“Here lies one whose name was writ in water,” ~ is the quote written over John Keats’ gravestone.
There are beings who live inside of us, & yet walk beyond our mortal grasp. These specters, like the phantoms of a dream, dance between the veil of life & death. Shadows that neither dwell in the past nor entirely in the present. In poetry, they are the figures who carry the weight of what is unseen ~ those fragments of soul that whisper in our ear, beckoning us toward truths half-known & worlds forgot.
Specters are those fleeting thoughts, the melancholic stirrings of an autumn wind, the moment between breath & silence. They are the very essence of life’s impermanence, & through poetry, we lend them form, as though the act of creation allows them to slip for a moment from the abyss.
Specters are not merely the shadows of our emotional landscapes, but the echoes of human potential, or what he might call; entelechy. These phantoms represent the dynamis, the potentiality that is ever within us, never fully realized but always present. To encounter the specter in poetry is to confront the essence of what we might become. It is to understand that we, too, are shadows cast by the forms of our highest selves. Specters are our teachers, pointing us not toward death, but toward life, urging us to reconcile with our unrequited dreams & desires.
Specters, then, are figures of great duality. They walk the lines between absence & presence. They are those which we both fear yet miss, the reflection of all we have lost, & all we may one day gain. They are the lover glimpsed in a dream, the lost friend whose great voice we cannot forget, the distant stars that twinkle not in the skies nor the heavens, but in the deepest thumping beats of the heart. And as we encounter them in poetry, we are asked to bear witness to their liminality, and in doing so, we ourselves are called to reckon with the fragile boundaries of our existence.
Specters are not mere figments. They are the poets' gift ~ the embodiments of longing, regret, & desire. They remind us that while we may walk in flesh, there is much within us that resides in the realm of shadows. To embrace them, then, is not to surrender to death, but to accept the preciousness of life. They are, as Keats said, “a joy forever,” and yet, like all joy, they are as fleeting as the breath that carries their name “greatness”.
There is no magic any more,
That time is done,
What was concealed is a wide open door,
You see the doves fly, their wings cover all the sun,
For when they flap again I’ll see your shining face revealed,
And what it was all for,
There is no magic anymore,
You’ve seen it all before,
Read it in books,
Watched the shows,
Seen the unimpressed looks,
They clap obediently at celebrities,
Because everyone else is taken,
Their half sunken eyes wanting something more,
More than makeup and shadows,
There is no magic anymore,
The ringmaster is a bore,
He unravels the same fate,
From the games he played before,
Put him too the task,
Ask questions not of the future but of the past,
For he has no North Star.
I learned my tricks from the devil himself,
Wore his cards on my sleeve,
My heart in my vest pocket,
And you think you’ve seen them all,
But you haven’t seen this one yet.
Who is the magician?
And who is the mark?
We watch in wonder,
At who was from the start,
A big surprise on the table,
Not a snake bite to predict,
Not a chess piece too soon,
Now listen to this fable,
Because you haven’t seen this trick before.
A cinematic poetry collaboration between NurArt and Laurence Fuller.
Visuals by @NurArt_
Poetry by @laurencefuller
Something felt different this year,
A visitor brought a specter which never left,
And it grew and grew and grew,
Until the whole garden was subsumed;
With a light from the spirit,
Which glowed like music,
And glistened everything with it,
The air felt different,
Reflections off the window shine brilliant,
The very ground tingled between my toes,
Frost was all broken,
Engraved his name in the snow,
The smile on his face was radiant and changed,
When he spoke it drew blood from a stone.
I could hardly believe it was the voice of a man,
Though the day felt longer, we all grew younger,
And sticky sap from blackberries dripped,
The garden felt different this year.
I heard laughter from the shadows;
“Follow me I’m over here!”
~ Laurence Fuller, 2024
Cinematic poetry by Laurence Fuller.
Minted for FakeWhale's "Art Market" exhibition.
Original poetry, performance, sound, AI cinematics by @laurencefuller
laurencefuller.art
Do you speak to ghosts?
How do you know?
I speak to them,
And watch them glow,
They’re everywhere,
They’re everyone that you know,
They’re all around.
You’ll see them everywhere in the shadows,
I read their words in the doctrines and manuals they left on the tables of
Look at what they left behind,
I think they’re still here,
In the ecstasy of death,
We leap like giants from our skin
All the while the angels sing.
Do you speak to ghosts?
Do you speak to them?
In the ecstasy of death,
We leap like giants from our skin,
All the while the angels sing.
The bells around my morning,
When they have tendered been,
The rake next to the cobbled walls,
The merchants bask in sin,
I think of all the travels of our ancestors,
And the stakes they claimed at last.
To build their homes and make their mark upon the mast.
When the person is out of body,
And the world is fractured in time,
The location unify our spirits is in the sacred wine,
They speak to others and to us, through the vessels of our being,
Memories are the bedrock of a world beyond our own.
Where ghosts are made at the omens place,
And question Kings upon the throne.
I often wonder if I am a ghost,
And I cannot transcend,
I speak to the living as they question my existence.
Hosted by the Holy Ghost
And it’s choir’s rendition,
A parade of the fallen,
Walks in our lives,
We are their ghosts,
And time is our conductor,
~ Laurence Fuller, 2024
Cinematic poetry by Laurence Fuller.
Minted for FakeWhale's "Art Market" exhibition.
Original poetry, performance, sound, AI cinematics by @laurencefuller
laurencefuller.art