I have had this sitting around. I thought it was to continue but I think the continuation by now will be a new poem. It seems now my poem goes on saying the same thing, just saying it better.
He’d filled it uP
Part 1
by now, his life
The spiral bound books
among the dead spiders and
kerosene dirt, smudged the
moments time left, fading
he'd kept on spinning--
not really finished
reaching for some resolution
the final one?
Jack thought he would figure
it all out someday
though having lost
that belief, some truth
of moments
to suffice,
no unchanging ideal--
it is in the revolving
cycles to new places
taken then swerve, and
seasoned mythos
each moment died, 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 a 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 lives, 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 business at airports
we'd driven far
but it was more a length
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 evolved to be
there was a code or grid of mind
he saw it in the rocks above
the imaginings, before ten commandments
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 of
a still moment, in 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 now
the way, a going on with and around the sun
the beauty of it all
he traced it and it became right
for a time then, it just had to change
a wriggling like the snake out of the egg
there was a deeper deep
and opposite feeling in death
his mother
he was writing after
aesthetic-ly 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, to go there
free it seems--
late Picasso was amazing
to find once again
an older self than
that newer devil
that, Miltonic DaimOn a more interesting
figure picturing sex with an industrial
nightmare
that politic truly, 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-right, 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 Street,
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 or
crisis
things jammed
together like leaves and sunset
ColosaLL sun and fragment
memory and Villa
into that ONE he still craved
at least here in the painting
although it represented what we longed
for in reality the ONE, sees
that made the cymbal clang, trumpet blare
As far away as Tibet
Professor Thurman was excited by
( but 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
What to make with this Surprised FlavouR.
it was a life by now
he could be dead, at this age
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 an image into words
John Ashbery had said to me,
"oh the painting and poetry thing--"
Jack said everything seemed so very
convoluted and difficult
he wondered what I meant?
so did I
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 on the heap
the rending apart, the hope
the coming down
of thought
into AmbivalenT, comic sublime.
a minor key
to coincide
with certain abstract
shapes
some striped, others plain.
Part 2
"Y’r not talkin' to anyone, kid"
he couldn't believe all this was for sale
chair thrown into the corner
he felt ok, with the cowboy hat
AgaiN, coming from the east
it would suffice
the black line completed it all
he was home
but still reaching for the Top Shelf
the bottle slipping
falling, tumbling
slow motion
the painting in a dream
Hero in a smudge, the “carving not a kiss”
everything BrOkEn
on the heaP
the serpents lair
here is where
he lives Here
nowhere and everywhere at once
a word out of the sea
whispered me
not to complete the thought but
to lead out into
the stars tracing a form
serpent flashing
a part for the whole
the name of one thing for something else
a turning
an emphasis
strangely, different
better than
"I sing a Heros head... "
we've been through the deconstructions
the universe of death
revolving around, down here
undid the summer
in flames
imagining the winter
constellations flying by
star spangled mind
of Achilles Universe
of winter circle
to deeper edge
she was the Universe
passing
the leaves
in sunset
he went west in ‘93
the joshua trees waving
through comic sublime
he tried
to put it all together
and was distracted by fashion
model of this world
he looked beyond to the sea
to live alone thankless
out there
he wasn’t dead yet, enough
sun revolving in that time-lapsed splendor
going down
silhouette and black
fades to scribble
rushing around to see it up--
I build from my foot
I order my head
repeating to symbol
I had this last judgement idea
revelations
unveiling a final truth
as man is the final resolution
of himself at least
but now everything was
just leant up against the wall.
waiting.
Part3
It was about putting
it all together again and
for all
it was the quest itself, arriving
he thought, everything leant up
against the wall
the flags waving
fate, freedom, and power
those idealisms waning in the sunset
Jack had by now some philosophical
idea that seemed reality
a procession was involved
It was a making, progress
of a he or self
Crispin was resolving an older order
new ideas were not what he needed
though they kept spinning ‘round
presenting themselves
in negative and positive interplay
Akilles had seen it long ago, the
reconciling of opposites
it made sense of it, all
this idea attached to a shape
to a surface, Shield
he gestured with his arms
it was all a narrowing down
we were all running fast not looking
down to see there was no net, no
nothing beneath
we were only human
a sad fact
we hid as well as we could, that
we died--
though it all had died long ago
in the winter mind, floating
through, he felt he knew a thing or two
that transcended or lifted him up
enough to keep on
a comic cycle into
sublime and falling
we used to just yell up--
then that wasn’t so cool any more
on the now busy street
Roy got a bell but it never worked
I was saying I wanted to try
it all from 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 discerned some
medieval abstraction-- CarniVal coloR
Waving, dancE
from a deep space, to a thing itself
"and would find myself more truly strange"
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 came back from the 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 a lot, I said
there seems no sin in this poetry
just guilt of living
too well
too much
he was in the dark
dreaming his name
the poem was like strata of earth
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
sitting having a quesadilla and jalapeno
over kitchen sink
ConstellationS revolving 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 SSnaking 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 WobBbling down
the lane on his bike.
