Back 2 the StudiO 2005-06

That VOYAGE belonging to
a Thought, high up
in the Bow,
through the Waves, bounding
Short-- shanks! He--

HO!
the something that happens,
some VisuaL-- FLAIR
down there, in and Amongst--
the romantic narrative,

spiraling up to Classic,
and Symbol, brought
forward to see--
that thing, he had in mind,
repeated

in spaces and-- spinning, the weavings
a World, at ONcE!
what this Pirate was trying to say
Was, one-- conceived of
a whole-- didn’t YOU?

like going on a trip, a beginning
one had thoughts of getting home--
this black and white--
he started the drawing
of positive and negative

shapes, on his knee
parts, joined together then—
But this form--
like life— the unending
reality

no HOME?
it took shape
from its end
brooding on that,
some kind-- no Promise,
but fiction of splendor

and difficulty, he said
"a wisdom"
we all had a final resting place
this affair of places
a “trial by landscape--”

he wrote, probably
remembering, 'A Map of Misreading'
the Childe Roland-- to the Dark tower!
a whole life training for that sight
and he didn’t recognize it
it all had changed

The vision of
all the parts together revolved
in a landscape of space—
“we too, must write Bibles,”
a great man said.
that kind of thought

these giant ideas
figures representing--
and the leaves come
and the outer blaring of day
Yes, the sun’s ray
diamonded reality

all turning--
"trial by landscape"
he liked the sound
Didn’t quite understand it, at first
death was everywhere—

been
ignoring the car bombs,
the first order death
is close enough,
passage of the days

through alternating years
in between the narrating, experience
the symbolic heightening
the wild sunflowers in western space
that distance

the broken surface--
moments, are lost in the
broken world
"the blank is in our own eye,"
he said, wanting to remake the leaves

just for the decorative
positive and negative,
“I like da effect”
like the pottery shards
the thick paint ribbon
thought he wanted that back, too
and the sunset bands

well, I’m talking to myself
as you might over hear
in this desert, a conversation
of philosophy, and pantheistic,
"God is everything there is,"
try that out, that Reality?
something like that,

that was years ago now,
a landscape space
a figure in solitary--
on a blank ground, still
arriving
isolated, there

a reduction of-- silhouetted
form, there, the blasted tree
an inner abstraction
seen in outer, this world, that or what
world, here
the tree brings back space to fore

the aspen leaves float through--
something about the birds, on fire
remembered
falling, into, strange mix
"the world is a sewer..."

in cartoon bubble
"and we live in hell"
that deep, the depth, the deeper
deep, to emergent, bubbling--
any figure’s depth,

like this crisp rising shape
now, the Surface!, then fragmented--
some how, In cycle, no one reality-- knows
all the new worlds of flowers, stars
his Pennsylvania, my India

the father seems the reality
death, he was reading
Fate and Power, deeper
between the classic surfaces,
of blue, Freedom, of indifferent sky
marching Egyptian fate

Western dream and
Asian meander
dark propelling light
“go on, wandering--”

"all too human," was so far away
the great man, the great man--
creating figures, out of himself
and in making our reality, reality
this figure in the sun

this man made of weather
creating some machine
to send everything
through, his self
my, self, ordering the clouds

of leaves, the sound of waves
glimpses he’d had
he was wearing glasses, now and
feeling old and-- was just keeping
on, drawing, a stump of charcoal
between dirty thumb and finger
making reductive shape
he just kept paint--ing

"it's the work," was said
everything adding up
he went back, was up in the old atelier
teaching
drawing, he could see how
this figure, head to toe

made, became
the surface, it becomes
the paper, itself, the figure
reinforcing the reality
this physical reality
there are opposites that make, a truth

an outer surface, shows some
inner reality
a color is surface,
a value shows depth

So he wondered
a flat figure of color, Falstaff?
that figure of value’s depth,
the shadowy Lear, a cartoon Ghost?
Hamlet equating a greying silhouette
only knew, Grand Achilles,
it must be black, paint it black

somehow depth came to equate feeling
what thought of a surface shape
that includes the depth of even seeing it
But then,
Shakespeare should look like
Shakespeare?

some abstract equivalent, he thought
do we have to go through this
all over again
(you can skip ahead) if you like
he had been working on the apartment

there were drawings and
building diagrams
the to do LISTs
drawings of a proposed paintings
all the in between all of this
years intermixed

he needed TO MAKE A PLAN
he kept saying over and again
it all started with the plumbing—
See--
back to the lagoon, then got mixed in
bubble wrap-- the paintings

move electric--
will they forget him?
he was forgetting himself--
he could see how lucky he’d been
reading Stevens in the hallway
we needed a home, alas
his fiction, the as if—
the goings around with the sun—
through the night

you know those big fat carpenter’s
pencils, measuring, 46 3/8 + a 1/32
out there that bird
that tree disappearing
they said, “we’ll put the splattered
dishes up there on the shelves
above the sink”

refrigerator and stove
he made a note before work that
morning, "since December 21st, reading
Wallace Stevens each morning
March 28th, almost finished--"
a place in the desert, he thought

or dreamed
they moved from Mercer, to Mott
to Jay
Street, they
lived Illegally,
without a shower
“and I’m reading Stevens each
morning in the bathroom down the hall”

just to sit and look at a painting, there
in all that space, that’s what they had
been doing, looking
the record of ideas
like what they used to do,
the idea as event
a house shaped of ideas

a door opens, it’s to the outside
what about a national park for ideas?
he thought, a big space

he felt, NO MORE HOPEFUL FIGURATION!
that humanist religion, OF THE OVENS
what comfort? of the clock tick
he wanted it to be from inside his
head, NATURE

continued its assault
his ROAD MOVIE fell to profane
bottom-- the Heights, the heights!
ALL fists-- fade to black
Swoosh.

those clouds, leaves, waves
every moment, passing
something he wasn’t able to--
So it JUST got easier
to keep it to himself,

his studio boarded up, those
big bent nails, made strange illusion
paintings stacked up
he was sad but had
become happy
once more, in those spaces
"a market out there" selling despair

he was, HAPPY WITH NO ONE, out there,
ON MY ASS
yeah, he said, “I turned
my back,
maybe I wished I had not”
We always talked about

our idealizations, the “Art World”
we loved this identity, on an edge
and how it turned
to pigeon coop
AND no one was even
listening by this point--
far away, OUT THERE
sometimes he thought
one sticks with tradition,
all the heroes

not to get lost
that line he really meant--
Oh! then there were all
the lists of people--

the photographs everywhere
taking over consciousness
like grey depth, meaning hole, it seems
was any one EVER looking?
NEVER felt the paint, for itself
how it became the experience
physically real somehow, handed our
lives to us
like at the GATE, the dark wall,
up and over!
but you wouldn't know

it was why he said he did it all,
man-- PHOTOGRAPHY,
photography
what he threw out

So who killed the red headed bird?
the tragedy, the demolition
of Orange ideal!
He had to stain the floor strip and

hook up the sink
get those hinges, move
all those books again
the end of the natural world
had begun, the ground here
crumbling beneath our feet
AND THERE IS

NO CHICKEN LITTLE
SCREAMING, just jerks
in big armored cars
nature had been the
subject for 50,000 years

he painted the chair a particular grey
and moving it into the light
that shaft that fell between the buildings
large shape after another one falling

a fragment of video, who are all those
people sitting in dark rooms
the buildings keep blowing up
people flee--
Ah! out here on the road!

A refreshment in Nature, he sheepishly
told his friend, not wanting to feel
backwards, take another look--
he tried painting on the side of the road
he was moving from here to there
he kept moving the Paintings

now What?
he had this idea about a metal Barn?
It was just all pieces
of a grand vision
all broken, it was falling

it was a dark vision
a bad time
no Arthur?
they read Blood Meridian
he moved out west

lost, distant
the inevitable fall back into dream
the heights abstracted, distance
he fell into October
evening passed to dark

interminable stars
out there
that depth dreaming creation
the nothingness of
the everything returning

there was news of his friend's death
he seemed to get off easy
always pushing to the edge
an old man, he’d been out
painting a 14 foot huge painting
of his whole life

he just fell over at lunch, into his plate
death brought a change
something changed
when he died

but something was freed up
he kept saying
he wanted to make it out of his head!
he needed to get to this new
place
plain and simple

THE EARTH, was just there,
he felt he was turning--

his back--
all this moving
much too much, can’t afford to
store all of this any more
he just kept going through it all
loading and unloading the books
he remembered his vision of himself
on a bicycle dressed in black
simple, all he owned, and now

all the ordering making something--
of its own becoming something?
another cycle
REDUCE, reduce
the future, give it away

it felt good, that sun, faint but warm
in the mountains way out there
leading from a yellow sun
the red diamonded
red sun and bird
quest of sun in their eyes
comic somehow

and sublime
and a new idea
arising
all of the paintings
taking place, the ordering

then, black cycle
nothing right-- no one truth it seemed
except it ALL
together spinning!
fiction we
revolved and --
he wrote, “making all these drawings
with his pen,”

he wrote each day
the drawings became
a weird strange language
and the overall form seems
to be their content

reducing to pictographs
and he drew them over from his mind
over and over they changed
saying things differently
he wanted to paint just that but

haven't been able to renounce
the more complex seeming
Reality or Gods of Tradition
old man game he thought, “Ruin the
Sacred Truths," reduced again--

somehow they look like
shards of desert pottery
black like dream
well, guessing
his age, one might think

he was over the hill
believing in these tattered
traditions, those gods of the
white men
he believed that

now x--ing even that
he thought he wanted to
continue
he'd better get to work
enough of this carpentry
he thought he was wearing out these
images repeating--
in his notes, he needed
to get them resolved into paint

their physical presence
REAL, there, the reason he did it!
for their surface truth
their physical reality
that handed to him his idea
and kept on--
that spot of time
there the ONLY TRUE god is

revolving, evolving

the CITY is busy, busy
these days, Too busy, BUSY
for HIM he thought, seemed a death
in life, but walking the streets
was what he knew or just needed to
do, so he came back and then forth

through all the designs gathering
twirling every day, the black and white
night and day, he saw it easiest
out there
here it was more--

well behind the
buildings, but then
there were the WHITE
BUILDINGS, and still the Brooklyn
Bridge, which he’d taken off from

but never MADE THAT PAINTING,

hot cold hot cold
into next day same day
into year
same year
all spinning around'

going nowhere
and somewhere
eternally different
in motion and the same

sun comes up, sun

goes down, was his first thought
with star
spinning around
the painting is not a window

it is an idea
the black line
makes that explicit
there are no lines in nature
these outlined figures

figures are ideas,
have to keep writing it
down to carry it along
or it disappears
I read that the Tate’s Rothko room

was to have a Giacometti
in it
how that would have changed things, he
thought he would have liked that
figure standing there--
the red paint

all is violence, of right
and might, wind into
mind, all is violence--
was wondering--
landscape equals death

the figure representation
equals-- life?
the distance of and it comes
journeys to-
the surface
arriving to

the studio, Yes, he said
still much to do
there were the landscapes left unfinished
last years and again--
the ongoing wind

and leaves, he dreamed of continuing
the paintings "were"
now they are "more"
maybe he needed "to go back, further?"
Susan said to him, OUT THERE, and back

to Achilles Tent
the light into the order
black, black, black
color in the dark night of stars
is the mother of beauty

the black and white of drawing
into the color of the day, the sun
the hero of DAY, the idea-- of JANGLING
DIAMONDED BEAUTY!
there! He said it-- out loud!

for others to
hear, OH HEAR!, it darts and stings
It’s this sensibility, this nature thing
he said it was all a camouflaged
religion of sorts

order it all from there
ordering from there--
red and yellow stripes
he’d been all over the place
had a dream

a shield and its dreamer
this black landscape
all the possibilities, weaving
between them, the light
the BLUE remembered hills, into leaves

wind
blurr, wind, mind, muse
how to reconcile ROAD MOVIE with
ALL ONE
ALL one, FALLING

PROBABLY,
the RECONCILING DIFFERENCE
keeping on,
SPRING IS ARRIVING
IN THE COTTON WOODS

LONG REDDISH BUDS
A TANAGER ON THE BIRD BATH
a Towhee scratching
and Black-headed Grosbeak
the Hummingbirds are back
Anna’s kind first, then Rufus

the Magpies sawing
Flycatchers on the line
whistling slow, hi to lo
an Oriole, too
the festival begun
--all swooping

here and back
a Jamboree
all celebrating this National
Bird-day of carnival's striped Ideas
he kept working on it,
making it 9 to 5

the journeyman's work
making money
not like the old days
everything is money
up ahead was Wal-Mart

he'd been to Home Depot almost weekly
for months now, he complained
still all this writing and
drawing in between
and a body of work, finally

some how each year
still, the evolving form was the
important thing to him and
how it evolved and
made of fictions

forming to shape
idea, snaking form
shedding
Here is where the serpent lives!
and up there the Tree at the
center of the world!

