Static

Following on from my previous posting the poem below is also part of my collaboration with the visual artist Melaneia Warwick. After wandering around inside a specific piece of her art I have tried to create a poem that engages with the narrative of her painting. 


This process is known as ekphrasis and there are many examples of poets creating such poems that have been inspired by works of art: 'The Disquieting Muses' by Sylvia Plath, which is based on the painting by the same title by Giorgio de Chirico, 'The Starry Night' by Anne Sexton based on the hugely famous painting by Vincent van Gogh and, much more recently, the absolutely stunning  'What the Water Gave Me' by Pascale Petit, which contains fifty-two poems in the voice of the Mexican painter Frida Kahlo.  


Here is Melaneia's painting 'Static' from her 'Gloaming' series that inspired my poem:

And here is my poem:

Static

Dread was a concept you never really understood.
Only the sweet iron of stars and summer lightning

coloured your days as life straddled you, rode you

bareback and bitless over a switchback of tragedies.

When people spoke of the coming storm you saw

the twist of their lips but heard only tinkling cymbals.

Even the sweaty lick of their appled palms failed

to draw you from the reverie of your malted bed.

As the hours passed, you stared into a blackening sky

and waited, your skin frothed with latherin as prongs

of hot silver darted through your mane.  At long last

you began to smell the stench of your own immortality.

Spooked by the rumblings of a distant thunderhead

you jittered with ignorance as the first sparks fizzed

about your hooves. Hobbled and haltered, you gasped

as licks of yellow fire pulsed along bone-dry timbers.

Rafters, blazing like crazy now, collapsed and crashed

to the ground as the next bolt struck your blistered ego.

Veins popping, breath bloody and sputtered, you wept

black tears as the final explosion ripped off your legs.

That’s how I found you, petrified and smoking with insight,

a broken mustang, static beside the brightest blue ocean.