Posts Tagged Art
Before, Then After Dali
Persistence
needed for calm survival,
maddening
dreams haunting
our false loves, clean peace, and death
steals our new purpose.
.
The Persistence of Memory, Salvador Dali, 1931.
America, 2016, #2 – On Gravel to Avoid the Hit
One in front
of the other they
said and no
one would love
me again, tossed I am on
rusty grills.
.
Carl’s dystopia today shot near Gibbon, Nebraska, September 2016
.
Yesterday, When Serenity Hurt Madly
Hammer blows
make me clutch at brain’s
vice grip, pain
piddles, mind
arcs to new power, seeking
freedoms, but
losing art.
You Too Can Write a Novel in 30 Days
I’ve been sold on so many things.
But I’m slow.
Too slow.
Too old to be slow.
Might die in 29
if you only give me 30.
Need infinite time
to create infinite art,
but I’m a wasted old man.
Accept my lack of time,
knowing my dreams are
infinitely stupid.
Dream I might write one,
just one, artistic poem, but
while I might finish,
it will never be good,
so I’m at peace
with my infinite inadequacy,
fueling my hopelessness,
but fighting my restlessness,
and putting it away.
.
Stop the Music, Only for a Moment
I asked him to stop the music,
the raunchy, thrusting drums,
sounding tinnish, cheap, back
alley, but beautifully persistent
tom-tomming so that I could
open the giant egg on my right,
the casket for Mother’s corpse,
for I needed silence to bring her
back properly, to show her how
her son had survived her be-
littlements, and with great
alacrity, had shed the alligator
skin which she had poured on
in layers of muddy martyrdom,
and show her how I had erupted
from cages, had somehow begun to
like myself for brief moments, all
of which I hoped would allow her
to rest easily in hell rather than
trapsing this earth, working
diligently to finally, decisively
ruin me.
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The Unshakable Infantile Spirit, Part II
So many say they can write, and here I add pink flurries
to the leaning stack, as gargoyles snort snot and
hang from my eyebrows laughing at my twisted,
sick, inadequate brain, and the excuses grab
my knee caps, rip them out, and the man on the corner
snickers. I don’t say I can bake. Why am I compelled
to write? I spy on the snake that guts, rather swallows whole,
all the other writers, and he and I drink grape juice at all the futility,
and the man on the corner hands me Pessoa, tells me
to read this, this that will tell me why I can’t
write, but the ants keep crawling up my
ass, while the gargoyles jump in the man’s pipe, burning
up into little leaves that blow up toward dirty clouds, and I keep
trying like a little baby with nothing to say worth anything.
.
Art in Writing
PAD day 13 instructed us to write a comparison poem of some type.
.
Art in Writing
Art’s not puerile, but childhood
is fair, not the same old thing,
not dual combinations of words
heard thousands of times, not
preachy but will often teach, will
lighten the world we’re in with
truth, something you might read
twice or more, where art will
say a thousand different things
on a thousand different reads,
where you may need to think
and think hard, but when
not art, you’re expected not
to think, not to question, not to
slow down, so how to enjoy?
.
Brahms, Revisited without Tears for Today
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Brahms, Revisited without Tears for Today
Brahms has the twitchy fuse,
lighting me in acidic
flames and the arguments inherited
from old elephants, between piano and orchestra,
are trudging – me, I verses the world,
and I’m losing
but I’m pounding the keyboard
until I get a break, a breath, a sigh,
and I show this grace
that is un-Brahms
but is
Brahms at his greatest,
and when the horns arrive
in red army coats, you know
victory is grasped with dirty,
dry, crisp finger nails, but it
never happens, never consummates.
I am finished, a heaping
pile of slippery dung
when Brahms is done.
And as a practicing drunk, the tears
would wilt tarnished cheeks and create heat
emanating around thorny eye sockets,
but these days are desert dry, pain layered
and hidden and only Brahms, only the
master knows, knows the truth, and now,
at least I rest, I stop, I pray, lost.
.
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p.s. – Embedded below is the referenced piece, performed by my favorite conductor and one of my favorite pianists. The exposition of the first movement lasts 3:45, so patience is needed in waiting for the arguments between piano and orchestra. The climax/recapitulation of the first movement at about 13:20 is one of the most intense sections of music I know along with the ending of the first movement. It is immense music. The third movement is a kick ass jam if you make it that far…
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The Mind’s Empty Darkness
Compelled by absence
from my pen
the poison of a slated trap
of an iPad keyboard,
Shitty one word thoughts,
I read, I stop reading,
I read, I tell others
to read.
I want to learn, become real,
but the grease of a refinery
broken down by deadly fog
has stilled my mind
so I am fearful of the empty notebook.
I order myself to write
an essay on the deleterious
squeeze of a persistent depression,
but I cave to a fear of narcissistic
rage, so how can I help? I hold
out my hand and I should cure
the mud from millions of horses
in a wet November Ohio valley.
I should sweep away the bags
of compost from the surface
of my almost-human construction,
and after all, I need to go read,
to go learn
before I ever write again,
and pray that death will
not stop my project, that
someday I might write.
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Parlaying the Intransigent Tar of my Editor
All the leafs, all of the websites, the tweets, hell,
Facebook posts, commanding, directing, distracting,
but making writing the compelling requirement, and Buk,
my friend, he tells me that if I’m not spitting it out, don’t do it,
but with respect, fuck him, and fuck my editor who sits,
who shits all over my shoulder and tells me I suck.
The directions tell me not to listen to the editor.
.
