Acrylic on paper 2005 Anna Chamberlain, poetry 2013
Category: Philosophy
Frank O’Hara 1926-1966 by Grace Hartigan
Frank O’Hara says to Grace Hartigan
‘I do not always know what I am feeling.’
(but in For Grace, After a Party
it will become about you)
spouting a poetry of indeterminacy
as he builds his identity,
a compulsion of artistry accusing
her of the betrayal of figuration
pure abstraction was required to
invent a self-referential language,
to find the convincing limits of the self
she asserted the definitive line
in his elegy in paint, Frank O’Hara, 1926-1966
now imagine the Abstract Expressionists
on Facebook, drunken missives
of fluid modernity existing within
the persistent lateral surveillance of decorum
gorging on sycophants sexting naked pictures
from the front facing cameras of smartphones
deKooning’s women couched in
an art of internalized misogyny
in this iDubai world of conspicuous
consumption, anything can be a commodity,
masquerade as a pretense or solipsistic dissolution
accompanied by a string orchestration
to score a cinematic self-expression
all devolves into projection and reflection
tactical apologues in the life of the mind
code-talker paradox a side effect
in a cyber-context devoid of meaning
simultaneously blocking and enabling communication
digital age where we cannot make marks
that depress the paper, only unembossed gloss
we’re so far from the sumptuous feasts
debauched scenes and willful obscurities
of Lycophron’s Alexandra, offering instead
staid symposia and motivational speeches
forgetting the orgiastic origins
and slave owning of the intelligentsia
Plato was the first literary dandy
explicating the joys of exploitation
revived by the Queen of Versailles
time share dream pushers building
90,000 square feet of opulence because they can
suing the filmmakers for life story rights
we bleat mutilated themes like Adele anthems
(registering attempts at emoting)
obsessive tracks running on elliptical trainers
to avoid over-hyped terrorist psychosis
virtualization is an act of fallacious connection
Time polls reiterate being rich will make you happy
performance art in the social hierarchy undermining
Rich’s dream of a common language
private and public merged
process and product revealed
so that the art and artist are one
unheeding the warning signs
Pollock’s unveiling killed him because
he knew the falsehood he stood upon
(cigarette butts and ejaculate
embedded in house paint)
how could we not continuously turn
to the melodic tones of dancing limbs?
pregnant looks, throwbacks to lover’s songs
ingestions of longing, You Belong to Me
melds into Make You Feel My Love
both speak intensely of possession,
of an invented and distorted humanity,
at the edge of thought as it becomes volition
or fades into the void, a gnat’s worth of life energy
in the storied American pursuit of happiness
dancing with death
exabyte choruses of jumbled debris
detritus and hubris, humility and dignity
Mao’s last dancer lifting Pol Pot corpses
in a ballet of ideologies as
art crumbles into propaganda
song lyrics and lyrical nightmares
conspire to create vistas of twisted
surrealist mindscapes, beautiful disease
even Charles and Ray fell prey
in a day/night haze of stalled flight
Isaiah Berlin argues value pluralism
beating a drum in honor of human tragedy
young pioneers of socialist realism dancing
immortalized with graphic clarity
denouncing enemies of the state
of a unified ego / positive freedom
collapses under the weight of oppression
a conscious self-mastery schoolmistress
raps her knuckles in the theater of mind/war
constructing corrective labor camps for the
multiplicity which refuses to comply with
posted slogans knowing the flogging will
continue until morale improves
an undecayable, sainted body
arises in a self-perpetuating
cult of personality,
becomes the god
birthing scribes who
indoctrinate the newly formed history
solidify the moral superiority
of the family of origin
in an attempt to root out the shame
of a peasant, anti-intellectual upbringing
there’s no escape
from the fatherland
cellular memories,
spinning ballerina delusions,
brought about by behavioral epigenetics
while vertigo overwhelms the
perpetually still dancer
ars poetica, a seduction of lexical lists
mélange unmoored from belonging
pulse thrum in the anechoic room
how will we find purity amidst semantic noise;
the salve of metalanguage in a sea of allusions?
language transfers mental content
(words are containers)
speakers eject thought into an external space
(in this way language is reified)
‘a poem should not mean but be’
positing a fantasia,
a condition of meaningfulness –
unfurling with the cosmic significance
of a blue lotus blooming improbably
at the base of a Bodhi tree
cartographic games of death,
hybrid experiments that assuage
our fear of floating into the void
-or-
a terribly human snow angel
sculpted and melting, transfigured
to cloud and stream
whispering Rilke’s empty freedom
attained by seeking what’s beyond
a treatise of identity,
Hillman’s String Theory Sutra
(this poem has a mimetic twin
that plays arias in another dimension
through a telekinetic gramophone)
where, a reader may ask, does virtue lie?
