Jonathan Beale- Three Poems

The Earth Enslaved

The earth enslaved: Diego Rivera, fresco, 1926 University of Chapingo, Mexico

Capitalism as two grotesques

Reliant upon the vie of the second side.

The cloud of dictators affects the sight

And senses of the masses.

The sun rises as they are in their fields;

Either owned by or chained by the

The dictatorial that blindly squeeze…

And squeeze…. and squeeze…

On, and on, and on, and on….

The named of the land.  Whose

Invisible venom is the parasitic

Worm that drives this viciously

Circular scenario, the curved body

Exhausted, spent, left with nothing.

Self-portrait as Mars (Selbstbildnis als Mars) 1915

The world was at war - a year in.

The inner chaos of the mind.

A war of absolutes.

The world spat and spewed

Fresh generations to 

New and newer depths

To inflict pain upon.  

The eye drinks in the red

Red of the blood of

The good and the bad.

Here, in his mind

Deformities’ of the undefinable

Shards, crosses, skulls, & blood.

Remain in his mind forever

In this raucous collage

Of his final desperation.

Mullholland Drive: The Road to the Studio 1980 David Hockney

‘When I started living up in the Hollywood Hills, I drove every day down to my studio.  I became fascinated by all these wiggly lines and they began to enter the paintings.  From the hills, Los Angeles is a completely different experience.  In fact, these pictures are more realistic than you might think.  When you look at Mulholland Drive –and Drive is not the name of the road, but the act of driving – your eye moves around the painting at about the same speed as the car drives along the road.’  David Hockney.

Every route makes its own plans

The tread marks of each

Journey seen in relapse photography

The season division and then

Months division and on to

The weekly daily and hourly.

The act of the ‘drive’ – driving.

A means to an end and an extension

Just another living space

Watching the others in their spaces

Passing along drowning

In metaphors – similes

Each time takes anticipation

And draws on reflection to make

A wider sea of anticipation

To drown or make generative

Watching the tennis courts empty

Or watching a game in passing

Sunglassed masses

In their machines smoking

Looking like spiders or ants

The automated formication

Motion du-dah-du-dah

Ants like men follow singular paths

In this cartographers hallucination

I drew upon the journey

That just goes on ad infinitum …