Paumanok Reeds Book

Cricket Poem

He was out painting
The fish shape. The reeds,
Came as thoughts
In a sleepless
Night. He was writing
It down

On the cold kitchen table.
A scent here
A touch here
Mother and death, here
The sea, here
Touch touch, here here

Tally was--
It whispered the Mother
The Night
The Death and the Sea
Whispered and repeated
The Beauty in the order

It was in the red rusted reeds,
A disposition-- flown,
Of season and light
Cycling
From the moments passing--
Revolved and around

The stars-- blazed in the shadows
If you saw them
What made him
He was,
And the stroke
Thought and hatch

And over hatch
Was his word
Saying it
Silence, the Shh,
In the rustling, in the not there
Those glimpses

The wind whipped,
Diamonded surface,
The pink tint
Invigorating-- returning
The walk back
Inhaling breath

Then exhale, of relief.
Back in the car, turning the key
Going home,
on the winding road

Watching for deer.

David Shapiro

David Shapiro Collages
Turtle Point Press, September 15, 2010



An Orange Hand, Here.


There was a big round Charlie Rose like table downstairs, it was the Anne Plumb Gallery in Soho. You could have called it a salon but we didn't, it was just what was happening.

I met David there probably discussing Frank O'Hara with Rene Ricard, pausing to add a remark about John Hedujk, then weaving together an idea from Goethe, there was a sense of permission. He already knew all the best poets and painters and was writing about them. He stuck everything in and continued to create his multi leveled pluralistic universe. It was a poem in progress.

David read his poetry often and I never missed it. I was far from being a connoisseur of poetry at the time but his musical voice and anecdotal goings on kept my interest.

I can remember, falling some where over Texas with his father, worrying but "safe in Texas," "safe as Texas." Different lines would stick, Blue jays and a "poor sparrow under an old car" a red bird flew. One easily loved the snow piling up in his poems.

Around the time of his, Evening Land, poem and The Seasons, did I start to catch on to the depth of associations required to approach. There was the fragile Earth behind, there were the ruins of art, a metal mouth, and a breast from somewhere before. A newspaper was blowing through, he could see, then couldn't see. Through the detritus, the constant qualifications but there was a ventriloquist's hope, a refusal to say no.

Here come the collages! I felt they were a side tributary to his poetry, running furiously for any time David wasn't writing-- they nervously ran and ran. Anyone that met David probably on the street between galleries, has a few collages hanging somewhere.

I scolded David for being so glib that, Hey, they were good but he cheapened them-- they came and came. One after the other. I grabbed for that one, No! David wanted to keep that one-- I took another. They evolved and I recognized a repeated imagery. This used over that and over, another repeated-- and then substituted.

Now, I think of the Whitman like tally, the scoring of each thing touched-- made real. The covering hands or birds like a Saint's touch conferring reality, here, here, and some still unrelated order into the scheme of things.

I asked John Ashbery about this complex once and he replied to me, I think, sarcastically, "Oh the poetry and painting thing." The oblique relations between the two arts, poets and painters. In our time seems just fine. They add enough.

David came to my studio once and wrote on xeroxes of paintings I had on my table. "The old sunflower almost blocks the sun" he wrote over a fragment of a sunflower painting. More than just oblique.

We had shared belief though knowing the difficulty or impossibility of. I think It seems to come down to just caring that much about something, a poem or painting to lend the added thought, to add ones own cherished autonomy to anothers, maybe a kind of poetic kiss.

Beside my desk is one of David's collages, a xeroxed figure of Cezanne's bather, a seahorse stamped onto this icon, adding a stuck on mystery-- it flattens to a "orange colored hand," reverberating, image to word, back.



David Shapiro Collage

Three Drawings by Gregory Botts for David Shapiro

I hardly ever write something as an occasional poem but in thinking about David's collages this came out somewhat naturally. We were going to use it for an essay to accompany the collage show at Turtle Point Press but then I wrote the prose piece  which we used instead.




