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Snapshots February 16, 2005
ÁRNI
dear Árni
if you are
feeling better
take that kayak
out of old
hafnarfjordur
paddle it over
past the faroes,
then scotland
on easterly side
mind oil wells
down north sea
turn right
at thames
past southend
mind mudbanks
right again
up river wandle
and we could
have a pint
or two beer
at the famous
william morris pub!
news from nowhere!
iceland first seen!
abbey mills
I'll treat!
skål!
Patrekur Magnússon, pmcmanus
***
First Chore: Take Dog to Park
Same time of morning, same front door,
same leash on same dog. Choice:
turn left or right, so long as we reach
the same old park. Same old routine:
throw tennis ball, run, fetch,
wag, bark. Keep a watch out:
other dogs - other humans -
just may break the routine.
Like the day two German shepherds
panicked her - she vanished.
I found her later waiting
for me on the front porch at home.
That¹s them again now,
no wonder she¹s skulking low.
Mostly though, it¹s OK,
go say hello¹, and she¹s away
skirting the dogs
(they get short shrift)
to greet their humans,
who¹re easily charmable,
chat her up brightly,
extend a hand to frisk
her soft blond spine and even,
as she rolls against them,
rub her blonder tum;
or throw her ball, eliciting
more animation from her
than ever does her master.
The sky, however,
knows several routines,
some including wetness,
windy unfriendliness,
hostile coldness.
Rain soon passes, at best,
and we watch from the sports-
pavilion veranda the usual
birds pursue invisible insects
on the wing or worms in the grass.
At the other extreme, the sky
can be punitive, a killing blue,
a dizzy-spell-inducing sun;
the turf wilts as we watch;
home seems beyond reach.
There¹s dried mud under
the hot drinking fountain,
the metal on her leash
scorches the touch.
- All in the park outing,
over in minutes, lived and lost,
exercised, exhausted.
This morning¹s sky
was a fresh display
of insouciance, teasing
with droplets we watched
bounce in puddles improper
for late summer
(where a non-swimmer
dog can wade drinking
exposing gap-toothed gums).
The sky momentarily
bared gaps of blue brilliance
through which the sun warned:
get home while you have a chance.
Routine? I should be glad
of such continuity.
Old man, old dog. We¹re home;
up on the mattress
I left at six, she¹s snoring,
crowding her mistress.
In the kitchen or wherever,
when her two humans reach
towards each other to embrace,
she whimpers, yelps, gets between us.
The sleeve of this shirt I¹m wearing
she ripped, an untrained puppy;
mouth full of new teeth.
Labradoodle¹ - half poodle,
half labrador, half human,
her days had just begun to flow,
over a decade of such days ago.
11am, Wednesday 16 February 2005
Max Richards, North Balwyn, Melbourne
***
Photograph: Sandy at the bathroom mirror in the morning or, as those French
posters or paintings are captioned, "Sandra a sa toilette".
*
A musk. Each morning driven to emerge with a musk. Cosmetic heraldry: the
lipstick, the touches of powder, eye shadow, the hair brushed just so. Does
one highlight what one knows to be true? Look for colors that accurately
illuminate an interior? The way one color will balance with another? Or is
it to cover, to shield, to hide the lonely, etc., self?
It is a question that haunts: the nature of skin its social presence, its
force. The social skin - whether face and fashion, or architecture, or
landscape. What comes to shape from what is molten within? The mere fire,
the mere shape, the mere color, the greater voice. The quality of old crust,
the eruption in which the new cracks enfold the old to enjoin the new:
She who goes with the darkened shadows on a young face =
the (her) fire, its ashes not quite dampened.
One night, while staying in Florida, at 1:30 in the morning, there was a
fire in the hotel. Awakened by the wall shaking sounds of a thundering horn,
about a thousand of us exited by foot down the interior stairs to go outside
to the patio edge of a swimming pool and its adjacent lawns. A pale, thick,
ominous floating pillar of smoke rose into the sky over the hotel's kitchen.
In the dim nightlight, cleansed of make-up - blanched and sleepy-eyed - no
one looked alluring. Nocturnal, barely conscious, one's beauty gone under
(or, perhaps, is it, to feed on an inside fire?). A beauty that will wait
until morning to bring its colors back up.
What does it mean, finally, for any person, place or thing "to become awake
in one's skin"?
- from Crossing the Millennium, 1999 (Project)
Stephen Vincent
***
OF ANDY G[oldsworthy]
Of looking, of using, trying . . .
fallen into the stream.
And sometimes in counterpoint
not to see that change as something negative, but as
dead trees creased along the fold to catch,
you know, that feeling--at least for me it's
got . . . I felt I should work with it.
