Like the Ceiling and Wall to which the poet is lured by Michelangelo's muse, The Sistine Gaze dances between vision and fantasy in words, images and metaphors that are muscular, tangible, sensuous, erotic or at times cold and questioning. The poem's philosophic currents in rhythmic line and verse are meditations on existence in the swell and fall of activity, of changing lives.
The poem's 'gaze' fixes on the creative process as mythologies, the god, the ungodly, and the corporeal luxuriate int he riches of the great Michelangelo's genius. Human certainty, death and the artist at work are central strand, discovering magnificence in the human body and tasting its destiny.
This ekphrastic epic is orchestral, impressionistic, thought-provoking and controversial. Indeed its raison d'être seems elegantly framed in an aphoristic line inviting us, 'To balance life with death and venture bravely to be beautiful.'