gulping form
continuing through black

his death would be tragic
though he lived so well
still all of his friends are alive
he left so many paintings
made real his life and ours
physically felt, made us all feel
what we missed

still he was standing there
his arms out stretched
a rod in his hand
drawing his body
in touch

the raining, the reality
the change--
driving back through snowy mountain
road, suburban life steals it away
mythic Mexico, already out of reach

all last night
the planets were lined up
at a diagonal from the horizon
and the horn of the
moon was at the end

all of the negative spaces
in the trees

minimal life with all of the junk
in a closet--
all this stuff is not poetic
the transposition of the content
to an abstract surface

this is a painting-- not a place
of illusion
this is positive and negative
the: bringing together
near and far

bring together near and
far, the abstraction in
negative and positive shape
What he was trying to say
was, “He saw at once--”
this all one, thing
then

and could then gage a shape
drawing it to the page
a thing adjusted as a shape
cut out
balanced in the page--

frizzle frazzle
what to hold on to
maybe too much thinking
and not enough doing
these days
remember the process--
it's life!


of diamond harlequin
height-- in the sun
the blood in the eyes
the red reality
the tragic comic trajectory

that famous sun
tic—ing time
wanting to know, once more
that famed day, gone
Oh, oh, here in the studio!
most times, ok--
painting away
the highs and low

know it by now,
keeping an even keel
he said before and he said it over--
there are no
lines in nature, he said it the
other day to someone trying it out
it is the idea, the figure
at the surface, to become real,
that thing in fact

not imaginary-- does that make sense?

sometimes it takes
a while to get there
Need that-- wow, the shield
scattering pieces
come to end--

that Jaunt,
back to the tree, he kept saying
look into oneself,
can’t keep on there--
realizing this thread bare self

no spirit here
he wouldn't allow such spooky
stuff, but that, out there, a refreshment--
there’s something!
still-- traditions
speaking through the artist
some comedian
is that a left over God

the food cold, going to hell
the Road Movie, surprised
at the boredom
but there are always
the stars, to wonder at

the black night
really repeating, now
looking for the new idea!
throw out the rest, reduce
and abstract, back

to the studio--
Agnes Martin died a couple
of months ago, saw a picture
of a small wall space she
worked over and over

like that, a saint, of
this modernist surface
and again-- the figure-- the idea
itself, flat plane--
oh, but where to go--
our accountant just shook

his head at the figures
been too obsessed with
the painting surface, too
rough, too smooth, shiny--
acrylic?

or oil
oil is-- they say-- so-- oH!
Authentic--
just need a record of the process
the new Mexican paintings
in the small studio, missed
somehow, over shot, fierce
he said, he guessed that was ok

the fortress walls of City, then
those Madrid paintings in the barn
dreaming to shield, Apollo light

need to redo the Lagoon
and Madrid in oil, in New York
get to that old level of intent, between
buying stuff
more and more, stuff

always needing something else
part of the busy--ness
to buy
the hero is, lost, the ideas
we’ve misplaced
the sun, blinds
bring this forward
there-- to the surface

the reason to paint—hero
ha! painting dead! again,
myth in the dreaming, of
the modern
Good idea!

Utopian, works
and then what did he
think-- he had lost it-- this boring
direction,
Idealism, lost Irony

ideas, figures, all shit
now, dragging him down, now
yes, the h-e-r-o? dragging-- scratching
that surface, as the figure
itself, this year's leaf

that’s what he meant
Trying to keep it all in
his old head, Yes, he'd said this
before but when one starts
losing it then one sees the
value of-- why he was doing

this to keep going
Oh! stop complaining, she complained
He'd get through this in fact he
was already on the other side
--Its ninety degrees in here!
now they are talking about global--
it's all too much

well, this American realism
is getting real-- that bad real--
was pretty obvious
not enough to make Picasso
another try at big Idea

there is wave after wave
length into the abstract now
wondering about what figure?
from the other side
But all on the surface, no matter what!
painting began to fail, lost the
truth--

the images, just that

one after another
dies wakes up, just faking it
Yes! fake painting! he meant
no critical path, the woods
thick with Redcoats
of course nothing else is happening

the video behind the curtains
and photography, in all those frames
is just as
empty-- something else
the complaints- resentments, lost something,
in their selves
no one out there,
I mean he had tried--
The ARTIST, THE ONLY CRITIC

still trying
no one there--
all resenting this and that
he tried to figure a way back
out there, that--

dirty word, Earth, World
starting over AGAIN, after the end
clarify all this repetition
to one
the poem within a poem

"I’m out by the ocean of my mind
but I'm in the desert--" it’s the DISTANCE
out there, in the landscape
out here, this figure
what he found inside

he put forth
the abstraction of
maybe it wasn't just the thing itself--
without the other thingy
see now it’s just adolescent

behavior not seeing anything
better but “refused to be bored”
that fate-- the freedom, and power

the rehearsals are over
spot lit on stage, this is it!
its all in here

why he wanted to paint from, here
like the one eyed man said

the slug horn was blown
the red sky
the sun rising
the new king
Saint Chrispin day

We went to see the
New Man in Philadelphia
some missed the whole point
but that was his world and
he was hanging on--
weird one would never get over

seeing the Cézannes
on sheet rock walls, like a, garage
that, bulldozed ART WORLD,
Chelsea, off to another side
streaking
forward though, no stopping
to see
can't stop
to see

so don’t, Drive by gallery
know what this vertical stop--
feeling could be
sinking feeling instead
WOMAN WITH CLOTHES BLOWING--

magnificent, he thought
keep going
he thought about a barn far away
chapel like
He’d hang it on the wall

a shaft of light
the sun going down
THE City
One HUNERT degrees now
just warming up
he wouldn’t mind leaving

to draw a leaf
such a far fetched idea?
the beauty in that order
urban crunch, Man, they are nuts--
“the pressure of reality,” he said

giving way to busy--ness
Palm--
I think he meant Poem
poem at the end
Big Black Glasses fell down his nose

he walked with a hand on his back
aching, all the ridiculous
symptoms of, over the hill
like his friend said, “he was dead
and didn’t even know it”

those islands in the Susquehanna
bleeding through into lagoon
that tree on the old Bonner farm--he drew
one for Mrs. Stanton
out by Kirby’s farm

looking down on Old Lewisberry
from his mother’s grave
STEPPING OFF-- THE BRIDGE!
HEADED WEST
all the places

he drew the map
over and over drew--
in his head
traced it out on the
newspaper’s weather map
another Long Island, Santa B—

somewhere, there must
be--
the ocean gone
If he admitted it
he said, he was sad
Some one said he hadn’t shown
anyone his
paintings for years

so what? he said, he would keep on
could he be wrong? he thought
the 4th came and went
picture surface made an analogy
to the world, a world

it falls and recycles
just busy work
looking like something
though-- here in the studio
a wall

repeating he became another,
a cartoon self somewhat
seeing himself in this balloon
this other-- in fallen--

what they called HERo
in his “as if--” world
made a mark on the wall
being there in the dark studio
the stars
the lack of surface--

then always still coming fore,
the he, the him
making, over hatching
here
here
the will, underlying eternal

WILL--
beauty, it lifted him a moment,
beyond, the desire
he saw it in a dream,
a lotus flower at the Botanical Gardens
it was really truly amazing

his mind repeated like those
arms in a Buddha, art
or Hindi? moment
out of gear
he wasn’t painting--
the backache again

the tiny apartment
waking up stiff he bumped into stuff
like a robot--
HIS ARMS OUTSTRETCHED WIDE
this frustration

the studio
he went back-- painting the
lagoon from some drawings
trying to get beyond this
look, in fashion
to a rougher record

he was back
reading Picasso
and remembering seeing
‘Demoiselles’
as similar to a de Kooning

the similar reductions
women as threatening-- as (THAT)
UNKNOWN
the Universe of Death
that hole IN time

and space
major trope OF
figure and ground as ONE
all together
like Pollock, they probably
would talk about it

there sober, over the table
in the cold kitchen
late at night the stars, revolving round
the branches swinging

( he'd seen the branches in the studio,
high up, in the sky lit window )
swoosh, how to get

to that seriousness
THE comic tragic serious
staking one's life on meaning
some, thing or cycle of being
or just the sun

light-- to dark
up and down
from out here
over there
in here

got something to bring along
dwell there
black stars
blue sky
his eyes

half shut he fell
back on his heels
trying to be there in the half light
hearing the frogs
one makes the painting
what is beyond

just over the horizon
this grey reflecting
big deal big--
he said, “the poem was not
made to stand alone-”

RUIN THE SACRED TRUTHS
back to--EARTH,
WORLD
and then, everyone
was getting sick
the reality upon us

He hELD the painting up against this
this PASSING
MOLISSA dancing, dancing
against the moments
passing, he saw them—
he loved them

the poetry already written
soon he’d be gone
that loner artist
in the room
writing on the bed

sometimes, afraid
he didn’t want to
leave there
he’d been there a long time
making something of that place

“How could he tolerate that,” they asked
the nonsense post-- past-- end of--
art, no art, no self
post-- Fiction, “hell I made it all up”
no imagination

not there
no Katsina shining
through
onslaught of grey
through the barren wind

no color
no black outlined
not there--there
no Insistence of being
the rain
the rain
from this heaven

falls, he said, “from all directions”
green, green
the dream of
“I’m out working in the garden”
Candide said

the catastrophes side--stepped
sunflowers to sky, climbing the beanstalk
dreaming dead and catching butterflies
"I think I can, I think I can"
leave all this behind
or no

maybe the reduction
pack it up, reduce it
fold it all into a manageable size
forget it send a truck back for it
later
if he needed it

He’d almost given up
through the ongoing wind
deeper snow
he sold the car
on Trash and Treasures
light of new morning
he was off again— new adventure
new morning
the journeying through

and now the abstraction
the boon
there was his soul located in
life
swallowed up, gulping after-- form
here! the serpent lived, at the pole

that dream tore at the
ideal of-- image
influenced, it-- to move
figurative painter! Ha
is kind of like a
hardened Christianity--he would
make his own

he added a black line
he would have to go further
his self and what was America?
now
he dreamt he was in heaven
that Fascist reality, GOD, the All ONE
the Modern dream-- all the same

believe it-- or not?
the modern, fallacy
just selling off the whole
god damned dream
the profound

fall into time
that, Yosemite Falls
out there still, distant
faint sound, roar, thunder
he could hear it, the fall, of comet shape
he held the flower, held it up to the sun
as it set once again

--again
flat enamel stripes on aluminum panel
He was out there
“after he was dead,” someone said
some of them kept on

he kicked around in what was left
it hadn’t meant anything, to anyone else
this wasn’t his biography
they didn’t know him, for he
was already dead
but he found some pleasure
in looking over there

in the sun
fearing the stars
relishing their air
and shimmer
dead god being god
dead

there was just no authority
directing history
“there was nothing behind the curtain”
Oz or art
or, nature

maybe, but we had to keep some
interest as
there was nothing --no
he would go too far
This was why he was and kept on

these questions
they were writing all these books
more end of nature
more end of art
Seemed, more, THE END OF YOU
a door shutting

shutting on a time
like 1984
like 2001
He’d have to tackle it all over again
OK, NATURE--
a construct of our mind

everything outside of himself
he thought and then himself included
GOD
well at least that god

older than religion, well
beyond religion but
he declared he loved living in the mystery
he had the necessary humility
and a reasoned

gratefulness of sound being,
temporarily
like when he had that near accident
and it missed--
he didn't want to even think
--his eyes!

way more complexity--
in this world than one could understand
and he tried that out for a while
that complexity, out there
he could be dead and this was

ALL HE KNEW

why reduce it to a word, god
minimalist god?
art, a fundamentalist
art, a funny idea

A JOKE, mans highest aspiration
including the low in that high
as it cycles round again now
of all people and of all the earth
this is not the end

“no man shall see...” it--

of anything, it is a beginning
new world, like old world
so he drew the tree
in pencil, liked that particular
quality that was familiar
to his childhood memory

but he was different and the
line had changed, he noticed
that he was influenced by
the time
by that conversation
with that Indian man--
he had attracted him

he told him of attractors in nature
of a particle split in half
“it’s other half was five miles away”
it was affected by the other
it quivered

or shook with mystery
in that, un--understandable
abstract moment, of the
nothing
that was

