Thursday, June 21, 2007

how the poem and the painting made love



it started timid,
virgin,
not crass,
or violent,
no blindfolds or
pick-up lines
but the erotica of
black-and-white lovers
with their hands first conjoined,

the poem with its honeyed words
and the painting,
bashful,
holding back its oils,

until the poem, emboldened by
a scripted and sensuous need,
lifted the pastel to gaze in wonder at
the canvas underneath,

and the painting,
with quickened breathing,
spreading its colors for the
oncoming stanzas;

and the poem slowly began

its tongue,

forming words of
aesthetic bliss and pleasure--

the rhythm and
the rhymes,
patterns retracing the first brush strokes,
taunting the painting to come forth from its frame;

the painting,
unhooking its clasps,
slipping gracefully from its mat,
stepping forth from the glass,
coyly shaking the dustcovers off its feet,

bending this way and that
to exhibit its carefully drawn landscape

then curling its deckle edges about the poem,
urging the words to melt from the page,
wanting the ink to mingle with its mediums,

-- and the subsequent,
not so spontaneous
but rather sumptuous
combustion of image and word,
wherein the rivers and mountains and
the walking in beauty like
the night, the pretty how town and
the impressions of some
starry night
became one --

and the one,
and the other,
one pointing,
one singing,
now joining,


then collapsing,
and stars,
afterglow and punctuation mark,

both spent as a child's allowance,

whereafter cinema,
their love child,
took its fragile infant form,
gestating from the union of
poem and painting.

Thursday, June 7, 2007

faith. a poem cycle in the form of vers libre.



*****


"This is the way we go to church,
We go to church, we go to church;
This is the way we go to church,
So early Sunday morning."


~ 1966 edition of My First Sing-A-Song Book


*****


the first rotation--
"god is the divine abortionist."

...when i was a child...


i felt as a child
i thought as a child

(i hurt as a child)

my elbows, alabaster
my smile a golden calf

and scevah knew my secrets
(did abel love his cain?)

and my knees were child-knees
scraped by unchild worlds.

-- when i was a child,
god forgot me --

...but now that i am grown...


i put childish things beside me
i hold them all more tightly
i place them around my room

my walls are scarred with ponies
the ceiling knows my demons
my bedspread is a doll house
i wear my captain crunch

now that i am grown
still i am child

and nightly as a child
i have a nightmare vision:

the children rise up against god,
and god will lose his children.


*****


the second rotation,
being a variation on a form

here is the church
here is the steeple
open your hands
see all the people

open your eyes
see all the people
here is the girl
here is the preacher

open your ears
hear the girl screaming
here is the church
here is the steeple

*****


the third rotation--
"in honor of evagrius; in contest of pope gregory; otherwise entitled acedia."

we are the dark-skinned.

we are the children of the night and
the inheritors of the earth.

we are the children of the morning and
thus eclipse the sun.

it is not that our skin has burnt,
that our pigment flows thicker,
more crudely, than yours and your oil

it is that our souls have swallowed our skins
and we do not mask our pigment

we do not blink with fists
and we do not take god lightly.

*****


the fourth rotation,
being entitled,
winter.

is it possible,
when we feel we need
ten more begotten sons,
a hundred of His daughters,
two more virgin (repentant lesbian) mothers
and hell itself,

that, in the aftermath
of the passionate expression of
our sacred freedom,

hearts,

long toyed with,
held in suspension by puppet-like fishing string,

break into a million sacreligious pieces,
yet someday mend?

Tuesday, June 5, 2007

understudy, or, aesthetics pt. 6


"or was it backward,
I had to ask
as I turned
to reach for a faraway towel."

~billy collins, "the long day"

it seems trite to tell you
that i write,
while sitting in the rain on a black metal chair
with a hole in my left shoe and
a cigarette in my right hand,

about the galaxy in her eyes
or the homeric epics in his head,

or to bring your attention to
-- is it a fact? --
that "homeric epics" are an understudy
to the pain he felt when he,
but a solitary astronaut,
realized he floated in plantary rotation
around but one of her planets,

the pain itself, having broken its leg,
being unable to stand for itself,

and wondering,
is it coy or crass or perhaps
is it a moment of poetic fury,
to ask the illiad to take its place on paper?

would it be heavyhanded,
to point,
line by line,
to how the poem,
more thinly constructed than tinkertoy windmills,
rose from dust into its eden home?

but most of all,
to end the poem,

not with some profound utterance or
subtle nod to the more favorite of plato's forms,

but rather,
languidly, as if intentionally,
an incomplete sentence,
an unfinished phrase.

an exercise in rhyme, or, aesthetics pt. 5


“And I wove the thing to a random rhyme."
~Austin Dobson

it is the weight of love on water
it is peter's feet on water
it is the smell of fishermen's daughters
it is pure and sweet and true

it is true and it is lethal
i am the bells that grace the steeple
i am the coroner and the preacher
i bury thoughts in moss

still mermaids hide in brambles
it makes no sense to ramble
it makes much sense to dally
you are the posterboards at rallies

i pen these words at midnight
i burned your words at midnight
i burned your words with daylight
i cut myself with love