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 semi-schizophrenic, alter ego creates the poetry.

The Pale Male Earlier Converted
There was no end.
The surrealist, a moralist.
Professed to detest.

Opium ingested,
Mistress thrashing in his bed.

Consumption, abuse,
A wish to die.
Reckless expenditure.


Just Contemplating
The infamous photo.
Mutilated, librarian corpse.
Stiff, bound wrists.

Blood on the moldy dungeon floor.
Rain in the distance.

Mad, enraged savage art.
Anything to say about it?


You Can Never Say That There's Only One
I get a lot of calls.
Strange people,
The government.
Who's watching?

He didn't say.
This is a common theme.

I'm on the radio.
I wrote a book?
Now that's very strange.

This man who they worshipped.
Deeply unpopular.
No one stands up.
It's doesn't make sense.

You hear people say,
There's no difference.
There is a difference.
That's not different.

One is perfect,
And one is the myth.

Images of one.
If one does something wrong.

The guilty is a myth.
A myth made necessary,
By the myth.
And you can't defy this.


The Book
I wrote it.
The whole thing.
It all came together.
The book.

I was conscious of what we were doing.
Near the street where I live.
Three or four people.
Questioned.

What you think, they feel.
I took out the book.

They started laughing,
And thought it was wonderful.
They loved it.
A great pleasure.

They accused me of soliciting the book.
It was absurd.
I was a pimp supposedly.
How ridiculous.

I considered it poetry.
Poetry not recognized.


Repeat The Cycle
Oversized, useless legs.
A pair of stockings.
Plenty of free time.
There was always something of interest.

A particular favorite.
Moby Dick's epilog.
Warm breezes, beaches, a beach chair.

A victim of infantile paralysis.
A tongue sandwich.
Lying in an iron lung.
The sun must have died.

A decade later,
His sense of smell became open.
The rain.
Not ordinary rain.


Civil Disorder
Sitting at a table.
The cat drinking plum juice.
Reminded of his last visit to Katmandu.

The only real excitement every morning.
The diabolical, raging battle,
Between street dogs and crows.
Over the possession of the garbage.
Listen to that.


Drinking Jean Paul
To understand Greek,
Call the Polish composer.
They called.

Yes, what have you got?
I have a painful procedure to do.
You will like it.

Buy red wine at outrageous prices.
If you say so.

Milky, alcoholic, rotten fruit.
Give me the whole bottle.

Let me ask you a question,
It is French?


Talent To Fish
Just put it aside.
To be paid and spend all your money on books?
You're crazy.

I'm describing a kind of ossification.
What's happening?
These are changes.
And it's affected me.

An addictive sociologist and heaven.
Find it interesting?

Disappear without a trace.
And spend a lot of money.

You can't do that,
Can't you?

We have to say,
This person is "X",
And take that kind of analysis seriously.


A Casual Sunday Conversation
Black and white footage.
A male figure with female parts.
How hazy the line forms.

Investigate declaration throughout.
Do not trust faith.
The words, a string of lies.

Rhyming words in personal narrative.
Scenes of orating language.

Language that intrigues.
That compels.
It sounds strange.
Like, "chop a duck head."


No, I Don't
Do you think books should be banned?
That puzzles me.

Is grammar not suitable?
A guy suckling on breasts.
Starving?
Absolutely, I'm sure.

I know it's being discussed.
What is considered normal.
I'd say,
No.


So, In Other Words
Thinking for a purpose.
I remember.

I became communist.
I was.

I thought it was impossible.
It was boring.
I couldn't accomplish one ideology.

I thought censorship.
But I didn't.

I belonged to nothing because,
I think I was,
I felt that,
I


The Village And The Beats
You ask a lot about the idea.
What do you think of is?

A creative outbreak.
To look back and say,
That was.
You're saying it.

People will say,
It was.
Because at least,
It was.

Compared to now,
Which I notice now.
You cannot, not notice.
It is the fact,
That is was so.

It's not good.
And if it isn't,
You know, the culture is.

There are technical things,
Which basically comes to people.
Not worried about was,
When was would never go.


It Seems I Think
Do you have confidence?
Did you ever think?

No, I mean, I thought.
But I don't think.

Got some papers.
The government told them,
That I didn't.
That I never thought.
I was shocked.

Of course, the thought.
I would have thought.


A Backward Step Puzzles Me
Life is the influential culture.
Autobiography books with obscenity laws.
A literary canon?

What is going on?
It seems to have gotten sharper.
I think it's sort of difficult.

What is going on, I remember.
A really bad situation,
The situation seems.

Dangerous, I don't know.
People saying the same thing.
The system
It can fall apart.


Moment of Change
The thought had never occurred.
A whole new idea.

They trust each other.
Talking just because.

