Synthesis

This one needs a title and not a sequence-tag. But I hate titles; I never want to sum my work into a neat phrase, nor create a further juxtaposition with something outside, appended later onto the text. So um...

Unsequenced Poem

Insider's joke-

putting cigarettes out in Guernica

cubist oil crinkling

like cellophane in the secret pocket.

*

I wear spectacles like cameras

X-Ray vision, or rather

quanta flitting about.

Uncovered truth:

There is no canvas under the paint.

*

I sign my name

in big, ignorant block:

Picasso.

While others searched, amongst the bodies,

I was taking notes.

I had never seen such ravens.

New work written in the hospital

Unsequenced poem

clear-headed, clear eyes;

you fly through mazy disentanglements

the saliva spans, like bars,

the place of the jaws

pulling apart.

the baleen of the uterus open:

pitcher/bell/category

of all enclosures; mark

of disparate Cains: you, small wings,

fly in.

crack the acorn, dear,

he bleeds honey;

in a mat of reeds and slivers

he sings himself to sleep.

when shall he pass through?

horn curl, like hair, framing:

the ridge of her clavicle,

the wings of her breasts,

the teeth of her ribs

and her tongue-heart.

in the center, centrality:

periphery gnashing his teeth,

castigating absence.

cut your many holes

through the many rings of the wall!

here is the place to end.

I rather like this one, it's got a nice balanced sequence and some lilting prosody; and the metaphor is quite decent even though it's necessarily abstract. The five sections are complementary, not quite to be viewed as separate poems; however, they are all split viewpoints of the same view, building not a progression or resolution as is normal, but rather adding to the picture different aspects and shadings. It attempts to make the solid silhouette, the block, into a fully dimensional entity, occupying space.

What is describes is somewhat beyond me to convey in prose without gross understatement. Besides, this is the age of the reader; what is intended by you is infinitely more subtle and meaningful than my intention in the composition.

Poetry of the Art

This poem is what netted me that painting you see to your right; the girl in the mirror with her variously posed reflections. I wrote it about the poem; the painter (who has since become a good friend of mine) liked it, and gave me the painting. He has since painted me, as well, for God knows whatever reason.

Book 5: XXVIII
(For John Stafford, on his painting “Dressing Room”)

The crossroads, Janus
form in the plane of your smile;
He scatters

who does not gather there.
The strawmen meet inside you
trading the slow stares of those

who, long abed, have arisen,
cut the cobwebs from their faces
and departed,

walking, infirm,
on the cold long road to the North.
The sun hangs her garlands,

blue veins of pearl,
recognizing, in the first glimpses of day,
her little ones beginning.

The confusion of the other!
Bewildered, unsettled, insane;
seeing oneself plain

with no glass to intervene.
No shadow to cast, no ribbon
to untie: brilliant and lucid

the sway of the painted faces
as they brush aside the light,
the pieces of the jigsaw

that stubbornly refuse
to be lost. They meet, in the crush
of hay and rags,

leaves in the tempest, bones in the sea,
reunited; touching arms, faces, clothes:
they let the canvas fall from their bodies

standing, nude bundles of lines:
no longer seen or seeing; journeying
away, away, away.