late last night i walked alone along the desolate shore
of Monet’s pond at Giverny the pale moon
sometimes obscured by impasto clouds
the waterlilies those treacherous waterlilies
screaming in agony
Saskia, Rembrandt’s wife, was there
naked and weeping, her hair and body
wet and slimy draped in orange pond algae
Cezanne crouched nearby cursing and slashing canvases
with a butcher’s knife before tossing them into a fire
when he finished he made fierce love to Saskia
who sang an old Dutch love song as he did
Rembrandt was in deep conversation with Monet
in a puddle of passing moonlight
and didn’t seemed to mind, anything
to stop her endless wailing I heard him say
Monet says Titian’s mistress is now a mermaid
who lives beneath my betraying waterlilies which is why they cry
and why I keep painting them no one makes love like her
just look at Titian’s Madonnas
Van Gogh stumbles in from a dung-filled alley, bleeding badly
from the bullet wound in his abdomen,
where the rich kids from Auvers tormented and shot him
just for the fun of it, Vermeer bankrupt and gaunt
steps from behind a tree and asks if it’s suicide or the new art
Vincent says let the people believe that tragic ending
it’s a dramatic final brushstroke to my life even if untrue
but I love the blackbirds and my wheat fields and blue irises
way too much to spill my guts on them cadmium red maybe
my left ear lobe maybe but never my guts
where’s de Kooning anyhow he yells the *******
borrowed my paintbrush and never returned it
now I’ll have to paint with the tongue of Gauguin’s old shoe
Caravaggio floats by face up caressed by the wet palms of the weeping lilies
he’s burning up with fever delirious screaming
where’s my ship where’s my ship
they’re all on the ship my paintings
my paintings will redeem me the Pope knows
I only killed one man
Monet strokes his beard like Moses Rembrandt
says it happens to all of us even our wives and
mistresses perhaps it’s the lead in our *****
it’s not suicide it’s not homicide it’s the madness of living too much
Rothko appears, a translucent ghost inside a mist salving his slashed wrist
with Monet’s pond water Mark washing washing
the healing water the Giverny water dancing with pran the giver of life
that’s what Monet was painting at the end
using the palette from the other side
pran transmitted through the wailing
of the waterlilies the siren’s song
that lures artists to their death
and then washes them clean for the next go
to pick up where they left off, alone
with his whiskey bottle Jackson ******* hurls paint clots
at Rembrandt’s Still Life with Peacocks
those two dead peacocks they’re all dead peacocks
floating belly up under Monet’s footbridge
all the color gone from their plumage
drink the water Jackson or better yet
let Cezanne rip out your diseased liver
and wrap it carefully in a weeping waterlily
and float it out into the middle of the pond
where the forgiving moonlight and the mermaids
and Monet’s eyes now dim with cataracts
can help it filter out the poison of living
too much and then you too Jackson
will make painterly love to Saskia and she will
daub your diseased body in Titian’s blue
and her husband’s gold and Vincent’s sunflower yellows
and send you back into the world
where you will continue to splash us all
as we lie flat on the ground hands and legs intertwined
our faces and bodies your canvas more willing than ever
Jackson, you’ll turn us into a unified field of smashed hues not just from here but from where you stand one foot on the other side
get us all raging drunk Jackson in that myth you longed for
splatter us in the tinted mess of the mystery you raged at
and had to settle for drunken oblivion instead
drink deeply the mystic-hued water of Giverny
Vincent and Paul and Mark and Jackson
and when you come back
spit it out on our parched souls
Jan 15, 2017
Jan 15, 2017 at 8:35 PM UTC
on the far side of the green and red-lit window
she stands her back to me black hair cropped short
loose strands grazing her slender neck
low-cut blouse half-hides the tense valley
running down the middle of her back
black handbag slung over right shoulder
she holds a compact or phone to her face
either fixing her lipstick or shooting a selfie
or looking at me in her mirror looking at her
her hips curve far left slightly stretching
the tight dark blue skirt suggestions of some
dreamy shoreline deep inside my forbidden lagoon
on the other side of the world seven dervishes
spin in white robes as a green and red mist slowly
curls around their hidden legs and takes their
inner mirroring high into the reflecting sky
the divine is always present
says the orange-robed monk to his companion
as they eat the lettuce and radishes before departing
Jan 15, 2017
Jan 15, 2017 at 8:33 PM UTC
alone, poems are always made
somewhere out on the fuzzy edge
of things where two worlds intertwine
the pulpiest juice spews out
sea and sky earth and sea fire and earth
sky and earth fire and wind water and fire
out there the veiled shaking the tenuous shifting
the curved drifting the spaces laid bare the whispering
down there the cold colliding the subterranean brawling
the white-hot raking the broken barriers the rumbling
up there the restless rising the upshot turbulence
the sudden melting the wind-sheared diving the resurrecting
in there the tormented dancing the quiet gnawing
the night crawling the bloodied twisting the dawning
always, poems are made alone
the determined tracing the insistent fingers the tracking
no team of divers no web no net no school of trawlers
never, because together poems are forever afraid
once made, poems are always alone
they stand apart the old the etched boulders
effaced facing the northward vast dark space
alone, poems resist the fade
the freeze the mists the fickle seasons
the cloudless reasons
Jan 15, 2017
Jan 15, 2017 at 8:31 PM UTC
this defrosting heart
by joe disabatino
don’t miss this moment
the ghosts of winter
still linger above the water
thinking white while feeling pink
just sit and listen
until no place else to be
pervades the heart
yes, this defrosting heart
now there’s nothing else to crave
while kneeling next
to your own rekindled fire inside
now you find your way back
along those re-emerging golden lines
tracing the hillsides of your memories oh so quiet
let the unfinished paintings and sudden poems
that appear in the dark blue silences come to you
like a herd of winter-starved deer
is that an approaching spring rain in the distance
or winter’s tide receding?
whichever you decide
become the equinox’s first visitor
this is a view to take with you
don’t forget this moment
waiting for season’s turn inside her lasting allure
ear to cold wet ground straining for her uncoiling whispers
Dec 29, 2016
Dec 29, 2016 at 4:57 PM UTC