#artworld - Hello Poetry

After the incident we gathered in the reception area Stalling Making small talk Vaguely excited and vaguely bored We were leaning into Little gala tables Covered in white linen Raised for conversation or Fashionable idleness Why look who’s here! You were slipping by Like a noblewoman Floating in her day-dress so the human machinations didn't show Why it’s been thirty years if not a day! It’s not like you were exactly moved My friend, your friend barely roused you Are you plastic? A formally once-was? You looked at me as if your eyes were Marbles Made of glass and somewhat pretty, Just for decoration It was hard to say in such darkness Your darkness in particular It may have been the suit. I know that they’ve fêted you here before. A king returns! Is it the magma chamber for your imminence? Or a mere Alcove? The face doesn’t really move Much anymore Forever frozen in a slight smugness Your mouth that strikes me as somewhat meta if that’s at all possible And it seems to be A bit rude A noirish marvel A dark star Funny you never once looked at me really Never said Hello Nor Good Evening And the things that I could have said Do you remember how you tried to drill a hole into a poured concrete floor with a cheap tool while we laughed about dentistry as opposed to *** practices How I tried to find a cherry picker through the yellow pages on a Saturday afternoon How you quizzed me about my practice and how I played dumb How your dealer ate my dinner when I was looking to the right But I remained silent bemused more than disgusted It has been a long time and Why would that forgotten phospherence be me? I wanted to say Did you know that that penthouse after-party at the Marmont was one of the saddest nights of my life? I leaned over the balcony and stared at the Marlborough Man puffing rings onto Sunset Blvd. Desperate. How has it come to this I asked shocked myself This has all gone so wrong. I looked down upon the street watching the rings echo and cars swerving off to nowhere No amount of drink can fix this night and they killed the joint without me being boys. One is now dead by hanging. I’d have preferred the other. But here you are. Silent with absent eyes after all these years I never opened my mouth I couldn’t seem to configure the lips precisely I don’t know why Perhaps they refused to comply despite my feathery efforts. No need.

0

Dec 30, 2018

Dec 30, 2018 at 12:57 PM UTC

swiggins

Opening No. 3

After the incident we gathered in the reception area Stalling Making small talk Vaguely excited and vaguely bored We were leaning into Little gala tables Covered in white linen Raised for conversation or Fashionable idleness Why look who’s here! You were slipping by Like a noblewoman Floating in her day-dress so the human machinations didn't show Why it’s been thirty years if not a day! It’s not like you were exactly moved My friend, your friend barely roused you Are you plastic? A formally once-was? You looked at me as if your eyes were Marbles Made of glass and somewhat pretty, Just for decoration It was hard to say in such darkness Your darkness in particular It may have been the suit. I know that they’ve fêted you here before. A king returns! Is it the magma chamber for your imminence? Or a mere Alcove? The face doesn’t really move Much anymore Forever frozen in a slight smugness Your mouth that strikes me as somewhat meta if that’s at all possible And it seems to be A bit rude A noirish marvel A dark star Funny you never once looked at me really Never said Hello Nor Good Evening And the things that I could have said Do you remember how you tried to drill a hole into a poured concrete floor with a cheap tool while we laughed about dentistry as opposed to *** practices How I tried to find a cherry picker through the yellow pages on a Saturday afternoon How you quizzed me about my practice and how I played dumb How your dealer ate my dinner when I was looking to the right But I remained silent bemused more than disgusted It has been a long time and Why would that forgotten phospherence be me? I wanted to say Did you know that that penthouse after-party at the Marmont was one of the saddest nights of my life? I leaned over the balcony and stared at the Marlborough Man puffing rings onto Sunset Blvd. Desperate. How has it come to this I asked shocked myself This has all gone so wrong. I looked down upon the street watching the rings echo and cars swerving off to nowhere No amount of drink can fix this night and they killed the joint without me being boys. One is now dead by hanging. I’d have preferred the other. But here you are. Silent with absent eyes after all these years I never opened my mouth I couldn’t seem to configure the lips precisely I don’t know why Perhaps they refused to comply despite my feathery efforts. No need.

94

what do little stuckists cry when their painting talents die? "this isn't art! you are not artists! i'm close to art, you are the farthest!"

0

Sep 9, 2016

Sep 9, 2016 at 9:17 AM UTC

effieebbtide

stuckism international

what do little stuckists cry when their painting talents die? "this isn't art! you are not artists! i'm close to art, you are the farthest!"

