.
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                    Cezann Ceza  nne Cezanne
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                    Cezanne.               Cezanne

if i was a pearl i’d feel itchy scratchy stuck inside an oyster shell if i was a tree i’d  be a big fat redwood fantasizing about Julia Butterfly Hill living and peeing around me if i was a dog i’d be a Catahoula hound if i was Italian i’d be Sicilian if i was pasta i’d be spaghetti if i was Icelandic i’d be Bjork if i was a rock star i’d be Elvis Presley Bob Dylan Jimi Hendrix Jim Morrison John Lennon Bruce Spingsteen Maynard James Keenan if i was i writer i’d be Herman Melville Mark Twain James Joyce William Faulkner Thomas Bernhard Yukio Mishima Naguib Mahfouz Phillip K. **** Gabriel Garcia Marquez Annie Proulx Lydia Davis if i was a poet i’d be Walt Whitman Sylvia Plath Ted Hughes Gwendolyn Brooks Pablo Neruda  Heather McHugh Carl Sandburg Robert Frost Arthur Rimbaud Dante Alighieri Homer if i was a painter i’d be Leonardo Da Vinci Michelangelo da Caravaggio Johan Vermeer Rembrandt van Rijn Paul Cezanne Marcel Duchamp Jackson ******* Mark Rothko Ad Reinhardt Anselm Kiefer Susan Rothenberg if i was a photographer i’d be Man Ray Ansel Adams Edward Weston Diane Arbus Robert Mapplethorpe Sally Mann Helmut Newton Richard Avedon Annie Leibovitz if i was a philosopher i’d be Socrates Plato Aristotle Jean Jacques Rousseau Sören Kierkegaard Immanuel Kant Karl Marx Georg Hegel Friedrich Nietzsche Henry David Thoreau Ralph Waldo Emerson  Jean-Paul Sartre Jean Baudrillard Michel Foucault if i was a singer i’d be Woody Guthrie Otis Redding Grace Slick Bob Marley Joni Mitchell Marvin Gaye Johnny Cash Patsy Cline June Carter Patti Smith Chrissie Hinde Nick Cave P J Harvey Beyonce if i wa a band i’d be Velvet Underground Ramones *** Pistols Clash Cure Smiths Joy Division Uncle Tupelo Pixies Nirvana Nine Inch Nails Madrugada Sigur Ros White Stripes Thee Silver Mt. Zion Memorial Orchestra Justice of the Unicorns if i was a boot i’d be Chippewa Frye Ariat Red Wing Tony Lama Wellington if i was a shoe i’d be Christian Louboutin Jimmy Choo Kedds Chaco Chuck Taylor p f flyer if i was a dress i’d be Channel Dolce & Gabbanna Giorgio Armani Marc Jacobs Comme des Garçons if i was a cowboy shirt i’d be H bar C Rockmount Temp Tex Karman Wrangler Levis Strauss Lee if i was a hat i’d be a Stetson Borsalino Stephen Jones if i was a fruit i’d be a mango apple banana blackberry if i was an scent i’d smell like fresh perspiration jasmine sandalwood ylang ylang the ocean if i was a doctor i’d be a gynecologist neurosurgeon if i was a flower i’d be a hibiscus rose orchard if i was a stone i’d be a sparkling ruby diamond opal if i was a knife i’d be a k-bar switch-blade machete if i was a gun i’d be a Remington Winchester Beretta Glock AK-47 if i was a car i’d be a Lamborghini Ferrari BMW Saab Volkswagen GTO Ford Mustang Dodge Challenger if i was a  TV show i’d be Law and Order if i was actor i’d be Charlie Chaplin Humphrey Bogart Steve McQueen Robert De Niro Ed Norton Shawn Penn if i was an actress i’d be Marlene Dietrich Ingrid Bergman Natalie Wood Audrey Hepburn Marilyn Monroe Helen Mirren  Meryil Streep Brigette Fonda Robin Wright Julianne Moore Angie Harmon if i was a female comedian i’d be Gilda Radner Lily Tomlin Nora Dunn Joan Cusack Sarah Silverman Tina Fey if i was a  football player i’d be Sid Luckman George Blanda Walter Payton **** Butkus Mike Singletary Joe Montana Jerry Rice Payton Manning LaDanian Tomlinson  Drew Breeze if i was a celebrity i’d be Charlotte Gainsbourg if i was a rapper i’d be Tupac Shakur if i was a movie director i’d be Sam Peckinpah Robert Altman Stanley Kubrick Roman Polanski Werner Herzog Rainer Fassbinder Louis Bunuel Alfred Hitchcock Jean-Luc Godard François Truffaut if i was a bird i’d be a eagle hawk sparrow bluebird if i was a fish i’d be a dolphin shark narwhal Charlie the tuna if i was breakfast i’d be a French toast pancake folded in half with 2 strips of bacon in between if i was a cold cereal i’d be snap crackle popping rice crispies shredded wheat cheerios oatmeal if i was tea i’d be Japanese green matcha Irish breakfast Tulsi Thai holy basil Lapsang souchong Luzianne Lipton if i was a soap i’d be French hand milled ayurvedic Avon Ivory Dove Pears Aveda  if i was a man i’d be a football basketball baseball tennis swimmer athlete if i was a woman i’d be a track star runner writer painter gardener doctor nurse yoga mom i'm just scratching the surface and the beat goes on lahdy dah dah

