Random, Abstract Poetry - 3/3/09

Background: I take the Brooklyn Rail newspaper and underline words and phases in the articles that catch my attention. Then circle a word or phrase for the title. It's more of a subtractive process, taking a page of words and editing down to a poem or maybe several. It's kind of backwards from the traditional process of adding words to a blank page, but it works for me. The pieces of newspaper with these random abstract poems get used as collage material in my artwork. I create the artwork. My darker, semi-schizophrenic alter ego creates the poetry.

The concept of taking something that already exists and turning it into something new was inspired by a Richard Prince exhibition I visited at the Guggenheim - 2008. His re-photography, nurse paintings, and deKooning woman, collage paintings were my favorites.

Examples: You can see actual articles from the Brooklyn Rail with the poetry on my website at - www.ErikVP.com/poetry


It's What The Story Is About
The mind looted,
Tumbling off cliffs.
Courage and suffering renders,
Meaningless contradiction.
Never pay for lies.

Tiny beauty, apparently threatened.
Grammar, which somehow becomes transgressive.

Done only to kill.
Deliberate, mind-blowing.
The monotone of a man's soul.

One year later, most sincere.
It's a classic.


A Physical Representation of The Id
Condemned to the irrelevant.
Anti-depressants of the global economy.
The paradox of insanity.
Maybe the pendulum swings.

Sometimes incoherent,
The unconscious in ourselves.

A man with an asymmetric sexual fantasy.
Eyes shut, harvesting dangerous desires.
Waiting for things to appear.

What we desire,
Tells us what to desire.
Desire a dream.
We can imagine.


The Vibe Is Established
Blue poetry.
A particular obsession,
Between language and thought.
The eye should listen.

Language, a paradox.
Margins reverberate throughout,
Of proverbs trapped.
The possibilities.

Every dream is vital,
To the thinkers and stones.
Fused so seamlessly,
Without gray spaces.

Seeing a Chinese film.
Asking the same question.
Look, but not always.