Thursday morning, April 17, 2014 at 10:25 a.m.; put on timeline at 10:45 a.m. What am I thinking about this morning? Poetry, literature, painting, the arts, and their relation to life, the writer, the artist. Too many writers, and critics, would and do divorce writers from their work, as if the writer is one person, the work another thing, something else. This is a false distinction, a distinction without a difference. Writers live their work consciously and/or unconsciously whether theyre ready to admit it or not, arent they John? And it is so obvious with painters . . . Picasso, Paul Gaugin, et al. their lives imbued, saturated, steeped in the work. As it should be. And so saying, here are FIVE poems for today, one new one just composed MY SIXTH SENSE: THE WARMTH, and four others, newly revised, that you have seen recently, a few days ago: 2. AS THE LIE GOES, SO GOES THE ACTOR—ACROSS AMERICA—TRADER JOE’S; 3. ONE ROBIN, TWO, NORTH BY NORTHWEST; 4. THE SUNLIGHT IN MY MIRROR THIS MORNING; and 5. WOMEN LYING, DROWNING, WHAT WE REMEMBER, WOMAN IRONING” BY PICASSO, WOMEN AS ARTISTS Read, enjoy, enjoy, read carefully poem 5, the last poem, the newly revised version of WOMEN LYING, DROWNING, WHAT WE REMEMBER, WOMAN IRONING” BY PICASSO, WOMEN AS ARTISTS Best, Dennis MY SIXTH SENSE: THE WARMTH first drafted in poetry notebook #2 on Wednesday morning, April 16, 2014 at 11:25 a.m.; revised later in the day at a café/restaurant near Whole Foods Supermarket in Cary, North Carolina at 4:30 p.m. “Now, here, the warmth I have forgotten becomes part of the major reality . . . “ --Wallace Stevens, from “First Warmth” “His place, as he sat and as he thought, was not in anything that he constructed, so frail, so barely lit, so shadowed over and naught . . .” --Wallace Stevens, from “A Quiet Normal Life” “Something you said—I found it written down— and your picture yesterday brought back old times. We are here in another country now . . . And we hardly ever really feel at home As though we might be happier somewhere else.” --William Bronk, “A Postcard to Send to Sumer” “When its black take a little time to hold yourself take a little time to feel around before its gone. you won’t let go but you still keep falling down remember how you save me now . . . forever holding on . . .” --James Morrison, “I Won’t Let You Go”, You Tube video, more than 45,000,000 views “It’s the last chance to feel again . . . When I’m speaking it’s the voice of someone else . . . I can’t tell you somethin that ain’t real . . . It’s like chasin the very last train when we both know its too late . . . You can’t play on broken strings . . . It’s the last chance to feel again. . .” --James Morrison, “Broken Strings”, with Nelly Furtado, You Tube video, more than 57,000,000 views You are my sixth sense, ready and available, on call as it were. You spoke to me early this morning in a language without, beyond words, beyond the normal meanings, are inside my consciousness, and I listen to you intently, your message felt, communicated, your warmth realized, a part of me, this experience akin to what and how Stevens felt late, belatedly, and wrote about. Wherein do you dwell? In me, you live therein, and perhaps midway, somewhere in between—an absent presence— as music plays and words are sung, but its those instrumentals that tell the tale. My place, my home is right here, whenever and wherever I can find, make it. I want days like today that are clear, without memories, days like today— sunny, cold and clear—not thinking about anyone else as they are, or “as they were fifty years ago . . . young and living in a live air.” My mind is not a part of that today to partially paraphrase Stevens. The day “flows over us without meanings” as we shop for groceries, our basic sustenance, “in this shallow spectacle, this invisible activity” that happens right here in Cary, North Carolina. AS THE LIE GOES, SO GOES THE ACTOR—ACROSS AMERICA—TRADER JOE’S drafted in poetry notebook #2 later Saturday morning, April 12, 2014 at 9:20 a.m.; revised Thursday morning, April 17, 2014 at 1:10 a.m. “On more lie could be the worst .” --Three Doors Down, “Let Me Go”, You Tube video With the lie goes the actor as I found out again yesterday afternoon at Trader Joe’s Supermarket in Cary—with the lie goes the actor. I told Susan what the store manager had done to me this week Wednesday— how she had blocked my sight, my ability to pick up my shopping bags immediately after my purchase, how she had pulled out a sliding wooden panel from the back end of a checkout counter just above my shopping bags when I wasn’t looking, blocked my ability to pick them up, at the same time blocking the aisle so I could not exit the store. She did this with her body. But does the truth matter? Hell no! Only what the police tell the store employees, the store manager to do in public-private surveillance operations. That’s all that matters at Trader Joe’s, and here, across America—“Do as we, the police, tell you!”