"cubist" poems
Surrealist Cut-up
boatman Purple haze
contemplative pouring
the sky as lone
rides the horizon.
islanding
into the lake,
Cubist
Arc to the horizon
apparition, brooding figure,
a form rides in twilight haze
junction of the worlds
into a slither of light.
Literal
Purple haze islanding the sky
pouring into the lake,
as lone boatman
rides contemplative
into the horizon.
Nov 26, 2014
Nov 26, 2014 at 8:23 PM UTC
it was the Cubist who created the space and color that
everywhere today assails our eyes
in uniform architecture and monotonous
design; the various branches of modern art
through tedious & exhaustive experiment
& research creating a massive cultural sinkhole
whose banal discoveries unveil for all the sameness
of form, line and color;
Quote from Gorky's 'Camouflage', 1942: I like the heat;
the tenderness; the edible; the lusciousness;
the song of a single person
in a bathtub full of water.
I like Ucello, Grunewald, Ingres,
the drawings and sketches for paintings
of Seurat and that man Pablo Picasso;
I measure all things by weight.
In text for MoMA, describing the 'Garden in Sochi' - series,
26 June 1942
I love Mougouch, Gorky's wife. What about papa Cézanne;
I like the wheat fields, the plow, the apricots,
those flirts of the sun. And bread above all.
My lever is the purple; About 194 feet away
from our house in Armenia on the road to the
spring my father had a little garden with
a few apple trees which had retired
from giving fruit;
this garden was identified as the _'Garden of Wish Fulfillment'_
often I had seen my mother and the other village women
exposing their naked bosoms, taking the soft,
dependable ******* in their hands &
rubbing them on the rocks; above all this
standing an enormous tree all bleached
under the sun, rain & cold, deprived of leaves.
This was the Holy Tree [quoted in 1942]
In text for MoMA, describing the 'Garden in Sochi' - series,
26 June 1942
I don't like that word 'finished'.
When something is finished,
that means it's dead, doesn't it?
I believe in everlastingness;
I never finish a painting – I just stop
working on it for a while.
I like painting because it's something
I can never come to the end of;
sometimes I paint a picture,
then I paint it all out. Sometimes
I'm working on fifteen or twenty
pictures at the same time; I do that
b/c I want to – b/c I change my
mind so often; The thing to do is
always to keep starting to paint;
never finishing the painting [quoted in 1948]
Aug 20, 2018
Aug 20, 2018 at 4:39 PM UTC
Your shy smile, in the buds
blooming late by mellow winds;
distant in the leaves turned golden
your fiery hair;
the city below, still asleep,
stuttering in the lanes, your voice,
in the coffee morning shop.
my heart, all the butterflies.
Your dreamy smile, in
the toast maker lady at the kiosk.
You said I should go to Primrose Hill
So I went to Primrose Hill.
and I found you everywhere.
Apr 26, 2015
Apr 26, 2015 at 5:55 PM UTC
I. Prologue
Splash words across: images on canvas.
Before Abraham was, I am:
the cubist of poets. Mangled and tangled;
Here thoughts emerge, in reverent perspectives.
The real world: how many dimensions,
depends on who you ask; Monotone
in my unidimensions. Filter. Baritone.
Coffee-brown is the best colour around.
II. Love
Here we sit by two-arms distance. To north,
to south. Facing opposing poles.
There is an attraction.
Here are images from the industrial world
gone post-industrial. Broken commodes.
Outsource your misery here. The sky can afford
a hole from on here. As long as
there's none in my shoe.
Sometimes, I roll over in waves.
Sometimes, you wave over.
Questions still hidden in the corners.
III. Peace
All that's passed remains flickering
green like the wireless router
silently at nights: recover, play it over.
Flush it all up. Splash it all around. Cubism.
Art nouveau. Portmanteau. Now fruck the world.
Neon shades rippling through the smoke
riding out dancing to metal clang;
Crazy laughter like that of an empty skull:
smoke the pipe, brother,
spread the peace around. 2013, stupid.
Idealism died in 1967. And many times since.
Repeats always a farce.
IV. Spirit
Only one man died for the poor.
Who called the dead to life.
All other stories are about barons and hedgehats:
while the millions were ground over
to oil the world. While they roiled the world.
How the poor die under the heels
of those that claim to love that man?
Disagree? Drone. Agree? The throne.
Yes, we can, brother, we can defeat this
****** corruption. Brother,
be not corrupt.
V. Prospect
A sigh of disapproval, soft in sleep.
I come and lie, back to your back,
waiting for love to seep over.
Yes, we can, brother, we can overcome
bigotry vile. Brother,
say not, mine, the only way ever.
Happy lovers day. Shout out aloud,
peans more to the meek women's rights.
Forget not, there's some in your sights.
