Random, Abstract Poetry - 4/15/09

Absurdity In Three Pieces
It is somewhat unclear,
How well it resonated.
A set of twins,
With almost no trace of human figure.

Symbols of female fertility,
Around the wall.
A greater emphasis on circumstantial context.
Her ideas are related.
Each is practical or primary.

Individual context of history.
Open to interact.
The dot screen shift to yellow,
Could be read.

Language and meaning.
Delusion and fortune,
Available to the viewer.

Something relevant, disjointed, or arbitrary.
Fragmented about a moot point.
Both have symbols.
The meaning, multiple and distinct.

The seamless has rendered,
To the ongoing evolution.

Daydream about how.
I recalled.
Interrogated about culture.
I imagined.

Photographic imagery.
The viability of ambiguities become visible.



Horizontal Bands Between Solidarity and Evanescence
Make sense for a reason,
And grasp the tangible.

The male nude, stiffly drawn.
Never painted a nude.
He was a painter, self-taught.

The concept of boxed-in feelings.
The geometry of urban living,
Will fill those spaces.

A small gesture reveals sensibility,
And unusual viewpoints.

Occasionally, snail-like accumulations,
Of color next to color,
Form shadow and space.

Things seem to be rigorous.
Falling somewhere between,
Predictable and unexplained.

Repeat things familiar.
These arrangements yet absurd.
Fish don't have access to the obscure.

Energy, an oasis of warmth.
The glow of inspired optimism.
Not that everything will.

A field of yellow.
The chaos understood.
This curious blend of words.


A False Metaphor, Mapped From Linguistic Meaning
Purposeful experiments in urban psychotherapy.
To change negative thought patterns,
The therapy is uniquely focused.

Distressing social structures,
Between forces of nature.
One problem and one location.
Futuristic speculation dismissed as fantasies.

Piece together geraniums.
The swan song of January.

A can of soup?
There's a fly in my soup.
Be discerned by the kitchen utensils.
Complex symbols of meaning.

Find a way.
More elliptical.
We have passed a time,
For delirious visionaries.
Imagine that.

Exotic coconuts,
Have a ritual we recognize.
An unlikely pair who resonate.
One was sophisticated,
The other reclusive.

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 - 3/15/09

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


The Intellectual Obscurity of Absolute Understanding
A transition to the invisible,
And the anxiety of convention.
I had to learn.

You mention civilization,
Being one-dimensional.
The negation.
An opposition to positivism.

The marginal was tangential.
So you would be aware of it.
Always in resistance.
Abandoning society.

Whether it was ten or ten thousand.
He thought deeply and completely lucid.
Very critical of the French.
A necessary block,
To understanding a complicated language.

To think about theory,
All complexities can be understood.

Do you think that way?
It's possible.

The dark side was very difficult.
I was influenced by the thinker.
The difference between negative and positive.
Being oneself and so on.

I'm also thinking.
In other words, the knowledge of knowledge,
Can teach us knowledge.

Writing In Fragment Down The Page

Take a piece of paper.

And follow it.

What have you written?

Searching for an entry.

The sound of birds.

So much talking.

Stories are the collection of stories,

With a beginning, middle and end.
He awoke with a mind,
From the left side of right.

The two-headed god?

Ideas ask questions.

It's possible, but none the less.

That's not weird, it's just interesting.

An observer of his own life.

Leading to the climactic line.

It is finished, isn't it?
Yes.

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.

Random, Abstract Poetry - 2/18/09

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


Just There
You know, I began going nowhere.
I remember that.
Like Van Gogh's drawings.

The drawings were very important.
Even now, they are lucid.

Color is something really open.
It was art with people,
who couldn't talk.

If you went over there,
they'd stop and not talk.
I didn't fit in.

You belonged to the color.
But I didn't really feel comfortable.
That was true.

The color didn't have structure.
Struggling and struggling.
Just trying to draw.
Too many choices.
You can't give people too many choices.