You tell me that I am young
That life has merely licked me, not stung
That I do not understand, that I have not yet lived
Enough to grasp the substance

I have known disease
Slow tears, muted pleas
Pain that nothing could appease
I have known the smell of hospitals for summers
The beeping and slurping of machine in massive numbers

I have spoken to voiceless loved ones,
Loved ones with teethless mouths and twisted tongues
Distorted jaws and wheezing lungs.
We have spoken with little green charts
And broken hearts
From the inability to connect the mouth to the thoughts in the head
And I left without understanding,
What they had said
Because I eventually had to let it go
(I still don't know)

I have spent countless summer nights
In nature’s garb, floating silently in a river
So warm that my limbs, skimming the surface, didn't shiver
Under a clear sky, the stars like paradisiac lights
Without anyone ever finding out
About these wild and primal escapades

I've drank, I've smoked
I have burned my throat
With coarse lemon gin
Until I could no longer feel my skin.

I have been frightened
Yes I have felt fear, like a noose around my throat being tightened
Like a gruesome black crow, perched on my shoulder
I have often awoken affright at night,
Longing, praying, for the morning light
I have felt fear, wild, fierce and turbulent fear
More than anyone will everyone will ever know
By men, by life, by myself
Desolate under the sheets, like a forsaken toy
All by myself

I have seen Paris in the rain
Traveled the French countryside by train
I've woken up to New York window views
And seen New Orleans afternoons, filled with heat and blues.
I've swam the Mexican Baja waters, turquoise and clear
With snakes as sharp as spears

I have known humiliation
Causing my cheeks to turn carnation
A spoon, emptying my insides out
Like a gourd

I have loved
I have known the aching pain of a swelled heart
And the way it can tear you apart
I have gushed torrents upon my pillows and sleeves
Tears running down my chin like guilty thieves
From a lit-up house

I have known death, and grief
The meaning of "never"
Whimpering in the school bathroom
And cold, lonely nights

I have seen the works of Van Gogh, Mondrian, and Miro,
Modigliani, Cezanne, and Frida Kahlo
Of Monet, Gauguin, Matisse, Magritte, and Picasso
I have wandered through hallways of masterpieces
Holding tight to my grandmother's hand
And I have wept shamelessly for joy
Before Degas's La classe de danse

I have been diagnosed
I have undergone computer programs designed to shift my brain, to better it
To get me to be normal, to submit
I have had brain-altering medicine shoved down my throat,
Like stuffing a goose,
To make my brain run a little less loose
And I have submitted and gotten use to my brain being altered.

I have had kisses that were mere trifles
Frivolous, yet fierce and acute like shots from a rifle
Lips of mere flesh, not sweet godly nectar
And gazes that meant everything
That seemed to connect with an invisible yet indestructible string
Iris like distant galaxies and pupils twinkling like black jewels
Eyes that seemed enkindled by some ethereal fuel
Speaking of emotions far too secluded, cryptic and cluttered
To be worded and uttered

I know the way in which violence resides
Not in commotion, brusqueness, nor physical harm
But in silence
In the time that covers pain and secrets
In the slow impossibility of trust
In the way that some secrets become inconceivable to tell, time has so covered them in rust
In that dull, dismal ache
In all that is doomed to remain forever opaque.