Another painting ahead--
It was GobBlinG him up.
Part 4
he would say he cared most
about the abstraction
the shapes and colors
that line which drew
the black and white lagoon
the depth is where he started
in mystery
which now the surface
that two colors make
in the beginning is a hint of the end
meeting, this reality, a religion
of sorts or poetry of
reality, he said instead of
this other God idea they all worship
Unless you meant what
was older, He had an idea
for that older unnamable
which was reality itself
all together, Jack here, a part
of that whole thing
the trumpet blare, like air raid horn,
now, here, the sun height
Orange square
depth in the PurplE square
all over form of stars
out there, in here
he’d said or painted it before
so many times, though
the leaves were ongoing
Chris said "fuck you if--"
well, I’m not sure about breaking it all
the leaves are enough-- and the
cartoon shape
no man shall see--
Odysseus
was puzzling it all together
that fast surface
he leapt out the window
cold stone sober
what he saw--
sufficed
a spot of time, here
repeated through a life
through a broken wind
painting the lives,
through which leaves hopped, skittled
and over days, hours, a moment
here--the brush of a fore head
warmed in sun, blond
that obscure glance
just looking for the outlook
which would be right
this poem that took the place
of a mountain
each day passed--
in adventure of some kind
sacred moments, which slowed
were looked for and recognized
a patch of blue
giving way
up there on the mountain
he saw the full moon rise
I mean didn’t they felt badly
knowing the moment had passed
they were teaching now
some relation
that the nature we had lost--
never to dance
with the daffodil
dancing
the wind
something I saw once.
everything dies everywhere
and is born of these moments--
this profundity of an inner
and outer reality which
blazed on the edge between
he wasn’t sure what that meant
he liked the reality seeming between.
what he meant by juxtaposition,
those paintings were finished
and now feeling at some height
he resumed, the stacking
more --? the two Henry’s asked
how much further?
say it more simply, Jack said
the different view now
The New, New, he was seeing through
the words now and there
wasn’t much more to say
it was the goings over
he was coming home
here was a garden,
he could manage
he held the idea
in his teeth
it was the flower
he saw in Zurbaran
there was a moment when
all metaphors became one
in the sun
he was thinking of the old certainty
even if not reality
what we expected from culture
what we made up, that fiction
he spoke of, saying it worked
over and over
it was artificial
any how
that heavy feeling had grown thin
and gave way to the light and air
that seemed
Well, felt good, after the weight
one friend doesn’t
seem to want to know
another made it up
satisfied with that.
I didn’t like the seeming bad faith
life was in its moments
too good to be true
At this point I was always, too
sincere maybe just too lucky
I was facing
THE new aUsteriTy plan
to ReducE
and Radical-IZE
I was trying to remember that
then find it in the paint
like the jumping out idea
they never got there
the figures they walked
on towards that vase
the island behind
the LeAvEs unfurled
in their positive and negative
aspects
tramping through the garbage
of fragments shored up to protect me
from an uncertain
ruin
of future moments
ongoing remnants, The great WinD
GO NoW! his friend exclaimed
shook him up from his GaRbAge can, and
it was gone, all changed
a different perspective
he was doubting the poem
not as good as the drawings
which came in similar profusion.
though there was little illusion in either
what it was pretty much
was what was there
would he want to hear it again
remember the shape
or idea
adventure of mind
he splayed IT-- out to amuse
wanting to feel it all meant something--
this wandering about.
Never really--
He underlined that
in a YelloW markeR
like out of the forest into
the meadow in the sun
it was a figure catching butterflieS--
never made, Achilles, was in the desert
he went on talking
of dialectics and Hegel
he’d married the woods to the flower
and superimposed a Orange Square
repeating Heaven
he remade it simpler
to see it aLL at ONCE
so he made these bluebird houses
it all had to do with each idea
interpenetrating
the depth and the surface
is what Jack wanted at ONCE
right NOW!
who he, we was
and what hE, wE made
he was starting to see the difficulty
in equating the experience
and continuing
to hang onto the idea
of a separate ART
there was an abstraction and then, the image
kept jumping the gun
and who cared except his inborn conscience
Crispin knew it from the beginning
the flat design made an icon
of the idea's space beneath
Did he say that?
This is finding it in the paint
as they say. They were betting
on the market and he lost interest
his wealth was buried
would they find iT, that
He missed Christophe
and that, Grand Idea of Art!
and the extravagance
that seemed plausible
for we were on the cusp
of the new time
there was still an ideal
there, in the Newman
in the Indian’s blanket
It felt like America had a belief
at least an idea of
the sun was coming up
again, and the figure arriving
It was a long story, now
lengthening, snakinG along
it needed an image to accompany
Jack, the two Henry’s-- he had better keep busy
make that painting which would
remind him--
why he couldn't remembeR
to keep-- Busy, busY
Achilles was out there, still
far in the distance
in the fence post ticking depth,
He was painting the sunset.
He was late and it was getting
cold, and
soon it would be dark, and
He’D be painting
The Stars, waving with his arms--
twirling ‘round
the StarS.