4

I revisit that night and I don't know why I don't know why it took so long for you to get there for one thing I parked Which took some time But I found a spot I won't be towed And I walked to the hotel entrance and waited far too long I took out a cigarette And I bet I smoked the whole thing. You never showed up which was strange. Did I start to smoke another? I thought that I was being polite waiting on the curbside Eventually R. and his girlfriend showed up Super late But polite which was no longer something to expect from anyone anymore I found They collected me and we went up to the Penthouse And there you were Did you race like a daemon breaking those presumptuous, Certainly useless Laws pertaining to Physics just to get up Fairfax Avenue? You ran to get to a party that you were only invited to because of me? Without me. This is not normal is it? Your excuse upon my arrival was ****** Idiotic. I walked away. On the balcony I stood with you and R. again We had avoided one another throughout the night yet always collided back like opposing atoms. Was that my doing? I really think that that one was your trick. One of you had a joint And I thought to myself O ****** Hell Thank God It went around once maybe twice And then became a two-step Without me (Again!) Back and forth between you two. I was standing there quietly waiting like it was a game of jump rope Watching for the moment when the rope would let me in My turn would come up eventually cuz I'm standing right here. I think one of you R. probably Handed me the joint now dead A stiff speck of rolling paper stuck between two fingers And the two of you turned and walked away from me Without a care Brothers-in-arms Well this isn't that sort of party. Boots on the ground. Blood in the sand. Pack on your back. Gun raised. The stench of iron and salty offal. Heroes in The Battle of Normandy. I am not an Axis soldier and i know that you are not Allies This Chateau is modeled after one in the Loire so the legend has it. And this is a totally different thing altogether. Wasn't your father, a fireman and you, his firestarter? Didn't you watch him put out your flames on the local tv news while you lay on the carpet chin in hands, full color? Did I follow you both back inside? I think that I didn't I hope that I didn't How do you follow that? I know that I walked to the balcony's edge And settled into watching the rings to my right The smoke rings from the cigarette of the Marlboro Man perching above Sunset Blvd. what have I done? how has it come to this so fast? I may have joined in Blowing rings from up above I made O's very well in those days One after another One inside another The billboard too We're strange amigos we Our rings float away unfurling into thinner mists While the white and red lights of cars down below us Rush into the sparkling night air East West Somewhere other than here My circles disappear above my head His circles too. Did he seem to you like a happy cowboy? Rugged and determined Those unsentimental eyes Narrowing fearlessly at a blank manifest destiny O O O O It's endless but I can keep up. Looking at him from were I stand I know that I will need some of what he's got to get through this situation. I thought that I had it on me. I thought that I had packed it. But somehow it's taken its leave or Gone Missing. He's not even real This eminence to my right Just wood and paper and a mechanism making steam look like a plume of carcinogens O O O O Yet I look at him a bit jealously regardless Funny to feel that way about a billboard Maybe cuz he's kind of a man Maybe it's his hat But it's true nevertheless His rough hew cardboard evokes the self determination at all costs here above Sunset. I will leave this penthouse with its sick yellowy light Dash into the elevator again Make my escape Light another and Blow those rings. Messaging Mayday Signaling my location Above ground Terra Firma Not underwater in depths that cannot support life R.'s been dead now almost twenty years By his own hand. Tomorrow I will try again I hinted to myself barely believing I still have my lighter and what cigarettes are left in the pack.