OF ANDY G[oldsworthy]
Of days to make it's quite high
of pressure - the challenge was to make that ring of branches withstand
anticipation of something to happen in the future
and this lasted - I made this
understood by staying in one place.
Very dark earth that is found in the mountains and
gets on your shoes when you walk in the city.
Barry Alpert / Silver Spring, MD US / 2-16-05 (12:13 AM)
This past Saturday I saw a dust-covered Andy Goldsworthy in full gas mask
sanding slate for his installation right outside the National Gallery of
Art in Washington DC. I took this unexpected sight as unframed performance
imagery in real life, but alas I didn't have my camera in my pocket that
day. However, I was comfortable enough with Goldsworthy's language from
two previous exposures to filmic documentation that I was able to write
four acrostic and two diastic half sonnets out of a video the NGA made of a
live lecture by AG which I had been unable to attend. So far I've only had
enough energy to revise the first two texts in the series.
***
Snapshot (polyglut)
Sounds of the other tongue confound. /Sluk./
Zoom in tight and the voids between letters
override their delineation. /Gap./ Metaphors
of a vacuum; the roller-coaster's tingle,
the elevator's deadly drop. /Bø./ /Bæ./ All lan-
guage and just this single space, glottal stops
and fricatives each scrapped up against the other;
/mor/ next to more next to moor next to
/morr,/ /mør,/ /myr,/ /merr,/ gasping for air,
trampling to death.
K. M. Skagen / Trondheim / 16.02.05
***
OFF its perch
red-tail hawk
wedge
world
incandescent
as of all snowfall
eyed combines
to keep it
from finding
nothing here
yes nothing will
now unfind
the sparrow
Gerald Schwartz/West Irondequoit,
New York, US/8:10 AM
***
a turn in a half circle, looking southward,
a curve of granite uplands; and between,
within the half ellipse of stone and sight,
in which the broken peaks, older than Jehova,
have precedence in shaping function,
fields, many showing evidence of work
turn the other way, shuffle past the pub,
and the universe is glazed striped pottery - light blue;
dark blue with green; then green and brown
here the rectangularity of hedge grids
does not change the underlying circularity
of this end of present Earth, finis terra
(so much more impressive than English lands end
suggesting a state of things which needs specialism -
not just some water you can't ford or round
but the significance is read inland
where all directions converge or double back
as if in panic at the abattoir truck
this morning's a bronze age, flowering yellow,
chunk greys glow with the sunlight they have sucked;
green shimmering beneath white-and-blue
in which the moon floats, on bright Earth shadow,
tilted upon the flow of other gravity
a standing stone in the middle of the field goes on
study it
rub your head and arse on it
like a cow
this is an entire space to be
whilst its warm
each bare dry wall stone pulsates
with tiny spiders staggering onward, the road's
wet with them, briefly;
small birds hesitate and then flutter about on anything raised
hesitant and not quite sure, full of urges
listen to the first few insects hum, the wind lifting
your hair across your ears, your blood ascending
and descending the pyramid of the brain
not stunned as in deep August's greatest heats
but still as, before any opening out
the day time yet too brief and chilly daisied
Lawrence Upton
***
flesh aloft sounds
elemental
held anatomies
where infinities
play upon
new stars unconcluded
ancient night
when flesh appears
revelation
silence
emerging
(borrowed 1 word/line ED Blodgett 'Emerging')
Douglas Barbour
***
The Result
is tail-feather
and rather not
is line and length
and over
is why the grin
and vicious
is all the above
and doubtful
is drown the sorrow
and hateful
is tell it well
and sickness
is all the apes
and creation
is the final fear
and going on
Andrew Burke
***
I Could Define "It"
There is something...
"It" is something
remarkable
or maybe unremarkable
Anyway, I know
what I know...
That can't be bad - but
it would help if
I could define "it"
in simple terms or visualize "it"
zen whack-a-doo, whack-a-doo...
I know ( like Klee)
that color possesses me
and therefore I possess color
This moment is red,
gold and green...
It is downright petalishous
like Irises, Calla lilies
and Rembrandt Tulips
"It" is like China and Budapest
and Australia
and "it" possesses me
possesses me, yeah...
me - me - me!
And Klee, Miro,
Picasso, color and I
are one - today
I am a painter
Deborah Russell
Fort Collins, CO
10:48 (Mountain Time)
February 19, 2005
***
all trains go the other way
the sun shines on the outside
inside there's not even rain
the banks count backwards
one bird, then, another bird
what song is that?
some days you keep going
travelling in check trousers
someone's initials etched on a window
suddenly buildings are taller
earth never comes to rest
the ochre junction
the yellow doors
always a guy who knows everything
a discussion over the blue car
the tunnel moves so fast
names in red and then blue
the white tiles, the beige
a glance beyond a book
idling
what cloud is that?
jill Jones
Sydney 16 Feb 2005
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