Achilles, still stood in black
sun shield shimmer
that was his dream
going back into, the coming back
what boon?
he was off once more
into the wood, in search
of his interior paramour
realizing inner realities
informing the outer hugeness

of Davy Crocket POEM
of what never really was
what was always nearly at an end
this myth in the sun
the falling moments-- gone
he had been there creating against
he vowed, that end, his reality
his getting through, his seeing
the other
the returning

through the spaces
of painting poetry
he was out in the backyard
bum style, reading what was there
lost like, reading

I’m reading reality, he exclaimed
to the bird that flit, and there,
flit, drawing really
he always came home
somewhere to a home

that was changed-- no home
to an Idiot wind of no direction
like a home one can not come home to
there was none

but first order, touch, touch
contact, touch, the world
touch, touch
a certain modernism
over hatched, another whole

this newly created
touch, touch--
they turned away, an excuse to shop
falling out of fashion

too hard, to bare
what could he-- possibly know
any how
besides he was out in Indian country
the Magnificent
the Painting all around

why even write back?
of the drama
of thunder and lightning
led him back to
the elegant black and white

on the desert floor
they looked so amazing those
simple fragments, broken
of some INDIAN intelligence-- and just
out there
swoosh

something had died--
HALF HIS LIVE was gone
he was all grown up
he still searched around
didnt feel grown up
he didn’t feel satisfied yet

staring into that sunset
he painted the doubt
preceding a new start
“the studio-- stupid!”
He saw snow blowing

off the mountain peak the clouds
of snow
--ism! and poof!
no thud-- a design

on a wall, the black paint
stars
talking to himself
looking out there, beyond
everyday ideal, moment
falls, no ideal but ideas,
revolving

ideal world these phases
representing the painter
painting the aspen tree
among the September
leaves

the first snow
blue, clearing
sky, and everything
brand new and crisp
and scuttling away

“create this new, here now
not some future--” left scrawled
on the dining room table
the broken windows, the drapes blowing
brainstorm, beyond

he feared he was losing it
he left something out
running back through
the abstract
thought

leading back to figuration
the other revolving
cycle
through
politic

and power, struggle
of strategies
he made a drawing of some leaves
some moss, a stick, a rock
there was an old poet

he liked, talked of
he saw a mountain, mesa
out here
cloud, a dying tree, pine, aspen eye--
and bobbing, daisy

he couldn't stay the track-- of politic
right there in reach, though--
he would fall asleep, on the rock
which was his pillow
at the heights, his romance--
a dream of depth, revolving

hell, he was out there painting
it is so very satisfying to paint the scene
didn’t need this poetry, second hand
experience but then first thought, well
the revision--there was something
to all that

he arranged all the brushes
squeezed out the paint with his thumb
rocked his chair into the earth
looked yonder
that scratching sound of the bristles
he whistled through dry lips

he said he left the abstraction in the studio
he felt something reached
you know that reaching through one--
through him, well here, he didn't know?
tradition, the conventions learned

the more rational, then Halloween thought
it all has some reality in the saying

he went over, returned
over and over
feeling some Authenticity
some Sincerity, his Irony

he admitted to the nostalgic,
the backward glance, the comfort there
he’d do it again
repeating stories, evolving
-- talking of heaven, here on earth
the moments

he was happy he had made the paintings
the one they made fun of
to ease,
this death in life --
is politics talking

to you--
urban reality bringing him down
another nostalgia for a reality
stealing the show
stealing, that loss

of the physical
to some value in space
he stood his ground
his brush to canvas his stance
his arms out stretched

“this good as belonging to you,” he said
raw material, wind, and
rain,
sun and sight
the walk around the lake

which it all depends upon,
the order
narrative building— falls and
snow clouds

mountain emerged as the wind

swept it all upward
those gold aspen leaves
were amazing
that poof!
the yellow in blue

and white snow covered peak
still some sunflowers,
the grey trunks
with eyes--
leading one

into mystery
blinking, bobbing
eyes
a wink--ing
a rustling

in the woods
something about coming
to the place and it not being
the place, anymore
Jack was back in the city, thinking
about it all, just sitting in the studio
little resolution here
he thought he always realized

he came so little distance
for all the traveling
saying these things over and over
to know it, it evolves
ever so slightly-- falls,
it turns,

he meant
new meaning
what is that new thing
just unknown-- as yet?
yes, he arrived, the place is strange -er
a memory of a distant holler—

looking now and instead of his divided self
he saw-- just an old-- man
that’s something changed now
this may be all he knew
he would be next,

he says it’s all about style
then he talked about brushing
out the paint and,
seems-- empty is that all
Pose-- then we know, about empty

meaning
against this annihilation
that smooth blending
wet into wet, what he loved too
a tree's bark, a face shape,

that ocean's
ripple
particular light
along a shore
like clam’s necklace? he painted
he liked that smooth paint into
brushed paint
drawing the two together

the sea and mocking bird
stars
sprig of lilac
forever rocking
incessant death, rocking

death, and whispering
what he knew he couldn’t say
that gulping mystery seemed to
swallow him up
what ever seemed to arrive
aren’t we like these ideas?

turning, turning,
in the same wind
beside the same blare, of the same
sunset, gone
into dark landscape
the space, revolving
in the thousands of miles

and hours of speed, of solar wind
who lasts? no man-- the tradition
who is that, collective
large red man reading
woman rocking--
sun and stars

what he knew
reducing to abstraction of black
and white, exchanging heat
to change, on, off, the on, off
revolving energy,

the direction of the world
the cycling of each day
each life, each idea
all Indian’s swastika motion

like some decorative surface
but describing, the
secret knowledge
right there intelligence! out there!
in the pieces, broken

I never really sat
there, wondering
what to make--
the next, kept emerging
out of the other--
in streams and rivulets

of possibility, following like
this poem or mind
repeating and changing
I had wanted to paint that gurggling
brook
at Maroon Belles or
Waterfall,

I thought I’d hike to
then, never did
HE was thinking
how HE could be dead
I guess it was
a starting out anew

a metal barn, HE thought

you just can’t remember
how beautiful it is here
it’s all HE needED tonight
no cars on the highway
one turning off onto the dirt--

high angel wing cloud
getting lovely
the mind rustling
the solemn reverence for
the being, here, now--

he wrote
that, he could so easily be
over there
that soon forgotten moon
up there

after the flame gold trees
below feel pushed along or
is it that Black Mountain?
grey wisp--
yellowed orb, lone tree
sea of sage

darkening blue flicker, of
the last bird
no sound at all,
he just sat there
farewell, the silent place

he didn’t know if he was coming or going--
the black mountain, he loved
always there
he was as big as all that tonight
and a drawing won’t do

he was driving his new car
back, remembering
but he only made it to Albuquerque
making coffee in the Motel 6
a still life of sorts, he thought

he took a picture
in the mirrored room
shaving cream and coffee
the sacred scene was fading --
the speed of morning
commuter traffic

what was oldest and best
covered over like wall paper
the southern mountain, was different
somehow flavored by old Mexico
driving south, into the older morning sun

the pastel colored thunderheads
like old Indian blanket
that creosote
smell of south
where still a few cranes

where a coyote-- sneaking around
where the birds, there
of heaven winter
at Bosque del Apache
the shuttle like sound as

they turned high up
remembering sound with
Buddha chant, through Trinity site
poignant juxtapositions--
or was he to allow you that--

these mountains turn, tortured
into that dark black, emptiness, of
further Mexico
now littered with light
well, he took this opportunity

just to be, to be here
he was headed to Marfa
but didn’t have the patience
to wait around
til the afternoon,
he’d been looking

looking, all his life, seemed strange
he didn't want to be the tourist,
at the moment
just seemed less--

onward, his fancy drew him-- to that big
Bend Park, yes, ahead! He
was for some reason thinking
of Fra Angelica, though, of

an Orange square, left back there--
he’d been thinking
of that narrative marching
around below, like on that altarpiece--

he drove into the park at dark
woke up to wild turkeys

poking around
old Mexico was right across
the little grande river,
he got packed up and on the way
he felt that nervous feeling,
and thought-- well, he’d come back

some day-- above a rise on the road
though, there rose the most amazing
display of blue mountains
one range after ragged
other,

with out thinking he was

unpacking to paint, he spent
the rest of the day, not stopping
from place to place, as the sun
turned round
he painted into evening

again, now looking for a campsite
coming upon one, strange
shadows and rustling sounds
he still made out the mountains like
Chinese formations

in the poems or scroll
there on the border
not sure how many people
have even seen them
but they were so amazing

he was still painting as the thunderstorm
tore through and the terrific
lightning
he painted the ocotillo
and he painted
negative spaces

back to formal object ness,
Jack was back in the car
the Judd--ville, weariness, he’d passed up
for his escapade
he’d get back to that later

Pretty Horses was on the CD player
and Langtry was coming up
“going to Laaang-treee”
he was well off into Texas now, crossing
bleak territory

it was a back and forth and
maybe some religion of nature and
art, lucky for the moment
he was going to visit the Rothko Chapel--
well
that changed things
it was there along the road he'd

been there before
on another pilgrimage,
how many times, now and
he was able to gauge
his changing feelings

from awe, to seeing-- through it
all, he thought, but still
something lingered
beyond, tourist
passing

that purple stain, there was
some origin here
he remembered, Christophe’s, Newman,
painting, NOW
the blue palm, POEM and

the “old woman from down in Mexico” that
deeper deep
of unknown-- of Mexico
down there across that tiny river
full moon over
minor key

the green and purple night
of Rio Grande Nocturne, just now
and that Blue Square,
the “Nature had no
need of aid,”

she was the universe"
a lot for him, started here.

coming through to Guadalajara
in 1979-- chief blankets--
escaping fire

that other New-- man, Ulysses
painting with his birth date
scrawled at bottom, 1952
New man, the yes!
his journey feeling, far a field

in Fashion Model-- ha!

Louisiana, da dump, da dump
of the bayou road woke him
da dump-- the green,
green, green humid, flatland
swamp and river water

all shimmer in sun setting light
more rush hour? egrets flee--
even here driving
nature just there--
everyone rushing by

these mosquitoes must be dangerous
by now--
big red sun blues,
vulture on a pole,
same violet night,
the apogee--

of green, rotted and moldy
rusting and dripping
like he repeated, all red
in sunset
this embarrassment of riches

still saying although he needed
to weave, and spin from place
to hidden place
of marginal occupants
The Other Florida!

the beach ball sun ad, proclaimed
then, in humid grey sinking
into aqua emerald
exaggeratedly green
after desert mind

through the tangle, now of
hotel restaurant, gas station,
wires and signs
the contemporary aesthetic
of jumbled superstructure

to see beyond on tip toe
toc tic toe toc
He thought-- IT’S THE PAINT
like it looks, like it’s meant
die there, die here

be in that moment
we face it or we don't
lost
for we know it was the spirit
that we sought
adventures and spaces

evaporating
there is now left
just what there is to do
the sacred thing
well, what do you think?

he meant by sacred--
breaking, ruining-- these
holy findings
with his own
religion of reality

or forgo--
the wooden religion call it, a
creating
the now, being there
from here

he pointed to his chest
to the many gods, twirling in thought
interchanging natural facts
becoming spirit and metaphor
making an inside

pointing or mirroring
out there
what they refused
didn’t see
a line of winter and shape

of summer height
leaves revolve in what color
turn--ing down
she’s out there-- by the shore
by the genius--

by the sea
the season and light, change--
the all death
the mythic idea
the idea striped

destination, rising
climbing to height
the view from here
this other world, he exclaimed
as Art

out there changing, a
snaking at the pole
waving free
the real me, he called that
“he loved that

damned ole rodeo--
is going out to Californ-i-A
he fell for that, all behind him now
the third year of the new
century was arriving--
the stars, ahead

and in the background,
the continuance
so, back to the studio,
he said flatly
there was no recourse

yes, Paul was gone
Odysseus was back
it all was changed
everyone squabbling
over the estate

He had gone west in 1970
to the sea, he went
west in 1980 to California
He went west in ninety--
to Yosemite and further, still

then west to New Mexico in the first
year of the new century
to the desert.
everything
approaching

Art,
the heightening, our loss--
that Thanksgiving holiday
he remembered--
He had started, began to paint
Woman with Clothes

Blowing in the Wind
that felt, Epic, his life
his winters work was begun
white canvases staring out
Aspen image jockeying for order