0

Feb 20, 2020

Feb 20, 2020 at 4:57 PM UTC

swiggins

Opening No. 9

I revisit that night and I don't know why I don't know why it took so long for you to get there for one thing I parked Which took some time But I found a spot I won't be towed And I walked to the hotel entrance and waited far too long I took out a cigarette And I bet I smoked the whole thing. You never showed up which was strange. Did I start to smoke another? I thought that I was being polite waiting on the curbside Eventually R. and his girlfriend showed up Super late But polite which was no longer something to expect from anyone anymore I found They collected me and we went up to the Penthouse And there you were Did you race like a daemon breaking those presumptuous, Certainly useless Laws pertaining to Physics just to get up Fairfax Avenue? You ran to get to a party that you were only invited to because of me? Without me. This is not normal is it? Your excuse upon my arrival was ****** Idiotic. I walked away. On the balcony I stood with you and R. again We had avoided one another throughout the night yet always collided back like opposing atoms. Was that my doing? I really think that that one was your trick. One of you had a joint And I thought to myself O ****** Hell Thank God It went around once maybe twice And then became a two-step Without me (Again!) Back and forth between you two. I was standing there quietly waiting like it was a game of jump rope Watching for the moment when the rope would let me in My turn would come up eventually cuz I'm standing right here. I think one of you R. probably Handed me the joint now dead A stiff speck of rolling paper stuck between two fingers And the two of you turned and walked away from me Without a care Brothers-in-arms Well this isn't that sort of party. Boots on the ground. Blood in the sand. Pack on your back. Gun raised. The stench of iron and salty offal. Heroes in The Battle of Normandy. I am not an Axis soldier and i know that you are not Allies This Chateau is modeled after one in the Loire so the legend has it. And this is a totally different thing altogether. Wasn't your father, a fireman and you, his firestarter? Didn't you watch him put out your flames on the local tv news while you lay on the carpet chin in hands, full color? Did I follow you both back inside? I think that I didn't I hope that I didn't How do you follow that? I know that I walked to the balcony's edge And settled into watching the rings to my right The smoke rings from the cigarette of the Marlboro Man perching above Sunset Blvd. what have I done? how has it come to this so fast? I may have joined in Blowing rings from up above I made O's very well in those days One after another One inside another The billboard too We're strange amigos we Our rings float away unfurling into thinner mists While the white and red lights of cars down below us Rush into the sparkling night air East West Somewhere other than here My circles disappear above my head His circles too. Did he seem to you like a happy cowboy? Rugged and determined Those unsentimental eyes Narrowing fearlessly at a blank manifest destiny O O O O It's endless but I can keep up. Looking at him from were I stand I know that I will need some of what he's got to get through this situation. I thought that I had it on me. I thought that I had packed it. But somehow it's taken its leave or Gone Missing. He's not even real This eminence to my right Just wood and paper and a mechanism making steam look like a plume of carcinogens O O O O Yet I look at him a bit jealously regardless Funny to feel that way about a billboard Maybe cuz he's kind of a man Maybe it's his hat But it's true nevertheless His rough hew cardboard evokes the self determination at all costs here above Sunset. I will leave this penthouse with its sick yellowy light Dash into the elevator again Make my escape Light another and Blow those rings. Messaging Mayday Signaling my location Above ground Terra Firma Not underwater in depths that cannot support life R.'s been dead now almost twenty years By his own hand. Tomorrow I will try again I hinted to myself barely believing I still have my lighter and what cigarettes are left in the pack.

169

i'm reporting to you here From the women's bathroom stall at (nam withheld) solo show At the (name withheld) Gallery Located on (name withheld) Blvd. I have to say that it comes as some relief to be sitting here with my little plastic cup of sour wine resting comfortably on the cold tiled floor I sit upon the plastic, seat cover down the door closed and latched shut What with my notes and my phone and my purse over-full Everything in here is the color of a rotting peach, hard stone exposed And I wonder what the color is in the men's bathroom? A bruised purplish tomato? A dull pinky brownish mayonnaise? It is very crowded out there Way too many people I came to see paintings painlessly and I can't see a thing but I can jostle with the best except that I'm completely exhausted. I know it sounds naive, sure that I don't mind saying "Hi!" and "Hey!" without the whitest of smiles But then what do you say after? No worries. I am charming. I will do all the work I will make you laugh Tantalize you with my wit My Enthusiasm or Disdain. I'll try to come back again when this space is empty perhaps commiserate leaning in at the counter If I feel so inclined Gage my conspiratorial tones by the eyes that face me Grim? Resigned? Expertly Professional? and it may in fact be quite lovely then Now airy, the galleries. Or it ill be a quick and disappointing walkabout and out I may not even need to say "Thank You." because no one cares. For now I will practice my breathing And think about dead third generation Abstract Expressionists like Norman Bluhm or Joan, my one true love I'm pretty sure that on the floors out there I've splashed my wine about which will prove to be rather unfortunate for someone who skids in kitten heeels. Did I mention that Blankety Blank came with yet another brand new spouse? Bold as day. She seems like all the others very nice A mid-tone wheat-y blonde Petite So far her ready smile is a solid and her interested gaze noteworthy Too shy to wear the engrossed face Her mouth is primly closed. She seems polished and stands rather well despite no one talking to her after the Introductory Handshake Her power may grow with time what with that ring on her left finger. I thought that the husband was still in jail to be honest or had fled to Barbados to sell the same rolled oil on canvas over and over to different buyers and still keep the scratch And the canvas rolled, wrapped, and neatly stored The artist seems to be fine with it although she will never be paid. Out there beyond this door Stand I can't get a proper count because it's five people deep and their backs are to the walls I watched someone walk passed something rather beautiful although they didn't notice. I for one nearly had my right eye knocked out by a shock of titanium white that was totally uncalled for. It's on the eastern wall and a scene stealer no doubt Probably already sold Probably hung already sold and it's gonna make the cover of everything. Personally I'd like to take a knife and slice it full across remove the white offense leaving it crumbled in a mass on the floor Now a loser's cape bright enough to be seen in darkness and stepped over lightly like so many others. Out there. When I leave this stall I'm gonna toss this cup and I'm gonna run and in so doing quickly side step another tangled bundle I will look intensely to find the hero instead, confronting as one does dark filthy textiles and thread counts and only in the passing In my beautiful raiment A vision I am sure will my eyes reveal that the over familiar tangled bundle the blanket is no one's cape but some exoskeletal remains left behind and its creature, gone. No ragged head. No ***** feet. No professional smile.