Two arms' distance is about the right in the day.
There are two faces seen in this bubble,
formed at the mouth of the tooth paste tube.
Peace to the world, every morning after.
Every little home by home.
Feb 14, 2013
Feb 14, 2013 at 12:14 PM UTC
Dali's brush, she has
in her expressive tongue;
his cubist sensibility,
laps up that dense macabre
as if it's cadence par excellence.
Nov 28, 2013
Nov 28, 2013 at 1:13 AM UTC
Too many frown lines to be certain
whether or not those lips
are worth a kiss.
Face paint cracks,
middle school onion skin effect,
on pale forehead hide, that
covers bare bone and brain.
Costume falls down at the shoulders,
waist and shin, only to reveal
more paint, Picasso paint,
blue and rose, cubist painted prose.
Your dance is little more than
a jig, left foot to right foot, Newton’s Cradle-
strings attached.
Nov 3, 2012
Nov 3, 2012 at 9:19 AM UTC
The night is breathing apartment aroma
and the drunks are tumbling
d o
w n
w a
r d
through marina side
alleys
where the
Jamaican trumpeter
sharpens the brickwork
with clamor
brass rifle bullet sounds.
I get my depression half price at the supermarket,
that man made melancholia/
dehydrating all senses/
gunpowder to a broken barrel.
Sleepless for that distant girl explosive!
She's moving to the big city,
yeah there she goes!
To live in a place where many go to die.
Mango the sky
and ashclouds-
autumnal daisy/
center sunshine/
opalescent ecstasy
reminding one of Indonesia
and Darjeeling balcony evening
on the cubist block
on Kuta
on dreams and nightmares simultaneous
(THE PARANOIA OF PARASITES)
wet air
vapor rain
February pain
in the July bone!
Celebration VOICENOISE
passing phantom
thru paisley sheet
corridor.
Life is strange..
the strangeness of days
receding via the mattress
to time
and memories and
remembering the happenings
of ceremonies
this year
past year
CAVALCADE!
SPECTACULAR STARLIGHT!
OVERVIEW THE FIELD OF TENTS
AND LOVERS!
Life is an unrecognizable chameleon
T R A N S M U T E
to some other color
iridescent
(Where do I go? where do I go?)
Say by December the
name of my Valentine
by boardwalk boreal
and I recall
the current
Summersun
pearl/red
beautiful and beating
(BEDAZZLED LIKE
THE HEART)
Jul 6, 2015
Jul 6, 2015 at 3:57 AM UTC
like pieces of a jigsaw
their faces were joined
interlocked in places
overlapping at others
like Picasso himself
had painted them
with linocut or oils
an imperfect portrait
harmoniously
asymmetrical
created by these two
fragmented profiles
lips interdependent
remaining in want
fulfilled for a moment
in this "their moment"
a cubist vision of beauty
not in appearance
or form necessarily
but in what it shows
Sep 21, 2023
Sep 21, 2023 at 1:04 PM UTC
Flame-tree abloom: dabbing red,
the distance paling green -
from the half-open window
to a dreary room;
Horizon waves bathed in gold dust -
from a vessel floating
in deep, enveloping seas;
Smudged streetlamp ayonder
a dark, rainy night;
Love, blooming silent, outlying mundane life.
Aug 8, 2013
Aug 8, 2013 at 2:04 PM UTC
Paintings delight my eye and ignite my imagination: Devotional icons, the omni cubist view, the brazen eyes of Whistler and Manet; and Monet's lilies.
The perspectives of the renaissance and the violence of Caravaggio; the lush glowing skin of Rubens' nudes; and more!
I celebrate the intellects that created these.
Apr 21, 2016
Apr 21, 2016 at 6:04 PM UTC
Change is necessary.
Change is require.
But is change sufficient?
Change is a diversifier.
Change is a niche filler.
But is change transformative?
Change is not good.
Change is not bad.
But then what changes do we keep?
Heuristic small change we like?
Perpetuating idiosyncratic Absurdities?
Selecting traits for "survival"
in a world of our own creation.
Do you understand the Michael Jackson trap?
Real Evolution is easy.
Diversity + Mobility = Survival
But cosmetics is much harder.
What will the monkey see in the mirror?
Will he like my face?
Will I have diversified my humanity,
change my BIOS for faces,
to an arbitrary Facebook,
Unrecognizable to a nostalgic monkey?
Sep 9, 2014
Sep 9, 2014 at 11:06 PM UTC
i.
the bones of your face
are long and defined.
i parse you
into geometry:
the firm lean lines of your
nose, your jaw
as a child's drawing,
as a cubist's dream.
ii.
you linger in my mind.
the way your hands
peel apart a question
as an artichoke falls open
barbed layer by layer until
you bare its redolent heart
which is also the answer.
