Campbell & Hidalgo – November 2018

TS Hidalgo and Grace Campbell traded art and words. Grace shared this image, titled “Breast Effects,” with TS:

In response, TS wrote this poem:

That´s a Mirror, Sir

This afternoon, after haranguing the masses
(second round, umpteenth political rally),
I went to the Prado Museum.
The exhibition of Hieronymus Bosch.
The whole history of painting is terrifying.
The dominant character of all the Prado Museum is Jesus Christ.
He is the most often appears.
In the Premier League they´d have called Him a Box to box.
In another vein,
all portraits of the kings are scary.
No wonder in his last stage Goya painted only on Terror.
The History of Painting is a celebration of Terror.
I do not know why so many people go to see the Terror.
Will they see something else?
What to say about El Greco:
that one, literally, gives Panic.
Let’s go back to Hieronymus Bosch,
dedicated full-time to paint not only hell,
but also flying fishes.
Holy Virgin! That’s just what was missing from my life:
flying fishes!
As if it wasn´t enough, for me,
with some kind of claustrophobia
(and strangeness)
that they are in the water,
there under.
The Prado Museum:
as a whole, it is quite grim,
by the eternal themes of Spain.
I always leave there surrounded by a growing anxiety,
(a bit) hungry and tired.
The entry should not be allowed to boys:
Terror is not decent.
Not to girls neither:
how much wasted punishment!
History of Literature
(all?)
It can also be a History of Terror,
if we consider it this way, of course:
we see the forest lighted by flames,
when the fire has not yet come…
Back, exactly,
the same idea as I explained before,
the same place
(I reiterate what has been said):
Not to girls neither:
how much wasted punishment!

* * * * *

TS shared this poem with Grace:

Funeral Parlor

Silence. Silence.
Death has come
(and you can have success, despite it,
if one gives everything one has).
The week has also come,
and with it an evolution of the lowest temperatures.
They’re still talking about precipitation,
winds from the north;
we don’t rule out frost.
Unmistakable dreamlike atmosphere:
women and men turned into red birds,
that cross an equally red cloud study us.
All of this on an island, full of congressmen,
who improbably decide to finally throw in the towel;
they’re not crying,
they’re crossing themselves.
We wander the streets.
In the room in back is a famous editor,
he’s a fish;
he’s rotting: he was our friend.
He’s…spread-out like, right?;
he’s as tall as a ceiling.
“Let me feed myself utopia,”
he seemed to be saying to us.
Empty chairs, in the room
(and, in front of our diver silences, black tapestries).
“Why have you deserted?”
when all of us present referred, afterwards, to him.
When we left, with all the members of the factory,
shoes that chew, through a hallway:
the mechanisms have started to buzz.
And an elevator carries us as though bewitched.
Nothing ends,
and death itself dreams of being the flagship of our eternity.
I tried to say winter,
I said silence:
only winter is indispensable.

In response, Grace made this image, titled “Women…Turned into Red Birds”: