There is something more that shines through all that we do and feel. Deliciously polyphonic and full of healing love, "Open the Light" is a gift made of gifts. Thank you so much to Alexander Bernat​, who has taught me and so many others about power of kindness and the joy of giving. Mad Dog Friedman on oak flute and Theremini. Alexander Bernat on Celtic harp.

Amber

I found the poet’s flashlight
shining dark as honey through
the mouth of a dream,
welding everything together,
filling the mind with sweetness,
oozing over edges like tree sap.

In the cave of our love
by the touch of your skin
I find my way, I flicker
and flare in the warmth
of your arms, then all is gone
in a sputter of breath.

When the day fades, how precious are
these luminous moments together.
The poem slows it all down. Under
its thick, sticky baptism of amber,
the radiance of ebony keeps us
golden through the silky night.

The Mathematics of Poetry

The Mathematics of Poetry

first starts to add up at two
with the irony that “pair”
is a single word

(all truth lies in paradox
except this one yet we persist
to resist that which contradicts)

by three our hope is constant
we formulate our own sign of redemption
an irrational trinity of rhythm sound and image

four is only suited for play
before its corners are stretched
from a perfect square into approximate roundness

rolled and half baked into a pie of three dimensions
five significant digits are left writing this tangent
as human touch lends a congruent hand

six is too close to sex for poets to ignore
while seven offers double rhymes
and eight an obvious pun

it does not stop
until nine not because
it is the German no

but because we can not
know more or less without
somehow starting over

good poems return us to our beginning
in infinite surprise even when we figure
out it invariably points to this end

(the imaginary derives what is missing)
another line taken in two directions
stressed or unstressed our ones and zeros approach forever

multiplying by their own radical rules never alone
or empty they give ration to rhyme or
not and without our lilting iambic

without the subtle enduring
babbling binary of the bard
we have nothing

Know Where to Go Crazy, a Digital Poem by M. D. Friedman

Original poetry, sound art, visual art, photography, and animation by M. D. Friedman highlight this ground breaking video short. This work showcases a growing mastery of M. D.'s combined talents to produce experimental, experiential, electronic literature fusing several multimedia elements into a new genre of poetics. Featuring state of the art 3D animation, "Know Where to Go Crazy" (2009) is a two voice poem with the second voice heard animated into the viewer's head. 

Forever Trespass

"Forever Trespass” (2007) is a digital poem exploring the question, "Does the poem own the poet or the poet own poem?" The sound art for this piece was constructed from the 2D (2 directional) poem, "Forever Trespass". The "normal" voice is reading the poem vertically (down the columns) and the "harmonized" voice is reading the same poem horizontally (across the rows). The video was made by animating my photographs and digital art and integrating it with the original sound art.

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