A naked foot first

I've been a bit busy and haven't set aside the time to finish up my latest drawing. I thought it might be interesting, however, to show off what one of my sketches looks like before I begin adding the colors.

Here's my "Fractured Foot" in the nude. I like the starkness of it, so I'm glad I can capture it for posterity here before altering it on the page.

Piecing together scraps

This is the first poem promised in the last post, albeit a bit tardy. I may yet alter it some, but I think it's mostly finished.

Stunning ephemera
By Francis Scudellari

His head open, unfolds...

Silk-tongue blossoms
lip-pressed snugly
between shuffled pages
with bindings worn
by salted drops
their liquid words loosed; a splashing
of seeded gusts

the handy, clipped moments...

Beading sounds dripped,
funneled, threaded
on dangled, thinning strings
that stretch too far
prismatic break
in many faceted spilling
of feathered light

black-white, pasted faces...

Eye-caught baubles
picked up and tucked
in pocketing cocoons
that ripen at
random ages
and burst forth in a clattering
of flitful wings

all collected, thought lost

His life's timing
a frayed patchwork
of ephemeral he
tattered-edge weaves
stitching a mind,
full of disconnected dreams joined
to memories

Teasing works in progress

Because my creative process is taking longer than expected, I thought I'd write a quick tease post about the work that's currently in progress. A poem I'm calling Stunning Ephemera is being built around the following lines:

Eye-caught baubles
picked up and tucked
in pocketing cocoons
that ripen at random ages
and burst forth with a clattering
of flit-full wings

The title is a phrase that quite literally popped in my head while lying in bed one morning. I have no idea what prompted it, but it struck me as interesting. Due to some strange serendipity I experienced around the writing of it, finishing this one is my current highest priority.

The second poem, Argus, is much less further along, but it's another of my attempts to modernize the characters from a classic myth. The idea of the watcher with one-hundred eyes has always captivated me.

Finally, I've begun a drawing inspired by my last poem Footsteps.

Footsteps, reworked

I re-worked the fragment from my last post, and I think this is how it will stay... a bit simple, but I like it.

Footsteps
By Francis Scudellari

A vision of footsteps
long ago's seeming faded
now beckoning, to-be retraced
with a trembling, unsteady finger

What if I was started tomorrow
anew by going back in time
to re-place myself then, first,
most, altar the future

Fragmentary pondering

While pondering things beyond my ken, perhaps too much, the following lines came to me. For now it's just a fragment, but I may some day soon expand on it.

I have a vision, of footsteps
long ago's seeming faded
now beckoning, to be retraced
with a trembling but steady finger

What If I were to,
tomorrow, start anew
by going back in time
and re-place myself, first

Feeling green

My latest drawing... not much else to say about it.

Another dream, another poem

This is another of my poems very loosely inspired by a dream. It's been taken out of that sleepy context, if dreams can be said to really have context.

Mismatched Messenger
By Francis Scudellari

A mismatch-making messenger --
its painted Kewpie doll's head
crudely glued to dovish body --
she frees from a tinfoil-wrapped cage

The bipolar-white wings outspread
to affect a slow-creeping glide
as this at-odds stranger descends
in clockwork-countering spirals

Its too pretty, rounded features
tooled on delicate ceramic
sharpen in edgy marked contrasts,
drawing never closer to me

The lifeless blue star-speckled eyes
string-pulled open by black bar brows;
the twin, red-dotted cheeks pushing
pursed lips not meant to kiss, but peck

Wire-thin, coiled pink talons grasping
a tightly rolled note, loose string-tied
and filled with her mock-poison words
penned at the tip of flaming tongue

The latest targeted missive
that it so precisely drops to
sweet trickle and prod me onward
in love bitterly imagined

Illustrative strangeness

This cartoonish portrait was meant to illustrate the line "flopped gold curls mopping a wide pink brow" from Oranges for Three Loves. It obviously took a bit of a twisted turn, but I'm growing fond of these imaginary faces.

Oranges, concluded with a dream

Finally, here is the last part of my poem Oranges for Three Loves (read the complete poem here). I may yet make some small changes to it, and please feel free to offer suggested tweaks. I should have another drawing or two based on it upcoming as well.

IV. Evening dreamed

As jagged-tooth fence-post's shadow lengthens,
a sudden unthinking appetite grows.
He grabs the last orange, gobbling it all
but a lone slick seed that sticks in his cheek

His magic seeming sadly lost, the kernel
he takes, finger-pushes it in topped soil,
then lays his head next to single-seed bed
and sleeps, drowsed by a soft-chirped serenade

That night, a tree sprouts of strange banded fruit;
perched among its branches, waking he spies
a fairy's green tossed locks, and dreamy she
with limpid hazel gaze smiles back at him

Oranges, Part Three: Pulpy Mess

Here's Part 3 of my poem Oranges for Three Loves. I'll have the conclusion up in a few days.

III. Mid-day Sun

Days left to his virtuous devices,
he fusses over the next, nails digging,
screw-cut peeling its thick rind, picking off
odd pieces of pith to smooth its surface

After would-be idol hours spent preening,
second love, an acid yellow figment,
floats down to him from distant high hilltop
her flopped gold curls mopping a wide pink brow

Fruit in palm extended, he waits his worth
while the orange exposed to mid-day sun
shrivels brown, a collapsed-in pulpy mess
that her passing wave topples uneasy

Swab of swirled scarlet

I don't know what the artistic merit of this drawing may be, but it appeals to me for some reason. It's a loose interpretation of the line "tall swab of swirled scarlet hair" from my poem Oranges for Three Loves.

