Poetry and the written word is an important part of my creative process. Whether its a prayer piece or a work born out of theological and/or contemplative musings the writing completes the work for me. As one might fashion a living being a body so the painting is born, its soul the presence of the work, then writing is the voice of the piece- speaking - enquiring - inviting.

The Marriage of Word and Form

An Anthology of Selected Poems

  • Its brilliant how beautiful tragedy is -

    How human

    The unspoken thoughts of hopeless futures are beautiful
    like the the whispered wingbeats of a moth on a night breeze
    drawn to the false promise of manufactured suns on a porch front

    they remain the unwanted cousin of the Day

    The listless song of the heart

    Their flight is a rickety stumble through the dark night
    Yet such fuzzy fancy creatures - preening women in evening furs

    In their dark gilded merriment
    in the unreality of it all
    it looks the least authentic
    and it feels the most romantic
    this fluttering hopeless unrequited love

  • Feed it incessantly through escape

    through the mundane and the dramatic

    so poled beyond conception
    that - the state of nature reflects in it an unreality
    - made real

    culture and civilization
    morality and the id
    Intersections and nexuses of such ardent opposite they fuel and bundle the intangibility of it all

  • I feel I have reached

    the end of the line

    I do not know this

    body anymore, my

    skin is not my own

    Why oh why do I do

    what I do not want

    and do not do what

    I want. - Because

    My body is riddled

    with the illness of

    consumption - the

    decay of hedonistic

    addiction. This is the

    End of the Line

  • To clash blades with you
    Dear friend
    Is the deepest loving I can do

    To keep both our arms strong
    Blades sharp

    And to tell you where your armor is weak

    Before your feet touch the battle grounds

    Before war of the world is at your door

    My dear friend
    You are the counsel I sharpen my life against

    Each tile, in the mosaic of my life, that is yours
    I can point to

    and when the war is done
    at the end of time

    When the sweet bliss of silence after battle comes

    may we sit together, two warriors in a garden

  • The  Silence of resentment is a loud

    Clamoring kind

    A void that contradicts emptiness

    And fills a room with electricity

    It is the kind of quiet that will stifle some voices

    And raises others to nervous babel

    Setting hairs to bristle

    And glances to be exchanged

    It  heightens and sharpens everything

    Such silence is the sound of unforgiveness

  • Poetry as a means of communication

    I think

    Is better then most

    For it is said that

    The most complex thoughts ought to be expressed simply and with consideration

    And I like the lawless nature of it’s form

  • Dear God
    Control my wrath and guide my tongue
    For lord you know the bite of my disgust
    and the cut of my words

    When I cling to my wrath like a hot coal
    It burns blisters in my gut
    and wreaths my heart in the flames of wretched un-forgiveness

  • He seems at ease or maybe asleep
    but he sits
    with both withering hands
    empty
    folded in his lap, look at nothing
    He is the Fool

    Another sits

    attentive but quiet
    one hand resting empty upon his knee
    the other grasping tranquility

    And yet another runs past in a flurry of
    papers trailing from his battered
    bumping briefcase
    both hand out stretched
    desperately grasping at the wind

    INSPIRED BY ECCLESIASTIES 4:3-6

    3 But better than both

    is the one who has never been born,

    who has not seen the evil

    that is done under the sun.

    4 And I saw that all toil and all achievement spring from one person’s envy of another. This too is meaningless, a chasing after the wind.

    5 Fools fold their hands

    and ruin themselves.

    6 Better one handful with tranquillity

    than two handfuls with toil

    and chasing after the wind.