I have read, for pleasure,
The works of Balzac, Fitzgerald, Steinbeck, and Voltaire
Of Bobin, Gaude, and Baudelaire
Of Flaubert, Hemingway
and good old Bradbury, Ray
Émile Zola,  Primo Levi
Moliere, Rousseau, and Bukowski
I have read, and loved, and understood

I have known insomnia
The way a beach knows the tides
Sleepless nights of convulsive, feverish panic, of clutching my sides,
Of silent hysteria and salty terror.
I know what happens at night, when sweet slumber seems so far away
The worries and woes seem to multiply and swell in hopeless disarray
My lips grow pale, my eye grow sunken
As a time ticks by, tomorrow darkens




I have witnessed horror
In the form of a blue body bag
Being rolled out with a squeaking drag
By two yellow-vested men
With apologetic eyes
That seemed to say "Oh god
We're so sorry you had to see that
Please, please
Go home
And try to forget"

But you are right
I am still just a child
Naive, innocent, and pure
I have known nothing dark or obscure
I have not yet lived.

A small skiff drifted in the harbor
guided by the eazy oars of a fisherman
standing in the hull to better view
the shimmering reflection
of the orange circle hovering overhead-
dancing with the gentle waves
in the morning mist.

Monet had to name it something
so he called it what it was:

          "Impression, soleil levant."

A critic, wanting poison for his pen,
seized Monet's title to squeeze
a lethal dose into the radical veins
of the artist and his fellows of the gallery

          (Renoir, Pissarro, Cezanne).

With scathing indignation
he dubbed the lot of them,

           "Mere Impressionists."

The label endures (minus one word)
but how many recall or care to know
the righteous critic's name?

*November, 2011

1975 Art Institute is tactic for Odysseus to put off dealing with real world also investigate range of visual techniques gay instructor fruitlessly endeavors to ****** him he enjoys several affairs with beautiful girls yet Bayli haunts him main building of school is connected behind Art Institute of Chicago Odysseus spends lots of time looking at paintings Edward Hopper’s “Nighthawks” Gustave Caillebotte’s “Paris Street Rainy Day” Ivan Albright’s “Portrait of Dorian Gray” Jackson *******’s “Greyed Rainbow” Georgia O’Keeffe’s “Black Cross New Mexico” Francis Bacon’s “Figure with Meat” Pablo Picasso’s “The Old Guitarist” Balthus’s “Solitaire” Claude Monet’s “Stacks of Wheat” Paul Cezanne’s “The Bathers” Vincent Van Gogh’s “Self-Portrait” Edouard Manet’s “The Mocking of Christ” Henri Toulouse-Lautrec’s “At the Moulin Rouge” Robert Rauschenberg’s “Photograph” Mary Cassatt’s “The Child’s Bath” Peter Blume’s “The Rock” Ed Paschke’s “Mid America” Grant Wood’s “American Gothic” Jasper John’s “Near the Lagoon” and John Singer Sargent James McNeill Whistler Diego Rivera Marsden Hartley Thomas Eakins Winslow Homer his 2nd year at Art Institute involves student teaching during day then at night working as waiter at Ivanhoe Restaurant and Theater gay managers teach him to make Caesar salad tableside and other flamboyant tasks wait staff are all gay men once more Odysseus experiences bias from homosexual regime he is assigned restaurant’s slowest sections it bothers him the way some gay men venomously condescend women and their bodies Odysseus loves women especially their bodies he thinks about how much easier his life would be if he was gay in 1976 the art world is managed by gay curators gay art dealers he wonders if he could be gay yet not realize it can a person be gay but not attracted to one’s own ***? Ivanhoe hires variety of night club acts one night he watches Tom Waits perform on piano in lounge Odysseus feels inspired in 1977 he graduates with teacher’s certification he considers all the sacrifices teachers make and humiliating salaries they put up with he does not want to teach candidly he feels he has nothing yet to teach teaching degree was Mom’s idea Odysseus wants to learn grow paint after Art Institute he flip-flops between styles his artwork suffers from too much schooling and scholastic practice it takes years to find his own voice he has tendency to be self-effacing put himself down often he will declare what do i know? i’m just a stupid painter one topic artists do not like talking about is their failures how much money they cost creation requires resource paint and canvas can be expensive how much money is spent on harebrained ideas that never pan out? most artists resort to cheap or used materials few can afford their dreams he gets job selling encyclopedias that job lasts about 5 weeks then he finds job selling posters at framing store on Broadway between Barry and Wellington Salvador Dali Escher Claude Monet prints are the rage his manager accuse him of lacking initiative being spacey after several months he gets laid off he finds job waiting tables during lunch shift at busy downtown restaurant other waiters are mostly old men from Europe they play cards with each other in between shifts teach Odysseus how to carry 6 hot plates on one arm and 2 in his other hand the job is hectic but money is good experience educates differently than books and college a university degree cannot teach what working in the real world confronts people learn most when they are nobodies he reads Sartre’s “Being And Nothingness” he wants to discover who he is by finding out who he is not often he rides bicycle along lakefront taking different routes sometimes following behind an anonymous bicyclist possibly to come across new way he does not know or to marvel at another person’s interest

