olive face
with a candle
reiterating
impossible green light,
the mouth only half formed
like it never even
kissed the girl he tried
to kill
before suiciding himself,
“oh the spanish are so passionate’”
says the lady walking by
as her husband remarks
on the thickness of the paint
and how long it must
have taken to dry
“this is a performer”
a mother tells
her child, but its max
jacob with a jester crown;
hat pummeled
with fingertips
like the christmas tree
sculptures i clayed at church
when i was 7 (but hint),
the eyes are black basins
cavernous excavations
craters for later….
the face seems too
small – with impish peeks
of cheek that imply agile
intelligence & semi-permissive
indulgence / the lips
are plucked
into a puckish
smirk or a twist to hold
in sentiments that
tinsel between
evocation,
and lightening
a verbal
trickster, he skipped
a tight-rope of horse tails
and rainbows.
He Was
some kind of jester
until dying
in drancy
deportation on route
to a camp of internment
& the sculpture remains lest we forget
picasso’s real blues came after
it is the kind of drawing
that concludes an ambit
the world cessates
its eclipse
in the crimp of her baby finger
crushed like a contorted
mark of question,
orbed eyes overburden
the slight pedestals
of fragile cheekbones,
the forehead is too grand
to make little sweep of this situation,
but her lower hand cradles her elbow
she still cares
he looks, without seeing -
mouth a crevice between
talking & listening.
his jaw is a dark shadow
ruminating a bruise,
an inverted
peach of sorrow
but he enfolds her
in a prescience of cubism
right hand impossibly flexed
along her arm
while his left drapes
over her shoulder
with skinny fingers
he does hold her
and you feel less sorry for them
because they are not alone,
because the wine bottle is not empty -
(we hope it is not empty)
and then an elderly lady rolls
up to it in her wheelchair
& in a guttered strike of language
she discerningly murmurs,
“oh, they are starving to death”
many conservatives stopped
listening to the beatles
after they went to india.
people blame yoko for some
act of destruction
when she handed lennon
a piece of paper
that said breathe
but that is not what i see
in the photos
of the fourteen years
he never left her side.
she wore black before
but it looked so much
sadder after
december 8, 1980
and although i would
have liked to overhear
the tenure specific
to their conversations
i will instead look
to the pedestal
where they placed
their shoes
while they lay naked
in front of the camera
wanting us to know
exactly what they were about
as they delivered
one of the most important
messages
of the century
love.
passed
objections
learned
to levitating
green
bluffs
no need to
exaggerate
make
reaches
protecting
colour
remind of
slowly
softer
overlooking
mildly
wilded
moss
and deery
island
this baked glory;
a steaming peach
why yes, i do
promote feeling like
the fragrance of summer pie
not stones, not numb
not broken, we open
like fields when we are
slowly finger-tilled.
reap the harvest -
cinnamon says this is why
the world has cream.
help breathing take
care of itself; ripen, widen,
sprawl the sweetness
stay home for the day
and be delicious.
there is a state called grace.
i like to be taken there
on a wild blue rhythm.
glass cuts the
wind in half
it gasps, crystalline
a big cold sky
and silver sea
seems eternity
lips melt ice
& moonlight lands
on their risking plan
as his tongue,
knees, intensity, lean
away from the wall
to pummel her evening.
it snows
and they make warm
and smooth under
the skirt of the ferry’s
please’d memory
no longer personal
i aim to publish
interest
in lace & space,
vintage sentiments,
enveloped lust
detailing sparkling options
containing 7 candles
beside a sun
i fling phrases
nimble with space,
smarter than history
here beside you,
honesty contained
there comes a day
of lit love,
within line, nameless
and no longer personal
these deities
born of burnt wood;
dragged &
smudged &
scrawled
into malas
and mudras,
head-dresses,
frangipani,
nipple-berry,
lion -
leaves as faces…
all hidden and emerging
by way of rhythm
and foliage -
a deft
embroidery of
dancing.
dancing
the way he must have
to push
open the doors
to these
drawings
jack shadbolt
india suite
1976