September 11th percolating through
and still--l, or silent
he’d missed a vital part of
what had come of New York
psyche

he asked his friends and he
got a “just like TV," answer
he just saw these two aspen out the window
he saw the TV
he saw everything falling

every which way
every thing in disbelief
no one could, understand
everything was all cleaned up
those tourists all around

nothing like the City anymore
whole cities now within
this city where he'd never even been
kept going with out-- made
it easier to leave

he wrote a poem, WROTE
ALL ONE
that was '99, in New Mexico
he saw the light flowing across
the kitchen table,
all quiet as the goldfinches
bobbed noiselessly
on the goldenrod
it was, 2000 the end of the end
we were still here

any one wondered as to how
the images continued and alternated
the narrative rambling
to the symbol height, the ordered
abstract direction winding round
renewed, then investigated

sacred revolving
down to profane
from that eternal and universal
term, to every day
sight, the flower there

now in the SUN, increased
that sublime, come down
he was down and out, hitching
on Road Movie
on desert washboard

all this mixed up it was the poem
on through past and future
like tragic and comic and winter
extremes
on making art like

City and Country, reading
naked in the studio's
loft bed
up against the ceiling,
private moments into universal
wrote it all on the rumbling train
a surface, in that lost thought

POP!
some strange religion
of his own
vibrant light, reflecting
between skitter and hop

here we go
between sun and flower
hero heightened
and clouds
and leaves the waves

hero sun and sun smeared villa
the red walls, dream in stars
bird flies across the floor
there then hi up--
Silhouette

“don’t really want to go through
this all again, all the frustration
of the move--”
relieved by that repetitious cycling
at second thought--

cleared the head
a kind of, what the Jews were
doing on the train
mumbling, following fingers
tracing, reading over—

well, he is kind of free again
at this bottom
here at the end
I think he felt some beginning
the color to black and—

white to zip
to diamonded reality
of there, there
harlequin reality
red and yellow spirit

jump cut
this to that, inter
text
jammed to another
obvious juxtaposition
gives way

to salon style hanging of
multiple style
nothing true but
this to that, here in this
fiction of two

all the paintings
were stacked against the wall
then, he got up, started
to see-- something
maybe happening, there

he took some photos
he made some drawings
realizing a different subject
between things
in this different reality




Part Two

don’t think he named it yet
it was in the subway drawings
already going through the years
images making that poem
thought now it was a little

more complex and had a reality
of the studio, night studio added
all the paintings remembered
gave them a more abstract quality

so he was finishing off

the aspen paintings--
the lagoon depth
and needed to strengthen the
surface, he felt
of the Madrid work by painting
once again

they were there, now
kind of, then saw,
he was painting it all together
and then the western
sunflower paintings
seemed still disparate

and there he saw
he wanted to see, still
the combinations
made in the shuffling
of the stack

the hi and low
winter to sun to sunset
color to blue sky
naturalistic-- in STRANGER
color

made that other flavor
and then kept wanting
to put it all together
then “that Nature thing”
he said-- "he would try to speak for it"

hadn’t just gone and become
a “western cowboy
artist--”
that early modernism attracted him
before it was consumed

before it lost it's nature to
the conventions
by now no one would house
these ideas
blocked from sight, lost to any real
any new depth
or possibility of
he said, way long ago, "the whole

Art World needed to take
off and refresh itself" in
the going back, words

were tricky, but forward
sounds just like weird
speak, "BACK TO NATURE,"
there he said it
that archetypal cliché, jump

into the ocean of
Death, the distance
renewing, to be reborn
so he suffers
he was there

he saw all this, he painted
out those adventures
out there, with his easel and palette
we seemed to be
misunderstood-- the out there

carrying on
even he, thought sometimes
it looked like calendar art, he had seen
he went on taking photos
but he understood,

painting beyond all that
it gave to him his life physically, real
lived experience--
from the beginning, we all agreed
it was no good
that photo realism was making

the rounds once again
that abstraction wrestled
from that figuration
was the goal and the
photographic grain was just

innocuous, a dilettante fleet--
moment, drifting away
never there, or there

never like a painting, really THERE
ah, this is the wrong tack--
he didn’t want to complain, he
found it in
himself and does,
here, now
just writing this -- too tired-- now
to paint but will in the

morning, will make that shape
more implicit, nail it down
to hold that shape
show you what I mean--
SEE?
color it over
there!

it all has turned to a
decorative, though, we forgot
mean-- he’s just
remembering
he is no better

he was of the time--
he still searched around
but is starving
He’s going to grab
that old bone!
it was hard
he knew how
wasn't any beginner

how did we lose that nature?
well, we threw it away
cultural snobbery of sorts
separating critics
he did see the value

of some elite, separation--
beside, the abstract for itself
was exciting
exciting as color had been for itself!
we take for granted, now, they thought
they’d go blind, were called
wild beasts
as nature fell away

art for the sake of art
the autonomy of art
understanding color, form
for itself
not as the referent, to nature

OK, we understand that,
lets put it back, before it's gone
the nature-- we just have to
the ground is crumbling
beneath us,

he said he just
saw this guy on television
explaining how there really was
plenty of forest,
He looked at her--

Was this guy for real?
He had just been telling her of
how awful it was to bomb all those
EMPTY mountains, in AFGANiSTAN
He meant what about--

all the lizards, the tiny blue bell,

flowers the, he meant
the shadows they threw--
what about that hawk up there circling?
he said, he thought we
could make some inroad

some understanding
to an Environmentalism?
it is just right, isn’t it
Are we so stupid
so arrogant?

to think there are two sides, here
Hey YOU, put back that tree!
and flower--
and bird, singing
we can figure a new

way, new day
“a rustling in the woods”
the old Jewish scholar
the poets
following the seasons

the quest
towards
death making beauty
the poem became, the Knowing
became then the, religion--

Knock Knock, any body home? now
arguing about dinosaurs--
in grade school--
that Gregory, was singing--
along-- stung— laughing,
hurting, the injustice--

a mysticism in
between, he guessed
and wisdom in known
rational flat reality
form, imagination again
could take lead,
he thought

yes, he could keep on
the black and white
design, like pictograph
graffiti eating away at foundations
inward thoughts

but physical, black
and white, FLAT-- paint!
the grey, grey
the value, was weak,
our apartment--
urban reality, falling back
value, like pressure--
realism, UGH!
the ebb and flow of OCEanic

wrung out, Myth
and in the absence
--God, remember an older--
in anything
from the news
to hero in, depth

but then there is no way out
the diversions are meaningless
after his escape
to adventure, out there
feeling alive

of physical being,
Out There
this urban reality was running out for
Jack Frost
Spaghetti--O's

splashed on walls, shadowy--
death throes of painting
photo-- no won't go there--
flickering, effervescing
as good seasons, fleet

so what’s better

right? no God but DEATH
controlling
fate, he dies either way—
social constructs are invisible--
the ways, GOD,
as well--
cannot escape
Achilles rage

at not being, GOD
or DEAD, RAGE,
but its all in the doings
and complications
and weavings
that hold our interest,

they that suffice
NEW AND AGAIN
and did and will
what ever garden, left
but there was no RIGOR, out there
in nature, that was the problem

this was ART, we were talking

but, never getting near
from a snap shot tourist
“the new, the new” he proclaimed
looking his age, big smile
now! the mountain

stream tumbles
GREY leaves, jimble and jump
scatter, as before
the clouds pass, pass--
sliding over the top

all the poems
inner forms, repeated
over and over in HIS notebook
cartoon shapes tumbling
It starts with the SUN!
identifies the HERO!

metaphor of a blossom
that leafy pink, he saw
goes through season, and
geographic direction, south
or west or
north

back east, SUN heightens
and loses moment,
dying
creates the BEAUTY, we seek
to keep from, the clouds
the leaves

the waves,
that poet’s space
the Giotto blue,
the Villa red
old and tattered
poop in poverty,
rich in splattered
sun,

the dreamed of—

clouds, puff puff
SHADOWS, on Alpine Mountain
deep blue sky
it would arrive again, even
as the wind grew cold

grabbing his coat around his throat
HE WAS IN THAT movie
the thread, why, how,
have we lost
even that?, we where up in the Asian wing
we loved that, art distant enough

we could see
for itself, like that Anasazi shard
in the dirt, the recognizable intelligence
he lectured, that reversal
of positive and negative is

the mystery or spirit
what seems alive
the irreconcilable
he carried it around--
in his pocket
the goldener nude,
was looking back
from another time,
we felt her nakedness, her
cultural moment, Mao moment
what ever belongs to this
collective, soul?

these milions and millions of swimming
people,

IT drops away, in this pressure for,
this competition for
BU--ULLY--for--
Immediate is-- All--

just wipe it out
here this BLACK PAINT SCRIBBLE
wipe it out
orange paint, BIBBLE
wait this is some STRANGE heightening

so, one is cynical
skeptical
hopeful pose--
EASE at world weary--
ness-- pose, no time for that

though, he was still untired,
he was still searching
nosing around
still seeming good stuff
around
his own ideas kept him on
going on

He was OK

each day reading on the F train
he was thumbing a Jewish book
all underlined now
mysticism as poetry, it read
inner reality, were the forms of
nature reflected into a being
being, all revolving
some total

feeling
seeing this!

idea of ONE
but falls, into opposite
still he couldn't figure
how it seemed, the reality was there
HE
painted all this, simple

painted up to-- and all around
when all of a sudden
THE PAINTINGS would all just finish
themselves one by one
done! finished!
their surfaces could take no more

IT WASN'T MAGIC, to hold it up--
life to the sky
the trophy
life itself
OR WAS it?
the compounding metaphor

flower in the sun
never tiring, blue
staring back
he was painting that lagoon, again
that dreaming place, it was
indifferent, YES
the floating paint, black and white

bands of color,
stripes making a surface
the room to breathe and daydream
the dramatic to tragic
he needed some stars, he thought
untitled, in the stars, maybe--

Jack Frost never thought
he’d get this far,
to see them all stacked up
like playing cards
a Parcheesi game
of life, Joker sticking out behind
line of Fashion Model standing there

but Johnny just liked that line --
stars above broken leaves
the sunset diamonds
and aspen eye
everything together-- sunflower

seeds dribbling behind, striped
couldn’t do this before
Goya image all over hatched
and Sunflower,
CRISPEN HERO!

adds up--"and the snow came down,
and covered up poetry"
“make drawings of the wall,” he said
his supreme fiction
the real content
he saw it from the first

flat footed there

reality,

well, his extreme invention
from dark to light,

the light
each day,

the light the

hero from the east

sun comes up
the sun goes down

this natural fact
forms our, MY spirit

seemed,
we were zipping past
looking back on, ideas
half formed thrown aside for a new--

ONWARD!
voyaging poet,
through SPLASHING WAVE

SUPREME FICTION,
ADAM
in the morning
starting off
the adventure into art,

the experience, in the pokeweed
abstracted TO HEIGHT, what was
seen
falling back around
through, THE stars,
STARS

he was connecting all these new paintings
back around
these new walls
are exciting, HE SQUINTED at first
he was making a picture of the whole

the form of the world,
he was happy he had seen, the
fictions together, revolving
all along with the breaking
of this super man,
at hand--

the rending apart
he said
the SPARagmos, he read
was THIS-- is LIFE!