0

Feb 3, 2020

Feb 3, 2020 at 3:28 PM UTC

swiggins

Opening No. 8

i'm reporting to you here From the women's bathroom stall at (nam withheld) solo show At the (name withheld) Gallery Located on (name withheld) Blvd. I have to say that it comes as some relief to be sitting here with my little plastic cup of sour wine resting comfortably on the cold tiled floor I sit upon the plastic, seat cover down the door closed and latched shut What with my notes and my phone and my purse over-full Everything in here is the color of a rotting peach, hard stone exposed And I wonder what the color is in the men's bathroom? A bruised purplish tomato? A dull pinky brownish mayonnaise? It is very crowded out there Way too many people I came to see paintings painlessly and I can't see a thing but I can jostle with the best except that I'm completely exhausted. I know it sounds naive, sure that I don't mind saying "Hi!" and "Hey!" without the whitest of smiles But then what do you say after? No worries. I am charming. I will do all the work I will make you laugh Tantalize you with my wit My Enthusiasm or Disdain. I'll try to come back again when this space is empty perhaps commiserate leaning in at the counter If I feel so inclined Gage my conspiratorial tones by the eyes that face me Grim? Resigned? Expertly Professional? and it may in fact be quite lovely then Now airy, the galleries. Or it ill be a quick and disappointing walkabout and out I may not even need to say "Thank You." because no one cares. For now I will practice my breathing And think about dead third generation Abstract Expressionists like Norman Bluhm or Joan, my one true love I'm pretty sure that on the floors out there I've splashed my wine about which will prove to be rather unfortunate for someone who skids in kitten heeels. Did I mention that Blankety Blank came with yet another brand new spouse? Bold as day. She seems like all the others very nice A mid-tone wheat-y blonde Petite So far her ready smile is a solid and her interested gaze noteworthy Too shy to wear the engrossed face Her mouth is primly closed. She seems polished and stands rather well despite no one talking to her after the Introductory Handshake Her power may grow with time what with that ring on her left finger. I thought that the husband was still in jail to be honest or had fled to Barbados to sell the same rolled oil on canvas over and over to different buyers and still keep the scratch And the canvas rolled, wrapped, and neatly stored The artist seems to be fine with it although she will never be paid. Out there beyond this door Stand I can't get a proper count because it's five people deep and their backs are to the walls I watched someone walk passed something rather beautiful although they didn't notice. I for one nearly had my right eye knocked out by a shock of titanium white that was totally uncalled for. It's on the eastern wall and a scene stealer no doubt Probably already sold Probably hung already sold and it's gonna make the cover of everything. Personally I'd like to take a knife and slice it full across remove the white offense leaving it crumbled in a mass on the floor Now a loser's cape bright enough to be seen in darkness and stepped over lightly like so many others. Out there. When I leave this stall I'm gonna toss this cup and I'm gonna run and in so doing quickly side step another tangled bundle I will look intensely to find the hero instead, confronting as one does dark filthy textiles and thread counts and only in the passing In my beautiful raiment A vision I am sure will my eyes reveal that the over familiar tangled bundle the blanket is no one's cape but some exoskeletal remains left behind and its creature, gone. No ragged head. No ***** feet. No professional smile.

139