A social interchange.
Kind of laid back.
Probably good.

Random, Abstract Poetry - 11/25/08

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 semi-schizophrenic, alter ego creates the poetry.

Sketched In Cadmium Red
The suggestion of fishy humor,
Offbeat.

The burning of the painting,
An abstract human quality.
Nature's way?

Allow the text to transition.
Weigh with judgement, not chaos.

Examine paintings of clouds.
Then, look at the sky,
Without desire.

Induce ambition.
Paint the question.
Who deserves?


Textural Renderings
Unamplified noise whispers.
Two performers project waves.
Short visual poems and symbols.
The page can grow hair.

A tidal wave,
It's own nature.
Existing in certainty.
The symbol and waves constant.


Translations
Scientific instruments.
Nuclear fission.
Things you imagine.

A laboratory of paint.
Tonality and color.
Mesmerizing and strange.

Paint a material vision.
Transform into substance.

Combine image and text,
As a strange occult.

Combine images with found text.
He was keenly interested.


Experimental Poetry
A performance with sound.
Respond to one another.

Deliberate, but primal.
Oscillate between.

Calm yet attentive intrigue.
It was a s'eance,
Existing between words and sound.

Enthusiasm clinching guilt.
Experimental association.
The odd personality to become.

The performance ended.


Art As A Model
His work was art.
Painting.
Concluding.
Including.

His paintings imaginary.
Translations that define painting.

The imagination.
The real.
Be transformed.

A romantic who rejects rational progress.
Denying egocentric gesture.
Understanding the artist,
Becomes all which were derived.


Spiraling In And Out
The silent place.
A kind of green light.

Truth stretches.
Dialogue silent.
It makes me wonder.

A native language.
Non-verbal.
But not French.


Or Re-Invented
Re-invention of the other thing.
Something referred to as the number.

You know they didn't think.
They got rid of non-fiction.

Imprint the analog.
Free of random form.
Were all shut down?

Beautiful Is
Multiple personality.
The presence of good.

Conscientious methods,
Lack dissenting intentions,
They argue.

The very presence of glass.
How beautiful it is.

Writing invokes tension.
Beauty, the profound aesthetic.

The hallmark of beauty,
Brokenness.


Mind of Hell
Torture, disorder.
A troubling question.

Interrogations critical?
Interrogators will.

Mentally ill psychologists.
Dubious psychologists.
Interrogations.


Broken
It is and,
It can be broken.
A piece of glass.

Resonate throughout.
Anxiety and instinct,
Constitutes what?

Tragedy.
How beautiful it is.

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, and my semi-schizophrenic, alter ego creates the poetry.

World Based On Principles
You get one kind of object.
Think about what must be going on.
It all ties together.

A scientific project.
Sea urchins and advanced mathematics.
Hyperbolic geometry,
The easiest way to describe.

The inverse of a sphere.
Crinkled edges.
Take those shapes,
And imagine infinity.

In actuality, it is impossible.
Realize nature.
Nature's imperfections.
You are a mathematician.
You may discover.


The Purpose Of
Futuristic structures.
Designed to cure all.
Censorship of the media.
The fact remains.

Never mind the critics.
Be more vocal.
Question ethics,
The regime,
The government.


Aesthetic In A Nut
You can find beauty in things.
The connections drift.

Treasures recovered,
Or maybe jarred loose.

An organism admiring color.
Color otherwise white.

Disposable fish.
Popular in Japan.


New Genera Of The Thread
A textile zoologist.
Her exceptional discovery in a pile of weed.
A plastic bag, I've been searching for.

A skeleton made from fiber.
Further analysis will confirm.
Fragments of thread,
Hypothetical.

A wire,
She considers.
Investigation into evolution.


Shocking Sensibilities
A project that is planned.
It is evident that it isn't.

An endemic problem.
All over the world.

Regimes of grandeur.
But one reality,
A crisis.
I don't think anything.


Call Them Units
Make a colony.
Thousands of tiny units.
Similar to a beehive.

Call them cells.
Why not?

Grow art in the structures.
Very cellular, it seems.
Follow the progression.


Mass Hypnosis
Reinforce the cult.
Then, in February,
Back out and support Sudan.
Genocidal?

That won't work.
Months later,
Echo the same.


In The Simplest Definition
Decorative green wool.
Fluffy wool.
Superfluous kitsch.

Experimenting,
Far less than perfect.

Mathematical models of,
Barnacles, wool, and plastic.
We got the purely mathematical stage.

Methodically categorize thousands of items.
Photos of plastic.
Begin with one.
Build upon another.
Tying together hundreds.


Society For The Art
They don't understand culture.
Of culture banned.

Focus on surrealism,
And postmodern revolution.

Open an anonymous museum.
All the more obvious,
By people the revolution is sensitive to.

