Photos from my art show/party last weekend

by Jack Brummet

---o0o---

Poem: [You can't see earth]

By Jack Brummet

1 
You can't see earth
From the dark side of the moon
But maybe that changes

With the accelerating deceleration
Of the moon and earth.
A waning Gibbous moon

Dangles 1.3 light seconds away,
The Sea of Tranquility
A menacing sinkhole.

2
The moon
And fog
Are in cahoots.

Do our brains have a tide?

      ---o0o---

World Poetry Day, Part 2: The Day Lady Died by Frank O'Hara/Painting of O'Hara by Alice Neel

It is 12:20 in New York a Friday 

three days after Bastille day, yes 

it is 1959 and I go get a shoeshine 

because I will get off the 4:19 in Easthampton   

at 7:15 and then go straight to dinner 

and I don’t know the people who will feed me 

I walk up the muggy street beginning to sun   

and have a hamburger and a malted and buy 

an ugly NEW WORLD WRITING to see what the poets   

in Ghana are doing these days 

                                                        I go on to the bank 

and Miss Stillwagon (first name Linda I once heard)   

doesn’t even look up my balance for once in her life   

and in the GOLDEN GRIFFIN I get a little Verlaine   

for Patsy with drawings by Bonnard although I do   

think of Hesiod, trans. Richmond Lattimore or   

Brendan Behan’s new play or Le Balcon or Les Nègres 

of Genet, but I don’t, I stick with Verlaine 

after practically going to sleep with quandariness 

and for Mike I just stroll into the PARK LANE 

Liquor Store and ask for a bottle of Strega and   

then I go back where I came from to 6th Avenue   

and the tobacconist in the Ziegfeld Theatre and   

casually ask for a carton of Gauloises and a carton 

of Picayunes, and a NEW YORK POST with her face on it 

and I am sweating a lot by now and thinking of 

leaning on the john door in the 5 SPOT 

while she whispered a song along the keyboard 

to Mal Waldron and everyone and I stopped breathing

---o0o---

Frank O’Hara, “The Day Lady Died” from Lunch Poems. Copyright © 1964 by Frank O’Hara. City Lights Books. 

Alice Neel, portrait of Frank O'Hara

Happy World Poetry Day! "Ozymandias" by Percy Shelley Reading by Bryan Cranston)

Ozymandias by Percy Shelley

I met a traveler from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed:

And on the pedestal these words appear:
'My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!'
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.

                    ---o0o---

A sweet A.E. Housman poem

The thoughts of others were light and fleeting,
Of lovers’ meeting, or luck and fame.
Mine were of trouble, and mine were steady;
So I was ready when trouble came.

– A. E. Housman

---o0o---

poem: Here

By Jack Brummet

When I'm not here
I'm often there

e.g., anywhere
that's not here

I'm there,
but not all there

I have to be
a little here

to be there
and a little there

to be here
being here

or being there
is not being everywhere

when you go anywhere
you leave a little bit behind

shedding pieces
here there and everywhere

if you're not here
and you're not there

you are somewhere
neither here nor there

and somewhere
could be anywhere

but can't be
everywhere
I saw a bear

where? over there.

     ---o0o---

Poem: Turn

By Jack Brummet

1

The host and tenant lock

        In benign equilibrium.

2
Each valley followed by a slope.
         Every going followed by a return.

3

There is no relief without an ache,
          And no virus without a host.

4
Bricks tumble into the moat.
           The king's body hangs naked from the flagpole.

5
For a fleeting moment

            The condition for change exists.
                     ---o0o--

[in just-], e.e. cummings great poem of spring

[in Just-]

BY E. E. CUMMINGS

in Just-

spring          when the world is mud-

luscious the little

lame balloonman

whistles          far          and wee

and eddieandbill come

running from marbles and

piracies and it's

spring

when the world is puddle-wonderful

the queer

old balloonman whistles

far          and             wee

and bettyandisbel come dancing

from hop-scotch and jump-rope and

it's

spring

and

         the

                  goat-footed

balloonMan          whistles

far

and

wee

Four James Richardson aphorisms

What I'm not changes more than what I am.

So many times I've made myself stupid with the fear of being outsmarted.

The wound hurts less than your desire to wound me.

Think of all the smart people who are made stupid by flaws of character. The finest watch isn't fine long when used as a hammer.

---o0o---

Poem: The Sun Plays Its Song

By Jack Brummet

The sun plays

Its song

On mountains

Blueing in the dusk

And climbs

Another yellow horizon.

A pale flare

In the distant east

Sets off roosters

And alarms

And coaxes
Dew from the grass.   
---o0o---

Poem: Voluptas by James Weldon Johnson

Excavated by Jack Brummet, Poetry Ed.

To chase a never-reached mirage
Across the hot, white sand,
And choke and die, while gazing on
Its green and watered strand.

               ---o0o---

Poem: The Painting

By Jack Brummet

The figure you brushed in,

Stuck under static skies,
Wants off the canvas.
He will not be your Man With Blue Banjo anymore.
He wants to be what he will be,
Not sailing scumbled seas
Under impasto thunderheads.

He is tired of the dark sun.
He wants to lie down and rest.

No news comes from a far country.
The real estate around him —
A confabulation of blue and red stone —
Chills in an un-harbored sea.

The black sun was pushed, fell, or jumped,
To shine back upon itself.

He knows the sun will never set.
He cannot open his mouth to scream.
The oars will never move.

The island of color
Will always be eight inches away
And the boat
Will always be sinking.

