Thank you for the opening, Sheila:-).  Nothing to do with Leibovitz or 
Sontag.  Nothing to do with poetry.  Bag form.

"ON PHOTOGRAPHY"

"I know this is a poetry list
but photography is part of my story."
It possessed me
the words I thought I had
I really didn't
I took for granted illusions
they live in the head
as well as in print
or on prints

I got my hands around the camera
and had to learn that art
had to

for years
I learned the camera
learned the darkroom
when I saw an image rise
through the chemicals
under the safelight

I was not in a yellow-lit Satanic mill
I was in a Heaven bounded only by
my own bad eye
some of my "images" (O Christ how pretentious)
taught how God (who did not look
like Diane Arbus) felt
when contemplating the mess he'd made
"Oh for My sake! the composition's all wrong
even The Son looks like a frigging
Teutonic Birkenau guard
O let the whole Creation rot!
I think I'll slash my wrists."

God's not dead, though, he's just
in rehab
it's not working the old fart's
still in De Nile

2

James Woods' desolation journalist
Richard Boyle        Stone's "Salvador"
wandering through El Playon with John Savage's
world-traveler doomed photojournalist

El Playon the poisoned shitheap of
Portrait of the Artist
not a Jesuit-induced nightmare
for in '89 the Jesuits would suffer horribly
not a dream at all
Rosemary's Baby
not a dream
fucked by the Devil
was it good for you too?

Woods' one selfless deed
between shots of whatever
they were pouring

wandering through that Golgotha
the decompositional stench
photographing the disappeared
the rotting
for identification
confirmation
confession
communion

They could not get rid of Boyle
obnoxious prick
so he hung around the pool
smoked "bueno caca" with a kid
who later bought one in the head
would go home only to save
a girl he loved for an hour
each afternoon.

A goad and a pain
says what he saw
survival is a cause
aesthetics...less said
better said.

Sheila Murphy wrote:
> I appreciate what you have shared, Ken, about your visit to the museum. It amazes me to consider the stamina that some artists have in their art, their tolerance for experience itself, then added to their, their capacity for carrying experience all the way to others. 
>    
>   I would love to be able to view the show you reference.
>    
>   Thank you, Sheila
>
>   


-- 
--------------
Kenneth Wolman	andreachenier.net	rainermaria.typepad.com

Never give up. And never, under any circumstances, face the facts. -- Ruth Gordon