Vertebral Vertigo

This extraordinary find, a vertebrae from a pot-roast, emerged pretty much as is from the carving up of that roast at a dinner table long years before I had decided to choose a vegetarian diet. The butcher’s part in the shaping of this one-armed Winged Victory Venus is evident in the exquisite chops he made in the trimming of the roast on its left side, its lower front facet, and provide a sitting base, all with accidental and absolutely impeccable placement.

My addition was to recognize the perfection of the shape and form of the piece, and to limit my intervention and claim to ownership to the addition of texture by scratching the bone and rubbing pigments into the scratches. It is a found art masterpiece that sits easily into the palm of one hand.

Vertebral Vertigo

Mordent Figment

 

 

Today my pen challenges

for a poem that is not just another scar or bruise

but a true and innocent gaiety.

 

                      I know I will only find it

                     where the given exceeds desire and need,

                     where senses are freed from all anxiety.

 

But my pen is an idealist,

an indelible fanatic, a razor-edged puritan, poor thing,

dreaming of calligraphic ecstasy.

 

                      Like me

                     it will have to seem to live

                     with music of a mordent theme.

Collage 6-Pack

If you count the edges of the chopped segments of abstract markings you can find a dozen pieces out of which this image was assembled and pasted down. I think of it as an innovation on a kind of centaur. Great fun to do such a wild compositional search-and-find assemblage.

AbsFig5