truth is this life is too difficult for me the violence hatred turf wars tribalism laws judgments practices rules permits history i’m not prepared emotionally to withstand the realities of this world not equipped psychologically to deal with the stresses of this world not prepared emotionally to withstand the realities of this world not equipped psychologically to deal with the stresses of this world i’m sorry am i repeating myself i apologize i’m not prepared emotionally to withstand the realities of this world not equipped psychologically to deal with the stresses of this world god please protect teach me strength courage fairness compassion wisdom love i’m not prepared emotionally to withstand the realities of this world not equipped psychologically to deal with the stresses of this world

buy divinity purchase devotion earn reward points own 4 bedroom loft with roof garden deck porch pool parking in paradise’s gated community pay for exclusive membership into sainthood become part of inner circle influence determine fate destiny of everything step up to the plate sign on the line immortalize yourself feel the privileges of eternal holiness i’m living inside a nightmare inside a nightmare inside a nightmare hello? i am dizzy in my own self-deceptions lost in my own self-deceptions alone in my own self-deceptions there was a time once but that time is gone there was a place once but that place has vanished there was a life once but that life is spent remember when things were different truth is i’m weak skittish anxious alienated paranoid scared to death pagan idiot stop

breath deeply push stale air out imagine kinder more respectful loving world please god do your stuff angels throw your weight around clean up this mess planets align stars shine ancient spirits raise your voices magic work there are words when spoken can change everything words rooted to spiritual nerves if voiced in  particular order secret passwords capable of setting off persuasions in the mind threads to the heart if a person can figure out which words what order tone of voice rate of pronunciation time of day then that person can summon powers of the supernatural Isis goddess of celestial sway of words whisper secret earth water fire air reveal your alchemy winter spring summer autumn teach about passages patterns sublime eastern western sun fickle moody moon unveil your heavenly equation north south east west  beat the drums blow winds show the path to healing path of the heart blood dirt hair *** bare the mystery of your trance dance the ghost dance sacred woman with ovaries cycles flow smell beautiful girl eyes sweetness strange awkward skinny scruffy boy great bear spirit bird jumping fish wise turtle where are you why is there no one to back me? jean paul sartre what was your last thought before you died? was it nausea? nothingness? or a wish?

The day is coming when
a single carrot
freshly observed
will set off a revolution.

