Here are a few drafts of poems I've been working on, along with some favorite images...
(Bermudas, for Alice and co.; acrylic and coffee grinds on canvas, 24'x36,' Jan, 2022.)
My Bird (Bachmann Cento)
Whatever devastated
night potion
tower deserted
owl’s calm
whatever time
my bird
fly fog
whirl down
should-mate weapon
feather bedecked
adornment veil
dance singers
the hip-high
leaves leap
like stardust
directly smoke
whatever happens
my accomplice
I ablaze
dark crackle
strike sparks
I ablaze
fire loved
stems wounds
spins earth
heart belief
trust watch-tower
moves calmly
quiet light
splendid fly
whatever happens.
(Cy Twombly, Primavera, from Quattro Stagioni)
Your best friend
is the one, I know, who likes me.
But hope’s persistence borders
obsession, as steady lightly
brushes against the neurotic,
first a tickle, then
a trigger, just like you
tonight.
A half-dimmed
lighthouse on
forgettable provincial shores,
I flash signal lights
randomly into the
vanishing dark, hoping
it might be so,
if not the green
light itself, yes
the green, green light
(exhibition installation model)
(Chagall, from Song of Song series)
the history you make
when talking about the past
it’s important to be measured
to be fair it’s important to be
talking measured about the past
In the past for example we
have been cavalier as Mozart’s
Don Giovanni even if to be fair
we have been it’s important to say
measured like the time between
letters before the days of smartphones
Don Giovanni’s catalog aria of his
it’s important to say conquests [for example]
to be talking about the past say
measured as Mozart cataloguing
letters of the cavalier past Don
Giovanni’s aria in-between times
it’s important to say for example when
talking about the past measured fair
(Still from Dardanus, ópera by J-P Rameau)
Rameau Cento (from Les Palladins liner essay)
astounding repeated
enthusiastic full
of sexy
opera stage
intense physical
moral value
scoundrel intolerably
boring waffling
Rameau retire
Androgynous scandal
tenor creature
success shock
farmer snake
fairy seducer
ratio dispenses
with dog
disguises adversity
the abduction
in Venice
passes transformed
into furies
lower parallels
playing forms
with this
explosive cocktail
fixation incompatible
disguised androgynous
tenor disappeared
mythological reflection
unsaid visible
unequivocally bold
O, Stéphanie,
amour, rester!
(Ruth E. Carter: from Afrofuturism, Taubman Museum of Art, Roanoke, Jan, 2022)
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