Poetry by Mike Handley
mkhandley@hotmail.com


HOMAGE

The world would rather see hope
Than just hear it's song.
-Wistawa Szymborska

for Irene Jacob

in memory of
Krzysztof Kieslowski

but for such sparks
The Dark ...

and She is his Light
Shining still

face in full bloom
eyes and voice on high

beaming on a smile's edge
which widens with the rain

and as the schoolgirl chorus scatters
I she holds the final note to her heart

eyelids aflutter under the sunny deluge
she lets it go with a luminous burst

to soar inside
through water, dust, and light

that afterflash smile
pure with Joy

(from The Double Life of Veronique)


MANIFESTO

my brilliant affliction
lives for the movies

the shock of pictures
the weight of words

real to reel 'magic'
in the darkroom

me myself
an eye

an original action painter
putting stills in motion

silver screen fantasms feeling
the light sculpture influence

in the shadows capturing
that decisive moment

behind the make-up

eyes of the heart
zero in on the raw nerve

that makes hit and myth
a whole new imaging system

insurgent imagination
brushing history against the grain

catastrophic coverage
trashing the stereotypes

true colors with torrential force
breaking the ice with style

like being caught
in a visual five alarm fire

the revisionist strategy of light

bottom-lining the what-ifs with
haunting questions



INSTANTS ,,,  AND THE INCIDENTAL

Inspired by the collaboration of Zbignew 
Prisener and Kieslowski

it's in the way
the frame is arraigned

how shadow caresses
the surface with light

that seamless way
stillness flickers

into flow
before the eye's blindness

as a breath of melody
opens the heart

beyond the body's time
still kept by beaten blood

while the slender threads
bowed, into contrary emotion

slip with silence through
a carefully filtered spectrum

where lives entwined
by accident and intent

cross the circling paths
interwoven with mystery and meaning

to meet us
in that liminal place

where we find
that blank screen between us

has always been
lit from

within