Saturday, March 17, 2018
Visions
One. And Done.
-My editor wants your vision
in words our readers get.
-Vision? Ponderous word to
face the world with!
-Bear with me.
-I just paint.
-Yes! Exhibit One, this Wawa Hoagie
so real I want to devour it! Ham,
Swiss, Lettuce, Tomatoes, Onion!
Mayo-o-o-o!
-Me too.
-And Exhibit Two! This...thing.
-Same hoagie.
-I don’t wish to devour it.
-I do, and much else there.
-And not there?
-Especially.
-I’m getting this on tape, you know.
If you’d care to focus.
-Whole world’s on tape! Who gives a shit?
-If you do, it’s vaguely. Help me out here!
-Something more specific?
-Just a bit.
-Nippur was the Capital of Babylonian
Religion for three thousand years.
-Hooray for the Nippurians! But we’re
dealing with Americans who put bread
on the table.
-Hooray for them!
Labels: abstraction, art, artist, culture, exposition, painter, painting, realism
Sunday, March 12, 2017
Matisse
left leaning against storage door, Spudwell walked
outside to the auto accident and subsequent
screaming. Then the legalistic debate in the furnace
of a street.
Key of C-Sharp.
-So there it was! A million bucks for someone, a route
guy, a homeless, anyone, to pick off! How long...?
-Hour. A wonderful discussion! Very detailed by two
guys who’ve never been wrong. BMW versus Porsche.
-You, the billionaire nitwit jury?
-Oh well. Insured.
-And if some opportunist hooked it? How about the
sick feeling then?
-That’s hired out too.
Labels: art, art market, billionaire, carelessness, Matisse, money, painting, wealth
Sunday, January 22, 2017
Two Painters
-I shoot for a concept right away.
-Because you can’t draw?
-Precisely.
-Lack of talent is the best shortcut.
-Would you say that such lack tends
to abstraction too?
-In your case, yes.
-Not necessarily bad, though.
-Are we judging on results?
-Jury always out and never returns.
-You vaguely posit one very slippery universe.
-There’s another?
Labels: abstraction, aesthetics, art, draftsmanship, painting, Philosophy
Thursday, August 18, 2016
The Woman Bored By Everything
finally tried reading, again.
But the authors too florid,
wrapping rhinestones in
platinum words.
And those whose tacked opposite
cast wisdom in asperity and just
sounded crabby.
Art helped her for a time, painting,
sculpture.
The more outlier and crap, the better.
A few shocks, a few laughs.
Her girlfriends recommended sex,
of course.
A week in the woods with a Polack
with a twelve-word vocabulary!
But, knowing her luck, said Polack
would not perform due to a massive
Mother Complex, or a nagging
vocational failure at Microsoft.
Was...she heading for that kind of
bitchy behavior which offended all?
Perhaps so, when she, instead,
discovered long walks.
Made no difference whether mid hot
concrete or cool dapples.
After, she breathed!
And not a thought.
Am I becoming a moron? laughed she.
Labels: art, artistic style, boredom, literary style, Literature, painting, sculpture, Woman, women
Friday, August 05, 2016
2066 …
or the more things change…
-They painted the passageways, and Larry
sent Robot Benny to check on the stickiness,
or none.
All the painters yelled! Except Gloria, who
shrieked out a girlish C over C.
That last piercing did it for Benny, who whirled
thrice and collapsed!
-Ridiculous! His whole LINE is oversensitive!
-Got him in a dark room. Deprogrammer Litzky
types in calming algorithms.
-Send that Litz to me later!
-No need, Ruthie! Just the one thing does it for ladies!
-Sex harassment rap at your old place too?
-I take it back! And any three future utterances!
Labels: future law, future workplace, painting, robot, sex harassment, workplace
Sunday, December 20, 2015
Minds
Even after the internet, Moke and Kippy sent
weekly letters.
Lulu and Racker kept them in Birkenstock
boxes in the cavernous attic.
They had inherited the monster of a house,
and crack many jokes about filling it up,
but no possibility there.
When winter came, they closed most of the
rooms off, but Racker said he enjoyed going
into one or another to think. Air like ice
evidentially conducive to such.
