Spinozablue

Sha-la, la-la-la-la, live for today!

May 11, 2022 Spinozablue

It’s only been in recent times that opening credits for TV shows seem to matter artistically, at least to me. I never gave them much thought and would often just skip them if that was an option. But queue up a wonderful show like Pachinko, based on the 2017 novel by Min Jin Lee, and it’s no longer automatic. It can be its own tiny moment of genius, and in this case, the near-perfect blend of music, image, and sheer joy.

Watch this video on YouTube

The song in question, written originally in Italian, but made famous by The Grass Roots, is arguably the quintessential expression of 1960s rebellion in pop music form. One could say it doesn’t have the philosophical heft of a CSNY, Beatles, or Simon and Garfunkel lyric, but it wasn’t going for that.… Click to Continue “Sha-la, la-la-la-la, live for today!”

Borealis in a Glass: Poetry by Dan Raphael

April 27, 2022 Spinozablue

With One Step

at least one mind always open
checking out is checking in, time for your elation
growth is seldom symmetrical, ticking as I warm
with bulbs between my feet, networked so I can fly
when my arm’s a world away, a 65 beetle for a bracelet

a city where you don’t have to go outside, borealis in a glass,
with my contacts everything’s black & white
how decisions are mass-produced—you have to know who to ask
I’m living on a ramen budget so I can afford solar-powered wings
my ribs are just for cooling and messages

the language of weather is almost translated by our emotions
which are polyglot omnivores, a stream 12 inches wide
but uncrossable, not water, the other side of a mirror’s internal organs
I hear toenails of rain, trans-body supplements
calling upon the privilege to exist, tiny clouds of gravy
mandating naps at inconvenient moments when everyone is watching
the stove changes sides and frosts the august windows
so the winded insects can write us instruction
hold to the mirror I’ve sanded my palms for hours to create

by looking in one looks behind, look through to out,
teach the toes to see through shoes and know colors
by their jersey numbers, split formations, shotgun,
only the invisible can score, the name you get when you graduate
the name you need without water, shelter or company
just trees on speed, wind on steroids, how can so much smoke
with nothing to burn, rattlers sleeping in dorito bags

— by Dan Raphael

Jason Hickel’s Less is More

April 25, 2022 Spinozablue

Animism versus Dualism. Mother Earth versus Descartes. Seeing ourselves and the world around us as continuous, interconnected, and interdependent, versus Subject/object/Master/slave. Seeing the world like a shaman or a bulldozer.

We can’t keep doing this anymore. We can’t keep treating the earth like a trash heap, like we own it, control it, and owe it nothing.

In Less is More, Jason Hickel makes the case for a massive shift in the way we think about the planet, its limited resources, and our (accelerating) role in depleting its former abundance. He does this by shining a fine light on our present, and takes us through roughly 500 years of recent history as well, with the occasional flashback to still earlier times. Concisely. Coherently. Accessibly. No whitewashing.… Click to Continue “Jason Hickel’s Less is More”

Mitch Corber’s windy mischief

April 13, 2022 Spinozablue

ANY DAY RAY
Celebrating Beat poet Ray Bremser
(1934–1998)

You’ve riveted the swivel-mirror with your
reigning game of breakup. Battered eggs renege
a second helping. Saps refute the gluey music.

I’m brothels to a thistle. I’m bootlicks from obeying.
Enter Bremser where the neon adman bellows,
brandishing his tawny beard.

“Kindly time your leap for cheap theatrics!”
Affordable a cordless drill, of tumbling wombs
now doubly whisked to kiss the nipple.

Prison schism scatters rags, as vines climb
the mended fencepost. Would you free a thwarted
comrade? Do weapons spank the cranky?

Vanity o sanitize my sorrows, borrow any feather.
Whether vanes skirmish in the windy mischief,
I’d presume to flutter.

— by Mitch Corber

Corber, a founding member and live TV advocate of the innovative art collective, Colab (Collaborative Projects, 1977-1986), is also is a noted filmmaker of “John Cage: Man and Myth” (1990), “Fickle Foliage” (2012), “Leonard Cohen Interview Trilogy” (1988-2013), “Nomads of New York” (2016) and the autobio “A Young 70″ (2019)—viewable online.… Click to Continue “Mitch Corber’s windy mischief”

New Poem by Frederick Pollack

April 7, 2022 Spinozablue

Mantra

Why should the phrase “Nothing is hidden”
occur ten times a day
in my private mumbling? I have no gospel
but poems; it’s used in several
I know, but in error:
no one is watching. Granted, whenever
one buys or types something one is
oneself a product or potential threat;
but those keeping tabs aren’t
the viewer I imply. He, it
sees nothing; no one does.
Yet the data accumulates, and whether
its proper metaphor
is topsoil or a final document,
it will eventually be filed or tended.

