Random, Abstract Poetry - 4/1/09

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's exhibition 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



A Boundary Between Perception Pieced Together
This is what we do.
Something or seeing something.
Looking up or looking down.
I empathize with that.

You make your own prints for intervention?
The color of strange colors.
Technical defects.
Unpredictability is always one thing.
Life and mirrors.

I was interested in invention, obsession,
The opposition to historical objects.
This guy looks at the same things,
But never interested,
And saw blue.
I thought, "oh my".

You know he gets more personalized.
Picture he's a flower.
Not so interesting.
He's not well.

Mud.
I also adore.
Interested in various kinds.
That's really obsolete!

What are your thoughts?
Who blurs the image?

We make hypotheses,
Reconstructing this process.
Visual illusions are extended,
As an image in a dream.

I don't think he loved Mussolini.
He just wanted to stay home.
Don't you think?



Watery Lily Pads Mocked By Instrumental Froggy
Be careful about the flower children.
An overdetermined idea.
Reading a sketch,
Then painting very clearly.

He was surprised by the fact.
Just spontaneous and totally classical.
I think it was overdetermined.

Maddeningly empty.
If apocalypse is revelation,
It's the end of understanding relevance.
Get ready.

The deluded old man,
Was genuinely touching.
His brilliance of manipulating.
The connection between sound and sounds,
Stripped of their color, words or images.

Can you talk about alchemy?
I was totally taken by it.
I wanted to find a way.

The musical landscape speaks.
I feel within your brain.
I deal with drama.

Over time, I am drawn to,
Part of my brain,
As well as color.
They're all people,
Who have life experience.

Virtually unnoticed.
Fashionably unconnected.
Fortunately, he had enough sense.
I can't think of one precisely.

Surreal, and beautifully rendered,
With highly physical experimentation.
A complex layer of conflict.
The message heard.
At times overlooked.
Stop fighting it.

A moment needs to be the next moment.
I can listen,
Lying broken.
It still sounds fantastic.



The Future May Not Be Completely Rosy
Cyan, magenta, yellow.
And make sounds called dance.
A cerebral piece?

Utterly original.
Contained within a labor of love.

Manufactured to the strictest standards.
Classical vinyl.

Nothing like a coherent narrative.
Political repression underneath surrealistic humor.
Serious words parsing at a literal level.
Funkier than a disco beat.

The mysterious German,
Strumming chords.

I discovered slippery truths,
About elusive recorders,
The word heresy.

Semi-acoustic, no-fi, lo-fi.
The secret studio.
Hundreds of beer and wine bottles,
Miraculously tidied up.

I'm not interested in composition.
I don't consciously use technique.

Ears decide who,
In terms of methodology.
People who choose to go,
And for some,
They do not experience a tangible artifact.
It's not personal.

For example,
Superimposed results compared to,
Meticulous restructurings,
That retain too much form and character.
Fascinating?
Frequently inspire,
And they will listen.

A man is like schizophrenia.
Legend says, he was listening on the radio.
This guy.
He was kind of a genius.
There is a kind of art called art brut.
I think you can call this music.

It's a song but also personal.
It's called rock 'n' roll.
But in fact rock 'n' roll.


Allow Meanings To Emerge
Their plans were delayed.
Irrevocably interrupted.
A non-stop mastermind from left field.

Wide geographic separation,
People still refer to "the impossible",
In 20th century structures.

An accessible art form.
Suburban worlds eventually go stale.
The niche creative projects had been found.

Compose life, and then go to the other side.
I like that quote.
Everything is equal.
I don't like hierarchy.
I don't like rules.
Arranging things that are equal, and so emotional.

The uncategorizable cow.
Tang, tang, tang.
Copy me?

I really wish people understood.
Move on to something else.
Reference a particular irony or nostalgia.
Probably nostalgia, as an illness.
People died of it.
Now think something sentimental.

Longing for home,
As an escape from war.
We were marching for the first time.
Into a world of really strange things.
I just woke.

I think paintings communicate.
There's the matter of one doing,
That nudges you.

You work, work, work.
It does something that you couldn't predict.
The baggage of convention entails serious slippage.
Whether faster or slower,
All I really care about is getting drunk.

Two inclinations may be diametric.
One aimed at creation.
The other about reality.
Objectively, the subjectively have a sense.
One might outweigh the striving of balance.
As you say, I like red and green.

Random, Abstract Poetry - The Sunday Edition 12/21/08

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 has been on mind ever since I saw the Richard Prince exhibition at the Guggenheim - 2008. His re-photography, nurse paintings, and deKooning woman, collage paintings were especially inspiring.


The Love Song
It's familiar.
Conjuring, and recreating.
Engaged in a frenzied effort.
Defining the end points,
Between today and yesterday.

A loosely fictionalized account.
Introduced by people,
Powerful, corporate, non-democratic.
The tribe.