When the correspondents moved to Paris, they
missed a couple of beats. Kippy started writing
poems in French––she had taught it at Central
High—and Moke started painting again.
He did send his efforts via the net. Fetching
neighborhood scenes, crusty bistros and the like,
which inexplicably acquired jarring pop elements
after a couple of years.
Then, all shape and color, with not much fathomable.
Now, just color.
I like them, but don’t know why.
For some reason, it becomes necessary to visit a
mountain monastery celebrating its five-hundredth
anniversary.
Well, some reason: She thinking of writing their
Gregorian Chants into secular poetry.
Oh well, I couldn’t see the future in that, but that’s
just me!
At any rate, their bus went through a barricade
in a rain storm and plunged...! well, all died.
Lulu and Racker held a memorial in the huge house
and we’re reading from the letters by candlelight very
nearly horizontal in the wind. Two things strike me.
They had been interested in virtually everything.
And! They had a Romance! From Childhood till they
sensed each other’s breathing.
Until it stopped.
But we all knew theirs was an ideal out of reach. End of
our particular stories in that regard! Two exs studied me
as the flames resumed upwardly.
Anyway, the lovers wanted their ashes in “a beautiful,
natural place,” and her brother in Virginia volunteered his
beaver pond.
I sent him my video of the service here. That had been a
friends’ deal; the beaver pond a family one. Except for
Lulu and Racker. They’re invited. Hey! Every family’s
different.
They didn’t want to leave Brusque at the vet. An old
little Jack Russell gentleman, if still frenetic. So I came
over and took care of him in their three-day absence.
Lulu had moved the boxes of letters to a special alcove
under the eaves. I wandered up there during a blizzard.
Blessedly alone, Brusque afraid of the attic.
Sorry to disappoint, but the wind prevented my hearing
anything else, if the lovers intimated to one another.
They did in a dream the next week. He said “It’s cold!”
And she, “Never! with you.”
So? Was the Wind translated then, as Romantics would
have it?
I say just the wind. My twisted mind, the rest.
Labels: art, Death of Lovers, friends, ghosts, letters, painting, Paris, poetry, Romance
Sunday, May 24, 2015
Charging Towards Perfection
Her Mind
Glor told Mark it was over, so he returned to his wife
and babies.
And to Ice! No, really. Ice Storm of the Century! Thus,
with Nelly at night school, he sat in the empty house
as it lost power, and contemplated both his lust and
fetching the children the following day from her mother's,
aka Dragon's Lair.
Glor, or course, had simply changed her mind. Again.
The voracious sex lasted five months this time, and Ralph-
the-Mechanic had won the pool at Kippy's Kool Kup, since
it didn't go six.
She became busy writing tiny missives now, to leave in the produce
section of the Acme. To be read by Cal, the young manager.
Poems actually, though lost to posterity when dumped into the
wrong box, of old TV Fan Magazines, by mistake.
One endured. The best one, luckily. Placed in oranges.
Blue?
Try someone new!
Clever lads find such poets, and Cal not long after rented a
bungalow on Appletree Lane.
Glor, this time, went total domestic! Aprons, Apple Pies, even his
lunchtime visits proved more flouncy, though hurried.
"She has found happiness at last!" proclaimed the Professor from
his canted stool at Kippy's.
But, she changed her mind. Lasted over a year though, and no one
won the pool.
Last--in the secular realm--a cyber millionaire installed her among
the old Pac Mens and a roller rink in his loft apartment-office.
He supplied her with iPhones and iPads no mattter how many she lost.
But...that life was not for her. All the WORKING while pretending it's fun.
She had changed her mind. Since the pool had rolled over, it became
even more interesting when the commissioner ruled that the cyber-guy one was improperly set up. So, another rollover!
Serious money! And he also ruled that anyone who stayed must
throw in an additional hundred. No one left, harder on the Professor,
since the state recently halved his retirement check.
The rules this time: One was to write a two-word depiction of Glor's next move.
Accomplished, and placed in the greasy tub that Slippery Skinny
had brought from the Roxy after devouring the popcorn therein.
When she announced, the new contents would be solemnly
brought out.
She did!
And the winner was Nun, Nepal.
Glor said Thailand, but the commissioner ruled close enough!
Hector Watts, the deathly quiet accountant, took home a couple
of thousand or so!
Actually, Glor, ultimately rejected both exotic locales--"Stinking
long ride on a stinking airplane!"--for Jersey City.
Mother Superior Veronica-Marie was taken by this serial sinner
with a burning vocation!
Everybody always was infatuated by our Glor, the Church only
the latest to break down.
And such a novice! Holy too small a term!
Well. Okay. This one not profaned by a pool, but she, uh,
changed her mind before the point of no return. Again.
In a first, went back to the Cyber Dude. There a third of
the floorspace devoted to her painting studio with its
garish abstracts, and Super-Morning-Six has interviewed
her and shown her work.
We are not surprised, having seen her artistic side with the poetry.
Good Morning America wanted to come in too, but she
snubbed them at the last minute.
Too immersed in painting her life. Her Life! LIFE!
Labels: abstract, art, artist, betting pool, change mind, cyber, painting, poetry, sex
Monday, November 24, 2014
The Critic
-Stale, flat, derivative, imitative!
-You can tell by looking at one little painting?
-Naturally.
-What if it’s satire, mocking its rigid form?
-It’s not.
-I’ve seen others of his, and they’re fresh and cheeky. He takes chances.
-That’s your view.
-Views. That’s where we differ.
-Whatever.
Labels: art, conceit, critic, criticism, experimentation in arts, painting, rigidity
Sunday, July 14, 2013
Shock of Art
Facets of Aesthetics
-After the divorce, I met Rosette. Did you ever...?
-You don't remember drinking away a few weekends?
Her and you, and my Chloe and me?
-I don't remember much of anything from that time.
That's the point. So, Rosette and I decided to change.
Instead of booze we studied painting in a night
course at the Academy. Both proved mediocre, but
we loved it even better than the giggle juice.
-Chloe and I are breaking away from it too.
Maybe we'll take a course.
-She's so beautiful it's a wonder some slickster hasn’t
stolen her away!
-I stay ever-vigilant. Besides, Rosette is no slouch. She...
- ...resembles a small gaudy dumpster. Let's not sugarcoat.
-Whereas you...?
-Even worse.
-I'd say Wooly Mammoth.
-No tusks.
-You come damn close.
-Okay so we're not Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie!
But we found each other--as some fuckin song
must go. But anyway, I called you about
Lindy, from Sales.
-Organized. No nonsense.
-Not really given to hallucinations?
-Hardly.
-That's my problem.
-How so?
-Well Rosette likes the light in my office, you know?
-It streams!
-She also likes to paint in the nude, and have me pose
the same way.
-This will intersect with totally not-artsy Lindy?
-Everybody supposed to be gone for holiday weekend?
And she hops back Saturday afternoon for sales folders.
-And into massive nudity?
-Exactly.
-What...?
-Faints dead away. We get dressed, like, immediately.
And when she comes to, I give her herbal shit my ex
had me buy the day she left...then phoned me here and
told me to stick it up my ass.
-Anyway, back to the victim?
-Rosette tells her of terrible virus going around!
-Let me guess. So awful it even imparts hallucinations?
-She looked so battered, I think she bought it.
-But what's the difference? It's your company!
You do what you please.
-Once upon a time. But we're part of a halfass
conglomerate now. And up for accreditation.
I mean they got heavenly standards. You'd never
think it was business. Besides, some of our
oldest stockholders run Church investment plans!
-So, if a certain eyewitness blabs as to behavior that other members of the conglom-a-nonsense, plus
traditional bluenoses, think is not exactly moral...?
-Hey! I could go it alone again, but lose a lot
of benefits for myself and the whole crew.
-You want me to talk to her! You devious, hairy bastard!
-Could you?
-Should I stay with the vision story?
-Use your own judgement.
-Well, if she's gone off half-wacky, I will.
-Hell, we really didn't do anything wrong!
-Was the shock! Besides from an aesthetic viewpoint
you both surely did. Do.
-Like, YOU'RE handsome?
-So I've been told...once even by...Lindy.
-I knew it was right to bring you in!
-This will cost you.
-Name it.
-She was so stressed out! The mind can do anything
to you. A few French dinners will soothe, methinks.
And then an equal number to assuage my Chloe.
-Balance!
-My middle name.