“the crack is how the light
gets through”--someone
said, moving underground
another way to say it,
he rambled to and fro
what did one wear

in this UNDERGrounD?
when every one has
on your IDENTITY-- when
New Jersey is
your backyard, now--
he pondered his old torn
CLOTHES

its all about not caring, really
that distance that puts one out
there, on the FASHION--
fringe,
outside--R
THERE--
FEELS BETTER HERE
no one could make a monkey out of him

"USE ME UP!"
like he said,
how much degradation
can one take?
thIS earth’s injury

business pressing on
greed, OF THE EIGHTIES
out in the open,
DRIVING IN
MACHO car--
my teeth hurt

here in the pigeon hole
THIS small --a bit part

for beans
bouquet of artists---ohh--urd--awh-- ah
repetitions
denial of death
culture falls like the best

of, cant even go back
and check that blue
caught between the movies
and an
old poem

that suffices, back in the library
asleep, through the years, revolving
stars turn dipper dipping
all forward motion, it seems
can't step into the river twice

but if one ran far and fast
enough ahead one could
see it coming
his, dreams in white shapes
he’d seen before
in deep space

reaching out and taking it
for mine
those dreams far away
those paintings-- dead
those sun flowers--
those, something over
the western mountain
the rainbow--
bending

he was on track again
in the studio
that was all that mattered
he was adding paintings
to the pile that yielded--
he repeated, but never repeated

these imageS, like yesterday
today, so that they--
embedded-- he drew
automatic like
became his soul’s world

knew them by heart-- he wasn’t sure
if the corny, clichés
sounded like archetypes
his own,
hardened, images
OF CHURCH
well, he knew he had to go on

bending them to new shape
those painted in Madrid
they evolved into
the distant, sun
maybe too exuberant
falling in flame
untitled:
in the stars

the ship in the night
massive, dark
silent slivering, that Greek
severity of line
history's weight
of wrong--
Short shank--
was light weight

even
a little carried away--
prone to, to become
well, transported!
spirited away
what was!

happy he did
he would get through the night
morning always came
he always felt like going on
he supposed,

he could not escape
diverted by art
Pin Ball, Pack Man
chomping time
checking all the corners

he thought he’d be gone too, soon--
like you, he nodded, remember
me and try and think
of how we felt, we were
friends

at that moment
of height!

his life’s work, he was realizing it
wasn’t going to save anything
besides himself
or—
the belief failed

what stays, is this graffiti
tearing, at, deterioration of
and rebuilding,
there! never ending static
anything, this to that
formal structures
THIS TO THAT

COVERING the wall
salon of ideas
this to that, structure of fiction
hiking along
he looked up, AHA!

he looked down, remembered
his boot sole
the studio, on to the--
a mind
drawn to physical

idea as event
pictured in monument
mickered and mocked
celebrated in prayer flags
blown, THE HORN BLARE,

bong clash
of cymbal, bird fly—scattering,
swoop
down
through continuance

controlled torture OF
modern PIN POINTED
terror, WAR
one needs this
dream--

dreamed, she was a knight
In SHINING armor
looking somewhere for a King
stuka, stuka, dive--
dive

we die, we die
the painting back there
tempers the scene
a GAUDY SUNFLOWER
now having said it
it seemed maybe he could

have been more, remained elevated
not stooped to the side
the moment of knife thrust and
twisting, it was the anger
of Hamlet,

Gregory, thought
bedraggled but bright
context of this to that
a text, a shield
a shield,

he was ONCE AGAIN
mired in the opposite
arrangements in minor key
MAJOR KEY
TO decorating height
flags blow
wind clouds

but life is good
HE WENT on
heaven, THIS earth
hell, just gone BYe its
all just
JACK
wondered here
the fiction, to suffice
the injustice
that emotion
resenting issue
he saw in movies

he saw in the news
he saw injustice
but he wouldn't write it
here? the jails, wars, racisms,
all plural,

people are plain
and mean
and are mean, back
some one was mean
the bored,

the powerless
I guess, yes he guessed
its all in education
"no I won't go on," he BELLOWED
in pain

formalism--?
and produced taste
and others said-- Fascism
losing, maybe you just awoke
but then that was just--

he was just MUTTERing to himself
that poem, went on like that
the
pressures infringing upon
THE poem
maybe he should JUST

put his poem in a drawer, she said
he was surprised she had other
interests in mind, he was so LOFTY
he thought

still what he cared for was the shape
he liked all the Anasazi striping

the gods themselves, in Indian STEP
shape, of her breast
all dissolved into nature
FORM FOR FORM, no good
no bad

indifferent, in cycle
poor Jack, now, BEGAN TO rant
but before HE WAS done
JUST one more thing he railed
THAT SUBURBAN God damned--

Suburban, good news!

AT TIMES HE THOUGHT IT TOO MUCH
THIS loss of the deep--
he dove to
which was his purpose

but then the skimming along--
in the waves, as the wind calmed
the wide turn--
this MAJOR resentment
to live, we DIE

we had to take responsibility
for the TREE
that was the bottom line
it was ours to KEEP
OURS!

THE TREE IS LIKE THE TREE!

he wrote to get through
he had no sonnet form
he was getting tired
up there in the library
he had his wall

HIS wailing wall
put up each year, it failed--
but he somehow still
continued to see some
possibility
some opening

in the cracked bowl, a hole
toward escape
the 4th or 5th WORLD,
he’d take
it apart, AGAIN

he always wanted
to make HIS fresco in an
abandoned building
out in space
he used to photograph

like sculpture, John said
like a head, he thought
Architectural dreaming STRUCTURE
inside, the fresco paintings--
high hued colors

he thought it was there still
someone, had sprayed, Free HUEY--
now all faded, chipped, and broken
out there in the blue sky
wind whipping

sierra snow still beyond,
those daisies were waving
the red Pompeii like reality
heightened to diamond
from sun-- flower, blue

clouds puffing to thunderhead
in eternal height tinged
turning to evening
slate and yellowing to stars
purpling and the black dome closing

round dipper star
heaven lit
star, figure representing whole
that's it--
at that moment

that was gone-- saying that’s it!
all transparent, It was right there
at the surface
the clear outlined
shape, that thing itself
at the moment, of loss
of weakening
having seen

the despair,

something of height put together
AGAIN, some organizing principle
it all falls into place
maybe he should never
have gotten out this far

but could he help it? just WAS
all the parts
like all the stars in the head
the chaotic, into fictions to
over see, out of order--

it gets complicated
what ideology? exactly did you
mean, your-- self!
how could he possibly

JUST see, ABSTRACTLY-- in the process
of the studio--
she was a exhibiting, just a wee bit of
wishful thinking--
but he knew what she meant
wondered where she was

coming from anyhow,
where she had been her-- self?

that Birds of America
IDEA-- was still, out there
thoughts all dressed up
and striped, evolving
having decorative effect
the story flying through, at
right moment, then gone--
BIG BIRD flying through
his story

David’s small birds
repeating, it all, becoming more
and again through
the repetition
ritual was his religion
here, in the studio
any home he had
was here, he chanted--
the square DEIFIC

he drew the distance there
this head floating
in the landscape

this landscape of thought, floating
his drifting ideas
through shells spiraling

through clouds, leaves
stain of ink drip
blotch of color, bleeding
the waves
the wind-- it blEW, it all changeD

the moments vanishing
all the poetry through
new combinations now meeting
the old-- become Art in
a big smear of paint
the ruined truth at his feet

he looked into
the wind, returned
and he saw the future
continuing
one continues
he thought he’d reached a limit
of his vocabulary
and thought

this repetition
that is ME, he thought
the limit, in that death, HE!
I’ll make something
out of it all, determined--
that tree in the mind

that center of the earth
that nature out there
the object
of many
realites sought, in that Tree

out there he said his mother,
called it the old rugged cross
all that she left
he was near the end
he just wanted to toss
It all, never

got close
repeated

what he mimicked
from elsewhere
no—he thought he was getting there
somewhere
like he said to me

here and there
can’t name it
its there
the Genius
is in the mountain

or under it, the land
the vision it offers of breath
and the whole cycle, they thought once of
what was America
and what it reflected upon the figure
that American place
that snow blowing
up there
that orange Square
ETERNAL SHAPE
Sacred height

THE repeating epiphany
and falling,
sink— the blare of horn, that
red sky repeating

to talk of gravity
here is ennui
the blasting television
the hidden moments, a glimpse
this high moment into low


profane reaching
to sacred moment
recreating this universe over
and over, again
keeps one glued, there

not to become DOG painter
to illustrate suburban fluff
magpie chatter
there in the Laundromat
winter moments

the sneakers banging around
the dryer to spring
the saints relics all neatly folded
his life, he muttered
the cracked painting

some scene
with the butterfly net pursuing
the beauty, the path--
beauty on the right
a tree on the left

the mountain ahead
the sun
ascending
to height--
the beauty
you get the idea, right--

the stars, repeating
revolving through
and down
he was back at the
supermarket checkout
flipping thru calendar pictures
the fashion magazines,

Cowboy Life,
he was talking to himself

I mean, he started to say--
Well, it went on
that was the poem
meaning how it went, it
was like
spots of time

all lined up
reflected in tranquility
how to turn it to the inside
there an eternal hum like resonance
being here

that always new
new, he had to throw aside
it was all dead ends
he just forgot it all

the next morning, in the oatmeal
that thought-- streaked
across the sky
fell to earth
the boredom dissipated

he was talking about gravity
the seasons coming round
there was the physical
proof, science
everyone is reading, Evolution
Darwin they said got it right

one sees
red and yellow diamonds
breaking into black and white
a crumbling,
this fallen state is history

fall into history
out of the symbolic
the symbolic, Orange height
back into a descriptive history
he was interested

in the descriptive journalism
his friend described, like Whitman
Jack wasn’t so sure, but then?
he insisted
and that insistence
made a surface, that heightened--
some idea-- and it repeated
to hardening-- Hmmm?

that was it! it had to crumble
to regenerate and evolve
the swerve
the word
abstracted

out of the sea
to a form
that represents
and crashes on the beach--
something beyond

he liked this idea about sacred time
repeating was eternal, like
on the river, creating
"out of death," he murmured
he enjoyed the busy time

he liked the running around, like anyone
through the fallen world
constantly mending, the way
not to fall through
now he repeated

it to his friends
the color was the outer
the black and white, went back
seemed the inner space
but the black and white

the world also has it's
outer directions
they could be like feelings
moving towards inner
through the purple air
struggling

to be free in resolved space
something behind but
coming forward, too!
when it felt all connected he felt the
COMING forward

the clap of hands THE TRUTH
he felt the, THERE!
it was the spot
in time, the stop
THAT LASTED

the red and yellow shield, the--
most people just feel this or not
he shrugged his sholders,
THE STAYING POWER of--
but he remembered
how he had learned it

seemed it was in the language,
it seemed the structure of his mind,
change and evolution
death, life
back and forth, this

keeps evolving
he didn't want it to get old
and rot
like the squash, the POET described
sprayed with frost

he like the tumbling effect
nature of it all
being in the city
in the center of thought
deeply planted

in this different garden
not that aimless type, he was yelling
to GET OUT
OF THE WAY, you tourist!
he didn’t think, he could paint

them any better
Jack needed to back off
not to finish them off
he wondered if this height
of finish

would be prelude to
Road Movie, and-- fall
to, jump cut
and crop
blow up

a funny irony
distance from nature, he complained of--
what was really,
going on? REVOLVING CYCLE
running through,
here it came



PART THREE

the overlapping
out of order, stuff
blocking the landscape
he saw it
in the contemporary

squares of signs
the ovals, the triangles, lines drooping
from poles, drawing, he thought
THIS was ALL in the way
he didn’t want to paint it--

didn't seem to belong
to the imaginations
ordering, but then the frame,
the square, the crop
broken shape, of formal ARGUMENT

He couldn't figure, seemed pressured,
the MODERN, he would admit
sliced through
a point of view--
what we might want
to see

this to that
obscuring blank
in our own eye
but death, that blank
revealing

larger whole
all the broken --curving
parts
outside of view
yes, OH MY!

to live in eternal time--
THE TREE UP THERE
on the mountain--
he would think about
that on the F train
eternal art repeated
some essay doomed

Orange square over THE
top
of everything
obscuring everything
blocking, everything out
yet, strangely revealing

he said, the crows
outside, calling--
its October and the cool
signals the Autumn,
he would speak

with the authority of knowing
Knowledge, seemed to be
of --
wisdom a realization of
limitation

beauty, no doubt
Damn--
this is sloppy but then
like flung paint
how he loved

the leavings of
the paint, the abstraction
or other reality
of it –
keep to that surface
he remembered that leaf emerging
from a final surface
alive before--

it became wooden
DECORATION twirling down
two squares
pegged it there
he never made that painting

kept on with the stripes
what he felt he owned
had some authority in
being the author of
acting out his own authority
and rigor
--giving it right to exist

they’re all silent, in
the piles and stacks
house and universe,
hidden beneath, under
a lagoon like stripe

that blue figure, was stark
fierce, THAT WORD
...like the leaves themselves.
SURPRISE
those sunset colors
into violet, then GREEN
packed them up

into his head each
night as he fell
to sleep through the stars
they led him
unloading them again on

the train rumbling
in the little drawings
repeating and
afraid he was going
to wear them
out, in their goings over

Well, Back to the Studio, he said
he had to get back, to it
he was telling me, he said
he'd been out there
looking for refreshment
for his art, and now
he was back, back to the workings
in the studio
the real work was
answers are in the work

the process, in his head
"all there is"
this poem is part of
that inside, of the work
speaking from there

sitting there in the library
that’s better
but he was still far away
he'd know when he was back on it
like the old days

in the performance
He was talking to Ricardo
about poetry, it was intense like Allen,
We're talkin' poetry here--
he repeated a formal

rhetoric, a thing itself that
drove the relationship, it
communicated itself
art to art, the physical thing
as critical object!

