2.1: the sign of dreaming pilots | J Karl Bogartte — experimental poetry and visual art
the sign of dreaming pilots
The Lilith-feasting lamps bleed, to gather her colors for the gravity gates and the window of projectiles, the ancient wiles, raising light. A blueness among the ashes of a burnt-out illusion unravels the ape of identity, throwing black gloves and a still-warm conundrum riddled with golden spigots and invisible alarms. Nothing too serious for the weary calligrapher. A riddle for obsessive basalt and the fluorite of meaningful delights. A fable for crafting witches.
*
Mandragora piping, a dust-blown frame, a sputtering constellation that remembers your bodily presence as if it were only yesterday. A latent thread issuing that treason of uncommon attractions for a hidden communion, living text, a force-fed signing, in waves. The tide, face… She is a fawn-shaped, demon-quenching sister, a surrational schemer, this dawnspark and every dawnspark thereafter… dragged out into the desert to conceive.
*
To keep desire alive and shuddering, when the spine is bright, a starry debris. Handfuls of pollen gathered for a flash fire, outstretched by night vision of animal nature. She lowered her quails squirting pearls deep into a nameless shadow. A fierce mastery of a delicate nature to align a primal blood-gaze for the enraptured Coat of Melusine, for travel and sudden entrances. To leap. Light is the maze, darkness is an image of it…
*
Where the chameleon-weaver comes to fiddle with the phases of the moon… Scraping darkness off a mirror, pulling the threads of a dream from your mouth, clothing for a dance forced into déjà vu. It was deep into her eyes that drew the order and continuation of desirable proportions, extracting, polishing… spirit-bone tapping for a spark-rendering pose. The art of lunacy.
©2018
The King’s Shining Daughter
archival pigment print
38 inches x 46 inches
©2012
And Still the Navigators
archival pigment print
38 inches x 38 inches
©2016
Bathing Lilith in Cappadocia
archival pigment print
40 inches x 48 inches
©2017
Hold Fast Your Anomaly
archival pigment print
40 inches x 48 inches
©2016
artist statement
It all just comes naturally. I have no preconceived ideas when I write anything, or begin an image. Nothing visionary or trance-like, but I am always surprised by what happens in a nonlinear fashion, and transparency seems the normal point of access. Even from an early age, I couldn’t think of anything being correct without a corresponding opposite, which naturally drew me to alchemy and it’s magical resolution of opposites. Surrealism provided the necessary synthesis and the active movement of thought and being.
While I have been schooled in anthropology and photography, I am basically self-taught and have no real influences in what I do. My most favorite artists are, of course, those in and around surrealism: Yves Tanguy, Roberto Matta, Gorky, Carrington, Varo. I also find Da Vinci most curious. Favorite writers, also in and around surrealism, André Breton, early René Char, Carrington, Octavio Paz, Jacques Dupin, Alejandra Pizarnik, among others.
biographical note
J. Karl Bogartte is both an artist and a poet, having been involved in international surrealism for almost 50 years. His writings and visual imagery, for all intents and purposes, is simply a means of exploration and a way of thinking and perceiving in non-traditional ways. He has published eight books of poetic texts and a bilingual novella “Antibodies.” He is co-founder of La Belle Inutile Éditions, a collective virtual press. More recently a book of his visual images, “Mythologies,” was published through Blurb books.
His writing has been included in Paraphilia Magazine, X- Peri, Peculiar Mormyrid, Analogon 65, la vertèbre et le rossignol… His most recent books are Auré, The Spindle’s Arc, And Still The Navigators…
Books by JKarl Bogartte Amazon
Visual Art by J Karl Bogartte on Tumblr
Doug Krimmer, photographer
©2012