Access private, totalitarian regimes.
Fill in the gap.


Made For TV
The grave of a KGB ruler.
His death, odd.
Designed to highest international standards.

An integral role in protocol.
A dictator telling them what not to report.
There were few examples.

A moral quagmire and politics.
It is no coincidence.
Invented propaganda.
The cinematic masterpiece.


Art In Nature
Knitting bones.
It's perfect for complex shapes.
The ideal circumstances,
Minimum shapes.

A visual thesis.
Prove evolution.
It was aesthetically beautiful.

Art is science.
Who's to say they are separate?


An Unfinished Painting
To sense how much he was haunted,
I cannot learn.
I am certain.

Painting innocence.
A collage of junk.
The time tells us which.
Damaged or rejected?

Bring together images.
The paint, which he copied in paint,
Stopped painting.
Failure fills in.


Stimuli Was Twofold
Fatal jagged lines,
And infectious color.

Atmosphere dissolved.
Personally, we realize.

Painful alienation.
Theatrical associations feel real.

The strain of laughter,
Intense.

Vampires began to mark out the shadows.
Deeply influenced by life without tomorrow.


A Tricky Little Caper
Make it appear imminently plausible.
First look at development.

The new white wall.
The window was beautiful,
As beautiful was.

Who realized in the past,
Modern was still folk?
The idea had to resemble fact.
Though strictly speculative.

Not what could be,
But what has been done.

Pedagogy has always been odd.
Evangelism, it's different.

Observe what they show.
Don't put up evidence.

Draw beneath the gap.
The mission is challenging.


A New Race
A kind of revenge.
Emerging from the past.

These myths, we have lost.
Our efficacy of nature,
A stable sense of ourselves.

Rattus Maximus

Rattus Maximus
2008 - 11"x12", Mixed media on wood.
(Not For Sale)
www.ErikVP.com

This is the third and final painting from my Year of The Rat series. Rat and Moon and Year of The Rat were the first two.

I like watching the rats running around the subway tracks, and I always take the F-Train. The painting is dated 4706 for the Chinese New Year. There's some random poetry on the Brooklyn Rail newspaper collage below, but not related to the rat.

The title is in reference to the misconception that rats living in New York are super-sized.

I Know
There was a moment.
Out the window.

Now and again.
Turned around.
I was trying to find.
You musn't trouble yourself.

Disabled
The war on terror.
Couldn't do it's job.
Spending millions a day.
Our infrastructure crumbling.
Responsibility.

In The Pudding
You can have a vision.
A vision.
I see the proof.

The Neighborhood
If nothing else,
People should put themelves,
In a position to save themselves.

New Orleans,
A financial disadvantage.
Courtesy of the government.
Pushing and providing.

That Was Deep
This is how I think.
The greatest moral failure.
And that's how it will.

Thoughts Crossed
I am far from people.
I had foolishly imagined.

I looked at my watch.
I decided.

The next day,
At 11:10pm, in the morning,
The idea seemed ridiculous.

They Were Black
Twice in a row,
Across the blue sky.
So quickly they seemed.

A straight line,
In the late afternoon.

I waited a bit.
I opened the door.
I went out.
I shall always remember.

Random, Abstract Poetry - 11/20/08

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.


Insightful Examination
Unaware, I pause.
Phonetic instructions were followed.

Early urban portraits.
Outbreak of war.
Expressive brushwork.

A feverish blank face.
A ticking time bomb.

Being symbolic can easily turn to consequences.
Transformed into a glow,
And immune to what might come.

Reminded of emotional detachment.
The unconscious art is urgent.


No Attempt To Blend
Catch up with the mind.
The world is detonating.
Plutonium, a devastating weapon.

Reproductions of Egyptian wall paintings,
and cartoons.
The paintings awkward.

Who seems to grasp?
The difference is in the color.
A mosaic to fulfill order.

The use of found images.
A few, coherent images.
Concoction never becomes unified.
Exploding pieces patiently joined.


This Particular Portrayal
In the anonymity of his surroundings.
Bring together seven.
Six to offer.
The first, of an apocalyptic history.

Notorious retrospect.
Crimes of the collective consciousness.


How To Draw
When he decided to.
He would say that.

My mind wanted to see.
I could not.
Images that had already been.

A deficiency ingenious.
Paintings, the final version.


That One Usually Applies
To have money.
You have money.
The thesis is likely.

As I said earlier.
We would have to have,
A lot of money.

Tell us about the pamphlets.
This idea of pamphlets.


Blue Flashes
Shatter a plate.
Unfazed to break.
This brings chaos.
Normally erratic or disruptive.

It seems that others choreographed chaos.
He admits.

The film cuts to the artist.
Telling transitions.