Three Drawings

1

now, If you drew a Violin on the grass

and then a Magnolia in a framing tree

and if a house were drawn burning behind

and a bluejay chattering in the further tree

they would be drawn together, flat,  by a line which seemed

more and more intent with drawing them

together like the original mystery they emerged 

the negative and positive,

balance and interplay

of texture forming a surface.

2

When Monsieur S. drew them, 

he borrowed a violin from that 19th c. painting 

in the magazine and then that  fire in the photo

he found on the Pont des Artistes and remembering

the bluejay from that  further heap. He would 

grid them and Yes, preserve that specific character that 

someone, somewhere-- had drawn them once, they would 

weave a reality in some way more life-like, maybe

as in our world of proliferating and actual overlay--

3

Now, when the boy King drew,  he knew the actual violin in mind 

but then thought this other idea of one, also possible 

and then forgot the other-- lost original?

He searched for a Magnolia but there was none 

and so used a Tulip. This was part of the house 

burning but because that was the title of the poem

he only needed to add the bluejay 

to let you know he wished it all could have been different.

His genius was to piece these things together 

in a making of his own  

as he was so very madly in love with the earth

he was close to and a part of

that whole, this earth--and this world, was seen in 

reality, plural.








An Orange Hand, Here.

There was a big round Charlie Rose like table downstairs, it was the Anne Plumb Gallery in Soho. You could have called it a salon but we didn't, it was just what was happening. 

I met David there probably discussing Frank O'Hara with Rene Ricard, pausing to add a remark about John Hedujk, then weaving together an idea from Goethe, there was a sense of permission. He already knew all the best poets and painters and was writing about them. He stuck everything in and continued to create his multi leveled pluralistic universe. It was a poem in progress.

David read his poetry often and I never missed it. I was far from being a connoisseur of poetry at the time but his musical voice and anecdotal goings on kept my interest.

I can remember, falling some where over Texas with his father, worrying but "safe in Texas," "safe as Texas." Different lines would stick, Blue jays and a "poor sparrow under an old car" a red bird flew. One easily loved the snow piling up in his poems.

Around the time of his, Evening Land, poem and The Seasons, did I start to catch on to the depth of associations required to approach. There was the fragile Earth behind, there were the ruins of art, a metal mouth, and a breast from somewhere before. A newspaper was blowing through, he could see, then couldn't see. Through the detritus, the constant qualifications but there was a ventriloquist's hope, a refusal to say no.

Here come the collages! I felt they were a side tributary to his poetry, running furiously for any time David wasn't writing-- they nervously ran and ran. Anyone that met David probably on the street between galleries, has a few collages hanging somewhere.

I scolded David for being so glib that, Hey, they were good but he cheapened them-- they came and came.  One after the other. I grabbed for that one, No!  David wanted to keep that one-- I took another. They evolved and I recognized a repeated imagery. This used over that and over, another repeated-- and then substituted.

Now, I think of the Whitman like tally, the scoring of each thing touched-- made real. The covering hands or birds like a Saint's touch conferring reality, here, here, and some still unrelated order into the scheme of things. 

I asked John Ashbery about this complex once and he replied to me, I think, sarcastically, "Oh the poetry and painting thing." The oblique relations between the two arts, poets and painters. In our time seems just fine. They add enough.

David came to my studio once and wrote on xeroxes of paintings I had on my table. "The old sunflower almost blocks the sun"  he wrote over a fragment of a sunflower painting. More than just oblique. 

We had shared belief though knowing the difficulty or impossibility of. I think It seems to come down to just caring that much about something, a poem or painting to lend the added thought, to add ones own cherished autonomy to anothers, maybe a kind of poetic kiss.

Beside my desk is one of David's collages, a xeroxed figure of Cezanne's bather, a seahorse stamped onto this icon, adding a stuck on mystery-- it flattens to a "orange colored hand," reverberating, image to word, back.

