La Strada, Back Alley, the Sea
“that way of
traveling along trapezes”—César Vallejo
Tonight it’s
Richard Baseheart returned as The Fool
up on the
telephone-wire having rigatoni
and vino russo at
two storeys
there’s neither
the fall nor redemption
there’s just
beguiling stasis and then
there’s just the
road
with its invite to
the town called Nowhere to Go.
Okay, it’s not
Richard Baseheart
it’s a silhouette
of a cartoony squirrel
spinning a walnut
around in its teeth for real
it’s a little word
in the shape of so, then, what
some flickering
world in its hands
that awakes a bit
of wind
every pebble
wobbles to help us notice that
before the fall
they held esteemed positions
as luminous
delegate number whatever
up there in the
firmament
Gelsomina’s face
absurd as this moon
also signifying
pebble-in-contest-with-oblivion
she says does the
moon stand any better
chance with
forever
if it’s rhetorical
then the walnut tree itself
is Zampanó with
the chains once
meant to bind it
to the fence
having grown
directly into his chest
“quiet flame,
bright flame, quiet flame, night cries”
Gelsomina, the
poet
“watching the rain
from the window that day”
Gelsomina, the
sufferer
“one of these days
I’ll take a match and set fire to everything”
Gelsomina, the
revolutionary
I read that all of
Fellini’s characters return to the sea for answers
and then the sea
is always like, so then what?
Clear-Day Mountain Wind of the Fan, after Suzuki Harunobu
“There was
something I believed”
there was something I believed
that the prisoners
would revolt and knock
at the bedroom
door of the warden
onward towards the
reckoning
down a hallway
leading to a mountain
calling the
homeless back to their island
for someone had
built the crag by hand
while I slept.
Paintings About the Land
To
work the land the wind leans
into
the dirt and then the dirt agrees to make a v in the field.
Thor
is standing among oak trees and it’s a stand-off of egos.
His
hair goes left.
Now
the wind lifts a normal person’s hat
and
sets the hat back down on a tree stump
as an
executioner might play with the effects of his kill.
Vincent
wrote, concerning the sun, “Today it’s trying to pull itself apart.”
Inside
the house I vacuum and I do the dishes and I clean the toilets. One of our
toilets, below the
waterline, is permanently stained.
There’s
crow in our alley, with a tin-foil helmet, beside the dumpster—
arrived from outer-space.
The
god of gods would have to be the supreme forsaker of power and this brings me
back
to the worship of dust and wind.
Vincent
drew the farm labourer’s lean in such a way that Theo could feel the same wind
when he opened the letter.
Vincent
was wearing a shirt with no cuff links and a caterpillar moved through one of
the
eyelets.
Agnes
Martin had a vision of the sky and it consisted of 86 cubes.
One
day she saw the wind move the sun into position so that it could place a square
of light
on some mud holding a coyote’s paw print.
A Very Brief History of Art
The man painted
the animals
put arrows sticking
out of them
the woman took the
charcoal
painted the human
body with the realist heavy eyes
and the realist
heavy belly.
The man looked at
it
and the woman was
banished outside the cave.
The man slammed
the Flinstones-door and returned to the painted wall.
He studied the
human body and moved his hand over the forms
as it was now possible
to touch a reflection in a lake
and not disturb
it.
So this is what we
are—a thought had gone through her arm
and into her hand
and took shape on the wall.
How did she do
it?
What is she?
Am I in danger?
Outside, in the
heavy rain, the woman began
humming the blues
that goes, “They say he’s
left you all alone
/ To weather this old storm…”
The man knelt down
and signed the
painting.
Honey, Proust’s at the Door
Well see him in, honey, see him in, I yelled as I hustled down the stairs. Proust—the fine-boned bird—stepped in. He knocked the snow off his cowboy boots by tapping each heel with the tip of his walking stick. I greeted him and shook his hand. He was wearing one of those gag hand-buzzers and it was then that I realised that this was not the real Proust. Proust said, I’m, um, Marcel and I done learned the American language just for this occasion—yee haw! I was shaking my sting out still when my wife intervened, she said you must have a very beautiful aparttement back in Paris, Marcel. Proust said, it ain’t ugly if that’s what you mean, lil darlin. He offered his lapel flower for my inspection. I declined. He looked at us. What’s a cowpoke gotta do to get a bourbon and a biscuit around here, he asked? Proust slapped my back. Oh he’s so charming and elegant, said my wife.
Jake Kennedy is grateful for the Erín M.'s and John L.'s and Kevin M. E.'s of the poetryworld for forever and always showing the wild this-a-ways and that-a-ways. He also likes the recurring dream in which he's Marcel Dalio—rocking a Brylcreemed 'do—and Jean Renoir says, "Cut. Bon job, hoser."
