A Poets Birthday Dance through Fire and Rain 2019

by Aberjhani

Title

A Poets Birthday Dance through Fire and Rain 2019

Artist

Aberjhani

Medium

Mixed Media - Silk-featherbrush

Description

A Poet’s Birthday Dance through Fire and Rain 2019 (Silk-Featherbrush Number 21)

Since reconfirming intentions to publish a book of my art with my poetry, I've been going through material to decide which images and poems work best together. The experience is a very different from when I worked on ELEMENTAL The Power of Illuminated Love, with artist Luther E. Vann. For that project, the poems were written based on Luther's images. For this book, INCANDESCENT WONDER, I am mostly creating art to go with poems already written. Never really imagined myself doing both.

The first two versions of "A Poet’s Birthday Dance through Fire and Rain" were celebratory poems written in 2006 and 2007. At this point in my life it seems logical the third interpretation of the concept should take the form of visual art combining my Silk-Featherbrush and Kaleidoscope Moons themes and techniques with some abstract flavor mixed in also. Below is an excerpt from the second poem version published in The River of Winged Dreams. A couple of the lines have become fairly popular quotes around the Internet:

A POET'S BIRTHDAY DANCE THROUGH FIRE & RAIN (2007)

In a skin tapestry of northern lights and
strawberry fields, a woman and I wore
each other‘s soul like twin coats of mink starlight.

We smoked the legends of sacred intimacy
without regard to mortal boundaries.
We danced the prophecy of twilight moaning in tongues.
Love taught me to die with dignity
that I might come forth anew in splendor.
Born once of flesh, then again of fire,
I was reborn a third time to the sound of
my name humming haikus in heaven‘s mouth.
And destiny kissed me hard 'til I trembled seed.
And vision played me––like a shepherd‘s hollow reed...

Bright spirits of my children wing my heels
with solar flares of gnosis, and cosmic songs of bliss.
My father‘s soul cloaks my shoulders with endurance.
My mother‘s prayers build diamond bridges to the future.
I step in flame, turn west––spin above water and fly east,
the dance of rain cleansing, the music of fire exploding.

--(from THE RIVER OF WINGED DREAMS)

Aberjhani
Encyclopedia of the Harlem Renaissance
Harlem Renaissance Centennial

Uploaded

February 13th, 2019

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