He'd filled it uP

by now, his life
The spiral bound books
among the dead spiders and
kerosene dirt, smudged, the
moments time left, fading in--

he'd kept on spinning
not really finished
reaching for some resolution
the final one? having lost
that belief









but not unchanged
it is in the revolving
cycles to new places
taken then swerve, and
seasoned mythos

each moment dies, as
we all
die, he saw a pathway there
in the sunflower
the artist standing on his box

God! wasn't
interesting so much
anymore he was looking for some
new name to give
some other perspective, to see

reality
a really
what might mean
kind of waiting--for
Still, the elephant blare! the trumpets of Tibet










he liked that, were metaphor
there was no occasion beside Himself
to sing
he was no professional
this milestone his 56 years

til the end of the world
his death bed got closer and
his idea of Giotto changed too
THE construction
of reality

two things-- juxtaposed
like our life, and death
reconciling the two
he guessed you could say
there was just no reconciling

THAT would be a poem
a metaphor of a fragment
or have any end meaning
OFF NOW! to the villa Wall
that fresco, that American thing










he felt from under his mountains
he had turned it over and that bright
striped salamander was the
beginning and indian glint
the portrait of the great man haunted him

his poem was more than travelogue
not of airports
we'd driven far
but it was more a lenght
of pictograms into a

code of DNA like romance
the lineage of a quest
goings over
in revolution
comforting world

he was, I am, and evolve to be
there was a code or grid of mind
he saw it in the rocks above
the imaginings before tenth commandment
he felt not much for the fortune telling










no god in russian was ok
now he'd remembered the brand name,
Coke in the novel
he was in the world and wasn't sure
still moment of the profane?

wrapped in his Indian blanket of diamonded
beauty which had its own order
The juxtaposition of music made everything
the mountain to the right
and the bush to the left, balancing

he saw it that way
way a going on with around the sun
the beauty of it
he traced it and it became right
for a time then had to change

a wriggling like the snake out of the egg
there was a depth
and opposite feeling in death
his mother
he was writing after










aestheticly so much was ruined
like listening to the radio before finding
out it has a point of view
decidedly christia-- oh I don't want
this

free it seems
late Picasso was amazing
to find once again
an older self than
that devil

that, miltonic Daimon a more interesting
figure picturing sex with an industrial
nightmare
that politic truely, evil
some real end to beauty

we find an island of fiction in the chaos
and dwell there
in the order we make
a presence that represents a loss, he said
we should test this as we go










feeling for surface
cracked and crumbling building
again piecing together
what to make of this diminished thing
the fallacy

the pathetic human
all too human
stars revolving behind
a reflected life going over and around
the Egyptians pointed toward a fate

the China man a meander
I'd forgotten the western way?
I'm just making it here
looking for a shape and line and
color to make

could it be
contained there
in the scribbling of the old Picasso,
I'm writing of a blank
I'm writing of a whole,











I seek still
not calling the phenomenon, One
waiting for--
older now he held so much
in his head packing and unpacking it all

The poet rode his bike down Houston, a black tee
shirt and a poem in his head
seemed all
he should be-- near he thought
maybe he could say it

he opened his mouth--the crossing
was some crux
crisis
things jammed
together like leaves and sunset

collosal sun and fragment
memory and Villa
into that ONE he liked
at least here in the painting
although it represented what we longed










for in reality ONE, see
that made cymbal clang, trumpet blare
As far away as Tibet
Professor Thurman was excited by
and you should meet his daughter

the idea arriving!
for cycling-- soul
blue comedian!
Art! to hear
then, redraw

again
he filed it away
for later another try
make with this surprised flavour
it was a life by now

he could be dead
All those other Poets were
and he heard others--
he liked the word transposition
it kept coming up










to transpose what he saw
into another form which reflected back
but was a thing in itself that sounded real
rather strange to fix a image into words
John Ashbery had said to me,

"oh the painting and poetry thing--"
he said everything seemed so very
convoluted and difficult
he wondered what I meant?
so did he

there would be a point
and a digression
from it, Abstract figure flying
into dream of landscape questing to
surface, it was realization

one sought
inner and outer resolution
the goings over
fixing to order
making of a poem










villa whole and fragmenting umph!
it repeated it self made another swerve
traveled back to the ole fish shaped
island to see what had changed
to continue his heaven

dreams of unknown
escaping profane
He, Ho! major man at helm
hero on his head
sparagmos

was the term he'd found
rending apart, the hope
the coming down
of thought
into comic sublime

a minor key
to coincide
with certain abstract
shapes
some striped others plain.











