Saturday, December 29, 2012

Josephine

Life love
You fit like a glove

Nudge shove
Coo of the turtle dove

Come Josephine
Wash my soul clean

Oh Josephine
We make a great team

Dear Josephine
Cold April dream

Sweet Josephine
Hot August steam

Life love
You fit like a glove

Nudge shove
Coo of the turtle dove


For Sketches
Denis J. Kelly
Dec. 29, 2012

Tuesday, December 18, 2012

Young Rene

Young Rene stepped out
Out from the museum's marble floor
Out from the toned confines
Of the gallery's walls its halls
Out into the wild world its crazy forms
Trying to recapture in words
Its raw beauty
Its refined tenderness
Like what had been depicted
By the masterpieces he had witnessed
With his own eyes
His own heart

He felt deep down to the depths of his soul
Not that he wanted to reproduce the masters
Now dead and buried
Some for hundreds of years
But that he wanted to feel a kinship
With beings who at one time felt similar to him
About his art
About his gift
About his explorations
Akin to the sensibilities
Of this collection of painters
These breakers of new ground
These front-line soldiers
Along the continuum of human expression

But how could this be accomplished
It is always so difficult to match one mode of human expression
With another
Trying to parallel the style
The grace
The touch
In a different medium

Still the expressions that their paints and strokes
Tried to capture and share
The colors the textures
It had all intrigued Young Rene
He felt overwhelmed as he stepped out
Out from the museum's marble floor
Out from the toned confines
Of the gallery's walls its halls
Out into the wild world its crazy forms
It all had imbued in him a burning desire
To capture in words
Its raw beauty
Its refined tenderness
Like had been depicted
By the masterpieces he had witnessed
With his eyes
With his heart

For Sketches
Denis J. Kelly
Dec. 18, 2012

Sunday, December 9, 2012

Antonio Astascio

He called himself Antonio Astascio
As he floated down the hill
The end of the line of Madison Park
An angelic section of Seattle
To the dock out onto Lake Washington
In full view of the floating bridge

Bridges don't float he screamed
Though only the insides of his imagination
Heard his melodiy in time

Bridges don't float he refrained
They fly  they rise  they hover
As he twirled and soft-shoed
Out onto the dock
Imagining it to be a stage catwalk
Out into an audience
Where he would show off his new-found dance shoes

I don't float he screamed
Though only the mirror of mirth in his imagination
Caught his inflection and guffawed
And cried

I don't float I aint no dancer I ain't no bridge

Oh sweet high stepper of these boards
Oh give me the gift to ply your planks
Oh inspire me in the performance of a lifetime
Oh help me to grace your humble yet timeless stage
With a creation appropriate to this view
The beauty of this lake
The texture of this inked cotton sky
Black and white watercolor canopy
And this contradiction from the world of science
Bridges don't float
And this contradiction from the world of art
I don't float

One-man symposium on magic convened on the spot
When he called himself Antonio Astascio
As he floated down the hill
The end of the line of Madison Park
An angelic section of Seatle
To the dock out onto Lake Washington
In full view of the floating bridge

For Sketches
Denis J. Kelly
Dec. 9, 2012