Popo and Itza
After Marsden Hartley’s “Popocatepetl, One Morning” (1932)
At my feet she lies, her shroud, my blanket.
If in fair Verona our scene were set,
we would be a play, she my Capulet,
or some other languid pentameter,
but Nahuatl remembers us in land,
great humps of land, immortal as a name.
Our sex and fears have crystallized in soot,
dark, noxious air, hungry, muddy slopes.
Platitudes aren't written in loam and magma.
Itza, my love, is long cold under our quilt,
but I have heat enough for both. Violet
my slopes, and blue-white, I froth eternally.
---
Portrait of the Artist
If my picture should ever hang in a gallery, know
it's not me. Mount a disclaimer to the side, just
to the right, perhaps include a list of other people
of whom it's not: Einstein, Sophia Loren, Bobby Kennedy,
Grant Wood, Whistler's mother, a swan-necked
model enjoyed by the artist himself.
Say my accoutrement may not be representative of my time.
Let them know my smile, or frown, wasn’t for the picture.
Say there was a wise-cracking girl they can’t see.
Ask if it's not a picture of themselves.
Call them liars when they disagree.
Direct them to look at the light and shadow.
Note the blending of pigments.
Tell them again: it's not me.
Make sure they know that oils, clay, chemical burns,
words, or other mummified corpses can’t be trusted
to steal souls. Reiterate:
all art is abstraction.
I like them. Who was it that says what things aren't? Can you not tell me who that is?
aitght
Posted by
Daniel |
12/20/2005 09:29:00 PM
Now I remember, It was that poet. Silly Scott, I wish you would make it more obvious who wrote those poems.
Posted by
Daniel |
12/20/2005 10:44:00 PM
Well, Daniel, subject matter of this sort always turns my mind to Billy Collins (introduced to me by Amy Tanner). Perhaps it’s his “Forgetfulness,” “Dear Reader,” or his “Nostalgia.” Perhaps it’s just the way he sometimes uses negative constructions so well (see “The Lanyard” or “Consolation”). Perhaps that was what you meant Daniel.
As for who wrote these particular poems, that would be me.
I am curious whence you derive your ever more ambiguous and tangential commenting style. I have a hard time figuring them out sometimes. My guess is that you intend to be funny.
Posted by
Scott |
12/20/2005 11:44:00 PM
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