one just can’t have that conversation
in the ATM line
only in Heaven, that surface
It only gets close
he'd have only this chance and

he said he'd die trying
his life
was overwhelming
he needed to live
in there, in there

the studio! stupid
he was talking about
he was angry over her
telling him that
all that mattered,

the nerve of her!
telling him the truth, he thought
all his self consciousness
So Much TALK
all his ordering

she called Ideology
he wasn’t sure
but it led him back
to look, the studio
you see he was a painter

"its all about the paint"
we work with all these extremes
then you have some meaning
the two and the one
the whirlwind

where they meet
be brave then--in the studio
he sat there writing
he sat there drawing him, writing
he sat there writing

some communication, obliquely
destroying and recreating cosmos
the hierOphony
revealing sacred illumination
infinite over and over

"this descriptive world to
trope," He thought

inward, through mythic
road
then dazzlingly! present
world making
formlessness, to

the returning
violence
re--
birthing, of
new worlds cycling

wheels and wheels
circles of hell and earth
and extension to heaven
he shivered, he heard a rustling
there in the aspen woods

as he painted
that light--
he didn't often talk of that kind
of light on the trees
the yellow gold,

shimmer shake
a shiver
daimonic eruption
allegory of otherness
slipping through

in transparent mirror
the cycles
showing each
in turn, the nothing--
arriving to a surface

reality represented
THERE! THE REALITY
Here, feel it, the older
god, this recognition--
ah ha!

the bird flutters and lights
upon a branch there—

the god is
Dionysian release
light flicker

divine speech, being gripped
by new man
repeating
I’m in this vertical world
alive to night of symbols
shamanic leadings

that moment we knew
then fell from
the carnival
at the end, opening
on eternal time

through unconscious repetition through
archetype
he was creating his own sacred
time
he guessed it would all be tossed
soon enough

phase of the moon
eternal merging
into a mobile--?
mobile home, door banging
they were desert nomads

living in the hot dirt
wind blowing steady, looking out
from cool straw concrete
he was dreaming of interior space
of this studio return

colors of grey, white, and tan
a shadowed porch view
garden walkway
his, Orange Square contained there
a temple to that moment seen

Yodeling at this mountain height
through abstract gods
beyond communication
commemorating
his ship was turning

and the winter melting and gone
he was arriving
it looked like another war
couldn’t escape this politic
like the bad old 70’s again somehow

trying to paint through it all
the black is coming on
the Studio mind--
with this big hero painting
within modernist architecture

of considered-- walls!
its spring again!
drawn from the imagination
trace it over
a romantic line, trace

image of an image
then that different, exactness
ROMANTIC TRUTH is that it?
what of a blue canvas with
a orange square --forgot that

some drawing in the blue—
deeper, to make a space
embarrassing to be an American—
these gas guzzling cars and
people that make such

waste and extravagance
a show of glitter
one of those Hummer cars just about
ran him over in the parking lot
of the organic market over there

Hearts Delight or something like that
all so nice and FUCking friendly, he thought
that trade center as a back drop
its all so disappointing
its all so big

he felt lost in it,
sure they were comfortable enough
now in his own space
navigating his own world view
the non existent citizen

suburban and corporate
that hero was broken
no need to be embarrassed
at this rate
the sun was broken too

in the indifferent sky
that he loved
all the aspen eyes
just stare
the smoking plume

blown to blank
but it's spring and it continues
winter's work finishing,
the fragmentation
going round, overlays

and juxtaposition
irrational or heightening
he was trying to mean-
or maybe present some
strange flavor, different sight

strange
strange flower
deepening or expanding
breathing
this to that, irrational

groupings, a surrealism
in dream space, wasn't
the end all, but a spice of sort
new thing, might emerge
did we do anything?

us Eighties artists
add an image to abstract
expressionism, he thought
and added a
description and height

of abstraction to it all
there, no one saw?
it was fine he was going on--
doing this
this rhetorical cycle

will never end, at least
he wouldn't see it
end, and the painting
continues
and they pile up,

he was in the middle
of not knowing and
having the strength to stay
there was no declaration of Victor
no celebration

here in the work, some schedule
jump cut to studio,
banging--ing, the framing
studio WALL
red WALL paintings tumbling

in swastika like Indian fashion
day night, day night
day month, day month
day, year
year, life

words, word another life
into the second world
a rabbit hole entry
studio mind
archetypal house

escaping figures
thoughts scattering, fleeing
light, burn it down
in frenzy of youth
house blown apart, the

leaves blow through
clouds in time lapse
ocean wave tumbles
to perfect shape
he was trying to get all

the left over parts of all those
years to come together
into something
he leant the painting against the wall
shuffling and reshuffling

then, like a game of life
is that it-- the mirror
the lamp, there,
that whole feeling
there a part, inspected

of a world
--and that’s what he'd been
wanting to say
"the form between things"
a world flying through

the stars revolving
THE STUDIO, it mirrored
this mind
in space
"Arial was glad

he had written his poems"
at night in winter
in the night studio
THE WESTERN SUN,
western sky, he meant

the western distance
that future sky
ever turning
into season
direction and

skies, he didn't care
the distance and death
in the trial
of the landscape
he was dismissed

for the thing itself
he was straddling a line
a life, all this extra crap
sticking out
pilling up the paintings

this distance he folded it up like
a newspaper into his overcoats breast
liking, this combination
recombining
exaggerated and strange

he was going to move
he felt this weight, these
paintings around his neck
that big bird
he painted them all together

on the wall and moved them around
in different combinations
like a line of poem
the different angles
hinted at

looking, maybe something over there?
he hadn’t seen,
WOW, I’m so bored, interrupted by
WAR, business
greedy, business

new, new
busy, busi--ness
death, death in every NEW
life
but the wrong death

or demeanor
behind
will live forever
so much piled up
cocktail after cocktail party blurr
TERRORIST! one way to get notice--
They ARE PLAYING WHOSE
the TERRORIST!

his harmony was a fiction
YOU COULD TELL FROM
HIS RANTING-- the distance
a refuge from--
they had lost the art of--

we were back up in the Asian wing
the pottery and scroll
a back drop
for warring feudal kings
and off somewhere

that mad drunk poet
samurai, bunch of jumbly lines
rises
Machiavellian— jumpcut
cartoon symbol

endlessly, mirroring
I am, that is, I am blank, that GOD
the rock, is
in between
is

of course, he was real
the rock was real
this knife stuck in his hand was
REAL
in between all

all the fingers was
REAL
he painted, he painted

all he had at the moment
cycle-- if he was dead--
Mir-ac-le-- Mir-ac-le
bang!
the big orange square
would be the monument
more than a just nuanced flavor

it would be-- NOW!
see, one would see! creates the
NOW!
in icy barren snow
that abstract

severe word, Heaven
in clouds the rippling up--
of THUNDER head
rumbling, F
static rapping in headphones

like train, ti dump, ti dumpt
visible graffiti
eating away the foundation
like the moments lost
slow motion nodding
out, he was sitting there reading
Themes,
the mysticism in--
all about the romance quest
in a thought-- like here what Jack thought

the mirroring mythos,
the seasonal--
height and depth
achieved and reconciled
it was just a theory of life
it just was

He could see it
the rapping earphones
we all stand by irritated
the other guy chanting
something from the torah

all revolving
Yeah, he had it all figured out--
yesterday, it had even
changed his irritated mood
he was moved to elation

HE had FORGOTten, THE CHAOS
newly ordered, he felt
a fresh-- a brand new
knowing! his purpose!
and now he had forgotten-- just what

exactly it was--
his thoughts fell
through, and down
through all the tumbling
images
searching all over

through the paintings
it was there somewhere
He believed it!
all these piles
a life,
the photos he took

proved it! not wanting to
forget or to lose, the old BIO stuff
like a review,
what someone else thought

that, old studio
he was trying to put it
all together as-- he didn't know yet
what--hope,
its not the nostalgia
for that mountain? or just following
some IDEOLOGY!

or is it the reality of those stars
the object in space
or the space itself
or this modern, doubt
of illusion
doubting realism
paint a new reality instead,
he said

or descriptions of a, environment
there intimate and then
with a second thought or revision

some, heightening
to some abstraction, or perspective
seen, taken apart-- formally
the shapes and the colors

line representative of
or in themselves, interesting
he didn’t want to forget the Tree
didn’t think Rothko
wanted to forget the

Myth, the RED
to try to see it for what
it was, but it required a poetry
to get close
he accepted the idea, the

received convention, conveying
realism, this accepted truth
in the way?
did he mislead himself?
for a more imaginative
way--

what is behind this handwriting
what poem
would the form
represent? in conversation
with himself?

of zodiac circling
the bird song
value to line
at height of thought
grand idea

flower
splat! in the sun
the vital I, he
she, was too
the hero, increased

those thoughts
smoke, drift to wasting day
the lowering globe
the scattering slate
weird invigorating tint of sky

walking home at 5 PM
flow and ebb
night star, mother, the sea
the just gone feeling
return to return, again

miles to go
he went on--
the evolution, met ahead
greeting once again
old friends
wonderful moments, unsaid

sitting there reading
that poem
he knew he was good as--
he couldn’t get around him
Couldn’t surpass

it was the drawing
the way he could conceive
of the whole,
at once
and knew how to make the parts
with out destroying
that whole

from the nature derived
not nostalgia, nothing
behind or inside
not the sad memory of
provincial experience

but a form derived from
the constructed reality
(tending toward,
to ill, to nature--)
that pure art, and the
resultant
formal value
its preservation

in elevation of the form
(and degradation of--)
"nature a blank?"
Emerson said, "it was in our own eye"
WE FEEL WE LIVE AT THE HEIGHT

he remembered as a kid he
threw the ball up
at the rim, he felt the form
of his hero, a star!
There WAs the original breath

innocenT and authoritATIVE
all the opposites
the painting, trace
he was looking at them, thinking
that in this mysterious
depth, he would forget them

but then if he made a shape
which represented them
he would remember, he wanted
to remember
the them, through the abstract
representation, or trace, he was
talking about

he "just wanted to sell
some paintings, for Chris' sakes"
for the sake of that idea-- Oh it went on,
it was a far away thought

his, what was being called
Buddha place
left behind
Fashion Model, all that profane
stance, sparks up anything

He said he just wanted to
make a still life,
he had been such a fool
it seemed out there
he had given

all the splendor away, Klaus
must have thought
on his walk down the beach
but he liked that black line
and striped object, Picasso

derived
form, modern
drift into
profane, not wanting to
die there,

he shared a form but was off alone
he put up a sign, subletting
the old studio
what's he going-- now without
for

the first time he obsessed
over, maybe
he was going through the paintings
he was drawing, the orders
stacked up

the Kiefer flare-- of that stack
with the sunflowers sticking out
he thought he'd burn them all
but that wasn't the poem

Fish-earl and Picasso, all the books
packed up, the cart piled high
traveling down the road
the paintings, bumpin' along

he mostly tried to stay in the center
in the sacred center
the tree out side, the prayer
flags offering a flavor of--
at the height, when he felt off--

he kept saying
All time, across the road Outside
the window of his
workshop, oh that word
the secondary realities, they seemed

to the
STUDIO, in THis His Story
like with stars for walls
no home, with no flowered couch
but stars

no football game on Sundays
just shapes
and a palette of color
against or for the--
only comfort, in the stars!

the truth was he created them
to suffice--
this fiction,
his structure of nature
His unbound God

The Road Movie
was JUST LIKE LIVIN’
how he saw a world
the wind blown mysteries
Nietzsche, in the desert--
train, coming home

there was a confidence
in convention, of course
tired of the black and white slashing
through signaling --the flames
a possible

re enchantment of this self
a simple mysticism, reaching
of this man on a mission, a simple
ease of arriving to-- Commanding
“loose these bonds
I tell thee”

the wall unmoved, like the aspens
still standing there
in sway-- the national
myth seen innocently
in a dream of youth
through Piero d-e-l-la Francesca
tumbling

common belief
the old cracked wall
VILLA WALL
red reality
the color we copied in Pompeii

it was the endless evolving
conventions
of realism that seemed
valid or real in itself

with out it there was a gasp!
but like God in Russia
it went on, we went on
and better for it
making it new

this distance, still, this
always seeking, height
this sublime,
in the cycle, in it-- all
this height, maybe just

a part? no, that OCEANic feeling
death, the father
whole, the mother's face
too severe?
he said "fierce"

he was, the sublime painter
just like that he always said,
"the center is ironic,"
he continued his missal

his letter of
contemporary relevance
he was not to give up
he would, go on

he would ask himself often
"why not an original relationship?"
in this ever changing world
these differing perspectives
and interpretations

hi and lo the broken down
look of
greeting card with

nothing
behind, a mirror
that creates and lights us
AFIRE, wild imagination
STRANGE!
unbounded imagination

then, headed off south on 95
he was just out there
out painting in the snow and
it is summer, hard to imagine

nature without Emerson
he re-- imagined America
the new world
he was
the oldest, best part
American Hero, he was

always arriving
Davy Crockett, to him
hat and pajamas "by
the shores of gitchy goomy,
by the shining big sea water"

