ALL RESPONSES |
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Clairvoyance
In the eye lies possible
past, present, future
and instants between.
I look at you and see me.
The wall must break.
Warm, sticky yolk, soaked with salt,
drips down throats.
A Sex Elemental (Reply to Red)
Arousal worked into oil, slippery and warm.
One touches another with intent.
She is aroused,
her organs covered with fluids,
reaching for impulse.
Tense pleasure building, bulging,
ready to explode in paint,
and fingers drip love like blood.
Choreographed for video,
tongues prod bodies to move, to give,
to break.
The Night
Pain is love
escaping body.
There is always more.
Party on the Roof
Getting to know them better,
distance increases,
until, lying down,
looking up at dry, blue sky,
I feel loneliness that begs for solitude.
Salvador
An apology is offered,
for every brute who called woman his own,
for every nation born on unwilling backs,
chained to prosperity they never saw. |
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Chocolates are delivered
to small apartments
by kneed young men
Next door, a painter looks
at white eggshell & paints
a black bird A man
who looks like John
rants on the corner
trying to explain why
he’s angry In the street
light circles a dog on a leash
Beneath stars all the snow
in the world melts Great
floods roar no matter
how hard the wind blows
Tomorrow a child opens
her hands to sixty-four
delicious colors Any
one of them becoming her
world if she breaths |
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A man in a black suit
paints a man in a black suit.
The man in a black suit
paints a bird in black.
In the picture is a picture
of a painting. Ergo:
the canvas is a mirror,
and the man, painting
and painted, is a bird.
Yes. And the bird
beaks at the canvas,
which means it’s a window.
He wants to come in. Or out.
But how? The painter studies
the egg on the nearby table
since the egg will soon be the bird
he is painting when he’s hatched.
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red is, not god:
the color everyone
believes in, like it says
on dimes or quarters
it’s like comparing two
groups of neurotics,
sitting next to each
other in a small room
or a lifelong mistrust
of italicized words
or like giving permission
to the entire world to pay
attention to what’s not said
out loud, rather whispered,
as an aside to whomever
will listen and sterilize |
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Clairvoyance by Rene Magritte
At birth my middle name was Renee
a feminine variation of Rene
or a positive spin on rainy day
but on a sunny day in June when vultures flew overhead
and every hair on my head was in place
my lawyer called to tell me the divorce was final
my name had returned to its original form. My hair stood on end,
no more walking on egg shells, no more painting
the canvas with movement when there was none.
Ruth, huh? Okay, I can live with Ruth, no no
don’t change it now this divorce has taken 27 months
and what’s in a name?
I ask myself this question when I look at art
thinking of Trudy, the bag lady and how she
reminded us that soup and art are a blended broth
and what matters are the goose bumps.
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Khachaturian bellows in a deep haunt of resonance
like a hanging
behind the wretched casting their languid arms
toward carnival and dreams.
They sink.
Faced with a painter’s blue period,
they toil for the obscure.
Living with the intent of dying –
Dying with the need of survival.
Aconitine powder
beneath the fingernails.
Je mets le livre sur le plancher.
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I saw a cardinal, then another
chasing each other against cloudless sky.
The sky filled with cardinals,
a swirl of red on blue.
The earth was made of faces,
everyone I ever knew,
alive in memory with laughter,
their voices from places
where smiles were painted
on wooden floors, sealed in silence.
Like music, away from outstretched fingers,
wings sketched old songs. |
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after Magritte
Look at the egg
see the bird,
the bulb not bulb,
but narcissus;
Even the blood flows
in if-then branchings,
the only tense
future,
conditional. |
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everyone, at some point in their lives, takes
a turn: at the stove, watching Bullwinkle, drinking
Southern Comfort, spitting watermelon seeds,
smoking cigarettes at midnight
on the rooftop studio, listening—
“loneliness is a lie lived only by those
who believe that at the end
of loving still life is nothing
more than surreal bullshit
“when the flag flies at half-mast, unfold
your clenched fist and cover your dark heart
“go on, ask me what i know…
Repeat after me
“my mother died in a fire & i still carry
the poker found in her hands
Zelda was right…
plagiarism begins at home
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so, Voltaire’s lost his head again,
has he? given it up to reason:
a reflection of anyone’s sad mirror
reason is often like watching
a foreign movie without subtitles
and this is way of Man, the way
it’s always been: someone speaks
bound to be understood…somewhere,
even if we're not there to hear
it’s as if, metaphysically,
we are all bound to the same mirror,
each living under the same moon,
each loving the same person
each of us awarded,
often posthumously,
a certificate
of participation
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The Artist
isn't even looking
at the egg.
But He does look like
PeeWee Herman
or a younger
Sir Ian McKellen,
which begs the question,
"Who came first;
PeeWee Herman
or Sir Ian McKellen?"
i.e.
"What came first;
the Blackbird
or the Egg?"
PeeWee must be the Egg
based simply upon
Egg proportion
and name size.
Sir Ian, the Blackbird,
quietly proud like Geisha,
displays a feathery wingspan,
announcing,
with posture like Jesus,
"I am here, dammit."
The Eggish PeeWee
has a whole,
witty world
egghead of Him.
He's fresh
-no cracks-
innocent,
pure like Dreft,
Snow White.
Not at all rustic,
McKellen's Bird (in black),
is reserved and accepting,
like a funeral.
In His end,
He's become a blank canvas,
awaiting a new beginning.
In age,
certainly Sir Ian is older,
indeed.
But,
the idea of PeeWee
has always been there.
Still no answer...
Or is there?
Did the Artist respond
by painting Himself
as Sir Ian?
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Across the street
German Bird bursts into song
He has recognized the artful display of
A perennial muse
long missing from view
Lilting hello cadence
greeting brilliant color spray
Friendship melody dancing on spring air |
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Alone in a window booth at the grocery deli
I read the Easter specials flyer
picturing brightly colored spiral ham and marshmallow chicks.
Steady April rain dots the pane, reflects my face a hundred times,
then dribbles my features down to a pool on the cement outside.
Heaven becomes earth,
earth dares to be sky, a oneness.
I add fresh broccoli to my list.
Deli din of cups clanging, voices rising and falling,
fills the space around me. I watch the weather monochrome,
turn the onerous page.
Outgoing shopper skitters quickly to her car,
pushing a laden cart, head bent to rain.
Incoming woman shields her fresh hairdo
with folded newspaper,
skirts a wide puddle,
steps back for a passing car,
hurries in with her list.
Patient, I wait
for Mable.
A sodden world waits too
for something,
for someone,
going or
coming,
not
on
the
list.
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An old man painted a white lark soaring
every evening for a month
then afterward cracked
and scrambled the egg
he’d modeled each distinct journey upon.
But he could taste no pepper, no sulfur, no salt.
Only vaguely a rainbow
originating several griefs ago. His wife
barbed on a cancer cell; the child they’d unwittingly set down
in the path of a great wobbling world.
The next morning he awoke shivering in a field.
The sky a gauzy gray.
Not a tool of consciousness
swooping, star-fastened;
no magical flash.
Or birds. Or rocket parts
clawing back to earth.
Not one offer
seeding heaven’s tongue.
Ah, he thought of the myriad lifetimes.
I am a greasy song.
Garnished with dandelions
and a drop of milky wind.
Ed Bok Lee
www.edboklee.com |
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