Shadowards

Here for the taking

2007-12-04T13:49:00.000-08:00

j.a.arrick

She came to see me at lunch time. Slender fingers
reached out over the table as she quietly asked, “I
hope you aren’t allergic to peanut butter.” It stuck
to the top of my mouth.
“I’m not”.

She wore a blue dress with a white sweater. Her red
hair was like a bunch of small slinkies tied at the
top of a cliff. I hid my hair was because it was short and rough.
“Do you like my hat?”

Her eyes said, “I can’t wait to get you home” as they
burned with hope. I could see my brown eyes in her
blue.
“I don’t mean to stare.”

She said, “I have waited my whole life for you to come
along.” I knew it was time and that she was the one.
“Can I call you mom?”

The end of this present life must come, whether sooner or later

2007-10-13T14:57:00.000-07:00

He rises from his car, a cane touching first where he will step
and limping step by shuffling step in sneakers crisply tied and white
he joins the crowd around the car -upturned onto its side.

He sees the stop sign now and puts -grandfatherly- his hand upon the car;
it cools as we call to her inside, entombed, blanketed
by airbag and glass.

She unclasps her seatbelt and climbs out, legs wobble, we reach
for her and marvel, we proclaim her miracle,
we resolve to improve our faith, resolve to increase our prayers.

She pales and shakes and sits upon the curb
and stares at the anchors of blood lowered from her hand.
The brush with death sickens us and leaves an acid taste inside our mouths.

But the man, hair still perfectly placed,
returns to the crumpled crib of his car, heart-beating and feeling
-more than he had for many years- alive alive alive.

The distinctions among created things; and their different rankings by the scales of utility and logic

2007-10-08T05:29:00.000-07:00

My youngest son dragoned in zippered green fabric
waves a red shovel and hoe and Adams an Eden in the hall.
My oldest son dumptrucks a wagon of brown plastic horses
onto the ranch of the rug and rides a smile
into the western afternoon, full of wrangling.

With the autumning of my body
I weigh the jump-roping of their play-
from hot-rods, dinosaurs, and hard-hatted Indians
with six-shooters and wooden spoons belted to their sides
to the jackhammering through leaves
behind the Frankensteined soccerball-
the scales midlife into crisis.

Later, as my sons -on their stomachs- teeter-totter their legs,
I shiver when a tower of blocks Babel them
as it nine-elevens to the floor.

-Remy

Pierre Bonnard's Nude in a Bathtub

2007-09-25T17:22:00.000-07:00

Perichoresis

j. a. arrick

Where is the to be or not to be seen?

-the man in the chair to the right of Ophelia.

Her face is not found nor bound hands and feet

rather, Athena’s chiseled figure is entombed

with weather faded stone.

Inferno fired cinderblocks holds

room in dance, and her, like paralysis’

daughter, songless, danceless, unclapped,

floats and therefore seem not to be.

He was not to be no more, but was to dance

In warmth and caress, with hand on side

Arm in air, and step in light, her face to his

The room decrease, their love crescendo

He was to dance. Instead, he is absent.

The room awaits the fiddle and horn,

and poises to tap a vibrant tune,

illuminates with joy and verve;

but there is not to be a dance

the couple is not to be.

nor anymore, Ophelia

Day in a Game

2007-09-17T19:19:00.000-07:00

J. Andrew Arrick

An Endless summer brings a glare from the cedar slated balcony.

Flat up, a steep silled window looks to the shrubs then the row of trees,

Converse All Stars clean white and black,

scrape the sill and fill the cracks with gravel

as out the foxhole to the great known battle field of yard;

they fly with no avail.

With sword in hand, the sheathed tin

with glass buttons glares at a sweaty brow.

Up the slated porch with drawn arrows

The shots fly into white ninja target.

CHARGE!!! Lieutenant Johnson orders

Saracen blades drawn to down frail foe

of shrub and tree, in clump and row.

