List of Writings | Tim Cantor

LIST OF POEMS / WRITINGS

Tim Cantor is at first a visual artist. Yet his visions inspire his own stylized literature. His poetic verses speak the stories of his paintings. Brimming with his inherent fears and loves, his dramatic writings mirror the scenes he creates and bares what lives in their shadows. The following is a selected list of the artist's poems and writings that relate with specific paintings.

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I. AFFINITÉ ~2017 "Roughened are the waters that seek my cherished skies

Each sky, each tide, each plea to be alive..."

II. TEMPTATION ~2010 "...What is in that bottle? It’s different for you than me.

It waits there in that bottle, and it begs us to be free

It asks that dreadful question, That cruel question Of ‘What might be ?’..."

III. THIEVES of MAY ~2017 "...Time is our own torture, feared thoughts of one lifespan

Youth is long and lasting, yet short and sweet and damned..."

IV. TRUST ~2014 "The days are made of gifting and thieving, of blissing and grieving

The savvy of time sends our meadows unleaving

We are Loved and killed, Kissed and crossed..."

V. DILEMMA ~2009 "In the second that I blink, that second has passed, for one second, in age, goes ever so fast

And a second from now, it will start to snow

For a year can seem Like one second ago..."

VI. BALLAD & SHIELD ~2017 "You live in a dream, feathered within

Red dress, black dress, woven with stars

And then it is said, That life can get hard..."

VII. BLIND GIRL ~2016 "...My stranger and my china, my figment and my finding

It's you that suffers highly, ceaseless in my mind..."

VIII. BLUE FIN ~2009 "Our faces are merging, customs are fading

The seas no more divide the cascading..."

IX. THE CALM BEFORE ~2019 "...A rose turned grey, by day, tarnished by the mist

Each day it changes shades, and dies, just a bit..."

X. THE CONDUCT of LIFE ~2012 "I see myself, right now, a frayed book still half unread

So much has long been written, and so much still waits ahead..."

XI. THIS HAUNTED HEART ~2018 "This rush that bleeds in me, finds its present day divide

One wish, one greed ― one seed that keeps my rush alive..."

XII. RAVENOUS NAME ~2019 "...So I fall from the clouds, split by the sun and the blue of the moon

My heart; it beats like a beast like it did in the womb

So fast and so rapt and so readily soon..."

XIII. NOSTALGIA ~2014 "Each memory sold to sorrow, each tale a course of clay

A girl in the shadows, curled up in waiting

Fighting through the thick time to carve your strength today..."

XIV. COME WHAT MAY ~2008 "Your rage descends on me; your past is mine to bare

Yet still I savor you and I know you love me too..."

XV. A THOUSAND MEANS ~2002 "...as this child grew,

the characters that she played seemed to burn away

One by one..."

XVI. WOUNDED ~2017 "Your wounds are merging stars

They show us our fine ways, and where we've always stood

Don't die, my red deer, this madland's mostly good..."

XVII. MANON ~2017 "The warm liquid of your eyes, it leaks out as poison pleas

They burn like wandered stars, like comets toward the seas..."

XVIII. 1316 ~2013 "...Perhaps it's our grace; this need to have meaning

An absolute thirst that lets us keep dreaming..."

XIX. WORDS of THE WISER ~2017 "...Time is a lake

And my memories are swimming just barely below..."

XX. THE SPINNING of THREADS ~2010 "...Some dwell upon the past, and the path they did not take

The person they’ve become is different from their dream

A rag doll, a strange doll, something unforeseen..."

XXI. STORIES of OUR OWN ~2014 "We hold each other, heads pressed together, fingers intertwined..."

XXII. SWAN LAKE . ROME ~2009 "...Whispers of waiting fade with the light, my watch is ticking

And the curtain scuffs way for the coming of night..."

XXIII. THROUGH the WATERS ~2008 "...I have seen the rise and fall of the water so many times

Always wet with fiction and just faintly damp with truth..."