—by Frederick Pollack

Author of two book-length narrative poems, The Adventure and Happiness, both Story Line Press; the former reissued 2022 by Red Hen Press.… Click to Continue “New Poem by Frederick Pollack”

Person, place, or thing

April 3, 2022 Spinozablue

Mirage II

Perception is a trap door in the sky
So they said
As they dragged
And crawled

O’er burning deserts
And rain-soaked fields
On their way into the black
Into night as day as night

For gold and roses were there
Just over there
Just over
The blue horizon

Twice blessed, they believed
But my songs differed
Twice blessed! they cried
But my paintings were oblique

Jazz
Crooned
Swing
Shimmied

Blues found
Wooden kimonos
For five
Then six

No art for them
Because the moment never came
For backward looks
Or epiphanies

No chorus featured
Wise apocrypha
The moment when —
The space between

—by Douglas Pinson

Feeling productive as of late. Krita has helped. Again, using its impasto brush, mostly, and taking advantage of its multibrushes as well.… Click to Continue “Person, place, or thing”

The Poetry of Place, Brick, and Stone

March 26, 2022 Spinozablue

Spinozablue welcomes new poetry by S.R. Brown, Stephen Mead, and Duane Anderson.

Secular monasteries of the mind. Byzantine, Gothic, Romanesque ruins of the unconscious. I dwell in the space between ancient walls, vaulted ceilings, piazzas, and naves, bereft of their original spirits, inhabited now by something else. By my own pantheon — if I could will it.

Watching Verhoeven’s Benedetta brings this full circle. Searching later for monasteries and abbeys online, going back to scenes from that film, I can see the illusions people create, how they need to be in those spaces too. Centuries later, with rare exceptions, these structures don’t hold their youthful majesty. They need nuns, townsfolk, artists, and writers to carry them fully into Being.… Click to Continue “The Poetry of Place, Brick, and Stone”

The Sibyl, Bound, by S.R. Brown

March 21, 2022 Spinozablue

THE SIBYL

(Lagerkvist, P. The Sibyl. Translated by Walford, N. Vol. V-240. New York, NY: Vintage Books, 1958)

I – P 1

(pinioned within
the (ancient
(sibyl (god’s
(her son’s unchanging (smile))
touched)) rocks)
heights)
Sun:

II – P 3-5

gazes ((below,
(maelstrom (of rocks.
(serene (white (the bridal)):
temple)) above)
the city)
son).

III – P 7-10

Threading the path
(mirrored, mazed,(
(the sibylline focus)
raveling unfocused intent,)
reflecting an intricate silence)
uncreating prophecy:

IV – P 10-14

thorn and blood:
(stumbling toward
(the cross; (offered
) pausing,
unblessed,)
a gray immortality,)
a clamorous ascension.

V – P 14-23

And (within: (the despair,
(directionless, (cursed) echoing)
empty;) without (the stilled
landscape (:cindered, (silent)
chill)))

VI – P 24-27

wandering the ashen earth (
(an uncaring (eternally
resounding): love?… Click to Continue “The Sibyl, Bound, by S.R. Brown”

Stephen Mead’s midnight carillon

March 19, 2022 Spinozablue

Keeping Open

An idiot’s delight,
(What, not dead yet?)
Mutterings, the daily scales practiced
sometimes
(—Who you dancing with?)
get carried away.
Joy swims upward.
The face is raised,
throwing off husks, gritty earth,
the strain of sighs pushing forth
(—here, here it is)
the sunflower sky.

Work, work…
I’m amazed the further I plunge
the more launch happens:
morning birds or
the midnight Carillon…
(—Is that you in there?)
Knock, knock , ..
the heart aflutter
wings keep opening:
the tribal, indefatigable pulse
breeding breathing
this life of seeds

— by Stephen Mead

Stephen Mead is an Outsider multi-media artist and writer. Since the 1990s he’s been grateful to many editors for publishing his work in print zines and eventually online.… Click to Continue “Stephen Mead’s midnight carillon”

New poems by Duane Anderson

March 18, 2022 Spinozablue

In the Eyes of a Worm

The saying goes
“The early bird gets the worm”,
but that only happens to the ones
who get up late.
The ones who are smart like me
set five alarm clocks,
five reminders to wake up
before the bird.

In the Eyes of a Corn Fed Pig

You may think I have no manners,
but it is you with none.
Oh, the mess you create
with all your dirty dishes, pots and pans.
You make eating so confusing,
no elbows on the table,
sit up straight,
chew your food with your mouth closed.
Wow, you make it hard.
Just take a lesson from me
and learn how to do it right,
the food will taste much better.

In the Eyes of a Pigeon

All of our life we play a game called
“Pilot to Bombardier”.… Click to Continue “New poems by Duane Anderson”