An intense revolution.
Global warming, war, financial collapse,
The government?
Corporate greed?

The tribe asks,
War for freedom, a moral choice?
Control, manipulate, pressure, persuade.
The system that controls us.

We should learn a thing or two.
History repeats itself.


Back In The Day
Honest working people.
Well meaning, sincere,
Mutual trust.
Feeling from virtue.
The countryside.

Poetry of the mundane.
Long periods of silence.
The simple story.
To simply be.

And that's the problem.
The other end.

Give less, say more.
A desperation for fame.
Insincerity, cynicism, self-righteousness.
Over abundant.
A climatic climax.

Deception, frustration, pressure
Feel the pressure.
The grinding pressure.
Try to figure out the problem.
It's their problem.

Consciousness overwhelmed.
Torn families.
Feeling all alone.
Tragedy, suicide, deadly violence.
The complex life.
When does it end?

The story continues forever.


The Situation Metastasizes
Trapped inside a bubble.
Mired in delusion.
Thinking of a nightmare.

Burn the dark poetry.
It's a lesser work.
A neatly crafted diversion.

Refer to the step-by-step conspiracy.
One revelation.
The game is literal.
Insist on French pronunciation.

This unfortunate pair of fantasies.
Obsessing about cartoon caricatures.
The caricatures complaining,
They're too one-dimensional.
A joke?
More tragic than real.

Give me 24 hours.
A cerebral force revolves around.
Insist on mysterious food.
Then draw the characters.
Deeper, more intelligent.

Burn one of the characters.
The small, paranoid one.
Sour laughter ensues.

Still believing.
The only sanity we have left.

Random, Abstract Poetry - The Sunday Edition

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.

Global Warnings
The last prophecy from Greek mythology,
The world is flat.

It is a revised thesis discovered.
Powerful forces.
My analysis became obvious.

The convergence of,
Hot, crowded,
Dynamic shaping.
Flattening the world.

The information,
Graphs and napkin drawings.
Written in simple language.
Calculated to a wide spectrum.

The frog is hot.


A Speech About
The process is broken.
Crushed or sabotaged.
I can't remember which.

There was singing and dancing.
Speeches about,
I don't remember exactly what.

I do remember.
We have this power.
A power to make something small.
It was real.

Transmitted from television and FM radio.
I had the experience.
I saw.


An Outside Signal
In the mucky waters,
A voice began to speak.

He couldn't finish a sentence.
So he began to speak.

Cautious optimism, drowning.
Spoken in paralyzing pain.

Consider the future.
Things will not get better.
There is little doubt.
The system, a signal to all.


Embattled and Aloof
There were a lot of interesting people.
I was there.
Tilted toward philosophy.
Difficult, to a large extent.

Compliant to literature,
And ways to escape the program.

I did not exist,
And I cannot imagine.

Time running out.
The activity planned,
And prepared.

The people, hung.
I think most of us were.
To survive, was very liberating.


A Kind of Visceral Interchange
The relationship between shapes.
Shapes you have investigated.
I'm wondering,
Is that coincidental?

The tribe.
A group of painters.
Creating a kind of abstraction.

The art.
Very drawn to it.
Experimenting with shapes.
Very large rectangles.
In a way, Greek.

I was intrigued.
A complex experience with color.


They Became Negligible
An incapacity to locate.
He made a point not to.

For fear of not being able to,
To find his way back.

The successful approach.
Engaged to the present.

Dwellers for time.
Rather than the near.

Death itself is sophisticated.
The termination, successful.

A pretty girl plays the tuba.



We Are All Americans
It's sort of extending into the absurd.
We are all unified?
Everybody is adopted?
I wondered.

Our vision of reality.
It makes sense.
The equation is clearly revealed.
What was the impulse?

Two pieces,
Fractured and broken.
People talked about being,
Split into parts.
The pieces all the same.

The idea of many people.
So many people.
It's a brilliant idea.
Very efficient.


Your Personal Suburb
A mysterious row of trees.
What is hidden behind?

Let's go back.
I remember.

The beginning of visual accumulation.
Images of suburbs,
Dominate the world.
That fascinates you.

I try to figure out why.
So immersed in thinking.
It got me thinking.

Everything has to do with you.
Mowing your lawn.
The absurdity of the whole thing.


A Concrete Thought
Blacked out names.
I collect them.

I know you.
You think logically.

A different kind of thinking.
Like a Vietnamese proverb.
Live long, be thin.
Live round, be dead.

A vision of reality.
Real facts on index cards.
I'm flattered that you think.


Gleeful Spaniel?
Do you speak?
Or do I not?
I do not.
Nor I cannot.

You and I.
For you the more.
I am you.
And my the more.

You, me, I.
But you will see.
Unworthy I am.
To follow, than be.

To love and respect.
I beg in you.
To be your dog.
I speak in truth.