Three Poems

Hello friends,

Three themed poems this week. Enjoy! (And if you do, please consider supporting my work by purchasing either The Robots of Babylon or my new omnibus edition Knit Ink (and Other Poems).)

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THE SCREAM (Anagram-Haiku)

The curves charm, madden,
vent a much redder chasm —
Edvard Munch: The Scream.

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The stanzas of the following poem are lipograms: Each stanza uses only those letters found in the name of the artist it discusses:

PAINTERS (Lipograms)

Vincent van Gogh 
can achieve 
the evening;
he cannot
negotiate night.

Paul Cézanne
can puzzle a plane:
a nuance 
can peel an apple.

Salvador Dalí is viral:
a vivid iris; 
a sordid oasis.

Pablo Picasso
spills classics.

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This final poem is a sestina composed of perfectly anagrammed lines:

ANAGRAM-SESTINA FOR PABLO PICASSO
 
The cubists paint the looming astral plane,
a torn plateau. Pale nothing stitches limbs
to planate space — to slash light, burn in time
the regal plans that motions built in space;
that multiple abstraction, song-line, shape;
that tragic spine: the point man labels “soul”.
 
A primal tone can light, best paints, the soul;
its shape this late, but long, romantic plane.
In mottling blue, Picasso learnt that shape.
In rose, the taut pleats hang Platonic limbs —
a blatant premise, thought on, in still space,
as points to help glance basal Truth in time.
 
A paintbrush calls! The angle points to time.
Grant main the plane! A bottle chips its soul....
So, halt that trouble planning: time is space;
all things abrupt to that one seismic plane;
all separate paths one night, cut into limbs;
one mulish, abstract glint: potential shape.
 
In Guernica’s still lamp, that too-bent shape,
a battle haunts horse-clapping lost in time;
then, too-tall paper statues, chaining limbs,
collapse in threatening baptism. That soul,
that battle springs malicious on the plane;
its night-lamp boils to haunt eternal space.
 
All bites, the Minotaur tonight plans space:
The beast, pulling a cart, its moon-lint shape
about to slip, retains the night’s calm plane.
Then, bathers lag: Points pull a coast in time;
that beach a still appointment, Ingres’ soul —
that posture, at pastiche, in long, lean limbs.
 
Atop Truth, painting, clothe an easel’s limbs....
Blot rain. Thin pigments lust to heal a space.
Plain talent meant the bright Picasso soul
(to mull) a plastic Einstein: both grant shape
to change, to lanterns, publish spatial time;
both aim at — sculpt their song — a silent plane.
 
Can’t night, our limbs — a palette lost in shape —
repaint that song in space? Lull, as both time,
soul, marble this, the poignant, static plane?