A filmmaker acutely aware.
The complexities an artist wants.
To uncover organically.

In order to allow,
Reveal.


Grammatological Terrain
Restricted of it's form.
Pedigree lying.
Somewhere found,
The system of not.

The visuality of the faded.
Repeated secondary vacuums
Loosely translated.

Production of myths.
Dark shadows,
A test of his imagination.
The painting, a hallucination.


Something Foolish
The distribution of color,
I have never seen.

There were a few ways.
Get up at dawn.
Pretend you were a mushroom sprouted.
Wait till the weekend.
Get drunk.


Being Butchered and Served
A madhouse.
Lurid, hallucinatory colors.
Graphic.
Overwhelmed by existential paralysis.
Sexual compulsion.

Response,
Over-stimulating.
Connection might be a pop song.

Self-conscious beauty enveloped me.
Still drowning.


Reason To Exist
A little boutique publisher.
No connection with it's past.
A couple of refugees.
Twenty-five, brought to Europe.
Publishing sensibility.
They published.
Very serious.
And made what?

Dreams Of

Dreams Of
2008 - 11"x12", Mixed media on wood.
www.ErikVP.com

Dreams Of
Life is always ulgy,
On the other side.
Neither true nor real.

Sometimes when I look.
There's no wind.
What are they tilting toward?

Speak To Me of Death
The trees lived.
I am in the sun, living.

Gaze at my smile.
Whenever I smile.
It was the end of everything.

This started off as happy, bright-colored painting. I looked through the newspaper collage and created the two poems above. You can see parts of both poems in the photo below. "Dreams Of" is by the pink house. "Speak To Me of Death" is vertical across the top of the painting and wraps around the edge. The first phrase, "The trees lived." was partially painted over with the black M&M tree.

Both poems have a darker feel and I didn't think they fit the painting at all. I kept thinking about a dream I had many years ago where I died in my dream. I revised the painting, replacing much of the color with black and white, and also some detail behind the black giraffe. I really like how the poems ended up influencing the artwork. This is another example of what comes out of the experimentation process, and will get incorporated into future artwork.

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.

More Sophisticated
Running through an impulse.
My impression composed.

A group of ravens explain,
"Keep expanding connections,
Moment to moment,
Communicate reflections."

"When you want proof,
Remember the musicians."
"Tonight is like that."


The Path That Encircles
The Hospital.
A smallpox hospital.
We would get in.

We tried out best to act like seagulls.
Posing.

We reached the fence.
There were spotlights.
The warning against trespassing.
We ignored the signs and jumped.


Life Aside From When
We thought it.
Have to change it.
So polite.

A heart condition.
One leg.

I think I belong.
More time.


The Back Door
I walked through it.
Could not have been.

A jungle of bamboo trees.
A miniature desert.
There is water.
A pond.


Outside
Those secret spaces.
You taking photos?

Transfixed by the images.
On the day, the sun rose.

That day.
Already belonging.


Expect To Find
It's moment to moment.
Comprehensive energy flowing.

Going over what?
Disorganization, leaving, changing.

This world.
I imagine romance.
There's sex.


On Her Back
She was on glycerine.
More and more.

She ended up dead.
Her faith in men.

She had devoted herself to danger,
Luxuries, never had.

This world to that.
To die.


They Look So Slender
Sand placed on a vibrating plate.
Open to chaotic feeling.
He relates.

A phenomena from his shoe.
Parabolas of darkness.

I speak obliquely.
I marvel at the peach tree,
With surrealist insight.

Prone to sudden chaos.
Their impulses circulating.


A Kind Of
People remember what?
What's unformed.

I'm trying to stabilize what.
The words are turbulent.

His thoughts dissolve.
Suffering becomes.


It's All About
I asked him how.
I learned what you will find.

A beautiful, shrunken box,
In camouglage,
Filled with weeds, trash, old tires,
And people.

He is unabashed.
He does no ask,
And he doesn't have to.


Stopping Often To Compose
People in the screen.
I arrange to meet.

10:00am
The mercury calling.

My apartment looked typical.
The same width.

"Two filters open."
"infinitely easier,"
He said in German.

Asylum
You
And that.
Of and.
The is.

To and.
It's of.
Of the.
There are.

The and.
To The.


Getting Up Early
The limbic nerve.
I become acute.

A man waving.
He works there?

This time,
There was a trial.


Beers From The Store
The recruiting officer wished me luck.
I was hand-washing paper towels.

The obligatory crazy guy.
I could see them looking at me.

An item in the paper.
People could get free meals.
Opportunities I discovered.


Previously Known As Blackwell
A small section.
A tall fence.
A paved road.
A second fence.

A smallpox hospital
A trip to explore.


She Was
An unrosy person.
Who's not going?
Ogling our new walnut.