Poems inspired by Heather's Clown painting
Her Clown
(For Heather Osborne)I behold in Heather's painted clown
A frown, ill-masked by fiddle-forced
Half-browned smiles which serenade
His withering self to worlds around.
His worries and his cares all buried
Deep within his cloak-draped bones,
The clown hums multicolour dreams
Of futures that have frog-leaped eons.
H.O.'s enlarged eye of his conscience
watches bewildered right behind,
Sad at the fate of the fiddling clown.
Kopan Mahadeva, March 1998
Heather's Clown
The clown is masked in motley,tricorn hat, ashen face,
feet on the body twisted,
and huge fumbling hands,
It's just one ritual degradation.
And yet the colours sing -
guitar-bole hewed in fire,
cloak of instinct green,
trousers, of ocean fullness
and sober purple backing.
And the light! Banana feet
hard sunlight everywhere!
Showing up bleakness.
No comfort here.
It is a sad picture,
alienated, with that touch
of gaiety and bravado
that can con us.
But of course there's
the eye. The inner eye,
The eye that patrols
unconscious thoughts.
If that's tuned in it's
worth more than all
our earthly gifts together.
Giles Osborne
Mask
I've never liked clowns much,don't like this one, strumming
an Open University logo,
smiling with red Al Jolson lips
at a masturbatory left hand.
Closed eyes hide thoughts
that are probably sinister,
feet threaten to walk away,
leaving a hovering torso
caught in the cyclops gaze
of that Orwellian lens.
The bright glow of her mind
must have dimmed a little
behind a film of darkness,
as the black sunflower heart
shadows the gay grave blooms.
Brian Dodds
URL: www.mourne.net/sunflower.htm
Some poems by Heather