Labels: art, business, conglomerate, nudity, painting, Puritan
Thursday, December 06, 2012
“I went for Art, not Sociology.”
Held
in a public place
by collective stink.
by collective stink.
PSYchology
okay,
our motives
shown
for
what they are,
Mount
Olympus
or kitchen
sink.
Painting
and music better,
predisposing
mere tones.
Poetry
best, con-
figuring
text
for whatever.
Labels: art, Music, painting, poetry, psychology, sociology, taste
Saturday, June 30, 2012
Painter, Composer, Writer
WRITER
At first, I recognized objects. Even if distorted,
that's a rolled umbrella, a women's arm. But now...?
PAINTER
I paint. Ask the paint.
WRITER
Just finished story: ...waitress in Jersey City diner
dreams of meeting a Met.
PAINTER
Where can I puke?
WRITER
You won't when you read it.
COMPOSER
So, maybe the human always pokes in?
Doing a commission from a small German city.
To be performed in the Cathedral.
PAINTER
Big-ass organ like Bach?
COMPOSER
Funny you should mention him. He chased
a chambermaid in the wine cellar while service
ensued upstairs. It got to be my starting point.
I'm hearing the muffled resonances coming from
up there. Organ, preacher, shifting of the congregation...
WRITER
Will you let on in the program notes?
PAINTER
Nah. He’ll get too far afield for that.
WRITER
Yeah, you'll coin some stupidity instead:
Poppies in Dusseldorf.
PAINTER
Too real. Gives too much. How about Arrangement?
WRITER
Too much a musical term already. Rendering!
COMPOSER
Premieres in a church, not a meat plant!
WRITER
At first, I recognized objects. Even if distorted,
that's a rolled umbrella, a women's arm. But now...?
PAINTER
I paint. Ask the paint.
WRITER
Just finished story: ...waitress in Jersey City diner
dreams of meeting a Met.
PAINTER
Where can I puke?
WRITER
You won't when you read it.
COMPOSER
So, maybe the human always pokes in?
Doing a commission from a small German city.
To be performed in the Cathedral.
PAINTER
Big-ass organ like Bach?
COMPOSER
Funny you should mention him. He chased
a chambermaid in the wine cellar while service
ensued upstairs. It got to be my starting point.
I'm hearing the muffled resonances coming from
up there. Organ, preacher, shifting of the congregation...
WRITER
Will you let on in the program notes?
PAINTER
Nah. He’ll get too far afield for that.
WRITER
Yeah, you'll coin some stupidity instead:
Poppies in Dusseldorf.
PAINTER
Too real. Gives too much. How about Arrangement?
WRITER
Too much a musical term already. Rendering!
COMPOSER
Premieres in a church, not a meat plant!
Labels: abstraction, art, Music, painting, writing
Friday, December 03, 2010
Rocco and Packy the Painter
ROCCO
Yo Pack! Still working on those abstracts of abstracts? Beautiful to me. I’ll buy the one in Time.
PACKY
Still available. That story supposed to make my career left me in the same unsalable rut.
ROCCO
But you hang in museums!
PACKY
Does that make me well-hung?
ROCCO
I’ll check with your girlfriend.
PACKY
Don’t bother. It’s her week not to speak to anybody.
Her PhD’s in Depression.
ROCCO
Christ! Does chaos make art, or art make chaos?
PACKY
I don’t puzzle much out. Intellectualizing ices the
balls of painting.
ROCCO
At any non-sexual rate, presently working on–?
PACKY
Complete 180. Photographic realism so acute it hurts.
ROCCO
Any subject I’d know? Twilight on St Monica’s?
PACKY
Remember that waterside industrial ruin in
French Connection? Set up my easel there among
crap and shattered toilets and graffiti. Not to mention homeless turds with steam still rising.
ROCCO
Lovely! What’re you calling it?
PACKY
The United States of America.
The artists, too, return to South Philadelphia.
Labels: art, industrial ruin, painting
Sunday, March 07, 2010
Winslow Homer Never Finished
paintings, according to
critics and academics--
who glimpsed promise
nonetheless. They itch
universally
to finish art, rendering
it pretty
as the fussy wraps
of gifts from
frigid spinsters.
Labels: academics, art, critics, painting, Winslow Homer
