The Chocolart™ gallery is a new poetic gallery of continuing artworks in the
Boutique of Arts™.
I painted all works presented here in organic fair-trade dark chocolate on Indian batik paper.
The theme of these artworks continues in the poetic tradition of the former Tribute Gallery, dedicated to current events in our ever-changing, never-changing world.
Modern Living 24/7: Shiva Now
– Mary Jo Magar –
Much nothing there was when Shiva first danced;
His fiery ring was world potential bare;
Now clutter is nothing but world despair,
The “all” too much – our lifestyle called advanced.
Potential is less with burdens enhanced,
So Shiva dances faster, less with care;
Time and money are worship as prayer,
While fleet distraction keeps the world entranced.
Of what worth is it all, yet must be done.
But why? To keep us or the fire burning?
Like the scorpion with nowhere to run,
Self-venom consummates our own churning.
Fire itself is consolation’s sure sun,
Around dark clutter, light ever turning.
Shell Phone: Unlimited Calling
– Mary Jo Magar –
Talk, talk, talk, but how much is worth hearing?
In constant touch, we are more out of touch
Than before our technological crutch.
We hear life through human engineering,
Perceive wind and rain as interfering,
Yet Nature was here first and remains such,
As we ourselves are Nature inasmuch,
We cannot deny, despite our veering.
We must spend time remembering our source;
We must call our Mother Nature each day,
Tell her that we love both her peace and force,
Then listen well to all she has to say,
Her sea of truth advising every course,
Her elemental, eternal wise way.
Suitical: Dressed to Kill
– Mary Jo Magar –
Fell Pharma as manifold addiction
Is well connected, smart, and so well dressed,
So damned impressive to persons distressed,
So morally free of trust’s conviction,
So lethal to health’s honest affliction.
Meds, feds, et alia, all do their best
To further the sick money-go-round fest,
Which tightens laws round loose jurisdiction.
Tax-payers, patients – fashionable, poor –
We all pay the price as partners in crime,
Replacing in cost more ills as the “cure,”
Thus adding poisons one skull at a time.
Not easy to find intent and blood pure;
Best on the street – honest pushers – less slime.
Oil Leak / Oil Spill: The Little is the Big
– Mary Jo Magar –
A drop here, a drop there, two drops make four;
Then we lose count, the puddle precedes stain
Marking, not conscience, but pavement again.
Each drop in the ocean soon swells to more,
And each time the stain is worse than before,
But still we ignore it, more or less plain,
It will not clean off with just acid rain.
We must do more to forbid such a chore:
Less consumption, less presumption, less waste,
Not someplace else but wherever we are,
For oil on our driveways gives us foretaste
Of innocent fish blackened by each car
And each apathy of thought unreplaced
By thoughtfulness of engulfing-sized par.
Golan Delicious: Growing Peace
– Mary Jo Magar –
From the Tree of Knowledge came the first fruit;
From that, a sweeter innocence returns;
The road too from Damascus teaches, learns.
With wisdom seeded, the apple en route
Is fragrant with peace, hence, trade follows suit,
And greatest nourishment ensues and earns
Fulfillment in time for which prayer yearns:
Awaited harvest in faith of repute.
Four decades from the strategic plateau,
Pome, Golan Delicious, ripens anew,
And crosses borders, Eden to bestow
Through merely a taste, one bite, not to rue,
The nurturing savor of hope hard grown,
With land-promised orchards, vast, holy, true.
Mercenaries: Love and War
– Mary Jo Magar –
War’s timeless reasons all reduce to one:
Personal humanity to smother
With terror seeking love to uncover.
For leaders, heroes, war is never won;
Hence, love – every kind – must take in the gun;
War’s profit comes one way or another,
Enemy today, tomorrow, lover,
Same story, same war, under the same sun.
Proud preachers of peace, so often maddest,
Make irony of history’s dead dove
Which rises still in victories saddest
To die again from peace on earth, above.
Wicked ways remain our earthly status;
Go onward yet the battle cries for love.
Kadupul: Celestial Calyx
– Mary Jo Magar –
If I were Cinderella at a ball,
Overdressed and bored with conversation,
Regretting my entire transformation,
Not wanting to be a pumpkin at all,
But neither still wanting drudgery’s call,
I would dispense with all dispensation –
Fairy Godmothers and relegation –
And choose my own transformational thrall;
Celestial calyx, that, I would be –
Kadupul, legendary bloom of gods,
The midnight miracle, lone, rare, far, free,
With beauty unconventional, at odds
With so-so much garden variety,
My glass shoe and coach, left as strewn seed pods.
Investment: Watch the Cape
– Mary Jo Magar –
Bears and bulls are too merely mice and men,
One and the same: buy / sell, break / save the day;
Best-laid plans usually go astray,
No matter the price in the market’s Zen,
Each trade the same, despite naught, loss, or win.
Whatever the market, the sport, to play,
Whatever the fear to face and allay,
The crucial action is waiting for “when.”
Like the matador’s cape, steadfast in red,
Yet blue streak in moving without show’s tell,
Concentration’s stronghold must stay widespread
While action’s fine point must execute well;
A magician’s cape, suddenly, instead,
Takes profit and loss, all, by closing bell.
One Hand: Ten Fingers, Five Elements
– Mary Jo Magar –
A big world from a big bang, all too big,
Too much complexity to comprehend,
While one hand tells all, beginning from end:
From nothing came something, a world to rig
With fingers – fine points – so the hand could dig.
Each finger is an element to fend,
Each single, in one, to create, contend
With digital shapes, the world, zag to zig.
Indeed, the word became flesh, life, handmade,
The oyster’s pearl, the big world in each palm;
Fisted, life’s foundation is grasped, unswayed;
Open, life’s mystique is revealed in psalm.
Is life a fixed shape, by fortune surveyed,
Or is fortune shaped by “hands” – the mind’s ROM?
The Three Disgraces: Sirens of the Urban Sprawl
– Mary Jo Magar –
Each big city, stormy, deep, a great sea
Self-drowns in mystery, the known unknown
Rippling with corruption, secret and shown,
High with adventure and glamour to keep,
Dense with timeless troubles that never sleep.
Crime waves, heat waves, waves of populace grown,
Metastatic tides wait not to atone
But breed loud sirens who save, then to weep.
The Three Disgraces, which only shame needs:
Cuffs for crime, a cross for pain, watered fire;
Like souls in hell, they wail tell of deeds
Of thugs, white collars, . . . the seaweeds of mire
From stress, ills, injuries, lifestyle that bleeds,
Singing lamentations, dreaded and dire.