Kept seeing,
like the leaves
that year
falling, down
around, like snow

covering

Hed filled it up, part 2

He wondered, maybe
a minor key
he wanted to be believable
though had none-- himself
oh, maybe a pose

no home, no chairs
thrown in the corner
broken with Thanksgiving diner
memories all for sale now
he had his eyes on the east

waiting for
that figure
he had a sketch in his head
as to what it would be
comic sadness

who had this poverty to paint
the black line
seemed to be the completion
even if there was nothing to lasso
sun, hero

star
he was driving them nuts
they said, all of them
himself too
if he had a voice-- maybe this poem








want of darkness
a hard thing
delivery
The ups truck rumbling
shaking the house

he reached for the top shelf
the bottle slipping from fingers
slow motion
tumbling
a dream like earth revolving

west and sea direction of weather
force and muse,
fury and form
this hero figure, charcoal smudge
"was a carving not a kiss"

could I have been wrong
he wanted to be the whole
not just a part
both things
at once

this is where the serpent lives
everywhere and nowhere
at once
a word out of the sea
it whispered








serpent cycle
flashing
he said, one thing
meant another
he sang a heros head

he was re building after
the deconstruction
he used his head
to defend
against the universe he desired

the wholeness of black
and white
the zenith revolving around
the change
he remembered, turning

blank upon the sand, the footprints
it was in our own eye
it all gained then fell away
it was like the tide
the revolving of the moon

the earth and sun
it made his mind
if one slowed one saw
the aurora undid the summer
in winter flare









as it imagined the change
it was a glory
a constellation
of thought
the idea writ in the sky

star spangled mind
of achilles
she was the unverse
touched him
on the head

it all passed
in leaves
in sunset
in bird song
the next morning it returned

it was the " c" remembered
his life seen this way seemed
a poem all ordained
he felt alive in time lapsed splendor
moment sparkling

as they flared
to memory
a new
word spirals
through that fate









freedom and power
remembered
maybe not on the surface but rippling below
it all faded to scribble in the sunset
again he was left here to wonder

back again to zero here
then
there was some form to the smudge the drawing
when he backed up and saw the whole wall
it was a muted image of the day

that was coming would come to be
he saw the sunset too-- he saw it all
and night
shapes fly round, in phosphorescent trace
glare and gone

he was headed south
then a turn west
the stars ahead
the sun was coming up
he drank it in and exaggerated it

surprised and romanticized
I'm coming home
that inner world
he saw out there
this merely going around he'd defend










his church
and altar
kind of sacrilegious -- going round
he pricked the pressure
of reality

and flew with the dream
aesthetic cloud
part of the wave, falls-- with leaf
it was modern once
the soul he'd built

all the paintings in his head
he'd built
he carried his book along
shrimp pond and palmetto
I mentioned the object and the distance

the blank
but never said anything truthful about the creating
the making
the nearness to--
and Florida beyond-- warm green

he never mentioned
it was easier to be negative about it
but no he was making a reality and
one would say believe-- and it took all direction
he just kept going he'd see









that warm beach-- palms flowing again
but for now it was closed
yes a big sign CLOSED
down in the swamps ad rump, da rump
he remembered the purple stain

where it seemed to come from
a pilgrimage he first saw a purple--"poem"
he forgot it was a palm-- a chapel
he had to go far
realize this-- so dear

it was always there
from the beginning
as most was as he had eyes to see
it was there on his way to Mexico
the woman from down in old---- Mexico

Christophe, Philip it all blurred into
the universe
she was
had no need of aid
from them

he was the new man and his indian diamonded blanket
he would continue reading
the imagination as value
seeking the essential
Sincerity and Authenticity











he'd order it as he read
and it was apparent now
look
what he loved
the mother even-- forgotten

bleeding through
a face
for her
he would see her in Marylyn Monroe--at the Modern
strange profaned sacred image in my church

