Frida Kahlo

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Dying Deer

Beauty
Broken
Crushed
Suffers
Broken not crushed
Beauty suffers in artistry

Just a quick Tyburn style poem to help kick things off.  

Title:  Frida

Escaping from one chaos to another
from a child to a wife to a lover
Born in a country both exotic and poor
Named after the coyotes living outside each door

She was without perfection
One step away from dereliction
And then she wore long skirts to hide her deformity
Polio being her childhood scorn without pity

Until she painted what she knew
Adding vibrant colours to a few
And blood to the others, for no other gain
I suspect, other than depicting her private pain

Painting her reality, she insisted she did not paint dreams
instead, she depicted beheadings and screams
Always including her frowning image
But for a few still life and pilgrimage

The ripping out of fetus with womb
There are steps leading to her tomb
She was clearly distressed
and anxious, even at rest

And the men, oh the men; She relied on
One affair after another with a few spawn
Though she was life, she fought life and then tipped the beam
She thought about death; often, it would seem

Always watching round the corner, she was evil eyed
as if the confusion she portrayed lived within until she died
Her likeness sharp and keen
Sometimes man, sometimes women, it would seem

Born Magdalena Carmen Frida Kahlo y Calderon
amidst the Mexican Revolution
All her life, she kept prim and proper
all the while fighting with anyone who tried to stop her

She was deeply afraid yet brave
Any ounce of fear she would save
And then relish what she did in her thoughts in her paintings of torture or paintings of death
saying, at the end, that she hoped to never to return in her last breath

           The Broken Column
 

the maiden voyage         she ascends    
    against colors           against winds
skin dreamy     slow simmering dreams
   soaked in amber-lust  purged by sea
  tips singed       aurora       golden kisses
blaze          aflame          red spanish roses
               ashes across sky
                                 
be still
        mi’ corazón
           the end is almost near

        this earth shall never hear
the silent cries     of    agony and pain    
heart-shaped splinters     piercing skin
bleeding rusty wounds  
                           splattered in cold hands
   rivers ravines shrinking faith's frays

crown of moss boldly dares     bastions
        circling dark coal of her eyes    
  midnight in hair    a veil of frail light
 she tucked her flesh folded inside out
under crimson moon and warped clouds

plucking thorns         piece by piece
         nailed to her tongue
                           unknown mysteries
loneliness and ache ghosts in the night

                          silence
              rattled cage of bones
the barren womb    covered with dust

sing songs of love whispered in muted tones
     lulling lullaby    a mother’s adieu
             te' amo mas que mi piel
nothing is permanent
                           but lover’s regrets

and the rain came         unexpectedly
     from       fractured skies
           tear
                by
                  tear
   falling
        where they may

Diego
      Diego

          Where is her grave?

Gods gift of a womb
Spelled her dominance doom
She wanted a shovel not a broom

Not content to nurture or brood
Nature thinks her position is rude
Changing your role according to mood

She could have been happy
She could have been whole
Refusing to settle for her gender dole

A lack of passion
For normal in fashion
Hard truth for your dreams to smash on

un poema algo sobre Frida Kahlo


“They thought I was a Surrealist, but I wasn't. I never painted dreams. I painted my own reality.”
               ― Frida Kahlo



end-over-end the mural extends
(out from this pelvis of thorns and string)

and watermelons consort with lemons instead
(atop a dusty sheet of broken things)

en la casa azul
(Frida Kahlo sits on her stool)

weeping golden medallions or lead
(in a house of tangible blue )

tears of quartz soak bleeding through
(cursing outward from the empty womb)

in a blue house in Coyoacán
(the wound wraps itself around the room)

butterflies bloom by morning, and peacocks
(bloom looming conduits of memento mori )

a parrot sings tequila scenes
(beating the double ire of its wings)

bleeds and bleeds within the dream
(smokes upon the pulse and sleep)

sweeping arrows into the stag
(how they stick like a spider's web)

an osprey flies away with the thread
(the wound wraps itself around the head)

she levels her brow like a blade
(we sing alone for our bread)

the ionic column of her spine embeds
(in the cracked collarbone of that sky)

no Mexican sun nor moon so bright
(time over time of barren white)

branches of pink streaked with lime
(we strip its skins for green pine)

beneath the tree which bears no fruit
(we gather the rinds to remind)

to remind this life itself of life
(we fill our brushes with the blood we find)

Centuries of Torture

Throughout your centuries of torture
Your art showed everyone your pain
And still you delved deep into culture
Your vision showed us another plane

Oh your reality! the torment and the gravity
The tragedies and maladies this life bestowed upon you
And yet out of that a beautiful gift was born
Torn as the entire world can witness - your house in blue

All that time confined to bed
As you poured the images from your head
In that isolation you found some consolation with your painting
And amid all those love affairs
You two were quite the pair
As panzon’s love for you seemed to keep you both sustaining

But still you pushed through the agony
As you wished for death somehow valiantly
You experienced so many tragic and awful ordeals
And through that we saw your heart
Your tortured soul expressed in art
Your expression was like magic, beautiful and surreal

Thank you very much Aemelia for the award.  It's a great honor to share it with Van and all the poets who participated in this comp in highlighting a great artist and a wonderful woman.