Locus and Latitudes: A Collaboration

-Poems by Philip F. Clark, Photography by Ronaldo Aguiar–

In the most extravagant multi-media gallery ever produced on Monologging.org, the following interactive presentation fuses writing, photography, film and voice recordings. The composite gallery explores a rich collaborative landscape created by New York City-based poet Philip F. Clark, and Brazillian photographer, Ronaldo Aguiar. Clark’s poetry grasps at the emotion-laden details that Aguiar captures through his lens, his voice revealing punctuated moods and a blend of scene-inspired feelings. From the soft light vanishing across a desert scrub horizon to a flood of orange in a deserted hallway, there are willful characters present. Magnetic attractions discovered through collaboration help these figures emerge from shadows and find their latitudes… 

 

 

Light Is the Only Witness To Ruin

Light is the only witness to ruin;
we hold our lives like wood in our hands,
as we hew it in wonder. We carve out our kings.
They don’t last. We make monuments.

Our cut and knarled fingers grip each other;
Unused to embrace, we touch as if we
were blind, hoping by touch to find the place
where flesh remembers its moorings.
Skin hungers but asks nothing of our hands.

We walk over and over until we become
our own roads, though few follow the paths.
What was here, who were we, what might we have been?
Each year we met on the road, we parted.

Night too has its asides and whispers;
it holds its ounce of forgiving dark. A shape in light
is the same at night — yet the one needs eyes
and the other hands. There has been lamentation here.

***

 

 

Steam Workers 

Dawn begins inside the steam,
the rush of hot water on still asleep hands;
the clamor of pot and plate; the withered soap,
the clock, the clock, the clock.
This dish will just make the rent,
that cup the electric bill; this spoon will
buy a lemon; this knife a hard-earned rose.
Need is met with wishes, and scrubbed hard.
A tonsure of sweat, a knowing smile;
the orders are choired in.

We lift, submerge, recover.
We earn and dream.

*** 

Skins 

Color fuses to light as flesh does to desire;
every surface hides a hope, a second chance,
and a shrill alacrity for alarm. The hive
is relentless. The eye takes everything in.
A thousand hours sculpt the day:
The dawn in the harbor dresses the metal and glass,
the air, as cool as pardons and promises,
collects its electric skins.
It is all we know of habitat. It is our habit of being,
as we house ourselves in these towers of stone
clocking our days with the haunt of seeing.

 ***

 

 

Lost Highway

The only music is far from here, and the only art
is the art of letting go. This road is an open question:
The rear-view mirror like the past in front of me.
How easy it would be to stop, to let what happens happen
and how hard it is to not keep going, to keep my hands
on the cost of the present, and the barter of all now behind.
What can this mendicant traveler hope for?
The good alms of better weather, wisdom and enough gas.

 ***

 

 

Corridor

He happened to me here.
I might have gone one floor higher,
but I stopped alarmed instead. I heard
his flagrant voice behind this door.
I might have questioned who it was,
and the sudden siren in my head. I might
have opened other doors than his.
Who would believe such a scene with
its scant and attendant ardors; who would
wander up these stairs and wonder
who I was speaking to? Who would
be surprised that I was talking in a foreign
language; that I was kissing a foreign air?

***