XXIV. PROMISED LAND ~2017 "...The air, like fear, holds us bound by nothing true

Be rich, Be poor, Be a man made of so much more..."

XXV. PORTRAIT of MAN'S DESIRE ~2014 "My wife, my family, my dearest friends and their two kids

Fortunes - that a fearless heart forbids..."

XXVI. MOTHER of ONE ~2019 "...Cover this child as I seek its new path

Through the strikers, resisters, through the bandwagon wrath

I carry what matters beyond the bloodbath..."

XXIV. LIKE CHILD, LIKE MAN ~2009 "...But No, that is not, the way I will age

There are a thousand things I must etch on this page..."

XXV. DUALITY ~2010 "...there are two minds in me. One to please me, one to please you..."

XXVI. JUST OUTSIDE the FENCE ~2009 "...I have no answers yet, so here I shall remain

These plants surround my heart, so too I grow like grain..."

XXVII. PRAISE of AGES ~2019 "...And soon, when you've known a bit of bedlam, of discord and illusion, and

because you will grow headstrong and fraught

again and again before the nightstars shine..."

XXVIII. HYPNAGOGIA ~2014 "...A language of the young

Less truth than flowered tongues, less lies than filtered lungs..."

XXIX. UNDENIED ~2019 "Which one is stronger? Whose heart is fonder?

They asked of he and she, as if one was less to be..."

XXX. de L'ABONDANCE du COEUR ~2013 "...A creature with a voice, a friend dressed all in black

From your heart he knows the truth to all that you can ask..."

XXXI. THE SELFLESS BALLERINA ~2010 "...She took away my fears, and embraced them as her own

"Feel safe," she said, "feel free. You will never be alone"..."

XXXII. CRY MY HEART ~2017 "...Rest, my dear, grow old within my heart, for there's only me and you.

There's only me and you..."

XXXIII. THE QUANDARIES ~2017 "...Incitements, Incentives, Plucked plums, pen-named, as dread?

These fears, these quandaries, these fortunes freely fed..."

XXXIV. THE HOLLOWS ~2007 "...All of the world is inevitably connected

And everything will make sense, when least expected..."

XXXV. CHARADE ~2014 "...We strain the days away; bookish sights, nurtured theory

A worthy kind of tread that can paint the clock quite dreary..."

XXXVI. A NEW DAY ~2003 "...I look through the moon, through sky, through the murk and the haze

Through the skin of my own, and my own selfish grey..."

XXXVII. ONE I LOVE ~2019 "The truest of thoughts remains to be seen. The white of

your wing stands distant, and I remain haunted by the words you don't say..."

XXXVIII.BEAUTY'S PRIVILEGE ~2002 "...my Aunt has left with me the greatest gift of regret

That has taught me to accept, a life less stressed..."

XXXIX. GHOSTS OF CROWS ~2009 "...What an image means to some, is to others something more

A memory told on wood, can show all that I adore..."

XL. EN POINTE ~2007 "...She spoke of her years, be them most in the past

Of time lapsed and prime youth and all that she had regretfully missed

Eight lives of glass darkly she had foolishly kissed..."

XLI. THE PATHOS OF THINGS ~2012 "...I’m weightless now, drifting, faintly balanced in the air

Things will come and things will go, Of this I am aware..."

XLII. I COME TO REST ~2009 "...Slacken thyself; to my fingers I plea

The past is bedlam that holds onto me..."

XLIII. BORN AGAIN ~2007 "...Wakeful to the reasoning chill of an altered state

My feet bleed to the earth, of an altered fate..."

XLIV. JOURNEYMAN ~2002 "...You can watch the birds fly

And wonder, why was not I given the sky?..."

XLV. MAN OF WAR ~2009 "...To see what I must see and live what I must live

A man of war, A victor of virtue, A victim of remembrance..."

XLVI. THE UNSUNNED SNOW ~2017 "... I see stars, planets, winters ― I see time without an end

I sense a sound once more, I hear my voice again;

"Nothing lasts forever, but life will never end"..."