Madonna
he realized
he had driven all the paintings to the desert left them there
tried to tend to them now but was alone there
others knew but made no motion

abandoned died
the cranes
reminded him of hearing
"The Clouds the Clouds, paint the clouds"
but even so he'd forgotten how

he saw the work begin to dance
they didn't need ,
as they were
But he couldn't see that for himself
they sometimes danced











or made a few steps, flung an arm
thinking-- yes!
thats it might be--
all this so super-- fluent
painting, but can't do it all the time

but again today seeing when I, he is painting
that's it
thats all
he was Painting there
a new name for the poem

He's Painting and that's, that!
He's back its so good to be home
back to the studio
well that was before, its another orbit
He had this idea of a Last Judgement a revelation

where all was told
all black
and a few symbolic looking drawn things
like the beginning in the end
a doubling of the world

He'd filled it uP part 3

3rd part... he'd filled it up

It was about putting
it all together
again and for all
it was the quest itself
he thought, everything leant up

against the wall
and the flags were waving
Fate, Freedom, and Power--
those idealisms all waning in the sunset
He had by now some philosophical

idea that seemed reality
a progression was involved
It was a making of a he or self
he was resolving an older order
the "new" ideas were not what he needed

though they kept spinning round
presenting themselves
in negative and positive interplay
he'd seen it now long ago, the


reconciling of the opposites
it made sense of it all
this idea attached to a shape
to a surface
he gestured with his arms










it was all a narrowing down
we were all running fast not looking
down to see, but there was no net, no
nothing beneath
we were only human

the sad fact
we hid as well as we could, that
we died, that--
though it all had died long ago
in the winter mind, floating

through, he felt he knew a thing or two
that trancended or lifted him up
enough to keep on
a comic cycle into
sublime and falling

we used to just yell up--
then that wasnt so cool any more
on the now busy street
Roy got a bell but it never worked
I was saying to him I wanted to try the imagination

to draw just from there, his head
he made it up--
we used to say, the clap of hands
was like the surface, truth, there!
Why had that meant so much?










the outline, a shape, a stripe
"I see what you are trying to do," Alex would say
a kind of abstraction repeated, and repeated
the blank in our eye
we denied

a blind man seeing for the first
would mean something--
seeing black
an irony
we struggled beyond

a can of white and a can of black
was all he had
a new beginning, again?
new modern--
the new, seeming glut

of post-
he dove in , was soaking wet,
with his shield
on his arm he emerged
he was still searching

for this abstraction, he decerned some
mideval abstraction-- carnival color
waving, dance
from a deep space to a thing itself
"and would find myself more strange in it"









and clear
seeing in a new way
with no cliche
but archetype, I guess a cliche itself
they were all having dinner by now

business was being discussed
we were still at the bar
and soon gathered over at
Bill Wilson's.
Agnes Martin died yesterday

I came back my own hero.
he said, "back from war", would visit the Modern
Chapel, he stepped aside-- to let them all pass
mom died and the dream
and what does that mean

being saved-- I'd never have put that on you?
Yeah, yeah, and then go have a few beers in the parking lot.
she said, "I'd be a very unhappy boy asking all those questions."
though I've asked all the questions

they were in touch with the earth, at least
had no questions, just work
I read alot, I said
there seems no sin in this poetry







he was in the dark dreaming his name
the poem was like strata of earth
the guilt of living
too well
too much, another layer

1st and now 3rd part put down
like refuse and bones
layering
a drone over and over Mantra
repeating forms

of life and fragmenting to release
a new life from dream of winter
shimmer, shake
there was a hero that cried that
he was dead, that his adventure had failed him

and comedian genius
cartoon character
and hieroglyph
Oh, glad to be back out here
in the SUn

snowing, no clouds
stars bright
enjoying a quesidilla and jalapeno
over kitchen sink
constellations revoving round










out the window
thinking about the size of the painting
that last judgement
thing, he had on his mind
the final reality

nearing, he hadn't been up to the
prayer flags in a while
he watched the health
of the tree at the center
he stood up there reading his poem

the snaking river below
the cycles would lift him above
he was thinking on beauty
he was thinking on death
it was his mother

he thought about.
he was wobbling down
the lane on his bike.
Another painting ahead--

It was gobbling him up.