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| Ink, oil and Industrial Enamel on cut velum Matthew Dennison |
the fisherman leaves
home to return to the leaf house
stolen tears do not repair the wind
nor mend the scream torn
nets of other
world pain globed
autumn world
unshaken but captured
sculpted to state
what is still
unsettled in the settled
useful to a tree
in the house of
unrelenting leaf taking
mute dogs of muscle lay
quietly about his bones
waiting to serve, drifting
toward a beach inside
becalmed the maniacal surge
swiped from cradle, stolen from grave
the wave broken boxer
rests on a stool in his corner
placating the swell
with a spoon of cool metal
sewing the skin shut, coached
by grief and loss, by leaf and
tree, repaired by moist wet
silence around him all
the yield is decreasing around him
all is leaf mutiny that you do not see
them scurry in pink shells leafed in
tinny tinted caves inside him all
is leaf tunnel maze, carpeted
land of ears and mitts to catch
what was too golden to be heard all
around him is too tear-shaped is bled
brown and abandoned by sun all
around him is the shape he could not hold
cold fish hooked from an infinite pool of
sorrow is the son sunk beneath the horizon
who could not grope his way into father
who could not leave his mother even after
he landed still wearing the red boots
he stood for days in puddles of
blood, in blood wave sloshed in blood spray
the killing he has made is killing what's still
wriggling alive inside his slick suit
a yellow hearse kept the corpse warm enough
to approximate a human on land, but at sea,
everything swims in a direct line from
eye to tear to wave, whichever breaks him
first can salt the bones for the bowl of
what you do not have is full of
lack and loss what the greedy
swiped clean leaves an unusual
hollow carved pause in the chest where
a line extends clear through
him into world into sea the reckoning
between each trip is a fight
victory defined only as escape
vaguely familiar the face that smirks
sleepless in his dreams
this is a lovely collaboration. beautiful image and words.
ReplyDeletethanks gigi! i was initially nervous about posting this. i've been exploring writing poetry in response to various forms of art recently, which is new territory for me. in the past my writing was almost entirely self generated. for some reason, i have been gradually dropping out of my poems while the world steadily seeps in. i saw a documentary about spalding gray in which his dramatic monologues were described as his encounters with the world, and yet, he had been the primary subject at first. a poet i knew in the nineties, gerald burns, once compared me to a wind chime. i have sometimes felt embarrassed about the passivity of that image, though i have to admit it's appropriateness. but on the other hand, a wind chime contains within it the capacity to beautifully respond to the world in a way that is familiar yet random and strange. one could say that the wind chime is pregnant with that beautiful response. for much of my life i have felt like a victim of my sensitivity, feeling frustrated with feeling what others don't even seem to notice, but with this responsive style of writing i feel like i am using that condition. i liken it to setting up microphones to randomly record the murmur of the world and then sifting through it to find interesting pieces to fuse together with the material that floats to the surface of my own consciousness as i am recording the world. i am that instrument.
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