Migration (part 8 of 8)

two wings and a tail fin,

a 3-edged sail navigates the sky—

redwoods and cedars grow

from moraine heaps along the gills of mountains,

arctic terns fly

north to south,

up and down

the 10,000 mile coast

of America,

desert trails widen into interstates.

the horizon line dissolves in night,

phosphorescence silvers

tides and currents,

waves roll in from Hawaii,

westmost state of this union,

eastern edge of sea migrations

stretching to Madagascar.

vines of light climb

concrete and I-beam towers

along this shore

where I pause

on the verge of arrival,

between abyss and home.

*

This is the last of 8 weekly postings of a poem-painting cycle called “Migration.” This work is based on my experiences in New Caledonia, where in 2007 I was invited to an artist residency exploring the connections between Melanesian cultures and aboriginal tribes of southern China. This final poetry installment is about returning to America from the South Pacific, and about some of the ways migration is manifest on this continent.

As a last-installment bonus, I am including a song (requires the Flash plugin to play) I wrote in New Caledonia, called “Departure.” I wrote this song to my Taiwanese aboriginal friends who invited me to New Caledonia—it’s about my departure from the community where I lived with them for three years on the Pacific coast of Taiwan. You can listen to this and other songs on my music and poetry website, scottezell.org.

If you enjoy this work, please visit my painting website at www.scottezellgallery.com, and click the links below to see previous postings of “Migration”.

Scott Ezell

Click to play (note I.E. users may need to click twice to get it to play)

Part One

Part Two

Part Three

Part Four

Part Five

Part Six

Part Seven

Part Eight

Migration (part 7 of 8)

a stone adze

shapes a tree

into departure

or return—

on Rapa Nui

warring tribes

felled the forest

and built wooden skids

to transport monuments

through denuded land.

topsoil blew into the sea,

children grew up to preside

over statues

toppled into discord.

rats in the holds of

canoe migrations

became food

for starving generations.

*

Notes:

Rapa Nui is the Polynesian name of Easter Island. It was originally covered with a diverse forest including the largest palm trees in the world, but had been completely deforested by the time of its European discovery in 1722. The Polynesian inhabitants of Rapa Nui cut down trees for firewood, to build canoes, and to transport moai, great stone statues that were a form of competition beween the island’s dozen or so clans. Clans had begun to throw down each other’s maoi in the 18th century; none remained erect by 1868.

Rats were introduced to Rapa Nui as stowaways when Polynesians migrated to the island in about 900 AD. They became an increasingly important food source when land birds had become extinct, migratory bird populations were decimated, and no trees remained to build canoes for deep sea fishing.

*

Every Friday for 8 weeks I will post a section of a poem-painting cycle called “Migration.” This work is based on my experiences in New Caledonia, where in 2007 I was invited to an artist residency exploring the connections between Melanesian cultures and aboriginal tribes of southern China.

If you enjoy this work, please visit my painting website at www.scottezellgallery.com, and click the links below to see previous postings of “Migration”.

Scott Ezell

Part One

Part Two

Part Three

Part Four

Part Five

Part Six

Part Seven

Part Eight

Migration (part 6 of 8)

animal meat
contains my mind,
sperm gunk clogs nerves,
commerce barters brain
for breath.

I ate my father’s flesh
to metabolize his songs.
I planted a pine tree
in the place he died,
but no son has yet been born.

*

Every Friday for a total of 8 weeks I will post a section of a poem-painting cycle called “Migration.” This work is based on my experiences in New Caledonia, where in 2007 I was invited to an artist residency exploring the connections between Melanesian cultures and aboriginal tribes of southern China. Today’s selection is about contemporary cultural dispersion.

Notes:
1. In some traditional Melanesian cultures, deceased are eaten by their relatives.
2. In New Caledonia, a pine tree is planted where a man dies, a ritual to bring a new son into the world.

Please tune in every Friday to check out this work, and visit my painting website at www.scottezellgallery.com. You can click the links below to see previous postings of “Migration”.

Part One

Part Two

Part Three

Part Four

Part Five

Part Six

Part Seven

Part Eight

Migration (part 5 of 8)

I am so violent in desire
I think my embrace
would tear you like a wound,
and bloody the waters around us.

I am shark breath,
the smell of brine and rot,
scales and skin and blood,
rows of teeth all down my throat,
one tooth for every
impulse to devour you.

I am a saw blade
struck with a hammer to sing,
I am a compass
pointing to the northern star in you
around which
galaxies revolve.

*

Every Friday for a total of 8 weeks I will post a section of a poem cycle called “Migration,” along with a painting of the same name. This week’s poetry selection is a reflection on the greatest migration in human history, the movement of individuals and communities from rural-agrarian to urban-industrial environments.

Please tune in every Friday to check out this work, and visit my painting website at www.scottezellgallery.com.

