Alison Eastley
lives in Australia
with her husband,
Steve, her son Tom,
and his pet
ferret, Bob.
Blistered
'Sometimes at
night when he's
drunk he hangs
around the
street corners or
behind doors to
scare me to death'
- Rimbaud
The trouble with
listening to the
Devil turn cruelty
into charm is like
Vincent on one of
his bad days
when he said he
was 'blistered
with burning' and
this was before he
discovered that
conjunction
in alchemy simply
means between
earth and water,
nothing but ash or
floating pieces of
dust congeal
to black on
Saturday at the
House of
Tolerance,
he asked the
prostitute to
'keep this and
treasure
it' as he handed
her the mutilated
crescent moon
of his infamous
ear and then he
disappeared.
'to express
the love of two
lovers by a
wedding of
complimentary
colors, their
minglings and
oppositions,...Letter
#531, Vincent van
Gogh
'You take its
smooth substance
into your mouth
and it is as if
the very darkness
of the room
were melting on
your tongue', the
milky glow
of skin and
underneath, deeper
than memory's
lackluster
pretense there may
be intoxication
as acidosis steeps
through creases,
rumpled sheets
on the bed. I'd
like to say your
fingernails trace
my spine and your
cheek rests
against my sleepy
eye, that I try to
understand these
moments mean
yellow is not
simply yellow and
blue can be more
than the blue of
convoluted
constellations,
those saturnine
stars predicting
how darkly we spin
with or without a
complimentary
cocoon.
Quote taken from
'In Praise of
Shadows' by
Tanizaki
The Bust of a
Woman Molds Itself
Against the Sky
'and our
ancestors, forced
to live in dark
rooms,
presently came
to discover beauty
in shadows...'
Tanizaki
A dark silhouette
of a man appears
the same way
twilight slowly
sips any night so
that some mornings
he 'breakfasted on
a piece of dry
bread and a glass
of beer - that is
what Dickens
advises for those
on the point of
committing
suicide'. At other
times,
as drunk as lovers
believing there is
purity on earth,
as stark as limbs
illuminated when
lightning
blisters,
then burns, he'd
splash and streak
and slide, spit
gobs of paint
until both broken
and contained,
the surface
changed when he
tried to explain
how the bust of a
woman molds itself
against the sky.
Quote taken from
Vincent van Gogh