Retreat, that imminent thing these friends of summer darn not disobey,

with a snake path sprint from gunfire and mortars.

All caps leap off heads from brushing arrows.

From fair haven foxhole, the dawning comrade yelps like a bard in battle.

From room tombed bed knobs where slates shadows are gone

and the shaggy best friend pants and yawns.

With summer drowning and windows shut,

sweat is swiped from brow and bed again at days end.

End of bright from summer’s glare the boys in lair

in cover in pillow, lay with sleepy nights under balcony.

Assignment

2007-08-18T09:22:00.001-07:00

Who's up for one?

Sonnet II

2007-07-20T21:43:00.000-07:00

Here's my second sonnet ever, as read recently at James' house. I know there were objections to the "before the face of God" bit, as being lazily abstract. I'm working on it, but in the meantime, any suggestions?

- b.c.

ii.

I peer, my face against the streaming pane
like Japheth in the backseat of a car,
at the rain on the rocks:
The waters are
rising, grasping below the asphalt edge
of the road, and I wonder how could Cain
have thought that grain could make sufficient hedge
around our sin; could keep our heads above
the waves.

In saffron hues beside the road
the aspens burn with sacrificial love:
A momentary storm shrouds gray their flame
and in a flood suspended, cleansing rain
lifts up as mist before the face of God
like smoke ascending from a martyr’s pyre
to shelter dust from death with dust afire.

The Lost Touch

2007-04-23T13:52:00.000-07:00

I just wrote something for the first time in several months and thought I'd post it here. It needs work. It needs to be savaged.

[Update: Thanks Davis. Here are some changes.]

The Lost Touch

On my magazine a wet handprint,
ominous as, the next morning in the meadhall,
Grendel’s arm,
and on this month’s electric bill
thumbmarks like drops from a dog’s mouth
placing a warm ball on the couch:
the vestige of a husky mailman and Louisiana’s late May.
Later that summer I saw his direct geometry, from house to house,
tender between the flowerbeds, the sky of his shirt,
through the bushes, ducking under low limbs.
Terminally shy and a stutterer,
I never remember his name,
yet he makes an indelible mark on life
like a leaf’s first swoosh across the dirt, like a shadow
of a bird flicked over
the face of a child.
Our deciduous lives make thin marks upon the world,
but these scuffs, dents, furrows pressed in table wood,
chips, frays, lost paint from figurines,
these are what personalize the world.

His face is blistered in sweat and forced
from complaints along his route to wear
pale blue gloves to keep his sopping
from soaking the mail.
But I miss the message he delivered with each letter,
written in invisible words -much too shy to say aloud-
that said, I carried this, it bears my touch.
I mothered this into your hand.
Take and open in remembrance of me.

A Field Along I-84

2006-11-18T09:06:00.000-08:00

Another edit. I cut the second stanza entirely. Is there not enough setup for the ending?

A Field Along I-84

I am confronted on the right and on the left with
Absolute Flatness -
tilled but unplanted:
a desire unfulfilled -

and I am compelled to grasp the landscape like a tablecloth
or the end of a skein of rough wool
and pull,

supressed at first
then desperate,
piling up the sheets of dirt at my feet:
Searching for mountains.

Washington Scrubland

2006-11-18T09:00:00.000-08:00

An edit, for your critique:

Washington Scrubland

Sage and scrub-grass
perch on the surface of the desert
like grit on sandpaper,
grievous and vital,
superposed upon the dirt
and clinging to the rocks in a
thousand narrow gorges
that score the desert's crackling skin
like wrinkles on an old man's neck.

Words Arranged from Anne Frank’s Diary

2006-11-09T05:50:00.000-08:00

This might be the dying gasp of Shadowards.

Six or seven years ago I came across the Found Poem phenomenom. A couple years later I was reading Anne Frank's diary (sounds so prurient to say that) and decided to take some of her phrases and craft them together. This is what I came up with.

Words Arranged from Anne Frank’s Diary

"Ich danke dir fur all das Gote und Liebe und Shone" -Anne Frank

I take a leisurely look
at the person called "Anne Frank"
and browse through the pages of her life
as though she were a stranger.

I feel like a songbird
whose wings have been ripped off
and who keeps hurling itself
against the bars of its dark cage.

I think spring is inside me.

Why shouldn’t we kiss each other
in times like these?
I’m longing–
really longing for everything.

Jews and Christians alike are waiting,
the whole world is waiting
and many are waiting for death.
Peter said, "the Jews have been
and always will be
the chosen people."
Anne said, "Just this once, I hope
they’ll be chosen for something good."

An empty day, though clear and bright,
Is just as dark as any night.
I think spring is inside me.

We still love life
we haven’t yet forgotten the voice of nature,
and we keep hoping,
hoping for

everything.

I don’t think building sandcastles in the air
is such a terrible thing to do
as long as you don’t take it too
seriously. I think spring is inside me.
It’s easier to whisper your feelings
than to shout them from the rooftops.
But where there’s hope, there’s life.

I think spring is inside me.

On Rhythms

2006-10-27T15:11:00.000-07:00

Here's an interesting post on poetic rhythms by Doc Leithart.

On a Poet

2006-10-20T16:03:00.000-07:00

Rae Armantrout, poet, in the most recent issue of American Poet, discusses this poem by Joseph Massey (from his chapbook Property Line) saying:

"The connotations of the few nouns, verbs, and adjectives in this small poem tug in two opposed directions. On one side we find "vortex", "navigate," and "path" -words which suggest purpose and concentration. On the other side we find "unraveled" and the cloud of "gnats." These words suggest entropy adn randomness. Among these objects of attention an Olsonian tension "holds." The subject-noun of the poem, "hummingbird" occipies middle ground. We expect a humming bird's movement to be erratic, flitting, but here the bird is seeen as almost comicall purposeful and direct, pursuing its ends through an entropic world. Is the poem, like the humingbird, penetrating determinedly into a world of receding and collapsing phenomena? Is the tension in th epoem (in all poems?) between such precision and such unraveling?

The is much to say about the sound of this poem and the way the syllables juxtapose. There are the six assonant short "a"s in "gnats", "nasturtiums", "navigates", "unraveled", "gravel" and "path"; the subtle scrambled rhyme in "hummingbird" and "nasturtium" the off-rhyme of "unraveled" and "gravel"; and there's the way stress falls on the first syllable in so many of these words, i.e. "Hummingbird", "vortex", "navigates", "gravel". As Olson says, a "head shows" in the play of (these) syllables indeed.

I find it refreshing and somehow also sobering to observe the way Massey sticks so closely to the perceptual world. Like William Carlos Williams, he challenges us to see the value in putting things in words. What does dependo n that famous red wheel barrow or on these nasturtiums? Is the question retro or is it time to ask again? How do we move from perception to experience, from experience to thought?" What sort of "property line" divides on e perceptual event from another?"

***

Something to discuss perhaps.

"Are We Roses?" On the Bosnian Genocide

2006-10-16T14:05:00.000-07:00

This was found in the ole files, unfinished. It's another From Friday poem and less intimidating that TSEliot swill.

"Are We Roses?" On the Bosnian Genocide
She writes down a scar, then erases "when I remembered that skin was unlikely to survive."
—Courtney Angela Brkic*

She examines her face for what will last:
only bones and eliminates the eyes,
cheeks, lips, hair and nose,
but teeth will stay -horrible in their openness.
"Are we roses?" a Bosnian child asks
near the stony fields of Herzegovina.

Not just the dead of old massacres remain
but the missing and bereft. An excavation team
provides the sole consolation the gone can leave:
a corpse; the victim turned over to mourners.
A rose patterned china cup in the rough hands
of the little girl, "Are we like roses?"