Scott Ezell

Part One

Part Two

Part Three

Part Four

Part Five

Part Six

Part Seven

Part Eight

"Migration" (part 4 of 8)

I watched my father bend
to pick up grain
where the forest had been.
he straightened when a bird called
but couldn’t place its memory.

he sat down with a bottle
and painted colors on his brain,
but they were gone by morning.

he was left with sweat
in an empty field
drained by roads
that lead to cities.

*

Every Friday for a total of 8 weeks I will post a section of a poem cycle called “Migration,” along with a painting of the same name. This week’s poetry selection is a reflection on the greatest migration in human history, the movement of individuals and communities from rural-agrarian to urban-industrial environments.

Please tune in every Friday to check out this work, and visit my painting website at www.scottezellgallery.com.

Scott Ezell

Part One

Part Two

Part Three

Part Four

Part Five

Part Six

Part Seven

Part Eight

"Migration" (part 3 of 8)

I was born homeless,
but with a roof on my back
and an instinct toward the sea.
I crawled from a nest
of broken yolk and shells
and blindly turned
to a violence of waves
that pulled me under
toward refracted light and space—

I followed birds that fly
straight out from shore with
an instinct to an island
they have never seen,
where nothing exists
but procreation,
the bones of ancestors
crumpled into dust.

the horizon
swallows tongues,
a zipper in the ocean’s skin
opens into silence.

*

Every Friday for a total of 8 weeks I will post a section of a poem cycle called “Migration,” along with a painting of the same name. This week’s poetry selection explores the connection between the geographical migrations of my own life with those of ancient peoples across oceans. Please tune in every Friday to check out this work, and visit my painting website at www.scottezellgallery.com.

Scott Ezell

Part One

Part Two

Part Three

Part Four

Part Five

Part Six

Part Seven

Part Eight

"Migration" (part 2 of 8)

Migration (part 2 of 8)


in place of my heart an engine
runs on processed crude
and drives me to
extremities of need,
freeways gun straight and hard
to the edge of continental dust,
10 million years’
migration and decay,
the gnaw of oceans,
sediment of bones and songs—



the throttle yawns
within my ribs,
distance is a stain
of engine oil,
avatar of sun
dug up in muck to burn
in a carburated cylinder
you spin to gamble
one bullet against one hope,
a roulette to see
who will fuck
who will climax
and who descends
thru brain pulp and metal junk
to where violence compends
in the rusting silence of machines,



how will you market it,
who’ll pay top dollar.

*

Every Friday for a total of 8 weeks I will post a section of a poem cycle called “Migration,” along with a painting of the same name. This week’s poetry selection explores the evolution of the human relationship to machines and industry. Please tune in every Friday to check out this work, and visit my painting website at www.scottezellgallery.com.

Scott Ezell

Part One

Part Two

Part Three

Part Four

Part Five

Part Six

Part Seven

Part Eight

“Migration,” a poem cycle by Scott Ezell

Migration (part 1 of 8)

the horizon line congeals
from a 1000-mile migration,
the sea opens in a wake
of widening water trails,
the ocean loam plowed open
by a bone hook
and a stone blade,
chickens and taro
in the holds of hollowed palms,
outrigger canoes with 3-edged sails:

thatch houses
broadcast south
along archipelagos
pioneered by
wedge-winged birds
beating into
distance and return,
beyond the continents
of human ken—

islands rise
from Pacific blue
like amphibians,
low and long,
with teeth raised into clouds
and tails that moult
from green to blue,
lipped with shimmers of sand
and wreathed in tropic flowers—

I was here
a thousand years ago,
and now return,
having never left.

diesel engines burn,
and heft the metal hull
thru swells
out on the open sea,
between two islands
where asphalt roads
cut edges into jungle,
palm huts stand gray
in a moulting rain
next to cinderblock homes
with metal sinks that
empty into reefs.
papaya trees grow
from trash heaps,
naked children leap
into water luminous blue—

coconuts curve their trunks into the wind,
the coral shore recedes,
the ocean loam spreads open into
curls of engine wash,
cloud-light rolls
flat and silver
across the sea,
the horizon line dissolves.

*

In September 2007 I traveled to New Caledonia, an island nation between Australia and Fiji, for an art residency with two abroriginal sculptors from Taiwan. The theme of the residency was the great Austronesian migrations south from China across the Pacific and Indian Oceans that reached Madagascar to the west, Easter Island to the east, and New Zealand to the south.

My work from the residency is centered on the theme of migration—not only the ancient sea-trails, but also the ways migration manifests in contemporary life when we move to and away from places, relationships, and stages of life.

Every Friday for the next 8 weeks I will post a section of a poem cycle called “Migration,” along with a painting of the same name. Please tune in to check out this work, and visit my painting website at www.scottezellgallery.com.

Scott Ezell

Part One

Part Two

Part Three

Part Four

Part Five

Part Six

Part Seven

Part Eight