S E A S O N S

At the center of fear lies trepidation for our mortality. We avoid thinking of our inevitable transformation from this world, often because when we die we leave behind all that we love. As the western mind stares into the face of death it moves through states of denial, isolation, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance. These states were discovered by Dr. Elizabeth Ross Kubbler, a psychiatrist who worked with terminal patients. It is believed that there is a humanistic desire to express these states. Due to our fear of death we have a tendency to isolate ourselves and also avoid others who are in the midst of transformation. Isolation feeds the flame of fear, often causing us to leave this world as we came into it, kicking and screaming. Poetry, music, dance and the visual arts are all ways to communicate the un-defining emotions that overtake us. The poetry selected captures the emotions expressed in the stages of the acceptance of death. The associated paintings further illustrate these emotions.

Death Alone

There are lone cemeteries,

tombs full of soundless bones,

the heart threading a tunnel,

a dark, dark tunnel:

like a wreak we die to the very core,

as if drowning at the heart

or collapsing inwards from skin to soul.

There are corpses,

clammy slabs for feet,

there is death in the bones,

like a pure sound,

a bark without its dog,

out of certain bells, certain tombs

swelling in this humidity like lament or rain.

I see, when alone at times,

coffins under sail

setting out with the pale dead,

women in their dead braids,

bakers as white as angels,

thoughtful girls married to notaries,

coffins ascending the vertical river of the dead,

the wine-dark river to its source,

with their sails swollen with the sound of death,

filled with the silent noise of death.

Death is drawn to sound

like a slipper without a foot, a suit without its wearer,

comes to knock with a ring, stoneless and fingerless,

comes to shout without a mouth, a tongue, without a throat.

Nevertheless its footsteps sound

and its clothes echo, hushes like a tree.

I do not know, I am ignorant, I hardly see

but it seems to me that it's song has the color of wet violets

violets well used to the earth,

since the face of death is green,

and the gaze of death is green with the etched moisture of a violet's leaf

and its grave color of exasperated winter

-Pablo Neruda

Death

Come thou, thou last one, whom I recognize,

unbearable pain throughout this body's fabric:

as I in my spirit burned, see, I now burn in thee:

the wood that long resisted the advancing flames

which thou kept flaring, I now an nourishing

and burn in thee.

My gentle and mild being through thy ruthless fury

has turned into a raging hell that is not from here.

Quite pure, quite free of future planning, I mounted

the tangled funeral pyre built for my suffering,

so sure of nothing more to buy for future needs,

while in my heart the stored reserves kept silent.

Is it still I, who there past all recognition burn?

Memories I do not seize and bring inside.

O life! O living! O to be outside!

And I in flames,

And no one here who knows me.

-Rainer Maria Rilke

Requiem

So madness now has wrapped its wings

Round half my soul and plies me, heartless,

With draughts of fiery wine, begins

To lure me towards the vale of darkness.

And I can see that I must now

Concede the victory -as I listen,

The dream that dogged my fevered brow

Already seems an outside vision.

And though I go on bended knee

To plead, implore its intercession,

There's nothing I may take with me,

It countenances no concession:

Nor yet my son's distracted eyes-

The rock-like suffering rooted in them,

The day the storm broke from clear skies,

The hour spent visiting the prison,

Nor yet the kind, cool clasp of hands,

The lime-tree shadows' fitful darting,

the far light call across the land-

The soothing words exchanged on parting.

-Anna Akhmatova

Gacela of the Dark Death

I want to sleep the dream of the apples,

to withdraw from the tumult of cemeteries.

I want to sleep the dream of that child

who wanted to cut his heart on the high seas.

I don't want to hear again that the dead do not lose their blood,

that the putrid mouth goes on asking for water.

I don't want to learn of the tortures of the grass,

nor of the moon with a serpent's mouth

that labors before dawn.

I want to sleep awhile,

awhile, a minute, a century;

but all must know that I have not died;

that there is a stable of gold in my lips;

that I am the small friend of the west wing;

that I am the intense shadows of my tears.

Cover me at dawn with a veil,

because dawn will throw fistfuls of ants at me,

and wet with hard water my shoes

so that the pincers of the scorpion slide.

For I want to sleep the dream of the apples,

to learn a lament that will cleanse me to the earth;

For I want to live with that dark child

who wanted to cut his heart on the high seas.

-Federico Garcia Lorca

O Lacrimosa

I

Oh tear-filled figure who, like a sky held back,

grows heavy above the landscape of her sorrow.

And when she weeps, the gentle raindrops fall,

slanting upon the sand-bed of her heart.

O heavy with weeping. Scale to weigh all tears.

Who felt herself not sky, since she was shining

and sky exists only for clouds to form in.

How clear it is, how close, your land of sorrow,

beneath the stern sky's oneness. Like a face

that lies there, slowly waking up and thinking

horizontally, into endless depths.

II

It is nothing but a breath, the void.

And that green fulfillment

of blossoming trees: a breath.

We who are the breathed-upon, count

this slow breathing of earth,

whose hurry are we

III

Ah but the winters! The earth's mysterious

turning-within. Where around the dead

in the pure receding of sap,

boldness is gathered,

the boldness of future spring times.

Where imagination occurs

beneath what is rigid; where all the green

worn thin by the vast summers

again turns into a new

insight and the mirror of intuition;

where the flowers color

Wholly forgets that lingering of our eyes.

-Rainer Maria Rilke

On Death

You would know the secret of death.

but how shall you find it unless you seek it in the heart of life?

The owl whose night-bound eyes are blind unto the day cannot unveil

the mystery of light.

If you would indeed behold the spirit of death, open your heart wide

unto the body of life.

For life and death are one, even as the river and the sea are one.

In the Depth of your hopes and desires lies your

silent knowledge of the beyond;

And like seeds dreaming beneath the snow

your heart dreams of spring.

Trust the dreams, for in them is hidden the gate to eternity.

Your fear of death is but the trembling of the shepherd when he

stands before the king whose hand is to be laid upon him in honour.

Is the shepherd not joyful beneath his trembling, that he shall wear

the mark of the king?

Yet is he not more mindful of his trembling?

For what is it to die but to stand naked in the wind and to melt into

the sun?

And what is it to cease breathing, but to free the breath from its

restless tides, that it may rise and expand and seek God

unencumbered?

Only When you drink from the river of silence shall you indeed sing.

And when you have reached the mountain top,

then you shall begin to climb.

And when the earth shall claim your limbs, then shall you truly dance

-Kahlil Gibran

Open Heart Poetry Poster

Bjork portrait

Acrylic on canvas

24 by 36 in

Radiohead Karma Police illustration

Acrylic on canvas

4 by 4 feet

"Creation" 
Acrylic on canvas 

6 by 4 feet

"Wat Tam Wua"

Oil on canvas

48 by 32 in

"Still Life" 

Acrylic ink and charcoal on paper

10 by 4 feet

Here are some Sketches. They are master studies, anatomy studies, plans for paintings and observations from life. All of the drawings are done in charcoal.