Oranges, Part Two: First Love

Here's the second installment of my poem Oranges for Three Loves (Part I is here). I'm trying to do a better job of balancing the flow, imagery and word play. I too often sacrifice on the first. I have an idea for another related drawing that I'll try to post before Part III.

II. Striped Dawning

Home on morn's edge, a first love he soon sights
her narrow white face with blush-dabbed features,
the tall swab of swirled scarlet hair atop,
a bobbing tongue that bounces into view

At striped dawning, he, perhaps too eager,
reaches into his bag with halting hand.
An under-ripe gift he blurts out to her,
offered wholly careless, green-tipped, unpeeled

She takes it, and rolls it in slender hands
thumbs inspecting it, a bit misshapen,
bumps and crevices around knobby stem...
no fruit for her, nose upturned, she walks on

Unraveled

Fruitful picking

I've been working on my poem "Oranges for Three Loves," and what started out the very simple seed of an idea has blossomed into something a bit over-grown. The plan is to present it in four parts, the first of which I finished the first draft of today. It will likely require some more pruning, but I think it's shaping up.

Oranges for Three Loves
By Francis Scudellari

I. Picked Night

To steal a-way: three oranges for love
he was instructed by cackling voices
over time become vague though sharply plucked
and sealed in wide-mouthed, boyish memory

So, this picked night, he stalks storybook rows
of stubby trees that squat stacked in a maze
pulled straight by tender hands to hide riddles --
a patchwork of endlessly seamed sameness

Aided by a sickle moon's pointed glance,
he hasty harvests three waxy-lit fruit;
The feather-leafed branch loosed, snapping skyward
As juicy hope drops neatly in his pouch

La Vita Oscura

In his La Vita Nuova (The New Life), the Italian poet Dante describes emerging from the dark forest of his early dissolute life to be guided to a more moral existence by his dead love Beatrice. It's a great piece of art, and an interesting framework for a collection of verses.

I've never led anything resembling a dissolute life, in fact I've toed a pretty conservative line in the conduct of my quotidian activities. Beyond an occasional beer at divy bars, I don't dabble in too many vices. That said, I haven't found much reward in this upright and uptight lifestyle.

So it got me thinking ... yes, always a dangerous prospect. Maybe I need to pull a reverse-Dante and explore the wonders of moral dissolution. I could even write a collection of verses called La Vita Oscura (The Dark Life) that describes my slow dissent from shiny plained turpitude to shadowed lands of vice. Of course, first I need to locate a dark-spirited guide for the endeavor ... my Malatrice. I'd prefer that she be living, however.

Too clever by half?

I've been a bit overwhelmed by real life, and only able to retreat into my imagination for a few short breaks, so updates to this blog are going to be slow in coming for a little while.

I do have three poems in various stages of incompletion, and I also have a quick question to pose to you dear readers: Do you think the title "Oranges for Three Loves" is a bit too "clever"? Also, do you even get the reference? I already have a companion sketch in mind, in case that influences your answer.

Fun in the fourth dimension

This poem is a bit of an experiment, and also a kind of a mental break for me. I hope the playfulness comes across...

Spacetime becomes molasses
By Francis Scudellari

Her words, I love you, dropped
a red marble planet
thumb-shot and rolling ... smack-
dab in my middle path
slow-dragging spacetime down
with its wavy weight's pull
the stop-motion churning
and turning it viscous
greenish yellow-green goop
that oozes round my legs
accordion wobbly
with each fractal footfall
till my heart-thickened thoughts
relatively rebound
and sling-shot, this pupil's
dilation speeds ahead
to future visions of
happiness densely packed
in a singular whole's
matter-slurping moment

Springtime growth

It's been quite a while since I posted a drawing, and the blog seems a bit dull without them. So, here finally is my latest. I think I like it better than the poem (Metamorphosis) that inspired it. The colors have a Springtime feel, and I'm definitely in need of that brightness.

Resurfacing

I finally feel fully back mentally, and as such I was able to finish the last three stanzas of my Metamorphosis re-write. I'll try to do some more catching up in the next few days. Below is the new conclusion, and you can see the whole thing on my main site here.

... Ashen arms time-tied into criss-crossed bow
unfold and stretch in open-palm seeking;
scarlet freckles, at long last bared, flare up,
bulge out, burst forth in pollen dusted blooms

Blush-tipped fingers petal-spread to attract
a noon-day sun's lurid stare, its stark heat
that bubble boils her inner crimson sap
till its smoky sighs vent through wax-flapped wrists

The hot blooded steam up-borne on breezes
intermingling in changeling-pregnant clouds;
where gathered droplet children patient wait
to be released and reborn, not themselves

Work in slow progress

The re-write of the poem Metamorphosis is proving a much slower slog than expected. I've managed to get the first three stanza's closer to the way I want them, but they're still not perfect. The last three are a jumbled mess. Maybe tomorrow...

Metamorphosis
by Francis Scudellari

Change engendered with mythic suddenness,
as if sprung from strange god's familiar touch --
whether for fleecing lust or lancing pride --
a re-purposed Daphne, her life transforms...

Crowning, walnut-stained strands turn thickened vines
that whip outward, crackling bud ends a-twirl
to loosed-leaf wrap around her trellised bed
and eager bind her to this dreamed waking...

A bony cage once rubbery encased
dons barky layers -- brittle, gray-notched sheets
that spiral-drop down and scratch uncoiled toes
seeking worm-led passage through soft black soil...

(to be continued...)