miss ashbery

—for john ashbery

schmoozing with miss ashbery
the future poet laureate—
of the sinking empire of neo…
just ask the nytimes about it,
they know everything about
everybody anyway don’t they?
just ask mr. david kermani—
miss ashbery’s business manager
about the future of beltway
glory and muse deification.
arranged by chance of course—
by pulitzer prize committee
plus harpercollins inc.
we’re meeting this morning
the nobel prize queens say—
the announcement is imminent.
it’s written in the stars above,
you can run but you can’t hide.
the macarthur foundation
certainly agrees: you and i are
suddenly giddy with possibility—
that what walt whitman was
trying to tell us is true:
merely being here now, dears,
means something; that soon
we may touch, love each other,
even get married for gawd’s sake.
no more don’t ask don’t tell—
no more jerry fartwell shit and
such buffoonery surrounded by.
a poetry already filled with style,
a style thru which emerges—
art deco weimar renaissance;
pandora’s box opening up once
again in a new puzzling light.
just ask fritz kortner or
louise brooks, my dear…

An answer to Ovid's Pythagoreus on a vegetarian rant on the nature of nature:


After the Wake

In the morning I'll make a cup of coffee
hot and strong two spoons of sugar
a lovely splash of cream.
I'll drink it in my garden
while I look to see what the night has wrought.
Eggs in the nest now a noisy din
clamoring for the convenience
of a ready chewed feast.
Some unruly cat bolts,
leaves behind a mangled mouse.
Inspect the roses,
lop off their withered heads
Life from Death---
but only for the ruthless.

Adonis II

Listen up Adonis--
Word on the street
you were always
your mamma’s boy
torn from the tree
kicking and screaming
tearing the bark
breaking the heart
of the goddess.

Grow up Adonis--
Word on the street
you got to learn to be a man
your mamma’s tears were wasted
tied up in that tree
no word to pass about those
afternoons in the lap
of the goddess
no way to tell you that
decadence kills.

Heads up Adonis--
Word on the street
you can’t tame the Hog
Aphrodite got it right
you're a flower in the wind.
Word on the street?
Radical alteration
Transformation with a
Capital T--
Metamortification
so to speak.

Check it out Adonis
Word on the--
Say what Sweet Adonis?
What's the word out on the Street?
Direful news Adonis
Word on the street--
Adonis is done in disaster.

Absalom, Absalom

On William Faulkner's Absalom, Absalom. There is something about this book that puts me in mind of the movie The Three Faces of Eve, or of James Frey's A Million Little Pieces and the question of how identity is related to perception. Who is Thomas Sutpen? Is he the desperate child clawing his way out of poverty? the heartless husband whose only need of a wife is to help him breed a dynasty? A man driven by self-hatred or driven by ambition to prove that the past never mattered? Is Sutpen his own worse enemy or is fate? If Sutpen only exists in memory, whose memory truly keeps him?

And on Quentin....what hell must it be to be the keeper of another man's soul? A man he hates but who represents the South...a South he claims to love. Suicide seems like a no-brainer.

Related (at least in my way of thinking): "MEMORY likes to play hide-and-seek, to crawl away. It tends to hold forth, to dress up, often needlessly. Memory contradicts itself; pedant that it is, it will have its way.

When pestered with questions, memory is like an onion that wishes to be peeled so we can read what is laid bare letter by letter. It is seldom unambiguous and often in mirror-writing or other disguised.

Beneath its dry and crackly outer skin we find another, more moist layer, that once detached, reveals a third, beneath which a fourth and fifth wait whispering. And each skin sweats words too long muffled, and curlicue signs, as if a mystery-monger from an early age, while the onion was still germinating, had decided to encode himself.

Then ambition raises its head: this scrawl must be deciphered, that code cracked. What currently insists on truth is disproved, because Lie or her younger sister, Deception, often hands over only the most acceptable part of a memory...." (Grass, Peeling the Onion)

(Photo source http://www.foothilltech.org/rgeib/english/orwell/primary_sources/william_faulkner_nobel_speech.htm

Adonis Squares Off Against the Boar

This painting by Waterhouse tells the story of Adonis' past, present and future. In the background is his mother, changed into a Myrrh tree to escape her father's wrath. In the foreground, anemones which will be created by Aphrodite's tears at his death. And the central focus, Aphrodite and Adonis. Aphrodite warns, begs, pleads for Adonis to have a care, to guard his life if only for her sake. But Adonis, who fears nothing because he loves nothing, goes on his reckless way.


Seventeen…
Full of life
laughter at the gods
Fate is now.

Seventeen...
Hey baby in the back of his daddy's car
can't fight kismet
consequences be damned.

Seventeen..
reckless and rash
falls headlong and
The hapless Aphrodite
never quite got that
her Adonis only came equipped
With a Teflon heart.

Sisyphus

Spectacular woodcut by Picart. Sisyphus makes me question the purpose of mythology. Was it related to religious ritual, ancient interpretation of science, pure literature, symbolism? What did it mean to the ancients, what does it mean to us?

I think I like Camus and Nietzsche on Sisphysus. In a godless world, is overcoming the self the only reasonable answer? Is absurdity the only rational response?

Andromeda: On Love

Here's Ruben's rendering of the Perseus and Andromeda myth. Beautiful, lush. Perseus, with the head of Medusa as his secret weapon, looks unbreakable. And things go well until the wedding feast. But what does Andromeda make of it all?


Andromeda

In Ovid, love is easy.
The hero spies a maiden
This one chained to a rock
He swoops to conquer
A dragon
Or a God
what difference
She sees the end in advance
And so doesn’t mind
Being chained to a pot full of beans
Or her baby’s new shoes
Certainly better than
Being ravaged by a dragon
And if not,
No worse.
But then the neighbors
Come calling…
The not in my backyarders
Old loves armed with swords
Who never stop to ask
If she wants to be saved.
Her father falls
her mother one more widow
mourning senseless tragedy...
But love is easy
chained to a hero
who turns all comers to stone,
And never once pauses
To drop his smile.