American rocket's red glare
bombs bursting in air, purple cows
and yellow britches
the creek, the river
Redcoats and John Paul Jones

this land is your land
Red Grooms style
and bomb shelters
down on front street
mosquitoes biting
our bare asses
the poster above his bed

THIS was his heaven it comes
around,
that Orange Square
so he was going to build this
new big metal building

for his studio, workshop--
the square
is some kind of blocking
and framing
or add to--

seen in relation to--
say a celebration or
cropping that
intensifies
the experience the
just pure color

he wore glasses, now
all of a sudden his eyes failing
THAT feeling old
peeking
over rims at the girls
he thought he had some

kind of tumor maybe
needED getting used TO
to, these glasses
so he's not so bad off
he'd done something

here
brought the mythic to the
outer world he thought
that intensity
if, gaudy Sun
AN IMAGE TO ABSTRACT
EXPRESSION

out of the shadow to press forward
to extreme--
he was out making a ranch like gate
and the plans were coming along
going to meetings, at the bank

meeting the contractor
he liked painting up
there in the snow
a blue bird just flew out
just as he thought, "this was
the extremist moment--"

she said,
"flew by with the sky on it's back"
gliding free
exaggerating his feelings
that curious bird

wondering at
amazing clouds
zipping fast at that height
the wind began to howl, it always did
such beauty, makes one a bit anxious

and a bit of a weight
to push against
or maybe just the amazing
beauty, at the breaking--
a fear felt at,

most intense blue
and impossibility
of capturing
ones just passing, through

he made that painting
IT DID seem to nail IT down
having been here!
in that ANXIETY
you know--fear

proximity, made it that more
BEAUTIFUL
now what to do
its not just to remember
that experience
but some approximate
enlargement
of life,

something to match this
FEELING JUST now, this SPLENDOR
they all drove fast, running,
biking
matching the aesthetic
IN ATHLETIC--
everyone is out here, now
he was pissed
comparing it to car ads
tearing at his enthusiastic

response
this moment
of benevolent weather
all mirroring reflecting joy
"look at me," a blue bird

there the god is
flying through that formal
moment in the sun
the painting was coming
out right, after all

everything just right
repeating it
those right moments
questioning?
This old rough, Walt--

enthralled--I had to stop
to pick some flowers
I saw coreopsis it
turned out to be--
SOME callED it COSMOS

poor purple clover
besides
it was summer and he was
that character
in the painting, representing--
he was driving west
into the transcendence,

seemed in that elevation
he called it, justLY
the naming is decorative
he wasn't a poet,
it didn't matter, ExistencE
that was the magic
what ever being WAS
an artist WAS in those days

finding a flower
relating it to more
all beyond he guessed
but he was right here now
in the Poke weed

his descriptive plain air--
was seeing the change
the beginning of myth
the change
where did it go?

a focus sharpened rigor
he had this image of
himself, he said
self, it’s called an identity
wild romantic, coons skin cap
sacred, eternity

in relation
TO A formal aesTHetic
in shape, sharp and somewhat
softening, comic landscape
disintegrating to cotton POOF--

consciousness, the space
out there, memory
puff-- puff, gone,
RoadrunneR--
no, sound

stopped

PART FOUR

the figure
was right there
right here on the surface
thAT outer moment
in the sun
at height, OF Orange SquarE

fall to relationship
of depth in
disappearing ideal
dive deep
someone

was mindlessly smoking,
smoking, the
bottle was empty

he was looking
for windows and doors
the barn was getting built
the foundation planned
after all these years--
we die, he said

some variation
of a liFes, flower
I lived, he said, he felt, he saw
construed a circle
the opposites reconciled

distance and surface
the figure one created on its ground,
of course she was right
the studio was the meaning
the discovery there

really good clouds out there
towering up over
churning and storming
the precursor is the uplifting
achieving the sublime

one achieves the precursor
he was teaching all this in his-- a class
called the Un--natural Landscape
all very self conscious and
post modern
of course painting
is not nature

big realization, of course
for some one that never
looked--
"what you have no
back yard" he lectured, one
could tell he was perturbed
"find it in yourselves"

he reflected
hadn’t been up to the prayer
flags in a good while

the tree he called the center
of the world,
he spent too much
time there at Home Depot
he just painted all
winter besides
those trips to town

the painting becomes
a metaphor of itself
there was the arc
of modernism
that left us hanging

once we realized
we could fall
had already fallen--
he could fall endlessly
re-- cycling

through new territories
veer sharply
it all would change
turn off--
pleasing us as to a new!
and its all been abstracted
the purpling night, out there

the blue canvas
under it all
before the dream
or thought
just there
masking that

absence made
by a presence
blocking--
painting it all over in white
and black drawing

what? anything

remembered
floating, removing the mask
revealing an undertow, remember
which is now the object
a further complication
would be to

overlay the stripes
with a line
which then floats
in between the spaces
just another space

one could name it if it was important
they were the leaves
between the ground and elemental
leaves float, pass
stop in time

and the leaf painting and
the one about the fragment
that seemed a leaf, too
all pierced
by that elemental stain
brought forward

always the origin
in front or behind
everything
he was not floating
he was waiting

for the concrete slab to be poured
in that dream
trying to survive the fashion
model
the trash heap

luxury problems
the dead animal pit--
in Nevada, That opera he remembered
near Death Valley
in the desert

looking like those figures
in Blood Meridian, or maybe Goya?
traveling up and down
in telephoto, heat waves

each year he seemed to
miss the cranes
he'd hear them high up
a shuttle
like sound

the birds of paradise
they are called
America!
that vision, not
to fall back on to
buried idea
grasping--

largeness of idea
as hero in the sun
leaving nature thing
behind
we die
nature equaling death
or joining up ahead? not sure

the bringer of new reality
question mark.
maybe he should answer this one--
he was out at Chaco
wanting to paint a constellation
overhead
seeing like an Indian

it was so cold
he was headed now into the sky
he was reading the shaman journey
what better place--
Indian chant
we were in the Paris
of the Indian world
between all the meetings, banker
and contractor

the stars revolved round
even behind the blinding blue
movement, signaling change--
how can the earth be whizzing
at 23,000 miles an hour

the spirit that occupies everything
SOME WHERE AROUND HERE
another part--
wind in the hair
"no clouds in monument valley"
but still as he said

all those times before
"beyond remembering"
the splendor of--
Koyanisquatsi blaring--
there are more lights all
the time in the valley

the dogs barking, all night
the something off in the darkness
bringing back the boon
they keep him awake
now coyote join in
night journey

but the, the making
and life is just as mysterious as death--
THIS NEW LAND
made new
new orb aloft!

sea drifting, desert
the nothing that is!
all new reality
that knowledge
sun surrounding this

solitude
wild whooshing in ears
brittle grasses ruffle
blinding white light
not sure of this anymore
it was an idealism

the opposite was always presented
he thought it was all part
of that
mistake
boats and rafts
floating down river
the hovering images in rock

relaxing
messages in slap, slap
high
walls and wonder
good weather
all is well!
made a painting
didn't even think!

art it was just in rhythm
natural like
amazing
Orion out there
on his head

turning
they were taking pictures
like it was the 19th century
and he was painting
going down this river
they were talking about

the differing contexts
pottery shards
and pictographs
he was saying that his
Navajo parents didn’t, believe

anymore, in the
emerging worlds
belief was
all confused
he was trying to make a
photo by lightening flash

it got too dark to paint
Jack was huddled under his
rain poncho
there was a good picture, a
great picture of him, they
took of him in the kayak

by "Mexican Hat”
he thought he had died and went
to Heaven

we had
been making our way back to
the eternal original sacred time”
around the bend
a radio tower

snapped us back into the profane
sadness
we ferried on into the continuing
mortality of time
drifting

photographs all grainy
the structure is what
he felt he needed to foreground
to paint
we are all exiled
adventurers

anti heroes fallen
into disrepair
the black dream
into the tent--
the hero, HA!

force of being
yes he was OUT HERE IN THE STARS
rocking back and forth--

the building was finally arriving
he was falling behind
loosing the thread
he wondered why they
Didn’t seem to see anything there?
where he did--
he kept talking about
DOING IT
ALL FROM his HEAD
in the studio
he tried, must remember
it changes it all

she thought she went
back to the cave paintings--
she said maybe he didn't
go back far enough

here he was again
in the western detachment
he remembered Houston Street
the old sun and stars

the planet on the table
the earth in blue
spinning
sun, stars earth, revolving
the parts, that whole
feeling

in the studio
he kept coming
back to that tent idea
black drawing into idea-- the shield
red and yellow
Buddha colors
ideal beauty from death

the idea, beauty, order
all this as an after thought
"a poem" he said and backed away
the studio-- red, red reality
he was talking of irony

presence and absence
da forte
a copy of the original
all sounds like, evasions of

--god, again
or reality, big deal just
everything there is, out there
thrown in too
definitions crumpled up

thrown in too
all a good story
I HOLD THIS fiction
UP AGAINST MY DEMISE--
that is Eliot, he was just
going to say it simpler
his lie against time

a shield
going back, laying out the string
back into
the death like dream
and seeing what sufficed
IT

to keep one there
a SIMPLE surface
MAybe diamonded design
what we called reality, to be an
adequate, representing--
the building is underway
"THE new TEMPLE," Jack laughed

he made the reference himself
the girders in the sunset red
oranging
into the purple
sky and nebulae

he thought to draw again
would help, he was up at the
Academy doing that
the cycle of western detachment
and Academy

wow, weird
it was all left unfinished
HE HAD NO POWER
he kept seeing the
completion-- in the joining--
he was reading again

MEANings in between, he remembered
from the eighties ideas
that never left him
the word kept coming up
--reminded him
of all that old stuff, smoking
in the Bridge Diner trying
to give it up--
"intertexual"
what he wanted to see
was the whole group at once

these new aspen paintings
all mixed in too
maybe a decorative but
now the structure exposed
strange
surprise

exaggerate it--
there
the meaning somehow
Zodiac whirling about
green earth
and all those places
he loved them so

stop in time
he thought, still he could make
something of those days
of exploit

thought he could die if
he didn't loosen up a bit
back in the studio
through the landscape weeds
the brush, the grasses, the

pokeweed, and thistle tearing at
legs and the thorns in boot soles and
stuck in stockings--
THE STUDIO, bam another wave
from nowhere, WON!
he was back IN the studio
through the landscapes and leaves
the crows

shattering SUN, THE shard
the color
high content and severest forms
that sculpture seemed like that
his dark look
THAT boat slicing through
THIS YEAR, the river turning

Achilles form,
and SWERVE
the poem and
its cyclING winter mind
through the 'C' before
the CHORUS
heightened to Credence

fragment
through AURORA CRY
of the peacocks
planets gathering--
New gods ARRIVING

"it was like a new knowledge
of reality," the poet said
dreaming in winter attic
memory
propelling ideal

making reality now, whew--
what does it look like
evolving
inside, outside not so
easy this landscape

I couldn’t even see her face
it frightened me
the new western moments
no tourist place
but a place of our, OWN
oh by now?
SEARCHING FOR America
THE place changed

conscious and myth
another death
all intertwining--
fine, but then
if he just put it all together

he said the poem didn’t
stand on its own
but was supportive
of the work--
his paintings all piled up waiting

the wall was the stars
IT WAS OK
tears, tears
GUERNICA
the little boy with the crown
believing
all piled up
the life flowing out
like thoughts that they were

what if he-- floating
IN THE clouds
scratching leaves
that RAveN with a broken wing

at the window
he never had really mentioned
rhythmic waves in space and time
yes, he thought like AN Egyptian

walls all pointing to eternity
all fate marching
deteriorating
space
a Greek vase whole revolved

the simpler figure
broken Renaissance memory
the roman wall, a postcard from Europe--
he had this idea
or he saw or knew where

this was going-- it vanished
I was approaching a relation
soon he would not be remembering
but would be in the present once more
he just felt this--

Jack no longer needed to know
where he'd been to know
HE KNEW and how
can be, in the moments like
IN THE STUDIO
making and forgetting

the words don’t mean
now but HE WAS not this poet
one didn't need to rehearse ones death
one would be ready
and the words are not

WERE NOT
here but, continue on the way
being the process
to clear hoping it might --
clearing space each day that’s enough
need to see
the larger ideas
of each day

the adventure, home?
feeling the down hill slope
black and white snow and ice
the slippery slope
the wild careening

the STUDIO ahead
his JERUSALEM, temple--
keep onward!!
his work kept doing what he did--
HE COULDNT will a direction
out of what would this be made
it was all a dream

now sublimated to a certain
knowledge, dreams and knowing
similar roots
in death
beauty being the mother

the mothers face
the reason for the poem
against the Reason making Art
a certain tra la la, he said
The studio building finally has a roof!