-- Paul Cezanne (1839-1906)

late last night i walked alone along the desolate shore
of Monet’s pond at Giverny the pale moon
sometimes obscured by impasto clouds
the waterlilies those treacherous waterlilies
screaming in agony
Saskia, Rembrandt’s wife, was there
naked and weeping, her hair and body
wet and slimy draped in orange pond algae
Cezanne crouched nearby cursing and slashing canvases
with a butcher’s knife before tossing them into a fire
when he finished he made fierce love to Saskia
who sang an old Dutch love song as he did
Rembrandt was in deep conversation with Monet
in a puddle of passing moonlight
and didn’t seemed to mind, anything
to stop her endless wailing I heard him say
Monet says Titian’s mistress is now a mermaid
who lives beneath my betraying waterlilies which is why they cry
and why I keep painting them no one makes love like her
just look at Titian’s Madonnas
Van Gogh stumbles in from a dung-filled alley, bleeding badly
from the bullet wound in his abdomen,
where the rich kids from Auvers tormented and shot him
just for the fun of it, Vermeer bankrupt and gaunt
steps from behind a tree and asks if it’s suicide or the new art
Vincent says let the people believe that tragic ending
it’s a dramatic final brushstroke to my life even if untrue
but I love the blackbirds and my wheat fields and blue irises
way too much to spill my guts on them cadmium red maybe
my left ear lobe maybe but never my guts
where’s de Kooning anyhow he yells the *******
borrowed my paintbrush and never returned it
now I’ll have to paint with the tongue of Gauguin’s old shoe
Caravaggio floats by face up caressed by the wet palms of the weeping lilies
he’s burning up with fever delirious screaming
where’s my ship where’s my ship
they’re all on the ship my paintings
my paintings will redeem me the Pope knows
I only killed one man
Monet strokes his beard like Moses Rembrandt
says it happens to all of us even our wives and
mistresses perhaps it’s the lead in our *****
it’s not suicide it’s not homicide it’s the madness of living too much
Rothko appears, a translucent ghost inside a mist salving his slashed wrist
with Monet’s pond water Mark washing washing
the healing water the Giverny water dancing with pran the giver of life
that’s what Monet was painting at the end
using the palette from the other side
pran transmitted through the wailing
of the waterlilies the siren’s song
that lures artists to their death
and then washes them clean for the next go
to pick up where they left off, alone
with his whiskey bottle Jackson ******* hurls paint clots
at Rembrandt’s Still Life with Peacocks
those two dead peacocks they’re all dead peacocks
floating belly up under Monet’s footbridge
all the color gone from their plumage
drink the water Jackson or better yet
let Cezanne rip out your diseased liver
and wrap it carefully in a weeping waterlily
and float it out into the middle of the pond
where the forgiving moonlight and the mermaids
and Monet’s eyes now dim with cataracts
can help it filter out the poison of living
too much and then you too Jackson
will make painterly love to Saskia and she will
daub your diseased body in Titian’s blue
and her husband’s gold and Vincent’s sunflower yellows
and send you back into the world
where you will continue to splash us all  
as we lie flat on the ground hands and legs intertwined
our faces and bodies your canvas more willing than ever
Jackson, you’ll turn us into a unified field of smashed hues not just from here but from where you stand one foot on the other side
get us all raging drunk Jackson in that myth you longed for
splatter us in the tinted mess of the mystery you raged at
and had to settle for drunken oblivion instead
drink deeply the mystic-hued water of Giverny
Vincent and Paul and Mark and Jackson
and when you come back
spit it out on our parched souls

Aye, Montecelli, that's the name.
You may have heard of him perhaps.
Yet though he never savoured fame,
Of those impressionistic chaps,
Monet and Manet and Renoir
He was the avatar.

He festered in a Marseilles slum,
A starving genius, god-inspired.
You'd take him for a lousy ***,
Tho' poetry of paint he lyred,
In dreamy pastels each a gem: . . .
How people laughed at them!

He peddled paint from bar to bar;
From sordid rags a jewel shone,
A glow of joy and colour far
From filth of fortune woe-begone.
'Just twenty francs,' he shyly said,
'To take me drunk to bed.'

Of Van Gogh and Cezanne a peer;
In dreams of ecstasy enskied,
A genius and a pioneer,
Poor, paralysed and mad he died:
Yet by all who hold Beauty dear
May he be glorified!

