These poems are conceptual although they read quite straightforwardly. My idea was to show those who were writing poetry that decimated grammar, syntax, and meaning that poetic language was no different than ordinary language and that aporia or uncertainty of meaning could be achieved in the most plainspoken English. The lack of finality of meaning simply accompanied language as a matter of course. The poems, I find, are a bit funny and hopefully are read that way.
the window of the shampoo ice
the kaiser roll of the sky is the law of the lake
to eat a burger on the open norse day
your old chewy ticket is the radio rock of the talon
eating a hungry hippo with a marble in my mouth
lending a measure to the crow
the breaking clone of the door
sleep is the rule of the great apple
the sleeping hum is the cloud of the wall
that walknut of the ironed face
the street puppet of the moth
the song of the lower limbs and the paint of the freezing face
this idea is the paint of the globe
this is the number of the roses and that is certain
to lake a lark
to win a letter of the working duck
the sinking fish
the lizard of the jumble
care for a chair (mcdonald’s coffee)
in the cave of the parrots
that coffee was in the shape of a rose
answering my skull when I’m in the rainbow shoes
the losing brick sauce
the navel orange is the bat of the produce
the household of mars
that apple plank is the standard of the forest
the bat’s head was like milk in the furnace
the winter seed is the diamond of the cacao
losing a worm to look for a wheel
that normal eye in the chair
the coin and that seventh myriad
my sleeping head swims
we are in the stomach of the goat’s raspberry
the shadow rabbit is the coil of the present
winning at the battleship game
bio/graf J. D. Nelson (b. 1971) experiments with words in his subterranean laboratory. His poetry has appeared in many small press publications, worldwide, since 2002. He is the author of several collections of poetry, including Cinderella City (The Red Ceilings Press, 2012). His first full-length collection, entitled In Ghostly Onehead, is slated for a 2021 release by mOnocle-Lash Anti-Press. His work has recently appeared in E·ratio, Otoliths, BlazeVOX, and Word For/Word. Visit www.MadVerse.com for more information and links to his published work. Nelson lives in Colorado
Imagine running a business where allies of the Shadows seek revenge against humanity. I have a quirk about multi- location Cloud Attendance, especially
when the call to arms is augmented with global load balancing. The native name of Armenia is Hayastan.
Bird photography
In many ways it seems like the national park that time forgot. So, if you’re
looking at being more mobile for a bash on the unpredictable ground
there, then forgo sky- high stilettos & put sandbags over the legs.
Tyrone Hemholtz is proud to be the first arts institution to sponsor an IORGO VALVA Memorial Retrospective, NO HEAD, NO PAIN.
An intensely private, reclusive artist who refused to attend exhibitions, grant interviews and was so obsessive about not exposing his face in public that he daily wore facial masks decades before the Covid Pandemic. The board of directors at Tyrone Hemholtz offers its gratitude to the Iorgo Valva family for allowing the publication of the only known photograph of this multi-disciplined artistic genius.
The paintings of Iorgo Valva (1953-2021) reinforces the premise that everything transitory is merely a smile. Everything we see is a proposal, a possibility, an expedient. The real truth, to begin with, remains invisible beneath the surface. The colors that captivate us are not lighting, but light. The graphic universe consists of light and shadow. The diffused clarity of slightly overcast weather is richer in phenomena than a sunny day. It is difficult to capture and represent this, because the moment is so fleeting. Mr. Valva has infiltrated our soul with the formal fuse of THOUGH I’M SCAT I STILL LOVE LITTER BOXES, using organic materials embedded into canvass.
Simple motion strikes us as banal. Valva’s work eliminates the time element. Yesterday and tomorrow are simultaneous. His FRISBEE AS CHOCOLATE CHIP and UP THE SCHOZZIN NOZZIN overcomes the time element by a retrograde motion that would penetrate consciousness, reassuring us that a renaissance might still be thinkable.
Early works indicate his demonical visions melt with the celestial. This dualism shall not be treated as such, but in its complementary oneness. This conviction is always present. The demonic is already peeking through here and there and can’t be kept down. For truth asks that all elements be presented at once, as is exemplified by the artist’s ORGASM SEEPS FROM DAMAGED BOOT and damned near didactic with the completion of his last major painting, the encaustic NEW ENGLAND NEUTERS, as well as conveyed through the lesser sculptures commemorating his recent period of Qanon fanaticism.
IORGO VALVA was born in the Bronx, New York, in 1953. His first contact with the art world came at an early age. In 1954, at the height of the bohemian “BEAT” tradition, Mrs. Chloe Valva was changing the future painter’s diapers in the Women’s Room at Crotona Park when Allen Ginsberg and Jackson Pollock, both in drag, each asked the artist’s mother for a dime and admired the streak-stained diaper Iorgo had created.
After a period of twenty-two years during which time Iorgo did not create art because of his paralyzing fear that ferrets would seek him out and defecate on his paint brushes, Mr. Valva went into a frenzied period of work that lasted until his death at age sixty-eight, when he was bitten by a rabid woodchuck while collecting organic materials for an anti-environmental collage.
Not only was Mr. Valva a prolific painter and sculptor, he also published many articles and essays of art history and criticism, as well as an acclaimed autobiography, I’m Not Paranoid Because My Fears Are Real, and a novella, Stories I Stole From My Father.
This novella led to a thirty-year court battle with his sister, Katya, when she discovered that the book was pirated from the uncopyrighted Estonian fiction of their father. The case was still in litigation at the time of the artist’s death and was said to be a major reason for renewed interest in Iorgo among art critics, who cited the novella title as the ultimate statement in truth, thus earning Mr. Valva a new and deeper examination of his oeuvre.
Inge Dumoulin is a Belgian photographer and Iorgo Valva family friend who is perhaps even more mysterious than the artist himself. Very little is known about her. Was she Iorgo’s mistress?
Mark Blickley is a proud member of the Dramatist Guild and PEN American Center. His latest book is the text-based art collaboration with fine arts photographer Amy Bassin, Dream Streams.
I Might Suppose That
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I might suppose that
Healing will not pass
the faithless desire
immediately
without a transform
to encourage faith
A path mends the already known
to Belief in the moment
Wishing -
the formless rides the moments
Creations pulled to creations
Lets grounding
catch up with
just
Being Yourself
Wishing -
When Cravings to see
Say never Be
A detour
to offer
Being Yourself
the Simply
Knowing
Lets the Wish Release
Wishing falls to Bow
Respectfully
Being Yourself
found worthier
than the first taste
I might suppose that
Liking draws the unknown
for the worthiness
is Both
forceless & infinite
Belongs
Accepts
Wishing -
Time is the Lens
to see now better
Releasing to comfort
adrift to the future
Letting
Be
And here We are
