From birth, his eyes were like baubles of glass—ornamental. Yet, he had been given a second sight like a vast array of solar sails, fanned and latticed- a sure conduit to enduring memory and the airs of the world. He authored colors, and spoke them into life.
[Art by Francis Picabia…The Joy in Blindness]
I whistled well when I was young-
An artifice of breath and tongue.
It ruffled almost everyone,
Save you, my funny shadow.
I met you in the grocery aisle
Unwitting of your secret smile
I hummed a tuneful ditty while
I squeezed an avocado.
Funny- how you had the nerve
So forward, and without reserve,
And scant I felt did I deserve
Your words of inspiration.
You asked me “Can you whistle too,
Or sing a silly song or two?”
And, blushing as I said, “I do”,
I paused, in hesitation.
And so, you said “Not many men
Can pull it off like that”, and then
You walked away, and that was when
You turned around, still smiling.
So, blushing still, I hoped that we
By happy Serendipity
Might meet again, for so you see-
Your smile is so beguiling.
Joey spoke to himself behind his mask of mute. People didn’t make sense anymore. He was in singsong thoughts, and all that was reaching him was the rising scent of his scrambled eggs and the underwater music of voices. Colored, they were, and in his mind he swam.
***
Art: “My friend Pierrot”, by Max Ernst
Old age is a smarmy being
that pushes you from behind,
confusing you with multiple choices
and dithering doubts.
Cutting some strings,
and tightening others,
it challenges your daring of pain,
and wants your attention during sleep.
Ah, this life and its just desserts.
***
Art by Remedios Varo
In we stayed, us kids, during the short days of that long winter, while Grand Dad saw to the animals and smoked his pipe. Well, what can you do in feet of powder snow in the flatlands? Not even good for a fort. Checkers. Cards. We fought. We read in kerosene light.
***
Art: Winter landscape. Neskuchnoye, 1910, by Zinaida Serebriakova.
In his hurried dream
of effervescence,
of disintegration,
our man had a knowing
that his neglected heart was more than the sum of his parts.
***
Art: Paul Klee, The Man of Confusion, 1939
All the days that I knew you, you hummed while you were working. No one ever had to tell you what to do. Most of us smiled as you bustled about. Some rolled their eyes, but I thought of you as a bee going from flower to flower. You made a song, and the angel was in the details.
***
Art: “As the Volante”, by Remedios Varo
Though my bones are broken,
I will stand erect for you
while you’re in this room.
Would a nicer house help us?
One with rooms further away,
but with furniture placed more warmly?
Each day,
the headlines grow more stale,
and I despair of a gentler world.
***
Art: Litzlberg am Attersee, 1915, by Gustav Klimt
In paint, you have described my dreams as if I were your ancestor and you had come across dusty tomes of them, written in too-early wakings. And it’s so odd and pertinent that the visions are all Untitled, yet seem to have come from my own cold rooms, leaving blanks on the walls.
***
Art: “Untitled”, by Zdzislaw Beksinski
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