Poem : Sumi-e

This isn't a poem about Japanese ink.

Due to COVID-19 I've been working from home since March 13th. In that month I have not been able to really get in to writing.

It feels stilted. Tiring. Less important to me on a personal level.

On Friday, my company had to lay off 50% of their employees. About 250 people. I was "lucky" enough to keep my job. And I am grateful.

I am grateful.

This was written on Saturday the 11th. It is not about COVID or layoffs or even really about not being in to writing at the moment.

It is about feeling like I am a dry brush waiting.

---

Sumi-e

It dips itself — the handle — it — has something — filament a golden hair — within that it must — express — as grapes underfoot — it dips itself — the well of creativity — see it knows — something we do not — has that inside its head — it is a blankness waiting — it dips itself — like honey or a pool of warm water — the image began eons ago — creativity is an ink waiting for the dryness of a horsehair — to have a thought of its past life — have wells of past selves to unmoor — a cliff face waits to fall into the sea all of its life —

Poem-A-Day #320 : It Is Hard Not To Think Of Gods As White Men

It Is Hard Not To Think Of Gods As White Men

I want Michael Fassbender to come in the room

right now - carrying a bunch of balloons - pink ones

It's important because it's January 14th and sometimes this is how these days go

The man who killed those two 30-year-olds has been charged with homicide - it -

I didn't know them and it isn't my pain - they were friends of people I know

And someone should talk about death today - all days - I wear my skull necklace

and pay for a painting of a canyon and it feels like a Turner storm and that is why I want it

I will never own Turner storms so -

Why Fassbender though - he came in first - I asked the universe

who should deliver January 14th balloons and it was him

We can talk about his choices of film if he is - in real life - this into comic books and video games

I often imagine being hit by a car as I cross an intersection - T-boned

is what they call it and it feels too graphic to discuss

But I imagine my body passing through showers of glass

swimming in a way I cannot in water - and I imagine what it would feel like

the rendering of bone and flesh and the images burned into retina that will never see again

In my head it is a jumble - like a screwdriver - a sort of whirl

An indecipherable - though maybe if you stare long enough but there is only a few seconds before the eye will hit the pavement - it is a cloud of brown colors washing over everything

A pop of sudden pink in the corner - the sun somehow still there

The face of a very European person taking souls out of the world

Michael Fassbender
Esquire Russia Sept. 2012

Poem-A-Day #285 : The Alarm is Going

The Alarm is Going

The alarm is going again -

It has been 15 years 8 years 2 years 1 month -
                    it was yesterday -

I stood in front of the Madonna - the one from 1290
Duccio
               - the painting is on peeling wood

Around her head the gold is sculpture - it is an object grown - the tree gave birth to this fully framed woman

The child reaches for her veil -
                    not yet - not yet -

A etches across the surface - it highlights her sadness - is a weight on her
like the oddly proportioned child -

          too small - too adult looking - a doll really

He reaches for her veil -
continues to reach -

You died on this day - or that day -

                                        the alarm is going again - I am not sleeping -

                         I blame the moon for this - it gets fucked by us too often - blamed for all atrocities - I blame it and the light it steals - the fucking rabbit that lives upon its face -

The rabbit hitched a ride on the back of the heron
          its small white paws going raw from the gravity of what they were doing

they landed and the rabbit reached one bloody hand towards the heron's face
and marked it forever -

The alarm has been going for hours -
                    and I feel like I should have burned up by now

Death isn't fear -

          at least not on the surface - I like to think that I understand this but -

The child reaches for the mother's veil -

                    His hand touches the edge of the loose fabric - blue and shimmering -
          his oddly small fingers pull at the edge - her eyes reveal themselves -

The leaves of gold peel steadily -

Madonna & Child (1290-1300)
Duccio

Poem-A-Day #199 : Instructions for How to Engage with Art

Instructions for How to Engage with Art

The canvas wants you to touch it
to run your fingers against the raised strokes

Feel the ochre burnt and otherwise

It wants you to lose yourself in it
to become so encased in its universe
that you will not escape unchanged or at all

It wants to yellow wallpaper you

All of this is contingent on the artist
understanding the canvas well enough
to reveal the need within it

All of this requires you to step closer

To press your chest against the Mona Lisa and to search for her pulse
Take your clothes off and jump into The Water Lilly Pond

Be naked and covered

Poem-A-Day #124 : Guernica

Day 2 of my Remember project stumbles to the starting point of my obsession with Pablo Picasso's Guernica. It began with a really odd piece of theater. A high school did an original dance/movement piece that slowly revealed the full tableau of the painting across the stage. Each of the figures in the painting was given a solo dance. It was crazy and wonderful.

