Visuals, Poetics and the Artist
The Silver Braid
Summer feature 2006
The Silver Braid
Summer feature 2006
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Visuals, Poetics and the Artist
The Silver Braid Summer feature 2006 |
Mannequin Envy | |
I write poetry that can not be paraphrased, that could not be predicted, and would transform me in the process. I am a different person by the end of it. Each line creates the next, the sounds, the multiple meanings, the context of the line breaks, juxtapositions, the flow of the music. The character I would be writing about would emerge as from a trance of the poem itself, lucid dreaming. If I could have known the ending at the beginning, why would I have written it? The poem develops through revisions, going deeper into beauty, discoveries, and when I feel a line of light move through me, I’ve probably got it right. I would like others to also feel that shiver of light. That shimmer. I am a model, creating artistic photography from the inside out. I have made my statement to the world about modeling being a way of bringing through the light. I bring the spirit through my eyes, to the photographer who is in tune with that. Bringing through beauty, feeling the light, expressing self beyond self. So the observer will be seeing a transparent being. A self in relation to the larger self. Pulsing out of the darkness, being both the light of manifestation and the darkness of absolute being. Photography works with light and dark, so why not reach into that concept and play? I have often sent transmissions of light, or Shaktipat, Kundalini work, to individuals, which causes them to see visions. Many wrote their stories of these occasions in my books, such as Being Turned to Fire. Leaving my life in an art studio, running a gallery, I consciously chose to do that rather than physical arts for years, as a different method of art and refining the fire of consciousness. I have enjoyed the numerous reports of hours of visions from sitting next to me over the years. People are growing more in touch with their fuller selves. Eventually, the digital art programs and internet allowed me to transmit images more like what I had been doing with energies. As with my writing, and the poetry of the body, and sending transformative energies, I create my art as a means of transformation. I like the end product to be a little mysterious, leaving room for miracles. Sometimes I start to do one image, and I end up with a book length set. The pictures set off dreaming, and we play together…. I love to talk to people who are talking in their sleep. It’s delightful. They finally catch on and wake up. Sometimes I talk to dream characters, and they themselves become lucid. I like to call my art Lucid Vision, and my writing Lucid Fiction. Tantra Bensko Flameflower@runbox.com |
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Meditation on the
Breath
Why does the evening converge inside your lungs? It does not breathe Out, only in, until So condensed, it is night, and your hand Cries, and your hair cries, and the water Is thirsty, and you break down On the bridge and lie Hearing the sky in the water below you, Leaves biting the water And swallowing birds, water Drowning their sounds, and the moon Let’s you breathe, your breath white now, Round puffs of xylophone music, Hanging on the bones of their sound, And the water leaps Onto you in drops that you catch With the tongues of your skin and it is good. |
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Snow
Sculpture
You work hard and days Turn colors with cold. Then, kinetic sculpture, The form begins to fade away And change its contours; Angles change and holes Appear, points turn around With water drops. Wheat farmers in Nebraska Wash their hair In your sculpture's flow; Clouds move it across the sky And down again in Mexico; A cactus drinks it, And it rains down A horse’s back, glimmering Along the sides, shaking, flashing, Curving into the darkening brown Beneath his belly, growing Hidden in the heaving And the breathing, shadowed Texture of desire. |
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The
Lateness of the Night Lies Dreaming
Are we one, then, dreaming we are two? But in my dreams are colors moving, Colors from your dreams That should not move. When from the darkness then my room Is sudden light, the scarves And pillows, drums and crotons Quiver, vibrate back and forth From you to me, shimmer For awhile as they caress Our thigh, your neck, my amethyst And voice, and lift themselves Into their place upon the walls, Upon the floor, and then stroke gently Your life distant Once again, then shimmer back Until they grow So saturated In their forms and shades That they contain what you There is in them and then They leap inside me, scarves Around me, drums beneath my hands, Pillows sliding down me, crotons Painting me until I know that I am colors Speaking through me Answers that I have to ask, And colors have to move to speak Through you. They sling out Through your heart and circle round Into your life, to someone whom you love But may not know, and lean themselves Inside you from below. But left inside you they grow dark And then your thighs don’t shimmer When caressed. My hand now Against the paper, and my fingers Tangled in the pen, touch you And will touch You when no longer there, and so Your finger quivers as it writes Upon me words in water, Words I cannot read nor drink But feel them as you drink Them with your tongue Across my wrist, and down my back, And swelling curve into my leg. You grow thirsty as you drink, The water being thin and light Upon me. And you want To wake and hear me say the words And with that, lose your thirst And your desire to speak because I know your words. We will speak in colors And our dreams will breathe together. We will breathe against our bodies Words that heat then cool The skin. Words of lettered lines Of breath, but of no sound. And we will listen to the body With an ear against it. Then we will Lick and eat the ear. The words entrance us, and we stare Into each others’ eyes and tunnel Back into the pupils, finding Something closer there than sight. I kiss your eyes and eat The distance found in sight. Distance shimmering on the walls Where you are, where I am. |
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