  • Wandering reminds me of foggy days and the rumble of distant thunder which
    reminds me of rainy days, tea and early mornings
    warmth from holding tea to my chest

    a room lit only by candles and a dim lamp
    of prayer -
    writing letters, talking to God

    and poetry

    which
    Reminds me writing, rest, and a  melancholy ethos

    which Reminds me of Opera House by Cigarettes After Sex and 朝/Asa by Mandarin,

    and profound loneliness

    I can't escape my feelings like I thought i could
    which reminds me of pains long hidden and love tucked away for a rainy day when wandering thoughts rest on memory like a butterfly perched on the end of a petal after a spring storm

  • Without you
    I would have died years ago

    Right now I wouldn’t be able to breathe
    My tear shorn face the product of mine own folly

    How much greater my pain
    I imagine If I did not have your
    Grace to return to

  • I laugh as much as I cry

    as much as i am numb…

    That years would continue to spill out of my cup

    and still the starvation persists

    It hollows holes in the heart leaving

    echoed apparitions of dreams to haunt the high halls of its

    abandoned form

    The elegant colorless fur coat named nihilism

    - paints the mindpalace in grey

    A shawl of mine own making

    specters of my self promenade the corridors

    faces from all times whispering doubts from the soul

    faces from times past, passing and yet to progress

    promises of potential plans and possible plots

    predestined potentiality masquerading as delusion

    My cursed heart and worm rotten mind

    pleading within a dusted cocoon, an ashen crypt

    begging not for the sun

    but at least for the viability to flourish under an endless moon

  • Have you ever known a thing
    to seem to bear Its name uncomfortably
    Without confidence
    Like an after image or some confounded creature

    That berry of a flower

    Arborvitae

    Like the Thuja, the white cedar
    The steadfast stands, evergreen covenant against time
    A sacred beauty In the grove of compelled bumbling creations, roots intertwine, a living prayer of life eternal.

    Of the friendship unending

    And the on arborvitae's breath,
    Is a vow whispered

  • Never the second or even the third
    The length of my longing’s life

    And so there is no glances to the window
    No expectation of homecoming
    - in fact -
    A distinct absence of koinonia

    The only union of souls
    found in the mirage of a daydream

    I gaze upon other’s fields awed by the hills of jasmine,
    spotted by Dahlias,
    and woven a rich red with rosie ruby colored tulips.

    Pollinated - precious and profound in their beauty

    Mine own field of rocky earth
    seemingly only home to the harsh mountain wind
    cloaked in patches of lichen and moss

    The only sprouting flowers nestled
    in alcoves away from the unending gale
    and any wandering walker -
    they wear the faces of the Dicentra,
    the Butterfly weed and a dotting of Purple hyacinths -
    all as infrequent to the eye as faerie sightings

    Pathetic, Paltry, and profane imitations of passion

    They speak with the petal tongues of the listless
    and are so rarely beheld by the eyes of others
    they neglect knowing their own virtue

    Woe the weary weight of the Bleeding Heart

  • Of course it hurts
    It hurts the way sandpaper rubs against skin
    Raw and unyielding
    a burn like the sun cooled by nothing but delusion
    It is an obsessive obstinate love
    regarded in its quality by few
    but it is mine and I will covet it till a day a greater love declares itself

    until then

    It is the thing that reminds me I am alive
    It robs my peace just as assuredly as it gives it
    And so it rubs me raw
    until the moment I decide my psychosis is ended
    and put down the sandpaper

  • Maybe in his eyes all that’s black and dark and repellent glitters

    Maybe in his home is the chill of winter
    the bite of the wind
    with a hearth most inviting
    as hot tea pours unendingly in spite of crow sitings

    I fell in love with a frog once a deep souled city dweller

    a frog who painted and carried around small candles
    Lights lit by the softness of his actions
    and rattled by the croak of his dry voice

    He was a gentleman most kind, most unnatural as he was to promenaded with a moth
    Their positions always undefined

    and she loved him

    beautiful brazen but benevolent beast that he was

    She loved him, tho his enchanting torch singed her fur to dim
    and she would find herself sore and asleep by the window trims.

