by Jack Ramey | Aug 15, 2015 | Art, Jack Ramey, plato, Poetry
I The gods are far too literal minded : Ithmonike of Pellene pregnant for three entire years after imploring the god Asklepios at Epidaurus. You silly woman, he said upon her return, why did you not say you wanted to give birth? II Fingernail-clipping moon Above dustbin horsetail cloud. A small moth ascends As day descends into darkness. Dawn breaks My heart Apart. Opens up the night Like a knife wound Spilling red across the horizon. III Great Egyptian Ptah, lord of creation, spoke out loud his green-skinned imagination : and the universe hurled off his tongue into being. IV Rose taffeta unwinds from her spinning dancer’s dress You’ve hurt me for the last time, she says. A rogue’s gallery of blackguards lines the walls of her memory like a portico around her cerebellum’s cloister as baroque violoncellos squawk in the nautilus hollows of her ears like a dead sea of ancient tears. You are gone now in dust and I am still here, dancing. from Eavesdropping in Plato’s Café Featured Print: Ship Wreck by Linda Lyke Newfoundland Paintings: Ship Wreck is from a series of paintings that convey the struggle for survival of the Beothuk Natives and European settlers of Newfoundland and memorializes the images of both cultures with their complex topography of land and...
by Jack Ramey | May 12, 2015 | Art, Jack Ramey, plato, Poetry
The last few bars of Mysticali Rose drifting down the street mixt with dust and rolling mesquite the beat lingering there in that corner where heat gathers itself up into a knot of tangled memories and squats in a heap of rags and print and sighs out loud for squandered love. You want to sing but cannot even hum. You want to scream but no sound escapes your mouth. Only the white moth flies out making good her fatal break as bone men strum their liquid guitars and proud dancers in red shake their fiery heads in tune, in tune with the fierce rhythms of leaving. from Eavesdropping in Plato’s Café Featured Painting: Blue Dancers by Susan...
by Jack Ramey | Apr 27, 2015 | Art, Jack Ramey, plato, Poetry
XXVII Simonides of Keos inventor of the art of memory said that painting is silent poetry and poetry is painting that speaks. He knew the true poet’s wish: to make a poem whose images speak to so many people that its words live on forever. But forever is much too long a time. Just ask poor Sappho whose poems cannot be found except in tiny scraps: one stuck here, one stuck there, one found wrapped around a mummy’s head, recycled to preserve a politician’s memory. from Eavesdropping in Plato’s...
