Cinematic Poetry
1616 ~ Don Quixote's Conquest
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1616 ~ Don Quixote's Conquest Man's rising temperature, Heightens, heaves and turrets, Steaming ruptures to the breach. Could he likely lonely sit with himself, In meditations grasp, Like buddha's boundless joy? Shed suffering surplus, Until it's empty wishing bowls, Were deep basins, Turned out and marrow, Then he, may happiness know. But before the stream is still, He scurries, Gazing at the gold to bare, The great and glory. Rabid wretched fancy of Modernity, In forces willed, More rightly coursed for wonders, This world knows nothing. For what could be; The endless joys brought by technology? Another hand and foot outside myself, That manages wants. These burdens of burning; From my pulsing heart, Unto my health. Ambition is the only moral, And to be vicious is victorious. And suffering stems only from its lack, When more is gained, Not born. For men like me and him, We are the musket's voice, Of the sacred and sacrament, The blood of blood. We ripped the pages out of books, And into life. We saw only one truth was to rise, You cannot rise without, That taste for what they have. Even if by crumbs, That were scraped from, The bread of glory. I've seen many cracks, Through doorways I was left outside of, Seeing past the wooden bars, That kept me hungry, And looking up to stars. Invited me to dine as their guest, See the bounty that lay in waiting. On the other side of Conquest.
The Collector’s Edition
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The second panel casts Don Quixote against the widening shadow of empire. In the final hours of Miguel de Cervantes, the aging writer reflects upon the strange life of the figure who defined his legacy ~ Don Quixote. Quixote believed himself the guardian of a moral order shaped by chivalry, honor, and devotion ~ yet the Spain through which he traveled had already entered another age. While Quixote rode in search of noble battles, Spain itself was engaged in the ruthless expansion of the Spanish conquest of the Americas. Across the Atlantic, ambition was the only moral, and it drove conquest to the edge of the world. The idealism of chivalry dissolves before the machinery of empire. 1616 Collection exhibited at the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam ~ Google Gemini Art Remix Competition. Poetry & AI Animation & Music & Produced & Performed by Laurence Fuller.