AMAZED
truly amazed
back in New York City
in Central Park
in the snow
from a mesa with a full
moon full

of cold and ice, THE DOG WAITING
IN dark bright stars
this jet traveling THROUGH
the moon out the window
conscious knowledge
unconscious dream
how to express this death

he saw

it in the landscape
that distance
IN the beauty so intense
at its leaving
the object crumbling
blue sky he called,
"indifferent"

we die and so tiresome
TO THINK
the reality
we accept, our responsibilities
THERE IS A feeling in that--
and where is art--
where is art in that--
romantic bliss

of repetitions
the presentness, this god idea
WE MADE OF REALITY
he had a feeling, was painting
what he already knew
but then felt he needed

to fill in some hole
a stance
its all apparent
roof and windows
over his head and looking out

seemed he should be able
to make this happen
WESTERN JAUNT
but in retrospect his future
in the deconstruction

of it
and they will exist after hIM
what he felt
at what he saw

wheeling crow in light, he was--
just feeling badly that no one answered
driving to Albuquerque
always feeling it could be the last
on a cold dark morning

the sun still behind
Sangre de Christo MOUNTAINS
its supposed to snow and is
being alive, just to keep going
more stars, more stars
never tiring, but to sleep
like flowers, are so--
home he guessed, a porch

and feeling home
this familiar feeling
returning
THE studio
he was filling it up already

with paintings in his head
the LAST JUDGEMENT
on the WALL, stars,
in the stars
leaves and fragments

of sun, in autumn passing
the clouds over ocean, relentless ocean
he Would TELL them
how to see in ANOTHER way
he was finishing the studio
he guessed he was
growing up, NOW
ON HIS OWN
FEEDING the stray dogs
moving the paintings out there

into that space
out there
in the stars, YES
it seemed ok and some
adventure still in the truck

bouncing along like Picasso
and the Minotaur
everything all rolled up
passing Fredrich Church on AHEAD
the museum wall seemed

"things were good"
albert P Ryder, scumbling authenticity
America, no one saw
AN equal to his making
too much to ask but
he'd been pretty positive

now that’s poetry
then he was off to Death Valley
PollocK was out in the stars
gyrating, surveying the scene
now that should have been good, RIGHT!

he wished he could change that
that, Institutionalized Nature
in the parking lot's heat--

he just so much wanted
them to love--
out there painting, he was free
in the big bang creation
the breathing in and breathing out

of Replication Bomb
evolving myth--
all of the new subjects for poetry
he was getting over the quest
idea, constant
tangling in mysticism, and Freud

and Nietzsche's example--
the studio was nearing
completion SPRING WAS ARRIVING
once more, and he was making diagrams
of packing, the painting

into that truck, like a brain
all the ordering
to fit in the truck
shuffling like cards
she and he, she's a goddess

a flower
a sea
a metaphor of genius of self
he is a sun a god
the sky how we managed it?
she was the sea

it just didn't work out that way
slam
the indignation he felt
starting the car--
he admitted it
in the heat in the parking lot
without a shower
all the names, all the connections
thrown out
no money-- he guessed

Oh, Yes his big idea-- A
REFRESHMENT IN NATURE--!!
painting died over AND AGAIN
at least in his part of the world
in his self IMAGE maybe

a little being told--
he said, "PAINTING COULD BE--"
AN ADVENTURE, THE HIGH UP--
BOUNDING--
more jottings of a madman in
a desert town--
no banana hut, ADDRESS

beside a howling waterfall
Crazily ROARING,
at the sun'S red reality
hurling red
he tried now to belong
he was off to the side appreciated


talking to anyone
that would listen
he soon saw an out
he'd be gone soon--
--why not an original relationship?
requiring the breaking—

of THAT tradition,
vessels of--
bringing forth
no competitors, left
leaving now

BUT, STILL way ahead
in those moments
ACHILLES
at the wall up and over
sharp perspective

sharply drawn, BLACK and blood
on HIS hands
colored in and striped
that mortality and anger
a new line
there, what he was talking about

drawn, straight from the hip
this new key board on HIS knees
listening to the chant in
California in a dreamn' of
the beginning, HE was Achilles

in the tent disappointed, Hecktor
dragged through the camp that 9th time
"can I move--" HELL, WHAT
DO YOU MEAN-- MOVE--”

YES, why not
a original relation?
RUIN that tradition
make it new
value that! NEW
something seen
that Freudian reduction
to make it new--

whose in charge?
no questions, changing
into unknown
leaves, scrape--
sun, shines-- ahead
INTO indifferent blue

no home for this head
this universe of possibility
this emptying out
a breath,

passing leaf, a breath in
the reeds, breathing out
here again, right here
world passing through
dipper down, turning round

cross hatch and over hatch
water from great height
crashing in comet form
distance, arriving
repeating remembering

NOW-- gone again
over the falls
fallinNg
repeat and become
second thought

replaces
first thought
all remembered
repeated symbol like
Shiva arms repeating

in machine gun reality
opening flower
eternity now-- no maybe later
soon enough
emptyING now--
Orange SqUARE
emblem of

is nothing
AND EVERYTHING
symbol height in abstract
sky around and through
SAME narrative
HEAVEN anD profanity, once more

through the politic
of talking to you
THIS EnvironmenT at the core
beginning
self shaping--and crumbling
UNDER HIS BOOTSOLE

ENVIRONMENTAL soul
shape in great space we--
love to say, American!
--distance
WE, Americans in space
grandeur and

West
of what, NOW--
nature defined and it DARTS--
AND STINGS, the intens-- est beauty
Deep-- eating, death, death

And beauty ordering, nature AND death
nature equals death, equals life and beauty
equals justice, truth and order?
weighing
how do we stand--

to comprehend the herO,
what stance?
the mocked, that sublime
sun in clouds
shining new--
forth
an another revolution

out ahead
out western
sky ahead
THE unknown-- distance
death at its reckoning

mythic eruption of
power at the crossing
HE painted them
with big house painting brushes
right there at the surface
rearranging

the paintings
like a game of life
ordering the whole he felt, saw
rearranging particulars
extremes reconciled
the triumph at last-- WELL

that seems extreme but some
expression was felt at seeING

in a surface
ordered decorated
in intelligent
patterning AND
seeing deeper patterns

and deeper beyond
OH, HE liked this detached
REALITY, this was exiting NOW
HE DIDNT WANT TO STOP!
IT WAS straight from the head--
SOME imagination
attached to the stars
the figures in the stars
the eye
the arm in SIDEWAYS motion,

dreaming his name HE became
home now
a bit at odds
for this kind of thing
home

but DID want to survive
the old campaigns calling
the old battle horse
by now
he was just getting it now

unafraid
tracing ghostly positive shapes
magic like
bringing this distance
into presence now
magic like marching
twilight

the old Italian cities
the swallows tracing
this transparency
weaving
it was Gregory,
singing-- how ridiculous

that rough
that gaudy design
that cloud in pants
darted and stung UPON
HOW DAZZLE-LING AND TREMENDOUS

that sun would kill, Me--
he saw why you’d do it,
that suicide
he’d won by winning
this to that

all the changing orders
lucky fellow, indeed!
FORT HAMILTON PARKWAY, stop!
no home, stoP!
analyzing failure
YES, much better on aluminum!
One million TWO!, sold! to--

slicker surface
Swartzennegger, hero
Oh yes, much, much better
there, a, way-- too much time lost
reflecting on these odds

THE barn is complete
THE drawingS, spilling out
by this point HE must get it down
painting out of his head? HE KEPT
WHISPERing
not looking back
at this point
he commanded his drawing
a language he was master

where the thinking-- was, though?
STILL ahead
Wow that view--
back in the wind, spring WIND
lemon green shadblow--
Woman with Clothes Blowing
In the NEVER STOPPING Wind
that Eternities, stingING

PHRASE, tamed in time
oh, see the distance
and he was ready to go again
he was drawing the lines
extending to Shield, surface
shining,

touch, touch, surface touch
ruining himself, that truth
what would that mean--
keep going
"they sure know how to beat a dead horse"
not to ruin
de Kooning
erase his drawing
erase myself

complicated game
all the moves
on many layers
then--that show,
STILL IT just blew him away
he forgot there was anything

that authoritative
de Kooning-- he thought
"Pollock, Newman, I mean nothin' like Titian"
HE THOUGHT
like he HAD invented it
and he did, "I mean did you ever see those
TINTORETTOS!
He was rolling up the paintings
He hoped they would make it
happy he had made them
they had some pedigree--
they were of the earth
he loved

packing the truck, carting it away
WITH hired hands
art is what’s underneath
that irony,
thinking one sees
his life here
at the crossing
New Mexico border

scribbling life’ on dashboard
packed in the back
through Virginia
Tennessee and Oklahoma
into New Mexico

he said to himself
that he was doing the right thing
rolled up paintings
like dead bodies in the back
he thought of carrying them up the stairs
at 68 Jay Street
THaT different war
its like a heaven here maybe

he was gone,
gone and gone
arriving to these clouds
Crystal sight
he'd remarked before-- always did
arriving
to these clouds
to the new leaves-- oozing
with sticking red
goo, the birds migrate towards

these perfected moments
the western tanagers leading
red headed leading
the attendant oriole
the conteNt established
redraw the form

he should ask him self often, he said
Is this a new worried thought?
and he should ask himself this often as he
drew, a beautiful line,
what is this beauty

and we should ask ourselves
this often
as we look
knowing our demise
is this our own--
original stance?

he
feared at times, that end
coming back home-- he was arriving
BACK to his world, even now
WADING THROUGH FLOOD
Tsunami wave, earthquake and
HURRICANE

becoming it
that place that is our own
what would one think all
this cropping is about
the abstracting surface

distance from nature, in THIS art
making the world, THIS
MAKING THE WORLD IS LIKE
MAKING THIS WORLD
the stacked paintings sense
a line traveling through
bringing forward the ideas

the whole form and
what is in between
BACK TO THE STUDIO,
O thinking place!

Of course then,
the stars
he said
it both revealed and negated
this American grain

it was to see the earth
the necessary angel
not too far from
the flat footed hero
QuestinG, Her Majesty's Bounty

through still, Ahab thrusting-- forth
Red is not just reD
heightening to a red, red
and loss?
eternal damnation
AND hell fire

earth—y, what’s behind
the idea is, drawing is THAT
painting in his sleep he tossed
seemed
there's a big jump ahead
no one's made it

he'd have a running start
like he said
"more experienceD than the kids"
he just painted till it was dark—
dark, walking out to the lagoon

he saw it all, this coming
together from the beginning
in the tent, through the leaves
the sun arriving-- some Hero off!
to the western trail and --

now to the beach, the sundown walk
the garden-- he said
a last cycle, in the stars
the moon coming up
the snake across the path

he was home in so many ways
there wasn't a house in sight
talking about this
system of seeing
through to a simple
biblical reality, ZION
there in Nevada
decent into hell, full moon'
purple in green faint

Oasis, silent blowing a faint--
well, here at the end arriving
over and over
the fresh are of yesterday
intervened, happy melancholia

going through them all, the painting
after painting
the poem
and all that in between
he was still thinking of
some environmental
assault

the earth'S dissolution, what
would not cycle
what would not ever be

to be that park ranger
the words he meant to say were
"grateful," HE THOUGHT, maybe
making these Tibetan like flags
at elevation
SOME RESPECT

'W' was at it again
we thought we’d lose
the world going in different
directions, fraying
going the other way
he'd gotten through--
the paintings

on the F train, drawing
it all, into one
watching the Hassidic pray
drawing, drawing
seeing a beginning for his end

Re: presented, RE--MODERN
doing it all over again
made it up, IN A DIFFERENT LIGHT
the future
Ha, it always will be so

no man shall see the end--
he just needed to paint, he thought
got all this stuff piled away
sticking out from underneath, there
a line, he saw
a shape, some color,

the stars, beyond