My latest, with which I'm rather pleased. Thought I'd throw it out; see
if I get - from Scotland or Australia or England or Canada or US - any
response.
Notes: Soho - South of Houston St. in New York. Major art activity has
lately shifted to Chelsea, but Soho retains big galleries as well as
upscale furniture stores, restaurants, etc. Santeria - should have an
accent mark over the i. *ut pictura poesis* - "from the picture the
poem" and vice versa. This Roman and Renaissance slogan commanded both
artists and art academies before our time. Loisaida - the Lower East
Side of NY as named by its largely Puerto Rican (or Nuyorican)
population. The term has become widely accepted.
Elegy in Soho
At least it isn't the Eighties,
when dresses and flatware
outranked the paintings,
sublime and deskilled,
affirming (if testimony
were needed) the credo brought
down from the lawyerlofts:
*destruction is consumption*. Now,
again, the usual place
has been made in the dumpster
for art.
And the goddess who reigns
below Houston St. raises
a fallen spaghetti-strap. Women
and men they would tolerate could
say of her, Giver
of sleep after overtime,
clement matcher of money
to whim, harbor
from the contradictory winds
of feeling, pace-setter; her peace
is our will.
She is deeply impartial. But
*this installation, this
techno-santeria
in a major gallery will attract
neither corporate nor museum
buyer; will resolve
into *membra disjecta* while
its tapes show
forever to darkness
the mice and pumpkins
of a gone afternoon.
Down the block, better: on
the walls of an outer
room, creditably
manic abstract impastos
(the old timelessness); then
precise gay reflections,
in putty, on gender; and,
nearest the office,
remote photorealist
portraits and night-pieces.
Jersey nights.
Expressed, she emerges
into a flowing crowd and
our eyes meet. -
How lucky I am
to have my wife, my wife's
arm to save me
from spring-rejoicing girls (their looks,
opinions and fashions
rudimentary versions
of my leitmotif). She
(my wife) meanwhile
looks on without comparable
terror … it is the mirror,
not young cute guys,
that wounds women.
I suspect she is pondering
our declining fortune
and wondering
if we will ever shop again
for handwoven jackets,
Fifties tchotchkes,
or art.
But love,
good weather, a gaze
deliberately restricted
to the nearer, shallow arc
of the slope cannot save me
from the goddess's brazen
though unemphatic questions, or
from drinks
on her tab
in my mind
as I walk.
It isn't about
desire with you (she
says in a place
of impossible
because ultimate trendiness
and amber light, where bare arms
gleam like artillery). Not
since your own youth
sank too definitively
for you to erect
a bridge to it.
Nor is it about
loss, since,
riding harder
and hungrier toward
acknowledged oblivion
than the coolest jockey
of these streets, you positioned yourself
to speak (however wildly,
unheeded or
correctly) beneath a self-
awarded wreath.
My only question is
what *painting means
that you should waste
so much imaginary leisure
on it. *My
divine involvement
is that of an auditor, but you act
as if *ut pictura poesis* still
applied: as if the image
or words it ate
still inspired words ...
She ceases, then,
charmingly not staying.
It isn't her job description
to stay - any more than
those of the tourists,
herds of young
growing younger as they
brush past
a middle-aged couple, birds rising
from Loisaida,
Bowery, the meeting rivers
or merging deserts. And ahead of us,
from another gallery,
workmen carry a crate - which,
as in time-lapse,
I see unpacked, removed, the work
hung. Two
intelligent, gorgeous, secure,
humane etc. people
touch
each other, stare
as if they would never turn away.
%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
|