The Chateau Harware

Happy first blog post of twelve twelve.

… So tonight we read this brilliant poem, The Chateau Harware, by John Ashbery in our workshop and I thought to share it with my lovely readers, to whom I’ve been unfaithful:

It was always November there. The farms
Were a kind of precinct; a certain control
Had been exercised. The little birds
Used to collect along the fence.
It was the great “as though,” the how the day went,
The excursions of the police
As I pursued my bodily functions, wanting
Neither fire nor water,
Vibrating to the distant pinch
And turning out the way I am, turning out to greet you.

Stay tuned for more (and even more).

The Girl

“A photograph is a secret about a secret. The more it tells you the less you know.”

— Diane Arbus

(Girl in a watch cap, NYC, 1965)

Suspended

“I paint not the things I see but the feelings they arouse in me.”

— Franz Kline

(Suspended – 1953)

Black Cherries

The green nude dancing through her eyes;

their faces are cold from the sea beneath them

and the black cherries within their veins.

Their smiles aglow smoothly, their hands taste sweet,

and their temptation remains a mystery

not to the red plantains,

but to you and me.

I Still Do

My eyes roll to my right,

and the red danger sign

flashes under the sun.

And on left, there is nothing

but a green floral pillow case

and four more stares.

On the back of my head

I still feel the pain of the

empty bottles and the

words that I never remember.

I smell detoxification.

In my very front, I am heading to

the lightness of my destiny.

In my ears,

“I still do”.

Lost Boys

Something inside them is

falling to pieces. Big smiles are failing like flakes;

they hide behind the blue bricks.

Storytellers reveal the toxic waste,

and Sylvia sings “the night dances”.

“A smile fell in the grass. Irretrievable!”,

she once said.

The world still moves in beats

without the lost boys and

last autumn moments.

Even ours.

Room

Far from the “closer” days,

way beyond the leaves,

pale clouds are chanting

loud with aggression.

She closed her eyes to

what’s called “yesterday”.

Black and white grapes,

a bar of music are all she desires.

She hated the light.

And rain?

Never.

Four Fifty Five

She is not his; he is not hers.

She, her heart is pounding gently

like the floating whales in the Pacific;

and he, he is lost in the pond of lust.

The seconds are dragging into decades.

The secrets are turning into goddamn lies.

The diving bells are on strike,

so are the embroidered angels and the butterflies.

Cry baby cry;

till you are lost as the

midnight light is lost in dark.

Jump if you dare;

into the golden daffodil fields,

till tears stretch in never-ending lines.