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

My blue tavern house in old Giverny,
with yellow bright daisies as a welcome.
We've swam on the wheat banks,
diving in absinthe and dealing in apathy.
Kissing the swirling midnight skies in secrecy.

Dark blue cascades the midnight hills,
I've spent another night in the open fields  -
looking at hay bails like an old friend, and worst enemy.
I've met your sharp eyes at noon and known better,
with your white shirts, stained socks, and slick smiles.

I remember you told me of the women stealing jam,
east of La Seine near Clackaloze,
You said she reminded you of me,
good until gone, broken undeniably
and the way I say I could do it all quietly -
paint the shining night sky with ease and one brush.
But if I was what you wanted, I wouldn't be,
too stubborn, too jealous, and too mad, honestly.

So I may as well write you what I am - underneath.

Often I awaken
into a world
different than
the one in which
I went to sleep.

It's nothing
dramatic, not

people with
green hair or
cats who speak
fluent Latin or
leaves that fall
upward in autumn.

It's only a
slight difference,
everything just
an inch or so
out of kilter:

like the first
moment of
consciousness
after an acid trip
45 years ago or

the memory of
a girl I should
have kissed,
but didn't or

a slight breeze
from the distant
wings of angels

or especially
like Monet's
endless *******
lily pads
floating at
Giverny

always seen,
but always
different,

simply
challenging
me to notice,

to wake up

to be alive

that most
important thing
of all:

just to
          notice.

  ~mce

Early spring flowers

sprouting in faraway dale

against dawn's blue sky

Take me to the xylographs of Tunis
Where silken shades of colour  
Dissolve and reassemble  

Take me to the white veils of sand
Along with Elysia
To the oils of Giverny scented with
Climbing roses  

( I want to touch them with my fingers)

Take me to the orange rows of Laos and  
-further away-  let me
Into the magic Australian Outback

( I want to count how many dots exploding  
The picturesque of Aboriginals)

Take me to Berlin before the curtain on
The Night
To the peripheries of the world

( I want to look in the eye the eyes kept prisoner by Time)
Then let me into the remote echo of the invisible squares

Explain Krieg und Krise.  Remember Nanjing.  Hand twist nasturtium, trim Elijah in no other language but your own.  Delicious, decked against scurvy despite punishing days world unwraps, made available to voracity, where would you build, on what day?  Perfection unable to sit still comes towards ambush as peasant night squeaks to the border.  Chanticleer in linear e phlox stammers discretely, hammers combination, blends tonality.  Gravid as brook trout, orangerie cascades kanji.  Bucolic spasm shimmering, weeping runes a la Giverny become Cycladic, veers off color’s lambent arsenal.  Caustic repeats, Gatling interferes, hope bails, song recants.  A Zebedee in Flemish hue cracks *** luck, lets out gurgle.  But in good fortune, peaches to daisies, Abigail to titmouse, family is raised.

Rows of bright
red roses

violets tulips
or tomatoes turnips

and carrots
too

in brown loamy
soil

is there structure
or is it a pallet

of assorted
smudges

grays
or flash and colors

Giverny
or a Victory Garden

we are
what we cultivate

and what and who
we feed

whit howland © 2021

Straight to Heaven

You could be a painting hung in the Louvre,
in your very own display. I watch you as the protagonist
in a Miller play. When you talk I’m listening to a Wolfgang Amadeus opera of modern day, your skin, blood red

porcelain, diaphoresis fire. You might think I’m crazy. But it’s not anyone who makes me feel this way. I read you as The Great Gatsby, the highbrow of society. You make me gush, as the Trevi, in old Italy. You walk as a GQ model wearing Armani. I smell

you Straight to Heaven, such an inspiration. You awaken
all my senses, woods, musk, the earth. I walk through
your smile as Claude Monet’s garden in Giverny, actually I’m floating up in the trees. If I go any higher I’ll reach

other galaxies. Your eyes are sapphires, I swear were stolen
from the queen. You would taste as Dom Perignon poured
in a goblet of Waterford, every sip a crystal drop resting on

my lips. You might think I’m crazy. But it’s not anyone
who makes me feel this way. I would say that you’re
humble. You don’t see your own reflection in the pool. That’s what’s makes me love you. That’s what makes you beautiful.

I wanted to turn off today
because saving the world is exhausting.
It was the same exhaustion that plagued your face last night,
in between spoonfuls from your indistinguishable plastic red cup.

What a privilege to be able to save the world
instead of being the one who needs saving.

I think that's what drives me to leave,
the feeling that, no matter where I turn,
comfort means ignorance, willfully blind.

I don't know if it'll be any different anywhere else,
but what if he never explored the Giverny?
We would be lost without the Water Lillies.

Obsessive Compulsive Disorder
Is really good for Art
Just ask Claude Monet
Not Napolean Blown Apart

I went to Giverny
Gave the garden Cary's ashes
When she wore no makeup
O God! Those eyelashes

Dublin, Wendy Darling
Gethsemani Trappist Abbey
Episcopal is Catholic Lite
Not too shabby!!!

         Long live Mr. Keating...