I have in me a bit of Tuscan sun
The wildness of mistral
The calmness of a Cezanne village
I often walk around the countryside of Pissaro
And see the colors, still abundant, undefeated
I stroll around the lilies and the harbor of France where Manet painted being thrown out of his house, not able to pay the rent
I dance with the beautiful girls in high society Parisian parties of whom from Zola to Maugham spoke about
I learn art in silence, in the bright orange color of the day drawing the French young girl
Whose face is like Madonna
Her innocence, her laughter, her flawless body
Excite me, breaks me, creates me
I walk with clean head and red wine in the streets of Montmartre
Searching the gone and dusted studio of Renoir, Picasso, Monet
I stand exactly there where there is nothing old except the moon
And the Sacre Couer
In the morning I take the first train to Auvers Sur Oise
And walk into the cemetery
Where lie in the gorgeous French sun
Vincent and Theo Van Gogh
I utter to them, "Can dream ever be false?"
It is when I heard the footsteps
I turned
The girl in the yellow dress stands at the gate of the cemetery
Whom I draw every day but never captured her beauty
The French girl
We both stand there as it is
As if 
framed
paused 
Frozen
We, the Impressionists!

my loves, the many accumulated mn-
eumonic responses play'd on future
women. ideas based on the poiv-
rottes of idealized affectation past.
cesspools emptied by the horse-tanks
with stelth in the night, but the-
re couldn't be much stealth for a target
reeking of **** and convalescence.
sadness and that odor would
hang heavy in the first cold rains
of winter. transplanting thoughts,
always transplanted emotions of
subjugation. she was waiting for
someone, this now past but once
future poivrotte. feet to be
knock'd from under, body to find
lulling embrace. mind the levitat-
ing affect. mind, the missing
portion of our feint'd love.
and
  - I was always empty and
    both sad and happy
with a third-class train ride, at
mon poivrottes' expense of mentality.
we could used to lay together talk-
king in adult tones through our
child mouths. remembering to poc-
ket fruit to retain our breakfast
from freezing. speaking no truer
words than those utter'd while
embraced. words from the mou-
ths of us children. truer words
never could be counterfeit, never
could be spoken without loss of
conscience. Cezanne-dreams of color,
Impressionist subconscious,
j'adore mon poivrottes. feasting of mo-
vement and staining all around with
the strong cafe au lait. follow'd aper-
itif, following digestifs, following back
to lie. to flow words from our child mo-
uths, we would walk paths through the
woods in the Autumn twilight. the trees
were sculptures having their leaves
stripped bare. walking alongside, we walk'd
ourselves down the same separate path.

every breath tastes
rancid on my tongue;
fun fact, if all you eat is
raspberry yogurt and
hypersaturated strawberries,
your ***** looks like
Jackson ******* plus
Picasso's Rose Period.
has anyone ever told you
that drunk texting you is like
standing in front of a Caravaggio;
it's dusky and dark and sensuous and I
******* adore getting lost in
translation. Cezanne draws solely in
molecular geometry, tetrahedral,
trigonal pyramidal, octahedrons
scrawled across the canvas and doused
in living color. Thursday night already
seems so intangible,
a bad dream that didn't dice up my liver
like a ******* sous chef. Thursdays
have come and gone, the weekends
ever-beckoning, and the scent of Smirnoff
stays in my sinuses.

I started dreaming in black and white.
you never seemed to
belong in this
technicolour drenched era,
an age of blood
carnations and sapphire Bomb Pops.
***** yellow cardboard boxes in
fluorescent refrigerated cases:
there are goosebumps on my arms and you
hated grocery shopping; I made the lists
and I made the buys; you made the
money, you made love.
we bought a Cezanne print for the
great room; it hangs above the frozen
hearth, grey sunlight filtered through
the cellulose blinds. there is a too tall
glass of scotch on the coffee table beside
a too empty scotch bottle and a too full
bottle of benzodiapenes: I haven't been
self-preservative, and you've been
self-prescribing.
we weren't cut out for this era,
an age of ***-coated lips and
onyx Benzes; we would've been better
in black and white, where our
color-saturated demons couldn't come, where our gem-studded cancers couldn't
eat us alive.

The college kids still pump out poems;
my heroes haven't published a book in years.
The academics are moving to visual arts
kerning letters on the page, adding artist statements.

Fuego en juventud. Sabiduría en viejo.

Passion fades with age, I suppose. A symptom of
the cult of happiness.

And I love to read poems
from twenty-somethings who just want to get ******.
I picture my red pen exciting them as I destroy
their fine-tuned metaphors, all muddled with conflicting allusion,
as if juxtaposition alone adds meaning.

