in front of the garden gate – JezzieG
Be Proud Be Loud (Be Heard)
Date: 1982
Genre: New Wave
Artist: Toyah
Toyah is a singer, actor, and TV Presenter. She has had eight top 40 singles, 20 albums, written two books, appeared in 10 feature films 40 stage plays in a career spanning more than 40 years
Sacred Spot
Form: Nonet
High above like a temple ceiling
The vault of night decked out with stars
I stand where the stream gurgles
Across the midnight breeze
With blades of grass bent
Beneath my feet
It is here
The gods
Speak
©JezzieG2024
Pincushion to Serve as Fetish
1965
Sculpture
Velvet, plastic funnel, metal pins, sawdust, and wool
Collection of the Tate, United Kingdom
‘Pincushion to Serve as Fetish’ is an early example of Tanning’s sculptures, A funnel, sawdust, and wool are covered in black velvet and stuck with pins. An open end resembles an orifice whilst the form appears like a strange sea creature.
Dorothea Tanning
Surrealism, Installation Art, Proto-Feminist Artists, Modern Sculpture
Born: 25 August 1910, Illinois, USA
Nationality: American
Died: 31 January 2012, New York, USA
Tanning was a painter, printmaker, sculptor, writer, and poet. Art pervades much of Tanning’s life; her images, objects, and texts have become worthwhile art and her very presence transformed photographs and moments in time to make them more artistic. The whirlwind energy that followed Tanning as a person is found in her brushstrokes. Tanning’s complete oeuvre is dominated by her unstoppable life force characteristics. Her ideas were too big for rural Illinois so Tanning left for Chicago and then New York. In New York, she found both the style and company that she identified as a Surrealist. She also married Max Ernst. Tanning meticulously depicted her own dreams throughout her long career. This psychological exploration of self continued as her work developed into a more abstract and sculptural
Should We Carry On
1980
Popular Music
David Foster
Classical Pop
Born: 1 November 1949, Victoria, Canada
Nationality: Canadian
David Foster is a musician, composer, arranger, record producer, and music executive. He chaired Veve Records from 2012—2016. Foster has been nominated for 47 Grammy Awards of which he won 16.
Poetics
You know the old story Ann Landers tells
About the housewife in her basement doing the wash?
She’s wearing her nightie, and she thinks, “Well, hell,
I might’s well put this in as well,” and then
Being dripped on by a leaky pipe puts on
Her son’s football helmet; whereupon
The meter reader happens to walk through
and “Lady,” he gravely says, “I sure hope your team wins.”
A story many times told in many ways,
The set of random accidents redeemed
By one more accident, as though chaos
Were the order that was before the creation came.
That is the way things happen in the world:
A joke, a disappointment satisfied,
As we walk through doing our daily round,
Reading the meter, making things add up
Howard Nemerov
Born: 1 March 1920, New York, USA
Nationality: American
Died: 5 July 1991, Missouri, USA
Nemerov was a poet. He was twice Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress, (1963-1964 and 1988-1990). Nemerov won the National Book Award for Poetry, the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry, and the Bollingen Prize for his ‘The Collected Poems of Howard Nemerov’ (1977)
Day 128
Prompt: If your life was a book, what is the title of the current chapter?
Hi Nigel
‘Hiya! I think it will have to be a fun answer to this one’
Why is that?
‘’Oh, Bollocks!’ just isn’t a good starting point, is it?’
Uh-oh, what’s the matter?
‘It’s only 6am and already the day is going wrong’
We all have days when simply getting out of bed is a disaster, mate.
‘Should we just go back to bed on those days?’
Yeah, but you can guarantee it is a day when you have got to do something so can’t get back in bed
‘So even if that goes wrong, that just sucks’
The chances are the day will get better
‘Or it will get even worse’
You really have got the blues, haven’t you?
‘I just feel like I have been taken for a twat again’
Ahh, the date didn’t work out
‘That’s putting it mildly’
That bad
‘How am I supposed to get to know a person if they are fiddling with their phone instead of talking?’
Honestly, mate, I think that tells you what you need to know about him.
‘Yeah, he’s an ignorant ass’
And be honest with yourself, do you want to develop a relationship with someone like that?
‘Hell, no’
Then it may have been a bad date, but it was a useful one
‘Yeah, and I’m on my own again’
I know it hurts, mate, but better that than with the wrong person
‘I know. Knowing it doesn’t make you feel better about it though’
No, indeed it doesn’t
‘Will I ever find it?’
What, love?
‘Yeah’
Of course, you will, but I can’t tell you when
‘Meanwhile, I’ll have another cup of coffee and a bit more fruit cake’
Help yourself, you know that
‘I have thought of a better title for the chapter’
Okay, what is it?
‘There’s Always Coffee’
That works. See you tomorrow, Nige
©JezzieG2024
Inspired by and written for the Weekly Prompts Weekend Challenge, my thanks to Sue and Gerry
Form: Cyhydedd Fer
From light to dark my thoughts can turn
And so entwined I feel me burn
Sacrificed for evil delight
I fear it’s now forever night
Yet black coldness I feel the rage
My thinkings have become my cage
In surrender, I have no doubt
Inner demons fighting it out
In their battle, I may be lost
That has always been thinking’s cost
I do not cry and wear no frown
As Bipolar spirals drag down
I want to burn my own desire
How do I set my soul on fire?
©JezzieG2024
Inspired by and written for the Ragtag Daily Prompt, my thanks to Sgeoil
Form: Awdl Gywydd
Monday morning out of sync
Poet’s ink has lost its way
No rhythm sounds to his words
Absurd, it’s always Monday
It takes the day to work out
Turnabout to rhythmic chat
So it goes line upon line
It’ll be fine for all of that
So I’ll simply keep at it
And bit by bit I’ll revoke
This old Monday and its thing
To sing poet cannot choke
©JezzieG2024
From the Back of the Wardrobe 