#2, He’d filled it uP.

#2 He’d filled it uP.

JacK was saying he 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

but he also thought 

this was all too complex

a kind of abstraction 

repeated, 

and turning

revealing the blank in our eye

11.

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?

a new MoDerN-- modern

the nEw, the NeW, seeming glut

of post-- PosT--

he dove in, was soaking wet,

kicking round 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 himselfself 

more truly strange"

and clear

seeing in a new way

with no cliche

but archetype, 

I guessed a cliche itself

they were all having dinner 

by now 

business being discussed

we were still at the bar

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, though there were no cloudS

starS Bright

Jack was sitting having a quesadilla and jalapeno

over kitchen sink

the ConstellationS were revolving round

out the window

thinking about the size of the painting

that last judgemenT 

thing, he had on his mind

the nearing final reality, he thought

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.

the leaves were ongoing

He said "fuck you, if--" 

A JoKe, well, I’m not sure about breaking it all

the leaves are enough and the

cartoon shape

no man shall see-- 

Odysseus

15.

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 breeze

painting the lives,

through which leaves hopped, skittled 

and over days, hours, a moment

here--

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 a reality

what we expected from our intellectual

refinement, what we made up

17.

that fiction Jack spoke of

ReducE

and Radical-IZE

Akilles was trying to remember 

that, then finding it in the paint,

the jumping out idea

they would never get there

the figures that walked 

on towards that vase

the island behind 

the LeAvEs unfurled

 in their positive and negative 

aspects

trampling through the garbage 

of fragments shored up 

18.

to protect Crispin

from certain ruin

these future moments

the ongoing remnants, The great WinD

GO NoW! 

his compatriot exclaimed-- 

shaking Akilles up 

from his GaRbAge can, and 

stepping out-- 

it was all gone, 

Crispin had changed

a different perspective

this wandering about.

Never really--

He underlined that

in a YelloW markeR

like out of the forest 

into 

the meadow, into the sun

Crispin was a figure 

catching butterflieS--

he never painted,

Achilles, was in the desert

he went on talking 

to no one

of dialectics and Hegel

He’d married the woods 

to the flower 

and superimposed 

the Orange Square, 

repeating a HeaveN

remade 

a simpler, 

kind of ReaL 

seen aLL 

at ONCE!

So he made these bluebird houses

19.

each idea , interpenetrating

the depth and the surface,

what Jack wanted at ONCE

right NOW!

who He, wE were

and what hE, wE made

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-- and

the Sun was CominG uP, 

20.

and would again, 

and the same FigurE arriving

It was a long story, now

lengthening, 

snakinG 

along

it needed an image to accompany

Jack, and 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

because, 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

in the StarS.