Category Archives: Poems by Adam Donaldson Powell

 

“Eternal Sleep — Mors Vincit Omnia”, 80 x 60 cm., oil on canvas, 2021.

One of the largest challenges for an artist is possibly that of deciding / daring to envision and portray oneself as dead. While Death itself is a fascinating theme for many artists, the psychological and superstitious reasons for not painting oneself as deceased keeps many artists in lockdown as regards trespassing and overcoming this mental and emotional hurdle.

On ne peut pas vivre sa vie en ayant peur de la mort. Mais soyez assuré que la mort l’emporte sur tout, y compris la peur.

You cannot live your life being afraid of death. But rest assured that death wins out over everything, including fear.

 

When Twilight Comes.

When twilight comes and consciousness sleeps in,

age-old echoes from prehistoric times begin to hum

Ego’s cradle-song … first with low, dark-brown

cello tones which cause bone-marrow to tremble until

it flows, and then with high, glossy, unheard shrieks

which can only be made by angels who mean to provoke.

In time, my uneven breathing becomes transformed

into turquoise-colored waves which whip my oversensitive

psychic fortress from sobriety, and near panic.

There are no guarantees that I am ready for the

extraordinary gift that I am to be given:

a glimpse of existence in its unbelievable purity, which

is so personal that I am forced to grab onto

my earthly reality and smash the perfection

into countless, cloudy bits of mirror which rain lightly

upon my consciousness. I awaken sweaty, but not

completely empty-handed .. and I am not the person

I once had been.

 

 

Nocturnal Journey.

In the twenty-fifth hour,

as sleeplessness concedes

to Jungian twilight,

the inviolate ticking

of the bedside clock

betrays consciousness

with sinister rhythm.

It is a requiem of

abandonment, whereby

unprotected souls are

magically ushered to the

threshold of time’s end.

Clockhands melt into

surreal images of groping,

disembodied appendages which

pull me down into the

infernal swirling oblivion.

I seem to fall forever;

plummeting past floating

sandstone ruins, through

prehistoric jungles and

at last into a vast galaxy

of translucent emerald shards.

The heartbeats of innumerable

still-terrified predecessors

urge me to scream before

striking bottom, and I

awaken in panic: grasping

for the luminous dial

of my unwitting timepiece.