give a heretic
paint and canvas, art becomes
psychotic, frenzied,
the stuff of nightmares, much like
a Bosch painting, demon play

~kat

A Tanka today for NaPoWriMo/GloPoWriMo Challenge Day 6. I just could not get into this painting with one disturbing image after the next. So I opted to write about the artist…he was certainly an odd fellow I think!

The challenge: Today’s (optional) prompt is ekphrastic in nature – but rather particular! Today, I’d like to challenge you to write a poem from the point of view of one person/animal/thing from Hieronymous Bosch’s famous (and famously bizarre) triptych The Garden of Earthly Delights. Whether you take the position of a twelve-legged clam, a narwhal with a cocktail olive speared on its horn, a man using an owl as a pool toy, or a backgammon board being carried through a crowd by a fish wearing a tambourine on its head, I hope that you find the experience deliriously amusing. And if the thought of speaking in the voice of a porcupine-as-painted-by-a-man-who-never-saw-one leaves you cold, perhaps you might write from the viewpoint of Bosch himself? Very little is known about him, so there’s plenty of room for invention, embroidery, and imagination.

The painting featured in the background above is the rather dark section of Hieronymous Bosch’s famous trytych, The Garden of Earthly Delights.