28 March 2010

The Photographer's Job

The photo's shallow focus
Eminence; A crepuscular grain of stoicism
Litters the simple portrait, unadorned
With background yet cluttered
In grey tones of cotton, four ivory buttons
One beside its perch.
Refusing the portraitist's love
His shorn fingernails long-ago grazed
Preposterously upon the subject's left cheek.
Subject, accepted, as 3 million eyes remove
Recast the ambulant crown of jackal's fur.

22 March 2010

untitled 3222010

To think rain then see the umbrella
Unafraid of
Confident in
Its huge freckled beauty
Aquiline and staring deeply
Red breast-sized droplets
Slapping the evening air
Wide painterly halo, impossible
Pinkish-flesh surrounding the street lamps'
Pulsing head. Never
Believe such things, even whispered
Atop a long-sallow, sworn-upon pillow
As they were, on many tender nights.

Gut softness exposed to cross fingernails
Of moonlight, here things are more realistic
And I am convinced
That I am convinced
I am that Man, warmer than coal
Rich as butter patiently churned
From darling milk.

untitled 3162010100, for a.w.

I don't want to play dress-up
in my beautiful skin & now behind
powdered teeth

I am wailing for happiness
see, already under a shroud
so why bisect with a tie

Or stomp out the sun with the false curl of a hat
why the heels, toes cut out
not waiting, wailing

Nothing done with a smile nor easily
nude practicality & little wisps of Whitman
collapsing alveoli, alluvial grapes, still on vines

Strangle around a skirt I will not entertain
will not entertain its baroque desire to drool
to widen here, elongate there, draw their upon-me eyes

Kneeward & beyond to where. Part of me

Wants
replanting each grape
refilling the grave

To impress you
though that share is small
the more substantial stock

Only wants to raise myself.

untitled 3162010

there is no learning
only the watch and
sea, desperate
paddling & constrictions

(wind, sharks, hunger
& their very thin relations
but this cold ungiving night)

not shackles but
endless, star-filled sky
pregnant & bending horizon's breath

the chill a child
mistakes for death
on the back of his neck.

x-bouffant observation

the math is simple
if i think feminine
even in the negative,
first i've thought feminine

your calculated gamble
has worked, you cannot
unsee this penny: heads
or the bird, its luck
now yours.

06 March 2010

"A young teacher explains to her children, 'Modern Art is interested in Abstraction.' And I cringe. And I am aware of my cringing."

"Don't make this about you
And your 'Cartoons.' Your inability
To function on human planes
Is what renders us untenable."

X.

"No, no, no, I see all the same
Shapes and colors, I get it. I see
This Mickey Mouse head-shape and
That drunkish pigeon. And the ..."

X.

"And the themes, the repeating squirls,
Floating around like lazy smoke. Who
Gives a fuck? The almost-straight big dick
Slashes, real repressed kind of masculine violence
Only a pansy like you could whimper
In public. For the whole world to see."

X.

"Well, I don't want it. Not one of them.
Doing a thing badly is a terrible disguise.
And now? This flaccid hand wringing
Bullshit."

X.

"I don't fucking care where you're hanging.
Arguments require two people. Human
Planes, Sid.This. Here. You're a fucking
Failure."

(for Cy Twombly)

poppies

the definite bisection is imagined
and there are no poppies, signifying
nothing. indifferent men hush
then drain over obscured mouths

in this place
no decision

flesh tensing, as urgent lights spun
kicked off brick beside the sand
and oil, lacking comport
bisection still of nothing

in this place
no decision

many-whirled pink existence, they
must not be souls or even poppies
those of us who Are will not survive it
the closer they seem, the more real

in this place
no decision

and out toward the horizon, the hanged sky
under blockage, they are small, disassociated
real, though with no sun to create them, incongruous
those of us who Are (or Are still) refuse abstraction

in this place
no decision

out toward this minor & faraway bough
men lay across the road, without affect
and beside them all a pair prepares to break
his hand leaving her side, her hands leaving his

in this place
no decision

the field is ready for harvest
the fields are ready for harvest

(for Anseml Kiefer)