Zaddikim
or
Following the Blueprint
When my father died, I took photos from his wallet, among which, one of his dead sister.
| I
heard him
say it not once but twice: somehow we are all Aristotelians But not in these words
|
That
snapshot
A girl's sailor suit Posing in a cardboard stall On a boardwalk in Coney Island talking to a hand Dressed as a puppet I had carried it since his death-- A picture of a sister, now Somewhere under Pittsburgh Zeta, my father's sister. |
| He
thought
he saw Julian Jaynes at the outpost dickering.
|
Why
are you...
-a little girl conversing with a hand -just as dead as weight to a Galileo -in cornerstone cited for demolition da Vinci spent 20 years somewhere I'm told and accomplished nothing
|
| But
I know it's simpler: Zeus giving up Athena
|
Were
you buried in that suit with your
Diseased lungs You weren't even smiling yet your brother Always talked of buying a stone The puppet is not the painted hand The stall is gone da Vinci carried off the Mona Lisa to France The brother carried the face with him then I with me |
If it moves it's alive!
If it moves shoot it!
If it moves eat it!
If it moves
I am never asked these days about art. But if I were, I would speak: Each artisan worth his salt should have a vision of what is to come and a better working knowledge of what has been. So in the artisan, a certain ability to set stage, juxtapose those things primary, prepare a facility, find the answer to the critical. But above all a personal anger, which, if worthy, become an beacon to the soul.
| Brecht
didn't piss around with words
|
A
vision of puppets is not enough
but knowing which paradigm one is currently lavishing is of more value I would not ask if the hand is alive or no but rather why do I think that it is not |
| Olson
says: It is space.
I say: It is velocity. Thales says: Know thyself. I say: Careful of the industrial norm. Aristotle says: It's alive. I know: The world is not complex.
|
FAQ
And where does an artisan set his bearings, ahead or behind? If I were learning quickly, very quickly, I would take bearing
on what is rapidly receding, grow splendid in the longer recurrences, and discard prudently.
And the post-moderns? They are not talking to the hand. They know only raiment. We have been in the grip of the Phoebus
for ninety or more years. It is too long. Even for the intellectual: that little indiscretion, that sidestep, then that wild
momentary gallop for the girl. And that monotonous prick couldn't quite do it;...so, when he found a couple a raunchy ones
and set 'em on the crack in Delphi to smell rotten eggs.... we all realized from then on it would be like tossing coins.
...and so what is to be said about post-modernism and its long awaited demise?
| I say we can no
longer:
be cynical and whimsical; view the world as contradictory, complex, or chaotic;seek a new allegiance with nature; assume the role of sophisticate; crave the public coffers; transform the commonplace with ulterior imagination; confuse the novel with the dernier cri; read them ;quote them ;believe them. time dilation==> slower decay==> elixir of life==> mind for technology==> standard operating procedure==> polyps==> monads==> t oids==> turds==>and fractals: in love with a designer measurement? |
So what's wrong with the white lines on this blue field? Where I trace her through its grid, waiting to be excavated? I got the blueprint and it's mine. I'll resurrect the subjunctive case, the passive voice; and, maybe I'll add a room at the back.
My favorite mistress?
The one who on her own occasion
crawls up my throat
to my anterior commissure
where she shouts from a bridge she cannot cross?
This city is new! This city gleams! She has her tomb!
and so....
am I by default that diseased girl
who would return to the painted hand
when the folk of her history begin
to ready themselves for that great Diaspora.
...and this the hand could sign:
there will be few
who maneuver amid jetsam,
and then leave
like Dionysus or Mr. J. Appleseed
to rename metropoles.
from Drei Gesänge-
Kaselsl, spring 1997
©syprian harvey