Canto Sun
Good poets offer an insight into their own reality. Great poets offer a new perspective on the universal “real”. Master poets hack the “real” apart.
And this is what you will find in Michael Conner’s work, a master class in hacking temporality and the subsequent “reality” apart.
Juris d. Ahn & Dr. Con
Canto is a Latin word which means song or singing.
Excerpts From The Book
Road to Glastonbury
Another still life
with just the right light,
Colors blend on canvas fibers,
accenting her perfectly fitted costume
in the garden by a sun dial and cistern
where lush ferns spread across
the painter’s horizon line
My eyes converge just to the left
of her intimate beauty,
composed on a stone bench
where the Master’s brush strokes
capture the weight of her anatomy
Flesh tones pass through the dilated pupil
Fluted birds pitch
dance around her absorption
with baby’s breath and ivy chaplet
The evening sunlight timidly
makes its way through the clouds
Floral arrangements nestle
her pink ankles
The evening perfumes mingle
A watermark on old parchment
absorbs the wet ink of her poetry
The rhymes succor my spirit
another traveler’s sign
on the lonely road to Glastonbury
For Vincent Van Gogh
Blinding ripe suns
cold pearl moons
long painted days and nights
of rich poverty
volatile oils, Absinthe, tobacco, coffee,
and where is my woman,
my lady of the flowers and brooks
my lady Sien,
the broken down prostitute?
Vincent, your solitude is so profound,
wandering dirges of melancholy,
and diabolical providence
I suppose that is what you are,
and there couldn’t have been
another woman for you.
I am happy you saw the Paris lights
from the streets of Montmartre,
with avant-garde,
comrades of impression
Eventually though,
we must all say farewell,
as you did
when you found it was you,
yourself,
the canvas being painted.
Grove and Sea
Life brings visions in epiphany
Through the sacred vines of Arcadia
With a daily Yield of mosaic grape clusters
By fire and black smoke of the Bacchanal
Scarlet capes in warm forest winds flow
Escorted with the choral songs of Delphi
Whose charming cult dancers
Undress by a waterfall of pressed wine
Men with olive wood masks
Dance naked to drums, pipes,
and crashing cymbals
For women of the festival and sea
Persephone’s Winter
(an extract)
A wet vine clings around her
heavy eyelid
The smoke of Syrian frankincense
stirs pastoral images
Wine, milk, and honeycomb,
trickle from the ceiling
Ruby sap, carved wood, and root
branch of petrified veins,
scroll through the Arch of Ariadne
within the living frieze
and carved acanthus leaves
Sweet nectar still drips from the
stone crack