— in all 50 states as the lie goes, so goes the actor. ONE ROBIN, TWO, NORTH BY NORTHWEST drafted in poetry notebook #2 later Sunday morning, April 6, 2014; revised Saturday morning April 12 at 8:50 a.m. and again at 2:12 p.m.; revised again Sunday morning, April 13, 2014 at 10:18 a.m.; revised again on Thursday morning, April 17, 2014 at 1:20 a.m. “What should we ‘do’ with the mind in meditation? Nothing at all. Just leave it, simply, as it is.” --Rigpa Glimpse of the Day, “Remember the View” One robin, two, north by northwest—I thought robins northern birds, birds that lived in upstate New York, but here one is lighting again on the concrete of our driveway, then another, as I walk passed, hopping, looking, inspecting, looking at me, and I wonder, “Do robins live in pairs like cardinals?” “No,” I decide, “Not in my experience, but seeing is believing, and I say to myself “You know what? You’re short-sighted.” It’s possible in certain cases. Yes, in certain cases. Anything can: of, on, and over the horizon as happened this morning, this morning’s sunlight in my mirror. Yes, that sun remembered. A new beginning? Wait and see. Let’s wait, meditate,, look and see, and then decide. I still have time—slow it down. THE SUNLIGHT IN MY MIRROR THIS MORNING drafted in poetry notebook #2 Sunday morning, April 6, 2014 at 7:40 a.m.; revised Saturday morning, April 12, 2014 at 8:02 a.m., and again this afternoon at 1:30 p.m.; revised on Thursday morning, April 17, 2014 at 1:31 a.m. “It’s down to this. I’ve got to make this life make sense. Can anyone . . .?” Away from the sun . . . I’m over there . . . Can anyone see me down here?” --Three Doors Down, “Away From the Sun”, view the You Tube video “I’m not a perfect person There’s many things I wish I didn’t do . . . But I continue learning I never meant to do those things to you—“ --Hoobastank, “The Reason” view the You Tube video “The sun came up . . . The stars above held you back once again . . . Half way here, half way here . . . I found out beautiful things about you . . .” --Natalie Imbruglia, “When You’re Sleeping” I awake this morning to bright yellow light, the sun shining through the window blinds, the trees, tree branches, their darker outlines, the green of new spring leaves burgeoning with yellow light, the light intermingling with, highlighting every single bud, leaf, twig, branch, everything—everything seen through the yellow light reflecting in this morning’s bedroom mirror opposite me. I have never experienced this kind of second-hand light before, the beauty of yellow light in the mirror, and I am in awe, in wonder for just an instant—then reality, the reality of what is happening comes home to me—I immediately look outside, can hear the singing of birds through the window glass, one bird in particular, perhaps a meadow lark, a bluebird, their songs crisp and clear, repeated beyond our backyard deck, and I think, “Yes, an occasion to write a poem, time to make a poem quick-quick before the light dissolves, before the sun moves on today, moves up and along, into that sheltering sky. That sheltering sky—that’s the kind of protection all of us need, but very few can get. WOMEN LYING, DROWNING, WHAT WE REMEMBER, ‘WOMAN IRONING” BY PICASSO, WOMEN AS ARTISTS begun Wednesday morning, April 9, 2014 at 8:25 a.m.; revised Friday morning, April 11, 2014 at 9 a.m., and again at 10:50 a.m.; revised Saturday afternoon, April 12, 2014 at 12:23 p.m.; revised Thursday morning, April 17, 2014 at 12:20 a.m. “I don’t care! I’d rather sink—than call Brad for help.” --thought bubble of crying, drowning woman thinking in Roy Lichtenstein’s DROWNING GIRL (1963), Museum of Modern Art, New York City (“Drowning