Beauty

Beauty doesn’t have to be framed and hung on gallery walls

Or stuck on pedestals and plinths in public spaces

Real beauty isn’t manufactured or reinterpreted

It exists in quiet forests

When the sun hits raindrops beading on spider webs

Like translucent pearls

Or in the glittering waves of surf rolling onto shores

Even city streets provide bold openings

I see masterpieces everywhere

In those around me

In the way that eyes seek other eyes

And hands reach out for other hands

Moments of tenderness quietly observed

We can all choose to see life unfold in splendid mystery

Revealing each layer of truth

Through the beauty of the day to day

Watching ordinaries become extra

In the radiance of love transcendent

Everything is beautiful

With the right perspective

 

 

David Trudel   ©  2013

 

 

Apogee

I wonder if we have reached the apogee of ignorance

There are so many utterly manipulative people

Powering and empowering the collective mind

Unencumbered with knowledge

Devolving to pre-consciousness

Suffering cultural amnesia

While the fringe is ridiculed and attacked

Instead of being celebrated as the avant garde

Confronting truth through undesignated designs

Finding meaning in the recollage of skewed moments

Tracking time by marking walls

Walls of fear and control

Until time takes its toll

And walls come down in splintered pieces

Illuminating the darkness of the artistically challenged

With the light of truth

 

 

David Trudel   ©  2013

 

 

Shoes

I wonder if they chose them deliberately

These shoes that are more than just shoes

Eyegrabbing, they pull your gaze away from trophied walls

To this floored installation of swaggered awkwardness

Still young enough their pose lacks the insouciant poise

Of polished divas, which makes it all the more charming

Slightly pigeon toed and wobbly

They rock their kicks

With a flourish of celebration

Splashing the gallery floor with pedal extremity rainbows

Ready to zombie stomp to the witching hour

Making each footstep a brushstroke that undercolours

This opening night

 

David Trudel   ©  2013

Photograph by Nancy Yakimoski, Used With Permission.

Sculptural Pieces

Weathered rocks scoured by ice and time

Derelict trees tumbled into dreams

Ripplesanded shorelines studded by rockshreds

Swayedback barns leaning into fallow fields

Rusted ratrods posing in jumbled yards

Skylines that pull you into horizons

Jig jaggedly climbing into impossibilities

Fences marking space and time

Held up or supporting a spray of twigged greenness

Invitations of benches

Offering views into eternity

Alterations made by serendipity or intention abound

Three dimensionally textured magic

Filling my thirst for the spectacular

Wherever I find the unexpected and sublime

I smile with intention

Breathe in and send an exhalation of applause

In the general direction of found art

Or art that’s found me

 

 

David Trudel    ©   2013

 

 

When I First Met Harold

When I first met Harold

At the house he shared with my new friends

A place called Hippie Haven

He was working on multiple pieces of art

Simultaneously

While talking over the loud music

Our obnoxious distractions didn’t faze

It wasn’t so much that he created

Rather, he channeled creativity

Multimedia

Music, art, performance

Whichever way the muse led, he followed

Not a musician, at least at first

Harold commanded the soundboard for the band

Lights came as a second nature afterthought

And if he dealt in prohibited substances

The profit kept the band afloat

Between gigs

Through the years the art kept flowing

Monumental, tiny, primal

He turned to sculpture

Turned old car parts

Even airline meal carts

Into metaphors and mysteries

Handpainted leather jackets

Joined a Taiko drumming troupe

Created and fathered

Fostered aural soundscapes in his basement studio

Eventually the worm turned

Selfdoubts and darkness crept in

The creative wellspring

That had flowed for so long

Shut down, dried up

Until one day

Moving day

The day when the family house became someone else’s

He made the ultimate move

Didn’t get out alive

But his work

Lives on

 

David Trudel   © 2012