“Scaling the Colour Bar: Ecophonics” is up on https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Wv-sAp-g1A.
My poem was originally part of Chris Meloche’s hour-long 2010 production called The Space Between: A Transmorphous Journey, at Aeolian Hall, London ON.
Penn Kemp: text and performance.
Chris Meloche & Richard Moule (Transmorphous Sound Ensemble): soundscapes.
Scaling the Colour Bar: Ecophonics
Transchromaticized by love, by
palette of constantly shifting grey
shades, we intermittently glimpse
vivid streaks, flash on the wing.
Orioles everywhere this year:
bright gleams searing the sky
impeccably orange and black.
A red-winged blackbird creaks
like a clothesline in low gear.
The creek it nests by murmurs
bubbles of possibility, ignoring
frothing eddies of sodden soap
for the fun of funnelling spray.
Spring’s annual utopia of hope
collides with dystopian detritus,
shoreline picketed by plastic.
As parallel discontinuity, planes
scar the blue with contrail puffs
crisscrossing innocent as cumuli.
Seemingly disparate elements
catch the light and loudly soar
co-mingling in cerulean expanse.
*
Swimming in ether, Kerouac calls,
“My witness is the empty sky.”
Earth responds; river replies…
“The ground that gives rise to
the Word and the Word that
articulates the encompassing
ground are exactly parallel.”
An early version of this poem, “Colour Bar” was published in RIVER REVERY, Insomniac Press, https://riverrevery.ca/.
Michael Morris (1942-1982) created the colour bar series I loved in the early 70’s. Where he and Mr. Peanut (Vincent Trasov) lived, in Babyland on BC’s Sunshine Coast, glorious colour bars lit up and littered the gardens: fun and an eye opener for me: Art and the land in action…
See https://bordercrossingsmag.com/article/michael-morris-of-words-wiliness-and-wisdom.
Penn Kemp 