Going to Egypt?
I should go to Egypt.
The pyramids.
I could stack together,
and not move the air.

I realized.
It just came to me.
The last key to the puzzle.

You got to struggle to figure out color.
I think that's about right.


I Didn't Know People
Shakespeare hardly had any friends.
But his ghost was present,
as though he'd never left.

An education in literature imagined.
So innovative and experimental.

A very unorthodox critic, traumatized.
Because I did not have the tools to write.
Thinking creatively in whatever.
Probably philosophy.



None Of This Was Ever Really Spoken
You were born early.
I wonder how that influenced you?

It was very intense.
They couldn't figure me out.
I read everything.

The war had a lot of resonance.
The 21st century complexity,
and so on.
The complexity of identity.

I found out later,
I wore rosary beads.

Much later in life,
I invented the process,
of organizing beloved figures.

I got very nervous.
They would vibrate any time the train went by.

Random, Abstract Poetry - 02/12/09

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


Door-to-Door Salesmen
The creators, looking to deceive.
Intellectual principles all centered on,
A devotion to the idea.

Peddled to the curious.
People bought complex, scientific theories.
This was decidedly odd.

Odd or ridiculous.
Unorthodox as much as sarcastic.
Hilariously hilarious.
Orchestrated ideas with humor.

It really is hilarious.
It might even be great.

It is strange to think,
But that's what happened.


Harmless Except To Himself
You talk literature with them.
Actually English.

You talk about anything?
He didn't talk much.
A very quiet, ominous language.

It wasn't literary,
But very intelligent, of course.

What were they like?
Sometimes, usually a psychoanalyst.
Concentrated on one person.
You get the idea?
Then next time,
It would be somebody else.

One thing was funny.
He didn't like Ireland.
It was a long story, I remember.
And I didn't notice the manuscript.

So strange.
The pauses taught silence.
He taught in silence.
This woman stood up and said,
This is terrible.

I wouldn't call that a great success.
But I guess it was successful.



The Way It Functions
This is a common thing.
People who don't believe.
When I believe.
Who really believes?

People are hostile.
Like Wal-Mart before they come in.
It's not planned cynicism.
But cynicism is not.

If you think it's a good thing,
To make people cynical,
What are you going to do?

There are two ways of looking at that.
Which never changes.
A laissez-faire state.
Sort of anti-ideology.

All the stuff gets tossed away.
Things, stuff,
And the red stuff.
That stuff has very little place.
You rarely hear about it.

Just a cynical maneuver?
I think so.
The magnetic power has exerted itself.

Random, Abstract Poetry - 1/25/09

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


An Opportunity To Understand Something
You figure out where because,
I don't feel whatever happened,
Cannot change.

People called me, and then
They tell me to go.
That was pretty wild.

We went out to walk.
A guy says, "Where are you?"
"Well, I'm here."
He says, "No, you're not here."
"I was here."
And the guy's like, "No, you're not here."
And I remember you were.
I was devastated.

But then I realized.
I'm here.
People tell me to go back.
I can go back.

If I tell, do they know,
They are supposed to go?
They would have to go,
Right?

I know I can always go.
That moment, I realized that.
[Laughs.]


A Hollowed Out Onion

One then another.
Down to three.
Where the woods begin,
The lesser one remains.

Heavy weather turned to rain.
Clouds which loom.
A picturesque backdrop.

That evening,
Stars dangled above.
Mushrooms in fleece and wool socks.
Behind a velvet curtain,
The composer conducted.

A thick sonata.
An interwoven symphony.
False notes slipped.
The failed attempt to engage.

The influence of the masks then spoke:
Beyond science and demolition.
What was monolithic?
To have never loved another?

Deep in the morning, skeptically observe,
That which wouldn't exist.

On the sunny afternoon, our final day.
Dead, emptied, systematically wrecked.
Humor must fail.
The end, in the face of realities.

The audience, with thrilling vigor,
Showed a complex-minded capacity to laugh.