Mass graves examined: "Do not look
at faces or hands," she’s advised. Because the skin
does not survive, she reminds herself. The wad
of bones, the mudstuck writhe of barren spines,
the body’s hieroglyphs of crushed anklebones,
splintered ribs, wrinkled wrists and pelvis dust;
each spell "killing fields" in decaying calcium and cloth.
"Are we roses?" she asks, her mouth as fragile as a cup,
her hands become the coarsest cradle for a stone.

When the girl was young a pinecone
put into her crib acquainted her
with hardship, pressed against her skin.
There’s a threadbare coarseness to her eyes
as she asks a final time, "Are we roses?"

The mother, soon to die, throws open the door
and gestures to the dust, "We are brush
clawing at the mountainside."

From "BOOKS OF THE TIMES; On the Killing Fields of Bosnia, Invoking Mother Courage" by Richard Eder, a review of The Stone Fields by Courtney Angela Brkic in the New York Times August 6th, 2004.

*pronounced BER-kitch

Wasteland Remix

2006-10-05T15:53:00.000-07:00

A number of years ago I began a Wasteland remix. Using the original Eliot poem, I took structures, rhythms, and even his own mad methods of composition to write my own, personally filled poem. I only got so far as the first section (Burial of the Dead) butI thought it might be interesting to see. Moreso than "Fluency" at least.

Badlands
(after T.S. Eliot)

Go & tell the king that
The sky is falling in
When it's not
Maybe not.
-Radiohead, 2+2=5

I. A Parable for the Dead

Spring is foolish for its progeny
spreading seed carelessly,
I remember when this hill was dead
and green a dream of immaturity.
Winter was logical, reasoning
dust to dust, fading
life into shades of grey.
Sunrise a shocking conclusion rising from the sea,
a little overcast, stopping in the coffeehouse,
then into a leisurely stroll along the stores,
drinking and chatting about the wares.
"I hate antiques, especially the shabby chic."
I remember, she said, the whirlpool in the stream
as a girl, my sisters and I, would walk
along the rocks, how slick they were,
but we don’t go there anymore.
On the farm it’s peaceful even at night,
the coyotes sing before they leave.

Out of the whirlwind grasping at the wind:
What is dust? Prophet,
if you can, what rough beast slouches
to Jerusalem to be born?
It screams "Peace, Peace!" when there is no peace,
its throat cracks for lack of wine. Only
dash yourself upon the rock
(many are dashed upon this rock)
and ask what Babel gives to you.
Oh Jonah, go down, down,
down, and I will meet you there
or I will come down and grind you into dust.

Old Bad Eyes,
Old Bad Eyes,
The Shepherd
Won’t leave me alone.

We searched for yarrow on the summer solstice.
I called her flower-petal eater
—yet when we came back, late, from the whirlwind garden
your arms held everything, Ophelia, and wet your hair.
The river passed an unkept pit, strewn with petals.
O churlish priest, a ministering angel
will she be when thou liest howling.
Kai pempo Lazarus hina bapto akron daktulos hudor*

Mavis, the twisted alchemist,
was banished, nevertheless
a crafty serpent to the promised land
acts as Charybdis with his tail
pointing to the dead, to Olaf glad and big
(more brave than me, more blond than you),
to Matilda, called Primavera by the pilgrim,
the lady beyond the fire.
Here is the soldier with the spear, here the Rood,
here is one like Woden with his ravens
whispering in his ear. I do not see
the quizzling, nor the ivory of his leg.
If you see the woman in the streets,
I have confessed, tell her so
and I’ll bring the sheets to wrap her in
to keep her stench back from my nose.

City of seven hills
under a canopy of a future flood,
a split ocean a people crossed
to scatter their bones, dry, across
the other land. Grumbling carried their exodus,
each man set his heart to dust,
past where the Levites kept their guard,
where pooled old blood of bulls and goats.
There I saw one I knew and called to him, "Achen!
You who were with me at the battle of A-I,
that silver planted last week in your tent
have you reaped your fruits of it?
Might I have my cut?
but keep clear of open sepulchers,
lest you see yourself go down —that’s home to man!
you blindman, my mirror, my friend!

*transliterated from the Greek, meaning:
(and send Lazarus that he may dip the tip of his finger in water)

Fluency

2006-09-28T07:20:00.000-07:00

This is another From Friday poem (A Life in Thrown Paint, and On the Highest Edge of Strings) that was slower in coming than the previous. I feel the first stanza is agonizing, but I've been blind as to what to do so I decided to release it to you guys and perhaps you'll free up my brainlock.

Fluency

"La foi." -Mozart Bastien, 58, said in French. After some work, he and his translator came up with the word he meant in English. "Faith."

—New York, NY
He went to sleep. He woke.
A stroke had stilled Mozart Bastien's tongue.
For three years silent,
the uncarved stone of words
lay unmoved in his mind.

A pastor in his former land,
often called to pray for ailing men,
now fired from his factory job,
he laid in bed, "I still have faith in God."
he said by speaking with his hands.

He prayed for fluency to return,
silence a gravestone in his mouth.
He prayed for work, for meaning aside from money.
And when his tongue was remade flesh
he went down on hands and knees and cried,
"This is liberte'."

From the article "The Neediest Cases; After a Stroke, a Torturous Battle to Put Thoughts Into Words, and to Work Again" by Monica Potts published in the New York Times December 16, 2005.

Wallace Stevens

2006-09-19T16:29:00.000-07:00

Thought I would post this poem by Wallace Stevens for comment and instruction. It seems to flow nicely with the classical/romantic poetry of Remy's which we have been enjoying of late.

"The Paltry Nude Starts on a Spring Voyage"

But not on a shell, she starts,
Archaic, for the sea.
But on the first-found weed
She scuds the glitters,
Noislessly, like one more wave.

She too is discontent
And would have purple stuff upon her arms,
Tired of the salty harbors,
Eager for the brine and bellowing
Of the high interiors of the sea.

The wind speeds her,
Blowing upon her hands
And watery back.
She touches the clouds, where she goes
In the circle of her traverse of the sea.

Yet this is a meagre play
In the scrurry and water-shine,
As her heels foam -
Not as when the golden nude
Of a later day

Will go, like the centre of sea-green pomp,
In an intenser calm,
Scullion of fate,
Across the spick torrent, ceaselessly,
Upon her irretrievable way.

- Wallace Stevens

Sometimes Venus Springs

2006-09-18T16:05:00.000-07:00

Continuing my neo-romantic love poetry.

Sometimes Venus Springs

fully formed

her shoulders like eggshell
in a cliff of moonlight
her throat like fish in water
shimmering her voice
like a taut rope
in a well rising
her midnight filled the room

my mouth enstoned
tongue of gravel
my knees
like dry ponds
in undisturbed mountains
my eyes pineconed
in the loam of night

all flesh is silt
my arms, old walls
need of care
need of touch
like melted snow
need of her breath
like new glass
against my side

her robe broke like clouds
brunette rain
the flesh of lightning
eyelash thunder
light spackled
like waterdrops
the earth rumbled like a breaking oak

the gulch of desire
crumbled split and

filled

The Birth of Fidelity

2006-09-12T06:27:00.000-07:00

This one has been floating around in pieces for a long time (I think some parts may have been presented to you all before). Sorry it's not as sexy as Rem's last few offerings.
I do not feel dogmatically about any part of this. I still consider it incomplete. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

"The Birth of Fidelity"

Search the southern sands
For husks cast up at the tide-line.
Pry inside with withered hands,
Rich with pearling shine
But empty.

Olive faced as Hecate,
Dancing slow above the earth
To rhythms beaten with a whisper:
Feathered, desperate,
Yet absurd.

Darker than the last
Yet brighter still, though fading
Breaks the dead-shelled, hardened cast
To lift him born anew,
Though trembling.

