Fine Art Discussions
Search Discussions
ON THE WINGS O' BUTTERFLY
is a collection of 162 poems of nine (9) contemporary poets from four 4 continent across the globe:
Chaline Ouellet
Christopher Gaston
Ed Meredith
Jacob King
Kevin Callahan
Maria Disley
Saigon De Castro
Thao Chuong
Xoanxo Cespon
These poets provide readers with a global perspective on different topics from the whole spectrum of thinking and writing process.
There are many books of poetry collection on the market. However this collection is very unique since all poets are also fine artists whose colourful vision of the world around them certainly has a positive impact on the way that they perceive and express in poetic words. In addition, this collection is distinctive as those poets are from a wide range of political, social, religious, and racial backgrounds in America, Asia, Australia, & Europe.
** link above is my facebook blognotes: https://www.facebook.com/notes/edgar-c-decastro/my-poetryart-book-on-the-wings-o-butterfly/10151076966958350
Feel free to comment and even give your feeler to order =)
Am inviting my fellow artist to feature some of the poems to see as teaser.
Big Skip
This is a very popular discussion with 630 responses. In order to help the page load faster and allow you to quickly read the most recent posts, we're only showing you the oldest 25 posts and the newest 25 posts. Everything in the middle has been skipped. Want to read the entire discussion? No problem: click here.
A
Wiki
Poem
-0-
S A V I N G G R A C E
-0-
Find
them quickly,
no stopping until you think
you may have found one, when
you do, you may stop, hold it up
to the mind and if it sparkles, pricking
all the senses, you may sit on your haunches
in the shallow inky water, or lie right where you are,
in soft bruised mud, above the buried ancient cities and
listen to the poem's secrets.. ancient trash or fresh, anyone’s
secrets are gold, as the next meal unfolds. But this is not a time for
eating, for filling the observer’s mouth, but silence. Send the timekeepers home,
hold the pendulums, put on your sandals and carry your brightest poems like starry
candles to the cleared fertile earth where once, fruit pickers had filled their blue juice stained
sacks, left tracks where they had scuffed the surface with their bee like movements, made scarved
paths for bearers to console one another among jewelled shrubs where only butterflies silently shimmer
with wings of gossamer as transparent as long, present memories...... and just listen to the colour of it all!
Feel the shades swallow your shoulders...nostalgic observer...shiver for a minute...as earth meets mud..mud..mud.
There, where even a rubbish heap will glow like a garden, with the merest gesture of loving kindness in this piece of Mother
Earth. The pile of garbage smelling dirt, where young fragile hands relieve the old men who’ve left their dreams as untested Zen.
Fresh blood brings new strength of hope, meeting both ends just to cope. Simple pleasures can jolt one's face. An old doll is counted
As a child’s saving grace, it fills her heart, her dreams, imparts distant images of butterfly wings, trinkets, treasures and shiny things...far from
Her life as a scavenger. And, afterwards, from the observers spot, the hilltop, the coloured rags and wrangled tin, glistens not unlike the old fruit workers
Their juicy crops, the corpses now laying in the hollows of their cradling roots. Above, the roots of rags, the rootings of rattling metal bits, the roots of work
Of scavengers, of unrest, survival, the roots of courage and determination when all’s you have to hold onto is an object, the colour of sky, or a tuft of grass, the Question why? Reflections in a shard of glass, where time dissipates and all’s you see is a strange face, a small hand, and think you hear a marching band...the sound Of hope in the child’s mind. Clinging to her grandpa’s wrinkled hand, clenched there, a dollar for his find of cans. Hot noodles from junk plastic they sold, collected through Midnight, winter cold, while mother shared election news of manifold, and smiles lightened at the makeshift table in twofold. Sitting first, the angel-child with doll in hand whom she named Grace, begins communion of praise for eventful day at Smokey Mountain,
skipping school for the joy obtained, unmindful of the fumes that morning, better than street begging. Although to outsiders it may seem they
live a broken life, a tainted dream, the doll named Grace, would be the one to see, the bosom of a loving family does exist amongst
the streets of scrap heaps, and what could matter more in this world than to be cherished by a waif’s heart, by this little treasure
hunting girl? And from the observer’s hilltop, away from the lowest point; the the sea of cloth and tin, like seaweed and
shells rattling in to the shore with treasures galore, a soul screams at the sight, at the plight, at the light in the man's
mind, to be so kind to one so small, to comfort her in her adult role, provider. A soul screams tears and joy,
a soul screams for all scavengers whether in suits, sorting emails, or overalls sorting screws, or hard hats
sorting men, or waders sorting fish.....hard work is life, no work is no life, sorting is organising, is
designing, is training, is choosing, is creating, is understanding. Watching from the hilltop, the
observer notices little difference from factory cloths, the glint of the needles, the clatter of
shuttles, the snip of scissors the collection of cottons in so many colours, the boxes of
buttons, all sorted and spilled, the workers like bees between aisles of machines.