In school, it was all Cezanne and hydrogen jukebox birdsongs,
and equally interesting but useless adjective strings.
The academics are doing the same, but with form.
It bores us, don't they know?

Fuego en juventud. Sabiduría en viejo.

**** these kids for having such easy means to publication.
I read their journals, their magazines, their "editions"
online, vivid, vomiting color and opinion.

I long for publishing classified ads and
scribbled chalk portraits of the women I loved
and the twenty-somethings who just wanted to get ******,
and reflections of how I never mastered either craft.

I long to rub the ink off newsprint in my fingers,
smudge the words on the page and ***** my hands,
watch the chalk run into the red brick
during ten-minute monsoons, smell the library's adobe,
light a cigarette and remember that the stacks are filled
with ages of greater work than these ******* kids...
and these ******* academics.

Greater than me.

Eating breakfast on a strange star
way up in the sky
Baconian, egg-less and toasty creatures
passing by

Waving at me
four arms four hands
avoiding crumbs  
while dancing to joyful one-man bands

Painting Cezanne's masterpieces
with van Gogh like skill
painting purple geese
and showing off until

I woke up hot
looking like hell
cursed my way down to my mademoiselle

Apologised to her in rapid succesion
got on my seat and called me a connection, waitress;
told her my **** breakfast was tasteless

Looked up at her hands and noticed some things
she was wearing some great tiny shiny gold rings
that wasn't that much strange but i noticed something else

She had twenty fingers
and four ******* hands
'crazy', i thought, all by myself

Woke up again
but in rapid succesion
and glad to find my girlfriend
waiting in vain

aborted babies in jars.

who might they have become?

perhaps another paul cezanne.
maybe a worker at burger king,
or perhaps the next muhammad ali
heavy weight champion of the world.

could be an axe ******
or worse
a politician or a lawyer.

maybe the next ernest hemingway.

the bitter taste of burnt dreams
lost in a prison of expectation.

screams of  the heart.

I like to believe
that nobody understands me
and I'm one of a kind
lost to obscurity
but hinting of mysterious
significance

And I feel sorry for
my uncle's three-legged dog
and the malignancy
of fear in rural America
and the failed successes
of the Bolsheviks

I wonder about the air
in Saõ Paolo in January
and the muskuloskelatal
infirmities that creep in
and make the aged
into churlish curmudgeons

There is no way I could
hunt truffles or find a fresh
Morel in the woods when
I didn't even realize until
my grandmother died that
we own a creek

Uttering vespers in moonlight
yields some sanguine lucidity
like contemplating the nuanced
differences between polenta
and cornmeal mush

It's like I'll never write a poem
in time or finish a marathon
or kiss a stranger deeply
through the crisp ventillation
of nevermore.

We might daydream the bombastic
colors of Cezanne but all
we'll ever be is some nondescript
platinum ischemic flash,
a slimy buffet consisting in
all-is-lost

An apocryphal journey
to the center of the city
faces our insubordination to plastic
with the harshness of a dictionary
in the face of the illiterate

But in the end, apoplectically
forgotten, I come to the
unintelligent conclusion,
mathematically speaking,
that there is nothing singular

nor more available
than the finite banality
of my empty, insufficiently
obscurantist words which
flow and choke and all can know
and see clearly through

though I insist that none
of this pretence is born
of any maleveloence, and I chide
"How very meta of me indeed"

to have thought of another witty
and most cleverest retort
the day after the insult
was first delivered

But I used my last gift card
to purchase this still life
to pierce the hollow
cerulean satisfaction
otherwise known as tears

Barring diastolic ******
I'll stick around to see
how this all turns out
and hope that one day I can stop
being so completely understood

And then I can hide in the lonely
and find refuge in the cave
as a single meaningless scrawl
buried in the last pages
at the end of the world.

