Greenberg & Mazurek – May.14

Alex Greenberg and Kathleen Mazurek traded art and words. Kathleen shared this video*, entitled “IOP,” with Alex:

* Concept, set design, projections – Kathleen Mazurek.  Performer – Ffrog Elaine Wang

In response, Alex wrote this poem:

The Blind

I’m afraid that walking down this thread of flooring today
I will waver my arms out like a tightrope walker
and reach into the imperium of black for two hands
who have dropped down to tie something
or to clean a stain that my eyes cleaned away years ago.

I am clapping the backs of the walls I pass by as if in congratulation.
My three legs are sculpting a new floor through every dark room.
I am settling on a landscape from the vast gallery of my imagination:
all this time with my eyes closed I am bound to find a place I want to be.

I like to think of black as a dying flower and
I’m the glass it must reflect through
when the sun comes out.

* * * * *

Alex shared this poem with Kathleen:

Gift For The Flies

The poor are the only ones
who know how to suck dry a bone,

how to leave not even the marrow
of the dead animal for God

to bring to its family in heaven.
Slavering over the bone,

with knives like torches,
ready for the grand opening-up

of the animal’s cave
and the hopeless suppression

of its red-rock blood which will fizzle
through the dark like a shiver.

When the lips of a person
are the only feature that can be made out,

we try and match them to a pair of eyes,
a hair color, a story. They could be anyone

we think. Under a blanket we used our nails
to lift. Cradling the cold in their arms like a young child.

In response, Kathleen made this painting, “Gift For Flies”: