Cords work

Cords work

themselves into fetal knots

while dust collects

Itself.

Boxes commonly contain cherished contents

to be kept out of touch, like death and memory.

Musicians and writers make notes 

and draw out descriptions,

Artists picture

new sound, reason, 

and likeness in the jagged line

that makes connections.

Verbs hang in midair proposing movement;

chores, change, promises, and poetry

for nouns to untangle. 

Electricity junkies, 

trying twisted ways to say 

what was entangled worked. 

Painting by Hans Dahl, 'Girl in a field knitting' c. 1879 in [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Shaken not stirred Ma’am

(For Frankie)

It is hard to see things abstract.

We are more accurate Now

Encapsulating climate

When we mention Culture.

Let’s look at Value:

Price tag says, “As Is”.

No complexities.

No narcissism.

Loathsome luminaries loaded

In ink, inebriated, inoculated,

Imbibed in itself-“As Is”.

The Sardines became the Gollum.

O’Hara, Oh everywhere, oh Sun, Oh oranges!

Can you feel the rust coming on,

Or is it Out?

Aren’t we all magnetized toward the morbid,

the dark, the obscure, obtuse, or abstract,

as they can be good for hiding things in corners, 

shading over or making shadows. This depth 

achieves something like,

making good on promises.

Sometimes he seemed gay,

they say, he was happy, in so many words.

All the time, they say, they were true,

the poems. Because they were simple

they cannot tell lies.

Portraiture is paraphrased,

how does one escape?

Clouds come and go.

Meanwhile, the pastoral artist demonstrating

how much one can hold,

runs out of colors, runs out to resupply,
runs hot, then cold.

Any poem can be an apocalypse,

this is how they all End

(in grey), 
except the last words say,

All days look the same. 



Image credit by Berenice Abbott, 'Radio row (NYC), 1936' in [Public domain or Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Representation

Only artists know
the sky is never painted
wrong, everything goes.





Painting Sky StudyBy Unknown artist – Artist [Public domain or Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Medium fits all

As the novelist is tempted to try
synopsizing and to nimbly stitch
a concise buttoned-up poem,

The poet reaches for the artists brush,
hoping his blended colors
will all come out in one broad stroke
as envisioned,

So does the artist become moved
by music in strokes of the latest
color combinations,
he paints a score to settle harmony
that escapes the canvas as a song,

And all are collaborations
of hand-eye articulation
expression in action,

As the photographer
captures realism completely
out of context,

The actor is able to enunciate
eloquently since he has had the script
beforehand,

interacting with his set he mimes
his role, the actor assumes his costume
as liar and professor,
adapting for his audience

The play,
what to think.

All artists play in living color, mixing
dead words and sterile symbology
waiting to be revived,
imbibed and misinterpreted
as original(s).




Image of painting By Etienne François-Eugène Lecoindre, 1882 (Sotheby's) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Dated 1432

Dated 1432
and here I am
looking...
                       If the artist
                       could only look back
                       too,
me admiring...
Transfixed.
And amongst
a lavish soiree
a veritas bouquet
                       death and life
displayed        and splayed
out-
                       hung crucified-
                       elaborated suffering, of the antiquity.

The lives
in the stills.
The (pro)posed lives
in the pastorals.
The captured chrysalis,
by stroke.
                        In wealthy company of all this
excessive impression
is-tic motif-
                        the money felt misplaced,
so it said subjectively.

And those people holding place
in the Portraiture room
                        -No Photographs-
needed.
                        the encounter is etched,
                        with abrasive stares-
over time.

On the walls
                        the writing of fates
                        in gilt frames
                        of a frozen time
                        of a minds eye
that was never there
but now,
                       while I am looking back
and there.





Image of painting by Cornelis Bisschop  (not the one referenced in this poem) Allegory on the Raid at Chatham dated 1667 [Public domain, Public domain or CC0], via Wikimedia Commons. 

A musical mosaic of lyrical landscapes

If you ask a sound painter

to drawn you a rhyme,

he will enchant you

not by the tone or the line:

but with an audible harmony,

a scenic serendipity,

a symbiosis in the sound

of quietude...

Lost in the paragon of verisimilitude 

With his wand weaves colors that blend 

images that transcend

before your nacreous eyes

here art lies

behind smoke and mirrors

is the image of the looker

You see

all is not fantasy.

You see

if you get a chance 

to harken a glance

you will see 

a song of poetry. 

Image of painting by Christen Købke of the Danish landscape painter Frederik Sødring[Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

I'll Be Frank with You

Strangers we are
and always have been
on other shores, lifetimes away
archived thankfully for someday
like this opening in my schedule.

I've done some looking in
to you, and wonder where you are
really from, I mean I get where you are
coming from, of the Hara, the place?
Or is it the Shiva or Scarlett's Hara?

I was taken in by many and none
the lineage leads to nowhere
but a sweet little eden, a valley lush
trees wearing afro dos, creeks trilling
through the dell-it clearly chose me
as you can tell.

I thought of a poem I wrote before
we had lunch yesterday, about a poet
who paints with words on white,
like still life, making space
more appealing. I forgot
to mention how much I enjoyed
Guadalajara, the pictures of Ashes Buried,
your instruction manual too, Mr. O'Hara.

Of course this was all before
page 163
of Secondary Colors
just past Orange
that banana split second-mutilated
dislocated from living just like that
taken away at 3-
on a beach! And what's more?!
It was not mine...
O the Horror!
These letters are just too much for me...

Pacifically.Stationed.
(this was long too early, I needed something like you there)

This poem was inspired by the poet Frank O'Hara and his poem specifically, Why I am not a painter.

Image by Sanford Robinson Gifford (1823-1880) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons,  painting described as Fire Island Beach, NY.

An artistic alliance, long ago, in a land far away...

nostalgic for the days I don't remember

way back when
poets and painters blended and mixed their mediums

mingling their reds and blacks blood brothers on white

walls paper words that made the colors stand up, shout out, jump and dance
in the aesthetic lyceum 

lit up by the spotlight of your gaze
tracing the illuminated lyrical lines
longing for your lips

that fuse, melt, and ooze from one dimension to all, in all

in alchemical attraction

of painters and poets, pictures smeared with words,

sounds like music,
sharing shapes in space

is art made anew

(reenvisioned)

(commissioned)

(juxtapositioned)

I never see

this artistic endeavor

together today, so sad to say

evermore I miss those olden days

that I've only felt in poems or paintings

when the love of artistry

met eye to I...

Once upon a time

partners in poetic crime.

Image By Władysław Roguski 1890-1940 [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.