Love and Poetry and Love

Frank O'Hara passed away today in 1966.

"I am mainly preoccupied with the world as I experience it, and at times when I would rather be dead the thought that I could never write another poem has so far stopped me. I think this is an ignoble attitude. I would rather die for love, but I haven't."




In love with You at Age 6



I think the lines should come out through the back (and open up) so there's a visual balance. But for now, this is fine.

Le Petit Prince

The little prince was overheard saying to the boy in the bed next to him "What makes the desert beautiful, is that somewhere it hides a well."



The Little Prince after the surgery

6" x 8"












Grown-ups never understand anything by themselves, and it is tiresome for children to have to explain things to them always and forever...

이별은 美의 創造

I was looking for Korean poetry on-line and stumbled upon a beautiful poem-


Separation is Beauty's Creation

Separation is beauty's creation.
Separation's beauty is in the intangible yellow-gold of
morning and the textureless black silk of evening
and eternal life's deathlessness and even in the
unwithering sky's blue blossoms lacking.
You. If it were not for separation, I would be
unable to die in tears and live again in laughter.
Oh, oh! Separation.
Beauty is separation's creation.


Manhae Han Yong (1879~1944)


이별은 美의 創造

이별은 美의 創造입니다.
이별의 美는 아침의 바탕 없는 황금과 밤의 올 없는 검은
비단과 죽음 없는 永遠의 生命과 시들지 않는 하늘의 푸른 꽃에도
없습니다.
님이여, 이별이 아니면 나는 눈물에서 죽었다가 웃음에서 다시
살아날 수가 없습니다. 오오, 이별이여.
美는 이별의 創造입니다.


만해 한룡운 (1879~1944)




Also in the process stumbled upon a nice blog featuring Korean poems both in English translation and in original Korean. Check it out here.

Separation is beauty's creation/Beauty is separation's creation. This leaves me speechless...

White Ropes II

Something brought me back to the white ropes earlier tonight.

Then I found out I just missed your birthday.



9" x 12"*


9" x 12"


6" x 8"


*Please excuse the poor scanning (top right) on the bigger drawings. Thank you.

It seems that you have inspired me another night

I will go brush my teeth now,
it's bed time.
The blade cut in too deeply
and dug into the bed.
There is a slit in the sheet
in which my toe gets caught,
every now and then.

Two weeks notice (2001-2009)

Once I fell asleep sitting against the wall
of the Borders on State Street.
I woke up to suits walking around me.
My hair was orange.

It took me three years to realize
I could never be blonde.
And two more to realize
I look good in black.

All the fire alarms destroyed,
the lamps pulled from the roots,
and the old lady's stolen shoes?
We were just belligerent.
Thought the world of pretty boys
with cigarettes and stained teeth.
We didn't even know what beauty was.

How the fuck
did we come out of that one alive?
The truth is, we barely did.

Statistically speaking
I rejected more than I accepted,
when you account for the ratio of
hours into days into months into the year,
etc.

I was young.
And just like that, you get it now.

The winter I blew a lot of money,
I couldn't get myself to lose control really.
But the rent was at least free.

To anyone getting seriously involved-
dissolved, is how I see it, cause
we all saw them less and less.

Rings and bookmarked jewelers on-line.
I haven't bothered taking them down.
I wonder what the big deal is
in getting into it or out of it.

I don't even have the guts to kiss you.
Where do I get off fancying you a good fuck?
It's those shoes you wear,
I'd like you to keep them on.

When I hear footsteps above me
I like to think it's the hot neighbor
coming and going.

Just so you know
I'm jumping years and skipping faces.

Two weeks notice.
I think I'll make some coffee now.

aunque mis labios no hablen te quiero devorar.

I don't remember anything that happens anymore
someone I used to give a fuck about
I've already forgotten
I remember I used to love her but it's nothing
compared to your back
up against the door
pressed against where your skin
meets the fabric of my shirt


siempre me quedará...

sticky

I'm going to write little notes, one liners on post-its and collect them in a shoebox.

Because...

Well...

why not?

And the dust the makes a Rubens out of you makes me a serpent

I have to admit that I've not been as productive, I work on drawings almost daily, but at times it's feeling forced. It's an expected cycle. Mentally and emotionally it's bound to happen regardless of how disciplined you are.

So I've recently turned to books. I find that it's so important to be proactive and stay stimulated always. If you're not feeling (visual) art then write. If you can't write, then read. So I've been reading, a bit.

I have to write an entry about finally picking up Nadja (by Breton) finishing it in one sitting and being astonished, but for me to give him and Nadja justice, it must wait for when my mind can form thoughts into paragraphs. Not today.

Frank O'Hara. I'm revisiting his book of collected poems. He's written so much, you won't love all of it (which I don't) but you'll love a lot of it (which I do.)

Here are few that in the past two days have really grabbed me (of course what poem, painting, film "grabs" you have as much to do with your personal emotional, state at the time as it does the quality of the piece...)




DEATH


1
If half of me is skewered
by grey crested birds
in the middle of the vines of my promise
and the very fact that I'm a poet
suffers my eyes
to be filled with vermillion tears,

2
how much greater danger
from occasion and pain is my vitality
yielding, like a tree on fire!-
for every day is another view
of the tentative past
grown secure in its foundry of shimmering
that's not even historical; it's just me.

3
And the other half
of me where I master the root
of my every idiosyncrasy
and fit my ribs like a glove,

4
is that me who accepts betrayal
in the abstract as if it were insight?
and draws its knuckles
across the much-lined eyes
in the most knowing manner of our time?

5
The wind that smiles through the wires
isn't vague enough for an assertion
of a personal nature, it's not for me,

6
I'm not dead. Nothing remains, let alone "to be said,"
except when I fall backwards
I am trying something new and shall succeed, as in the past.




Song


Did you see me walking by the Buick Repairs?
I was thinking of you
having a Coke in the heat it was your face
I saw on the movie magazine, no it was Fabian's
I was thinking of you
and down at the railroad tracks where the station
has mysteriously disappeared
I was thinking of you
as the bus pulled away in the twilight
I was thinking of you
and right now




A Hill


Yes, it's disgusting
when you lose
control, but my
wilderness is love

of a kind, no?
And the purity
of my confusion is
there, it's poetry

in love with you
along with me,
both of us love you
in the same "My!"

Yes, but don't be
scared; poetry
is intangible and
there's no purity

in me
outside of love,
which you can easily wreck
and I can lose.

Clouds pass in
my notorious eyes
but you, through
all, I see.




My Heart


I'm not going to cry all the time
nor shall I laugh all the time,
I don't prefer one "strain" to another.
I'd have the immediacy of a bad movie,
not just a sleeper, but also the big,
overproduced first-run kind. I want to be
at least as alive as the vulgar. And if
some aficionado of my mess says "That's
not like Frank!", all to the good! I
don't wear brown and grey suits all the time,
do I? No. I wear workshirts to the opera,
often. I want my feet to be bare,
I want my face to be shaven, and my heart--
you can't plan on the heart, but
the better part of it, my poetry, is open.