A line cook at Denny’s (must have own pans)
Is an artist, accomplished in assemblage
Compositions of eggs (rather like Cezanne’s)
Toast, bacon, waffles for his decoupage

His gesso is the window layered in steam
Built of reflections and condensation
Hinting at the flowing Interstate stream
Beyond the No Smoking pumping station

The line cook has indeed his pans and plans -
Art, as the muse of cookery commands

They sit in the humblest of frames,
Faux wood-grained plastic grotesqueries
Purchased long ago from some doomed Grants or Bradlees,
Though one or two enjoy something nicer,
Left behind by some long-timer taking a buyout
Or a sympathetic youngster denied tenure
(She has, for the better part of three decades,
Cleaned up the detritus of middle-school children,
A bit stooped from the work,
Not to mention the burden
Of any number of she’s just  or she’s only
Tossed like so much bric-a-brac in her direction.)
The approximations of old masters equally eclectic in origin:
One or two gallery-quality reproductions
Blithely abandoned by some haughty faculty matron
Mentoring children through noblesse oblige,
The odd promotional piece from a scholastic publisher,
Mostly things she has cut from magazines or discarded texts.
She studiously avoids pieces tending to the dark or muted,
No Stuart portraiture or pensive Vermeers;
She has a strong predilection for bold, boisterous Gaugins,
Mad cubist Picassos, lush Cezanne still-lifes,
Even the odd blocky *******.
If you pressed her to explain her fetish
For the brightest of the great masters,
She would likely be at a loss to explain,
Having no academic bent for such things
(Though she has been known to curse the shortcomings
Of lithographers and pressmen under her breath)
And, as she freely admits, I’m not much good with words.
There would be the uncharitable suggestion
That their purpose is to mask cracks and pockmarks in her walls
(She has, to be sure, lived in a long series of such places)
But she has never, consciously or otherwise,
Used them for such pedestrian and utilitarian purposes;
They are, to her anyway, beautiful, and that is all they need be.

Still Life With Apples

Cezanne would ignore the grain
omit the quarter moon flute
burned quarter inch deep
pay scant attention
to your recollection  
of the barn in Armada
rinsed to a rumor of red
listen politely as you paint
a picture of the man who ran
the orphanage for bedsteads
wardrobes and sideboards
steal glances at his watch
while you play both parts
retelling the horse trade
eyebrows frantic to escape
gravity
your own straining
to lift off and boomerang
around the circumference of the table
lighting on the ordinal
points of countless dinners
apples
in the mind’s eye of the artist
flocking like birds
defying gravity
on the dizzy oval of oak.

The Artist


I need a Muse.  
Do you think it could be you?
Can you pick up a paint brush
And show me what you can do?


I need a painter of portraits;
To fill in the gaps inside my head.
I need a Goddess of Love,
To notice the stuff I write in my bed.


I need an Artist, who is simply magnificent,
A breath-taking vision, who is simply Heaven sent.
I need an Angel to paint me a Picasso,
Of my poetry in pieces, before I end up like Van Gogh.


Slightly impaired by deafness, I guess.
Going grey now; thank you stress.


Hi Mona, how’s Rembrandt?
He’s been seen drinking in a bar,
With someone called Cezanne?


Call Michelangelo; Donatello will have a plan.
Leonardo’s busy with his inventions,
But here comes Raphael.
Turtle Power!  Hi Master Splinter.
Do you have your easel and paints ready,
To see you through the winter?


Paint me a story
And I’ll write you a picture.
I think if the two of us worked together,
What I see, to you, could become much clearer.


Are you sat there looking for some inspiration?
Then read one of my poems, sing one of my songs;
Maybe then you could paint our creation.
Maybe then, I could write poetry about your art.


My vision brought to life,
With the gift of your care.
Paint a picture of us together,
So you will remember that I will always be there.


If you ever need some inspiration,
Just creep inside my mind for a little vacation;
An escape from reality, or from your personal Demon’s.
You will see we are all the same;
I have as many foibles as you do.


My heart belongs to any Woman who truly wants it;
But she hasn’t told me how she feels yet,
So I guess I can’t live without it.


But soon I will meet someone
And offer them my love;
Because an artist without inspiration,
Is like a poet who has never been in love.


Joyous tragedy! Shakespeare laughs,
As he tears apart love with just a couple of paragraphs.
Dead and gone!  Not our fair Juliet.
If Romeo had just gone home instead,
He would have turned into a moody poet.


(C)2011 Aa Harvey. All Rights Reserved.