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.