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Posts Tagged ‘klimt’

Transmogrification

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , on November 19, 2023| 12 Comments »

            while looking at Klimt’s “Tree of Life,” I consider
 
 
After grief carved me, dismembered me,
scattered my parts, I couldn’t imagine
how I’d ever be put back together.
This is how it is life grew me again,
less like a woman, more like a tree
rooted in compassion and forget me nots,
nourished by all that had happened,
rising out of old stories, old wounds,
old parts, old love, new love.
The person I was is gone, yet here,
fueling the flourishing, the unfurling,
fashioning my limbs into a resting place
for dark wings, for golden light.

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Dear Gustav Klimt,

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on November 18, 2023| 12 Comments »


 
 
Please, don’t paint me today.
Maybe sketch me in pencil,
arms dangling soft by my sides.
Perhaps another day
I will gaze at the world
straight on, chin up,
eyes full of challenge
lips curled in risk.
Perhaps another day
I’ll stand with defiance,
long hair tossed back,
hands on my hips.
But today, dear man,
keep the eraser close.
I’m more paper than gesture.
more blank than bold stroke.
Today I have no mask,
no message, no need
to be seen. In fact,
Gustav, close your eyes.
Let me ask you about
when you met Typhon
and the Gorgons
and how things changed
from snakes to angel choirs
from skulls to golden kisses.
Here, good man.
Show me your face.
Please, hand me the pencil.

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Learning to Love Life

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , on November 11, 2023| 14 Comments »

We learn to love by being loved.
            —Rafael J. Gonzalez, personal correspondence


There are days now when I feel so embraced by life
it’s as if life itself is pulling me into its great, strong arms,
surrounding me with warmth, tenderness, radiance,
as if life is whispering into my ear, loving and low,
I’ve got you, sweetheart, I’ve got you.

Not that I’ve forgotten how fear enters in
with its wide-eyed hunger, how grief gnaws at raw flesh,
how the heart’s walls fall down in cacophonous descent,
but there are, I must tell you, golden hours sparked with joy,
love-dappled days steeped in flowers and song

and I can’t pretend it’s not beautiful,
can’t not share how the same life that ravages us
also gathers us in so gently, so surely
that we, too, become golden, become sun and moon,
become rapturous bloom, become kiss.


inspired by The Beethoven Frieze (1901), Gustav Klimt

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What the Mermaids Sang

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on November 11, 2023| 9 Comments »

            after Mermaids (1898) by Gustav Klimt
 
Truths are hidden from the surface.
            —motto of Carl von Rokitansky, head of the Vienna School of Medicine, who influenced Klimt
 
 
We’ve traveled to the waters dark and cold
where the only light to be found
is the light you learn to make with your own body.
We have traveled to the depths
where we were crushed by pressure,
where the only way to move is slow,
where the only nourishment is what is dead,
and now we arrive on shores of gold.
 
There are seas in you, deep trenches
you’d rather perhaps not explore.
But you must meet the mystery—
must be changed by all you cannot know.
It will widen your eyes forever.
Dear swimmer, this change is the treasure.

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Perhaps Inevitable

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on November 5, 2023| 4 Comments »

           after Gustav Klimt’s “Tragedie”
 
 
even now beneath
the stony gray mask of control
I feel it growing
a shimmering flower of purest gold
the naked truth
 
*

To sign up for the class that inspired this poem (and yesterday’s, too)–it’s not too late!–see below. Though the three-week class began last Friday, you could watch the recording of the first class and join us for the next two sessions. 

Love, Sex, Death and Everything: A Creativity Playshop with Gustav Klimt
Nov. 3, 10, 17, 11a.m. -1 p.m. MST
 
Three weeks of exploring what lurks in the depths of humanity. Each class consists of a deep Jungian-oriented dive into music and myths behind Klimt’s images led by Kayleen Asbo, interwoven with Rosemerry leading an exploration of mortality, passion, terror and beauty in your own creative writing practice. For more information and to register, visit here.

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Two Days After I Left the Museum of Modern Art

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , on December 6, 2021| 8 Comments »


after Hope II by Gustav Klimt


I am still thinking of the pregnant woman
on the fifth floor in room five hundred four
in a gold and jewel-toned Byzantine gown
with her eyes closed and her head bowed
down toward her swollen belly. Has she
glimpsed the gray skull attached to her womb?
Is this why her eyes are closed? Did she
somehow guess at what I now know—
that to say yes to a birth is to also say yes
to the death of that child—how the end
is in every one of us from the beginning.
It is right the soon-to-be mother
is nearly naked. This is what birth
and death do to us—no matter how
rich our clothes, we are utterly exposed—
not a damn thing to protect us
from our impermanence. I have fallen
in love with her, this mother to be—
in love with the curl of her fingers,
in love with the flex of her wrist,
in love with her flat and ornate robe,
in love with her delicate face,
and in love with her ripening shape—
this is how the human story goes.
Death hides in all our robes.
It’s the only way to live.


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The Legacy of Gustav Klimt and His Enduring Kiss

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , on February 28, 2018| 2 Comments »

After over a hundred years,

the blue flowers in her hair

are still as blue and the ivy

in his hair is still as green

and her face is just as soft

and serene as when she received

the kiss, the kiss that made

the whole world fall in love

with Gustav Klimt. And who

wouldn’t want to be caught

forever and ever in a golden

embrace, infinitely tender,

eternally erotic, the way

no kiss truly is? But here

they are, defying the fall,

these lovers, hanging unframed

on the wall of the Belvedere,

still passionate, lust-drowsy,

their love spilling into the halls

as the whole world around

them dissolves into shimmer,

into shine.

http://www.cnn.com/style/article/gustav-klimt-100-years/?iid=ob_lockedrail_bottomlarge

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