    Sleepy eyes drifting to wishing stars while she nursed candle made heart blisters

    She loved him tho his gaze would hunger at the wings of her insect sisters

  • how many days un-haunted is the real question

    Where is the line in the sand

    How many days free of the weight in my chest
    in horrible control the desire for death and its hold over my soul
    End me, end the belligerence
    let the lack of faith
    the questioning
    the finality finally settle

    Let the dark reclaim
    rewrite
    rename
    the unending pleas of the insane

    how many days un-haunted is the real question

    How many beautiful days

    days un-marred

    If there where any at all they fell forgotten

    to the earth

    unbound by blithering and the boiling bile building beneath the skin they fell forgotten

    leaving the creaking corpse of the self unforgiven

  • Shrunken, hunched, bent -
    Bones, skin taught sinus and maggot ridden despair
    perfume the state of my soul and the countenance of the air

    Adulthood

    Life the cave; a haven of the known
    The mapped walls of the present and past: familiar

    But the future breathes on the nape of my neck
    The great maw of tomorrow inviting survival or death

    My id clings to the stalagmites of escape like
    Some Creature of the dark

    But the dragon of the future lays heavy
    claws of expectation in my chest

    Egos torn wings of pride seeking the burning light of the day
    But beyond the cave I do not know

    I am a frigid warbling fledgling with seemingly

    No confines

    No direction

    No governing, change, or injunction

  • Mighty is the hand that molded the earth
    That pulled from itself totality

    From the breath of words all abounds
    And in the light of the fading sun

    Rests the memory of his warmth on this world

    For we have killed him.

    In ourselves at least
    We have said
    God is dead

    But never tried the Man that killed him

    The unforgivable murder

    That mutilated moral
    And laid waist the seat of virtue

    Mighty is the hand that molded the earth
    That pulled from itself two more
    From the breath of word all world abounds

    So Mighty is the pride of man
    -the lie of man

    That tilts the divine axiom of the cosmos
    Leaving space for decay and waste

Living With The Art

  • "...Through the combination of biography, title, visual elements, and poetry, Criscuolo creates a guided journey through her own spiritual and artistic awakening. But rather than starting with the viewer’s interpretation, this journey begins with the artist’s internal dialogue, her own struggle for transcendence beyond the raw facts of existence. The result is both more and less than traditional abstract art. More, because it provides multiple entry points for understanding; less, because it somewhat constrains the viewer’s interpretative freedom. Yet perhaps this tension itself – between guidance and discovery, between the inevitable and the hoped-for – is precisely the point."

    Robert A. Veen
    Philosopher and Theologian

    Quote from About Modern Art: Levinas and Criscuolo – A Second Attempt

  • “Having several of Biancas prayer pieces in my home is like hosting a silent worship service in my home at all times. The painting's forms invite contemplation and prayer, always reminding me to be dwelling in the spirit throughout my day. The accompanying poem increases the preciousness of the work to me. It has become something for me to read to soften my heart and remember what it means to be loved and prayed for. Each one is a space carved out in my home for reflection and remembrance of the preciousness of God.”

    Anonymous
    For collector confidentially

“Criscuolo's artistic process, as revealed in her writings, deeply resonates with the Levinasian concept of "il y a" explored in her work. She describes her paintings and poems as a "marriage," not twins, emphasizing their individual evolution yet profound interdependence. Just as her art, as interpreted through Levinas, reveals raw materiality and invites a journey beyond the everyday, her creative practice reflects a similar dynamic. Paintings and poems, often born separately, find their purpose in each other's presence, echoing the tension between raw being and the search for meaning in the reflection of an ‘other’. This "marriage" allows each form to retain its individuality while contributing to a unified dialogue with the viewer, where the visual "face" of the painting and the "voice" of the poem guide an exploration, or invite conversation much like Levinas's emphasis on the artwork as a trace pointing beyond itself. Criscuolo's approach, therefore, embodies the delicate balance between the artwork's autonomy and the artist's intentional guidance, inviting viewers to engage in a deeply personal and dialogical experience.”

A short Curatorial Synthesis of Robert A. Veens two articles “About Modern Art: Immanuel Levinas and Bianca Valencia Criscuolo” / “Levinas and Criscuolo – A Second Attempt” and her recent personal essay “One Flesh”.