After the painting, Card Players by Chris Gollon which in turn was after Paul Cezanne’s painting of the same name.
Given the hand; is both first and last
The flat earth table unrelenting
Silently passes – along.
Their daily sustenance:
Tobacco, wine, & omnipotence
That will fade.
Even against that Royal Flush
this conjunction will subdivide
and separate back to
and with ash of the tobacco
they have smoked today.
A queen to the jack and “let there be light” – ashes to ashes to idle acts of creation? – mh clay
Those dark corners that the light never sees
Find solace in their own dankness.
Most nuances, as in faces, are…
Entirely unsymmetrical.
(Although we love to think that they are).
That fractional corner of a mirror,
Reflecting some old moon
Through half-drunk winking wine glasses
And barely smoking cigarettes
In barely full ashtrays
Smouldering away against the wind
Against life, against the current.
When devolved into delirium, we seek solace in symmetry. – mh clay
Invariably they were linked
Joined as par-for-the-course
woven to cover,
keep out cold:
…and then, the gaps grew –
more and more apparent –
these days that once
held together
now let too much through
What’s left?
What remains?
Not enough
Never enough.
A new coat, or warmer climes? How much do you like that coat? – mh clay
After Torquato Tasso
She was aware!
And so, those impossibilities metaphysical or otherwise:
Butterflies, and moths avoided those weighty deeds and rings of iron:
Invisible to the original draft or sketch –
Yet could somehow exist alongside
The honest nature of the muse – indefinable
Where the darkness bred
Bluebells out of the rock face
Here is where purity has its harshest test
Leaving a path for those to come
As for skating on thin ice
Flaws will find flaws –
His epic mind covers a mass of cracks
“as for the ‘understanding’ who knew & why cells that
Grew you.’ Made you just to torture you for a congruence of another world.
editors note: All hail, the Holy City. Not made for us, but we for it; not here, but on the other side. – mh clay
You’d better give me something
So I don’t die
Novocaine for the soul
Before I sputter out
– ‘Novocaine for the Soul’, Eels
There they stand, just angels with dirty faces
The corporate wind to cleanse – somehow does not
Pass by their ultimately innocent faces, Before I…
Misconceive or misconstrue what it means to be you
Give me, give me something, just thread
Before I splutter out… Before I splutter out.
Stuck in queues and queues of queues
There is some misty essence of a quintessence
Still blinded by an ignorant sun
I go on before I splutter out – I need something
As The song reminds of what is known
So here I sit as asinine as the rest
Something must come – the lure is set
Give me something – before I die
Something, before I splutter out, before I…
Some are flint; others, tinder. Together, fire. – mh clay
From Beale Street to the Trump Tower
The free-falling age has yet to find its niche
Where the self-policing police
Find freedom to be just what they want to be
The rules are there ‘for the others’
And not to bother us with
From North Korea to the Sears
This Twitter age has moulded our fears
To where language lies
like a broken animal whimpering limping
Where only those in the law or in the know
Understand the pattern understand the flow
As they familiarize themselves with their place
And the lie of the streets
Where the once free-falling jazz age
Collides with this new.
This new “music” is hard to follow; melodies malevolent, bad beats, best to run from, not dance to. – mh clay
Just…
(after: the cooking of eggs)
– After Velazquez, 1599-1660
She acts to create
Just something to eat
So every day the human eye
Cannot acknowledge –
The eggs; as an assistant
Seek the immediate reaction
Her sage eyes know just when.
Then, see his youthful distracted
eyes – on some young woman –
his game? Or some masculine
game to win…
distracted in sin – to be committed
still seeing this alchemy
the magic of this egg
becoming something else
this Assumption will pass
by and large, unnoticed.
For her, the eggs; for him, the code. One will crack, the other will crumble. (This bit o’ ekphrasis inspired by this picture here.) – mh clay
The people: as knights, bishops and queens.
Pawns…Pawns…Pawns. treading the stone
Stone conquers life –
Blood, bone, and flesh.
Are eroded upon this spinning wheel
Desolation is the fear of flesh
Pawns dream (that’s if the Fates allow)
Lives are galleries within galleries
Each October thrives, anew.
They are eroded still, upon this spinning wheel
The oils, now hard, lost the image
Of ages long past, the long past remains
To be uncovered once more
For each of us, it’s a new discovery: We’re stuck in repeat. – mh clay
After Marianne Moore
There, by the de-barked tree
There was once this figure
An embolismic statue.
This totem
Lessons in the day gone by
The one craved ”you must”
A goblin in the sky
A portent
Beauty is never a reality
It’s the frailly human reflection
The broken images
The broken idol
Here are lessons for men
Here! Long dead long lost
Even to memory – gone, here
In this totem
Tokens of remembrance; creators, long forgotten. – mh clay
One slight; one night; once among the neon
and the bar room noise
The chaos
Seemed to be alien vaguely relative, somehow familiar.
The action something invisible something unreal
Although important for need of mankind
The need for when all else has drained
Down away away away…
All their eyes were distracted by
The neon, billboards, and garbage blowing about
Now forgotten
Yesterday’s wants now gone – bellies empty
Unrequired – yet to cut out as a cataract
To forget the image.
The impossible trick; to unsee a thing. – mh clay