The tattered sails hang in the wind.
The next day refuses to begin.
He clutches that blue banjo
As his ship tilts toward heaven.
         ---o0o---

Started 1997, finished 2013

Poem: The Dream

By Jack Brummet

1.
There is no verisimilitude,
No character development
Or contrapuntal plotting—
Only shadowy acts and intentions.

2.
What the wind whispers,
The taste of metal in my mouth,
The riptide around Cold Island.

3.
The sound of footsteps,
In unison.
---o0o---

Poem: Sailing to Athens

By Jack Brummet

In a pale grey fog,
I see the ghosts

Of ancient Helleniki mariners
Sailing phantom steamships, sloops,

Prams, dories, catamarans, dinghies,
Trawlers, purse-seiners, frigates and tugboats

Across the cerulean blue sea,
Trawling for missing fish.
          ---o0o---

Poem: "I contain multitudes"

By Jack Brummet

We all have a platoon
Of partly-contained

Spooky and multiple personalities
Ready to burst 

From the confines
Of our clown car.
         ---o0o--- 

The Tumbling Walls Of Jericho

By Jack Brummet

Jericho was locked down tighter than a submarine.

It made Helms Deep and Fort Knox look porous.

Joshua studied the walls, scooping a way inside,

When a man with whirling gaslight eyes appeared.

"Hey Spook! Are you for us, or against us?"

The spook whirled around, rattled his sword,

And grew ten feet tall and five feet wide.

"I am the General of all Generals."

It was The Lamplighter himself. "Take the shoes

From your feet on my holy ground,

And follow the ark, with seven priests with seven trumpets.”

Joshua told the peasants, "All right, beat feet!”

Seven priests tooting seven horns led the parade

Around and around and around Jericho

Like Sambo marched the tigers around the tree,

Or the way the earth spins in the dark around the sun.

They marched in silence six long days.

On the seventh day they lit out at dawn

And marched around the city seven times.

After the seventh orbit, the priests blew a cadenza.

Joshua said "Shout”

And the roared swelled with each passing minute

Until the walls came tumbling down.

Every man, woman, animal and bug,

Young, old, red, yellow, black and white,

Fell on the sword.

Joshua was the Lord’s boy now

 And put the hairy eyeball on any plan

To resurrect Jericho.

----o0o----

A Marilyn Monroe Poem

By Jack Brummet, Poetry Ed.


From Fragments: Poems, Intimate Notes, Letters by Marilyn Monroe by Farrar, Straus and Giroux (First Edition October 12, 2010, ISBN-10: 0374158355)

Only parts of us will ever
touch only parts of others –
one’s own truth is just that really — one’s own truth.
We can only share the part that is understood by within another’s knowing acceptable to
the other — therefore so one
is for most part alone.
As it is meant to be in
evidently in nature — at best though perhaps it could make
our understanding seekanother’s loneliness out. 

---o0o---

Poem - from the Poetry Generator: The Cloud Endures

By Jack Brummet, and the poetry generator

1
The cloud endures like a red sun.
Winds calmly rise like a dead captain.

2
Love, adventure, and anger.
Work, anger, and death.

3
Laughter, anger and death.
The dusty skyscraper grabs the truck.
                    ---o0o--- 

A Memoir of Robert Huff by Lewis Turco

By Jack Brummet, Poetry Ed.

A sad, but fascinating memoir of one of my poetry mentors, Bob Huff.  Jump here, to Lewis Turco's blog to read the story.  Ed's Note: Turco is also the author/editor of a great poetry reference book--The Book of Forms.

I interviewed Robert Huff in 1977 for a magazine--Jeopardy.  I'll have to dig that up. It was priceless...my clueless questions parried by his snarky answers. That's him, second from the left in the photograph. 

I took two classes and one independent study from Bob. Our "one on ones" were usually conducted at a bar; we met on campus only when he was boxed in by faculty or editing duties. Depending on the level of ethel he was running, he ranged from warm, encouraging, and hilarious to the, well, dark polar opposite. On the whole it was great to spend a few sessions outside the classroom. He was wise about poetry and song and the act of writing. And not so wise about his own situation. Another prof I became friends with at Fairhaven/Western, R.D. Brown, published a mass market mystery novel with a lead character loosely but vividly based on Robert Huff. Bob denied this in the interview, where he said "the only thing I have in common with this cop, Killian, is defensive drinking."

Jerry Melin, Keelin Curran, Nick Gattuccio, Jan Newberry, Kevin Francis Aloysius Curran and I first published two or three poems from what would become his final book (the book and poems are mentioned in the article), in the second issue of our NYC literary magazine, Scape, in 1982.

Ed's note:  My friend Pope Francis mentioned, interestingly, that Miller Williams, another poet at the Breadloaf conference (and pictured above) is the father of the singer-songwriter Lucinda Williams.

---o0o---

Edgar Allan Poe's poem Eldorado (happy national poetry month)

Edgar Allan Poe's famous poem about the city of gold.  The line from this poem "Ride, boldly ride," has been used as the title of several books, articles, and anthologies of country music, and the west in general.  /Jack B, Poetry Ed.

Eldorado


Gaily bedight,
A gallant knight,
In sunshine and in shadow,
Had journeyed long,
Singing a song,
In search of Eldorado.

But he grew old,
This knight so bold,
And o'er his heart a shadow
Fell as he found
No spot of ground
That looked like Eldorado.

And, as his strength
Failed him at length,
He met a pilgrim shadow;
"Shadow," said he,
"Where can it be,
This land of Eldorado?"

"Over the mountains
Of the moon,
Down the valley of the shadow,
Ride, boldly ride,"
The shade replied,--
"If you seek for Eldorado!"

- Edgar Allan Poe


 ---o0o---