The buzz of work, people pollinating the shrubs of cloth, the petals of metal, the
blooming hillocks of rainbowed spillages, notice little difference if you rule
out money rule out disease, political unease notice little difference
ruling out comfort, or shelter or wealth education, good health,
notice little difference from the grace of the girl, the doll,
and her world... The dump truck roars, announcing
its return, slowly marching into the moonlit dregs.
To a kingdom ruled next to filth, they’ll burn
on a beautiful wistful night under an
elegant moon that’s unusually
light, a doll in her hand on a
dreamy night. The observer
stands to yawn, to stretch
in the forgetting of time
and place, to notice
the sketch of a new
moon, no half
s c y t h e
swinging
in the
sky
and gone
is the sun, all
seamless are the
dyes of colour, all one,
but tiny bits try tiredly to
force a moonlit wink. Bones
ache from sitting idly on a distant hill
watching the workers and reminiscing,
the indistinctive dull rag mounds, the footpath’s
trail looks altogether a dreamy landscape route under
a sky where watchful stars do hang and shoot to make rubbish look
like dark boxed jewels, and scavengers, as slow as shadows now, huddled
up like dark carved dolls or cardboard shepherds for the nativity, pushed
by a Prometheus hand along the path....the hamster wheel..eternity..infinity? The
observer turns away. Leaves the hill, its silhouettes, which almost scare him half to
death, to walk another path, just another, with regrets, but hope for Grace, lest he for
one forgets in haste. Then time and place was rearranged and on the hill she stood so very still,
the sirens shrilling, women shouting, men swarming, she kneeled to something strange horizon ranged,
beyond the noise against the acrid odour of poverty, smoke and fire so overpowering, monster orange,
a beast's identity, as fear engulfs the impoverished sea like a disturbed ant of humanity. A night of chaos,
a silent sob, a rag companion to blot out the mob, speechless heart bleeding emotion on fire! Unaware of eyes
across the dust, the media and t.v crews, as the pink dawn broke it threw a light over the burning smoking sight,
it became apparent that their plight was far from over. The sanctuary they had always known was a charred shell,
no longer a home. When the media showed the face of the girl Holding Grace in the smoking swirl Pity reached out
across the world, to save the girl from running wild a scavenging child. Surreal urban scene it all came to be
crawling life and struggling norms wish I'd never known as the clearing was shown under
the rubble of the burnt domain charred bodies over turned revealed as Grace’s
parents, press cover in a frenzy for Grace's sympathy. The observer, in a
distant place, saw the tragic news, remembered Grace the girl and
doll, and as a poet, declared as he sat down with his family to a
meal, ' My homage to your smiling innocence, dear Grace!
Your beautiful bravery, My homage to your freedom
from behind the bars
of my barefoot,
ragged
poetry.
-0-
©
All rights reserved
2013
20th
May
Please login before posting a reply to this message. If you do not have an account on FineArtAmerica.com, click here to create one!
