THREE POEMS ON PAINTING RUINS

 

 

THREE POEMS ON PAINTING RUINS

1.  A Riot of Ruins

That I might smell, that I might see:

was a measure of how good my painting
would have to be before I kept or framed
it for a ready gift I did not need to wrap,

or before I burned it with leftover oil like

the posturing madman I was more often
than not, when scented chiaroscuro was
a poem’s altered form as long stretches
of babbling Babel plagued my wordhouse.

“A dab of sienna would be mouldering

leaves, a worm’s dark squiggle in the dirt,”
a shadow of a bird on rotting barn roof,
bundled twigs left askew on burnt grass:
always, always a riot of ruins on canvas.

2. Ruins, Woeful Vanishings

Why would the stump of a crumpled bell

tower find itself the fulcrum of colour
pasted, splashed, whirled into whorls
of pastel fading into a stray of gossamer
at the bastidor’s edges? How does it smell?

Dark. Dark. Like a gaping eyeless socket,

the belfry where the bell hung is empty
save for a blackened rope whipped by wind
that must have driven the bats that have
long absconded, leaving their putrid dung.

Dread. Dread. Like the threat of volcanic

mayhem, seen now from a distance
of quite hues, a shadow upon a shadow,
a hurt poised by razor-edged memories
of other ruins, other woeful vanishings.

3.  Ruins of Ruins

On the tip of my ashen grey is sulphuric

stench that would always be redolent
of lacerating betrayals, carrion of love’s
cadavers forever embalmed, forever
alive, forever recent, endlessly rising
from ruins of ruins flooding my senses.

--- ALBERT B. CASUGA