Welcome to Nicole Surginer and Carl Scharwath

copyright -- Carl Scharwath

One of the most rewarding things about "curating" this blog-zine is bringing poetry together with visual images and/or music.  Tonight I would like to post the collaboration of poet Nicole Surginer and photographer Carl Scharwath (who is a poet as well).  Carl's photograph above is paired with Nicole's poem "Bound" below.

Bound

Endlessly I roamed lands 

foreign to my tattered feet

to flee the resonance of you

Plaguing the song of my sky

Yet the maps of stars led

me relentlessly back to this

place where now only shells

of home lie in desolate grey

I am drawn to linger evermore 

Where the story of our love

gleams from effulgent cloud

Memories warming light seeps

through the branches of trees 

rooted of our immortal adoration 

The featherings of your energy

invade my wavelengths feeding my

starving soul as I breathe the taste

of your heat into my every cell

Though I had vanquished all thought

of you urgently away into the 

crevices of my heart to silence the

lure of longings echoing call

Still I heard the weeping of desire

Leeching through my vessels 

For I am bound to you as the soil to

this very earth and that which is

sealed of soul shall not be severed 

Copyright -- Carl Scharwath
Model -- Jennifer Fernald

Abandoned

I run my hands across the stone

that I may feel the essence of you

pulsing warmth through my veins

My ears burn with the longing

for your voice yet I hear my

truths in the absence of words.

They lie amongst the remnants of

my brokenness on faltering ground

The portrait of us painted in the

ink of empty promise shattered

and cast into desecrated earth

In this place that is grey and barren

the dampness of cold strains my breath

The ravishings of loneliness clutch my

pallid face within her crushing fingers

I strain to see beyond the fragmented

shadow of you clinging to the remnants

of brick that once bonded our love

Where I once dreamed and lived in you

I stood breathless as my foundation

crumbled and I was laid bare and alone

Cast away as rubble to smolder in ash

as my heart crumpled within my chest

Nicole Surginer, is a poet from the small town of Bastrop,Texas. She is inspired to write by her love for nature's enchantment, a fascination with the power of raw, intense emotion and a desire to create beauty with words. She has been published in Tuck Magazine, Anti-Heroin Chic, Indiana Voice Journal, Tuck Magazine, In Between Hangovers, Your One Phone Call, Sick Lit Magazine with pending publications in the Contemporary Poet's group anthology "Dandelion in a vase of roses."

Carl Scharwath, has appeared globally with 80+ magazines selecting his poetry, short stories, essays or art photography. He won the National Poetry Contest award for Writers One Flight Up. His first poetry book is 'Journey To Become Forgotten' (Kind of a Hurricane Press). Carl is a dedicated runner ("that's where his art ideas spring from.”)

I'm looking for some collaborations.  Of course, all music (except for solo performances) is a collaboration.  I'll start by returning to Ran Blake and Jeanne Lee.  This time I'm posting their version of "Ticket to Ride":  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wEIodQs30KE  "Ticket to Ride" is, of course, a song by Lennon and McCartney.

Later she sang with Mal Waldron: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xERkQzxEZPc

"Quiet Temple" is listed as a collaboration between Mal Waldron and Barney Wilen:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VSFCi4SGxl8

Here is Jeanne Lee and Mal Waldron's version of "Goodbye Porkpie Hat," a collaboration between Charles Mingus and Joni Mitchell: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HIzI5uODgGg

Jeanne Lee and Ran Blake are jazz musicians born in the 1930s, by the way.