Skip to main content
Year
for Barnett Newman, Abstract Expressionist Painter, 
Cy Twomby, Sculptor/Painter, & Frank O'Hara, American 
Poet, Art Curator & Art Critic

A bird seems to have
passed through the impasto with cream-colored screams and
bitter claw marks.

Though they are all white with black and grey scoring, 
the range is far from a whisper, and this new development
makes the painting itself the form. - O'Hara about Cy Twomby's paintings 




Two seasons upon your forehead

Horizon of your brow now tilts toward sunset 

Stratus clouds lift above the
major line parallel but with telemetry
of their own -

symmetry shifts, music
notes stretched flat on the scale

Below all this your eyes two suns setting

though it is redundant to say so, 
a poem line tracing horizon, what
lies behind it/below/we leap or 
can, happily, to mental verticals, 

distant stars orient us as
specks just as they are 

specks such are these
birds 
flying out to sea such
is 
this our land giving way 
beneath all their push



We lay together, two wrecks, Love, 
wooden ships conjoined by forces 
too great, too objective to blame 
We stretch beside a shoreline,  
eels play in the one rib of our 
opened selves, our rarer fingers 
share at last, gesture horizon 
to stars, even Sun Moon entwine 
before behind centering a presumably
expanding circumference 
curving
inwardly toward itself 
which is an
affection, a longing, 
a bottom upon
which even God can 
lay hidden
from secret admirers 
such are mirrors
whose surfaces 
are rarely breached 

But there is reach

many ways to say the word love

which, redundant to say, 

sparks, 

and we are returned to some 

notion Platonic beyond higher 

math 

of over-said, 

over-reached 

Infinity

of which Barnett Newman spoke to 
Frank O'Hara about, rather, 

the Void 

he said

...
can the word bear a capital 
... 

...
may the word bear a capital 
...

V

his fear of it, discomfort,
to be exact, not knowing that
Frank would be in it (the Void)
not 
far from the saying of it, the 
mention, the beach that day, hot 
(so I have read), crowded though
Frank chose a Voided 
spot to
recline to sun upon when 
the
tanned dune buggy ran 
over
upon his tanned radiance
 

like attracting like 

his broken nose his brilliance, 

that Chariot of the Sun Eclipse 

it's job done

fated fell forward 

into the wine sea 

as did Frank's soul 

cherry dark

an Amarone 


most homophone 

he may have till then denied
tried, 
at least decried died
trying to name 
it

(
 the soul a starfish

painted
say by 
Cy
                             )

to work an
image dead mariners 

make wishes 

upon within 

as do we also wish


*


I wish you, Love, 
beyond within all Voids 

...(is the Void one or plurality?)... 

a painter on a near shore to 
paint what we have become

One (he must be) beautiful, 

a man, radiant, who raises 

a thumb to rearrange


^^^^^^^^^^^^^the horizon^^^^^^^^^^^^ 

******************************************************the sky*****

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~the moving line~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ 

~~~~~~~~~un~~~~~du~~~~~lant~~~~~aslant


of the sea where we without
breadth heave each our
separate 
selves and each
other into (
squint) a promontory,
shear, 
one eye to gauge, the
other 
allow a thumb's scan by
any 
other intent acknowledgement 
of worth perceived and 

waves/wayward clocks

(become)  


adrift migrant birds, scores, 
always crying at the unending feast

We are not the least of these
but know ourselves too beyond
bondage to time which is to say 
'hunger' in spite of rhythm


*


Love, let us live without 

rhyme


the sun go up the sun 

go down,


the Sky-(Amor)-Wheel-(Fati)  

turn and return 

with feeling 


Let the painter lonely be 

alone 

pinned to shore with 

his paints, his brushes, 

his thumb-gauged vision 

in relation to ourselves, 

and Void, without intended 

rhyme trued, true to ourselves


Nature, too, is true


May he use the color blue

Carelessly

Tubes of it


We once were that, too -

careless without


Now wrecks


Vaulted


Now become 


weather without 

foreheads 


without

cloudnecks


Vastness


in the making 

(if such
is made at all)  

but is aporetic** 

euphoric 

a condition, 

a given hard 

thumb 

against 

a sky of 

tubes made 


and of 

squints made


we are then a

striving after

beyond cream-colored 

foam


we are then

form


churned by storm


Here come the wild birds again


>-<


**aporetic -  an
 adjective which means "to be at a loss", "impassable", and "inclined to doubt, or to raise objections";
and the noun form "aporia", which the "state of the 
aporetic" and "a perplexity or difficulty".
Rating
No votes yet
Reviews
No reviews yet.