Dickens’ acuity akin to the Delphic Oracle unsettles
telescopic vision reveals Bishop’s calculated descriptors
alongside Ashbery’s nuanced reflection:
convex mirror distorting the ruminating Self
(my face imprints the air within a breath of yours)
Carson’s accordion of grief,
a Sanskrit obituary contrasting handwritten notes
each word translated to illuminate a place
where no light is permitted
we poets enact a query
demonstrating the fragility
of the sacred phoenix’s flight
philosophical conceits drown
in a tidal wave of lyricism
roaring, irremediable, shifting selves
litter an infinite shore
(we build cairns for those without name,
stone markers in the sand)
van Gogh paints stars on the interior of a hadron collider,
excitation modes divining the luminous day of the psyche,
ebullience of the creative moment as comets seed the earth
kaleidoscopic supersymmetry unveils strange loops,
circumscribed by the calm intelligibility of science
model agnosticism engulfs with purifying fire
in the ascetic refuge of an enchanted forest, imaginarium of enlightenment,
crystalline structures of specificity hide the occlusions of the unconscious,
chaotic clouds of information growing exponentially
Usha’s bifurcated tongue spreads duality across the canvas of the mind
sand shifting at the garden’s gate, encoding cryptic messages,
erosive ablutions upon the glittering souls of the dead
across the deep shaded valley starling calls and falcon cries unite
imploding singularity awash in Dionysian pleasure amidst an Apollonian
atmosphere, contrasting Wittgenstein’s necessary silence
Huysum’s flowers scry an ecstatic love, impulses flashing
like jewel inlaid symbols of eternity, cartography of virtuosic ambiguity,
as Richter explicates tragic materiality or sublime interiority
within this vale of soul-making, temporal and inescapable,
poetry’s fountain, a thousand headed hydra, reanimates and reclaims
Renoir’s river runs as the round world spins, days end and the end begins
in this elusive and fragile bubble replete with elaborate honeybee dances
Magritte’s surreal apple exists in its listening room
immortally intoxicated with the mystic universe
Flora (detail from Primavera) Botticelli
‘Yea, in the very moment of possessing,
Surges the heat of lovers to and fro,
Restive, uncertain; and they cannot fix
On what to first enjoy with eyes and hands.
The parts they sought for or those they squeeze so tight’*
Gentle western wind enamored of her purity
Caught swirling in a fury of passion
Overtaking the nymph of Elysian fields
Perianths cascading from her lips
Dew of heaven, conceived in the womb of earth
Meadows bloom with myriad colors where there was but one
Ephemeral four petal blue flower of alchemy, mystic rose
Eros embraced in the mandala of calyx and corolla
Only her scent remains
Insufflation of Spring’s promise
Bounty, beauty and union abound
Gifts of the goddess framing our pleasure
Notes: *From Of The Nature of Things, by [Titus Lucretius Carus] Lucretius (written in the 1st Century BC) Translator: William Ellery Leonard
snow sends fathomless missives to the ocean
frozen kisses that kindle love
and we become one
storms thunder and unleash rain
born from a mountain glacial lake
in the watery center of my being
across the distance I traverse to you
naturally responding to the power
of your gravitational pull
ebb and flow I travel and remain still
upon a rocky shoreline,
deep current and unending whole
an American
cultural reality
Berne’s wooden leg game
Dave Yust Chromaxiologic Inclusion 27-6 1/1 2006
difficult unity of inclusion
contrasts the easy unity
of exclusion, a priori
philosophical stance
equiluminous color
makes visible the unseen,
unobservable phenomena
between something & nothing
broken catenary curves,
inextensible cable
suspended from two points,
a disbelief, a distraction
interplay of geometric
& biomorphic imagery:
complexity & contradiction
spontaneity & continuity
a process of inclusion
chromaxiologic exploration
quick shift in spacetime
to truncate thought
printmaking exemplification
fruitful liberation gained in
finding purpose through chromaphilia,
establishing relationships
Thought Experiment: begin with a cryptographic key life cycle where you function as the key
Key Life Cycle (in developmental phases)
Generation
give birth, bring forth ideas illuminated
in liquidity’s nourishing infrastructure
embody the symbols, imprint the genetic code
Distribution
produce without possession
envision freedom from rationality
educe a contradistinction
Storage
gather the cipher and the subtext
data amassed for encoding
integrate a secret sharing scheme
Usage
excel but do not lead your thoughts
breathe, decrypt the psychological schemas
act without premeditated expectation
Change
assimilate the workings of the universe
puzzle out an esemplastic solution
to unlock strategies of liberation
Destruction
allow entropy to overpower existence
witness the denaturing of mysterious virtue,
for all states are possible in the end
* This poem was influenced by the 10th Chapter (Pacifying the agitated, material soul) of Tao Te Ching by Lao Tzu and is a companion piece to Feasting on Shadows. Chromatopia, LLC has just released its first two books of poetry: These Little Episodes and Signal from Static available in e-book and paperback.