Girl, also known as Secret Hearts . . .with oil and synthetic polymer paint on canvas . . . Utilizing the conventions of comic book art . . .”) “For years conservators and art historians have known that hidden beneath the surface of “Woman Ironing”, long considered an example of his Blue Period, is the upside-down ghost of another painting—a three-quarter-length portrait of a man with a mustache that was first seen in images taken with an infrared camera in 1989. But the big question—who the man was, and even whether it was Picasso who painted him—have remained unanswered.” --Carol Vogel, “Under One Picasso, Another”, New York Times, Art & Design Section, October 24, 2012 “This is to say that woman is poetry. And she plays this same role with Gerard de Nerval; but in his Sylvia and Aurelia she has the quality of a memory or of a phantom, because the dream, more true than the real, does not coincide exactly with it . . . She is poetry in essence, directly—that is to say, for man; we are not told whether she is poetry for herself also.” --Simone de Beauvoir, “Breton or Poetry” “On more lie could be the worst . . . In this world there’s real and make believe And this seems real to me . . .” --Three Doors Down, “Let Me Go”, You Tube video Later, I realized she was lying— I thought about who she is, how I know her, how she had talked to me, what she had said, and then knew instantly she had lied to protect herself, a secret, her feelings, to gain a certain advantage. Her gratitude—that irony. And the thing is, she is not prone to lie, not in my time with her, and certainly not like someone I know, who would lie even about the sun rising in the morning over the horizon, if she had to, if need be— “No, it didn’t? I thought it did, but I guess you’re right . . . you’re right, have to be right to justify . . .” the lie to herself for whatever reason. At this point, so far behind and ahead, I’m tired of thinking about her, about what she might be thinking about in this regard, she lies so well, has lied to me so often. But that’s in the past, as I said, past tense; back to the present moment, situation, this lie— what, how to handle it. Allow me to think awhile . . . It’s really not that big a deal. I’m okay with it. Spring is burgeoning forth here, as it did then, and I can’t get the drowning girl, that painting, Sylvie too, off my mind—Sam just wasn’t thinking, had inadvertently let go while they were floating on their backs in the river, and almost didn’t recover— it took years for him to open up, to feel things, figure things out. Still, Sylvie, Ophelia drowned. Watch Helena Bonham Carter in Australia, in a small town outside of Melbourne— ‘till other voices wake us—with Guy Pearce, then with Mel Gibson as the melancholy poet prince—things happen late, so suddenly for me as they do in spring skies, in the changing of the tide . . . that poem of Freeport, Bahamas. I don’t know what to think about living, how to try to live in this world. Well, I do, but you can never exactly anticipate your next turn though you try . . . I’ve got a busy morning, afternoon, ahead I can see, and I don’t wish for any more tragedy, not for her, or for me, mine. How many miles away is she? Just about as far away as one can be in continental North America. They say its not best policy to lie continuously unless you have just so much evidence to hide, to cover up as do Raleigh city officials, the police, right here, now, in Raleigh and Cary, North Carolina. And elsewhere. Once we connected and she started giving me things, showing me her sketches, giving me her password to look at her work on Instagram, I gave her one study, copies of some portraits, but it’s the one by Picasso—“Woman Ironing”, painted in 1904—I can’t get away from. Looking at the woman dressed in drab colors, she could have been my Lithuanian grandmother, perhaps any Lithuanian woman, Pole, Czech or Russian mother slaving at home in those eastern Pennsylvania coal mining towns in the 1950’s—Mount Carmel, Shamokin, Shenandoah—that resemble small towns in eastern Europe, the houses so tall, built so close together on high ground. What separates the woman ironing from my grandmother, from her, and her, and her? Nothing, absolutely nothing. END OF POEMS
Posted on: Thu, 17 Apr 2014 14:45:51 +0000
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