The original:

Guernica (12/6/98)

Came from above the rain
The purple is broken open
Tossing summersaults in the air it falls
Something inside me makes me want to run
Something inside me makes me want to put my arms up like I were crucified
Someone inside me runs away and is gone
Came down to earth
The red is spread out
Twisting summersaults in the air it falls
Guernica is confronted
Guernica is gone


The edit:

Guernica

From above the purple
          above the rain
the sky is open

The pouring face tosses itself in the air
          it falls

          You want to run

          You want to be crucified

          You are both

Red spreads like paint
          summersaulting over the earth

It ignites
          and within moments
it is gone

Guernica (1937) - Pablo Picasso

Poem-A-Day #111 : Typographic Music 1

Typographic Music 1

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Hadrian the Seventh

The official List of Popes spans 21 centuries of human history. It begins with St. Peter and ends, obviously, with Francis. In between are 266 men. A few highlights:

St. Peter by Peter Paul Rubens

- From August 1799 - March 1800 there was no Pope. The previous, Pius VI, died in France while imprisoned by Napoleon. There have been 4 other breaks between Popes. Those were for 2 or 3 years and were mainly caused by politics in the church.

- Pope-elect Stephen died 3 days after being elected and before his ordination. The Catholic church removed him from the official list of Popes in 1961. Though Stephen's after him counted him in the number after their names.

- Benedict IX was Pope 3 times. He was deposed all twice and sold the Papacy to Gregory VI because he wanted to marry. What's amazing is that he became Pope the third time AFTER he sold the seat.

- John Paul II has the third longest reign behind Pius IX and St. Peter. He was Pope for 26 years. Pius IX for almost 32. St. Peter is said to have reigned for 34 years.

Study after Velázquez's Portrait of Pope Innocent X 1953

This is just scratching the surface. This leaves out the Borgia Popes and the 41 Anti-Popes. And when Pius IX declared himself Prisoner of the Vatican in 1870 and the title stuck until 1929. And countless other things.

My favorite Pope-related artifact is the series of Pope Innocent X paintings by Francis Bacon. In all, there are 45 variations. Bacon was painting after the famous Velázquez painting of Innocent X.

I've always loved the horror in the paintings. The feeling of a caged soul. A trapped thing. That yawning mouth eating the world.

It is critique without being critique. Bacon famously said that he painted the Pope because he merely sought "an excuse to use these colours, and you can't give ordinary clothes that purple colour without getting into a sort of false fauve manner."

I bring up Popes because I just finished reading Hadrian the Seventh by Frederick Rolfe. The book concerns George Rose, an Englishman who is basically elected Pope on accident after Leo XIII dies in 1903. What follows is one year in the life of the new Pope. He sells off the Vatican jewels and forces Europe to redefine its borders. And then he is assassinated by socialists.

Fr. Rolfe

The book is an interesting look at church politics. There are pages of Papal machinations and in-fighting. There is a scene where Hadrian removes his Papal ring and confronts his Cardinals not as Pope but as George Rose that is one of the most interesting exchanges I've read recently. The compartmentalization that Hadrian/Rose puts himself through to allow himself to BE Pope is amazing.

Frederick Rolfe's book is also mostly a thinly coated wish. He was a failed Catholic priest. He shortened his name to Fr. so people would think he was a friar. The book reads like one long fever dream of a man who felt that the world owed him more. And for that alone, you should go read it. Each page is a screed on what Rolfe thinks the church should be doing vs. what they are doing.

I could discuss Rolfe's at length, but will just add that he dabbled in photography. Of young boys. He was an open homosexual in Victorian England. He died alone and penniless in Venice at the age of 53. And he carried on a long distance affair through love-letters and poems with a priest.