The Thousand Warships of My Eyes

2006-09-11T14:28:00.000-07:00

In terms of subverting pagan antiquity, at least with me, it really comes down to the adage "make it new". With "Icarus after Orgasm" I wanted to take away all that grand pity the Greek narratives are so gloomily after. Yes, the Icarus story is about the folly of youth, but look at how noble it was. And that's how we read that story, I just wanted to enjoy myself, I wanted to go higher, I was seduced by the beauty of the sun. Biblically speaking folly is gross, destructive, and childish. So I had Daedylus speaking the Proverbs to him. Still pity, still sin, but (I hope) sin exposed.

But please, I don't have a limitless supply of these things. There needs to be more stuff written. Let's discuss. Maybe we should turn this into poetry discussion page as well. Maybe in a few days someone can put up a question or short essay (what's important in poetry? sort of questions) or maybe discuss a poem written by someone published.

Here goes some love poetry:

[Edited since first posting]

The Thousand Warships of My Eyes

My Helen of the bedsheets
wage a war against me,

a war of attrition,
wear me down,

break the bridge of my resistance,
scar the walls of my arms,

uproot the crops of my mouth,

and I will surrender in the sheets
of cold winter’s bed.

But at the point of defeat,
hidden in pillows,

while you revel in victory,

a parade of fingers,
the rough wooden horse of my hands

...legs like the city of Troy

Icarus After Orgasm

2006-09-06T18:29:00.000-07:00

I disdain classical allusion for the same reason that I disdain "-eths", "o'ers", and "t'was", but more than that, I just don't fancy the pagan myths. It's like trying to have affection for "Birth of a Nation" because it's the first film. The whole aura in English Electives around the gods has a sort of antiquarian-necrophilia about it. Satan and his cohorts have been reduced to wobbly-headed bobs. I get the gigglies when I see a movie with demonic apparitions waving salt-shakers around, chittering the dishes. That's not a sign of power, that's a sign of weakness.

So it tickles me when Carl Dennis mentions Icarus and says "a whale, not some silly boy". That's how I like my classical allusions. Dismissive, sly.

Thanks for the words on my old stuff. It's been in my head so long I can't see the faults. And a note: in the original poem there are highly artistic indents that really add zing, pep, and gollygosh to the poem (but I still cannot figure out how to html an indentation worth a damn).

Icarus After Orgasm
Daedalus Speaks

My warnings bore no fruit,
Icarus, my son, my son,
but he had a famine for an ear,
and a heart of dry wood
wishing fire.

She was like the sight of a single bird
flying over a field of stones,
the sun, a slower similar yearning,
and Icarus took her like wings
and plied her to the sky of his desire.

Her bed swept him up like vanilla in a candle’s flame
and Egyptian linen rippled against
the curvatures of his back,
becoming tiny question marks of surprise, pleasure
at the muscles of her body.

Do not seek the woman of fire.
Do not fly to her embrace, I cried.
Icarus, O Icarus, my son.
She laid low many
seeking the burning touch of her hand.

In her hands Icarus quivered
and his heart, a bird without snare.
O Icarus, my son,
my son,
her fire turned his wings to stone.

When Icarus came
flickering like a feather in wind to the woman of lust,
sweat running like wax,
he fell –O Icarus my son–
to the unruly, soiled bed,

melting into the depths of the sea of his heart.

Roman Marriage in Antiquity

2006-08-31T07:17:00.000-07:00

Some more old stuff. This is one of my "dirty classical" poems. Did I ever post Icarus After Orgasm here? I have a growing hatred for romantic uses of Romanisms, Greek gods, et cetera. Classical allusions bore me unless they're subverted. Admittedly, What They'll Never Understand doesn't fit this, but I consider that more of a character discription. By the way, in depicting the filthy practices of the Romans I have used appropriate language.

Roman Marriage in Antiquity

The loss of virginity is, as they say, vi non sine.
Or, not without violence is a woman robbed
of her virginity, and divinity is employed
to help the Roman male enact this rite. This replacing
taking the newly wedded bride to the idol of Priapus
and commanding her to sit on his phallus.
Instead the god Domiducus is invited
to "lead her home" (domum ducere),
and the god Domitius installs her there
with the goddess Manturna to see that she "remain"
(manere) in faith to her husband. In terms of modesty
there was none, as more gods were brought into the act.
In all likelihood lusting, elbowing each other
out of the way after their role was done, the god of the pillow
blesses what heads will there soon lay, the goddess of the sheets
strips nude the bed at the approval of goddess
Virginesis, there as witness.
The Father Subigus (to subdue, subigere) readies the manacles
of his hands to spread the ankles,
and Mother Prema (to press, premere)
sets her girth on the virgins legs
waiting for goddess Pertunda (to pierce, pertundere)
to loose the virgin girdle,
all under the watchful
eager eyes of Venus, the goddess of lust,
depraved sex, fellatio, and cunnilingus.
And soon, after the gods have done their work,
the Roman male may enjoy his bride
with all Olympia at his back,
clucking their tongues
and fumbling with immortal cocks and cunts.

The Crossword

2006-08-24T16:09:00.000-07:00

To keep this page from getting stale I've gone into the ole files and pulled out something from circa 2003. I'm working on another newspaper poem. I might throw it up to get some help with it.

The Crossword

The kiss she left him with had all the force and fire
of a golf clap. She glances back to make sure
all eyes are on the smallness of her skirt
(a Berlin wall of newspapers crash
at the swing, like a silent bell, of hips,
as she walks away, a row of old ears ringing
before boxscores and editorials re-form cubicles).
The boyfriend tugs at the sewer of his pants,
"She toys with me" whispered in his hands.

A study group, circled around their books,
stare like castaways at the bottom of their boat,
the idealist among them parts his lips,
"Every invention is a wager for utopia"
he says, and drinks rapidly a glass of water.

A mathematician is asked about belief in god.
He mutters, pulling a pencil from above his ear,
"My business is the infinite, what do you think?"
and slowly fills out a five letter word for transience.

-Remy

Airport Barista

2006-08-07T21:16:00.000-07:00

Though your coffee skin and Veda voice
Allude to ties to Vishnu,
I see that Man on the golden tree
Is strung up on your neck.

By the honest lure of your low-caste eyes,
I am drawn, like sheep,
To the shimmering destruction
Of your Shiva smile.

Who knows how wide the gulf of faith,
The gulf of space, the gulf of Want between us?
Would I could convince, convict,
Convert you with a kiss!

If not for my fleeting flight,
If not for my weakened knees, my better judgment,
And if not for that glittering pledge around your finger,
I might this moment dare to do instead of dream.

A Life in Thrown Paint

2006-08-07T12:02:00.000-07:00

"It was a healing space, and they were both in great need of being healed" -Audrey Flack, 75, on the house Jackson Pollock and his wife, Lee Krasner, escaped to.

-East Hampton, NY
Light stung the sanddunes near a smashed car made soft
in the new morning.
Earlier that year a wife
off by Accabonac Creek, Lee Krasner,
part pragmatist, part masochist, waited
for husband Jackson Pollock to return from what rough rage
he drank into or
from whose blatant arms he slouched into,
or from what unconcious canvas had filled his mind
with slapped color, and his arms with
spontaneous motion; spill or pour,
stab or sprinkle.

Was he the paint or place
where it came to rest?
What dark bruising pushed his hand to drive the nail
inside the slack and pooled paint?
The string congealed
upon his art could be a sign of hope -a lifeline laid
to save
what was buried in the struggling flood. Or
was it to make a noose among the taut
and jerking paint?

When she left him
taking her faith in him
he lashed and poured his abuse
upon himself. He became
a painting for wrath and flung his car beyond the frame of streets.

A "From Friday" poem by Remy Wilkins from the article “At Jackson Pollock’s Hamptons House, a Life in Spatters” by Ellen Maguire