Yes.
iii.
lulling, your words are calm
drops falling into the ocean
of our mutual silence. i feel
only contentment, only
contentment.
Mar 13, 2017
Mar 13, 2017 at 11:59 AM UTC
Mamie met you
in the base camp bar
in Malaga
her curly red hair
damp from a recent shower
and said
Picasso was born here
In this bar?
you said
No
she moaned
In the city
in 1881
and she took the drink
you’d bought her
I like Picasso don’t you?
she asked
taking a sip
of the drink
and you noticed
the tight tee shirt
snugly holding
her firm *******
and her eyes bright
as sunlight’s breaking dawn
yes
you said
I like his later work
not the Blue
or Pink period or
that Cubist *****
and your eyes
slipped downwards
along her slender frame
the tight blue jeans
caressing her small
but plumpish ***
her fingers holding
the glass
and you thinking
of other things
far removed
from Picasso‘s art
though knowing he
would understand
where your mind
had wandered
and what the scene
your mind had set
like some dramatist
preparing for a play
she sipped more
of the drink
her head thrown back
the nice turn
of the neck
the chin
the nose
the ears protruding slight
between her red
and curly hair
and wondered deep
as you drank your own
if the other hair below
between her thighs
was as red and tight
as that above
and she said
breaking through
your thoughts
Was it lust or love
that moved his brush
Picasso I mean?
and oh you mused
taking on her words
and squeezing
the meaning
from each syllable
that was uttered
on her breath
to lay my head
upon her breast
not to sleep
but dreaming rest
and you turning to her
said High love or low lust
fed by his fond muse
moved his brush I trust.
Jun 20, 2012
Jun 20, 2012 at 2:47 PM UTC
*the museums
the art galleries
all had he visited
van gough
rembrandt
dali
picasso
knew he all
and their works
paintings
drawings
sculptures
and etchings
surrealist and cubist
and he dazzled his audiences
with his vast store of fact and opinion
till the sorry drunk
troubled his thoughts
with accounts of john next door
the man who visited
when our man was on his rounds
giving erudite talks
and bargaining with dealers in antiques*
Dec 12, 2015
Dec 12, 2015 at 4:38 PM UTC
if the hand outline has been emptied,
i'll say sorry in advance.
call the emergency mind-repair system
(please never ever call me back).
quiet down the thoughts now,
if seems your time has come:
to be cast into oblivion
with the rest of the mortal ones.
Apr 3, 2019
Apr 3, 2019 at 2:31 PM UTC
Wail 'n' whine of the saxman's blues
The syncopated sizzle of the drum kit
Trinkle, ****** of fingers fervent
The jigsaw jazz of a cubist portrait
Feb 4, 2015
Feb 4, 2015 at 12:51 PM UTC
Oreii mama....
Ayyababoyi ... navvesindirooo....
.
.
Nuvvante naakishtam, nee navvante naakishtam
Sachin ki thana straight drive antha na?
Na galli lo Farhaan ki thana leg spin antha na?
Veetikante ekkuva,
Nuvvante naakishtam.
MF Husain ki thana modified cubist style antha na?
Zakir Hussain ki thana pakhawaj antha na?
Veetikante ekkuva,
Nuvvante naakishtam.
Shakespeare ki thana kalam antha na?
Math sir ki thana blackboard duster antha na?
Veetikante ekkuva,
Nuvvante naakishtam.
Amma pette goru muddha antha na?
Nanna cheyyi pattukoni nadipinche anthe na?
Veetikante ekkuva!!
Nuvvante naakishtam.
Oreii babai...
Siggu padthundiroo...
Feb 21, 2020
Feb 21, 2020 at 10:27 AM UTC
i never seem
to get enough
rest
these days
always waking
up
tired
to start coffee,
****
fix my hair,
sit in bed drinking
the coffee
plumbing the depths
for
ways to get through
another day,
****
try to remember ways
that worked
before
maybe a quote
or a character
a poem
a song
a memory
an illusion
could even be
another person
but time draws
ever nearer
ever closer
until
at last
that silent cheetah
is sprinting
before i know it
i'm sitting
in my car
turning the key
with whatever
semblance and steel
i finally gathered
-a real live
cubist representation
of my
self
driving to work
at 3:49 a.m.
passing
three black cats
in
the street
that watch me
carefully,
the glowing night
white-hot
in their eyes
satellites of some
indifferent future
hidden with
the devils
on the horizon
Jul 28, 2019
Jul 28, 2019 at 7:09 PM UTC
Caught a moonbeam to Muskogee with a dark angel
Where it started, it's hard to know. Maybe I was a traveller
hitching a ride on an ideology maybe I was trying to find my space,
then she was there and we were sharing space
She was all anodyne and icicles with a presence magnetic and
manner so soothing,
she allowed me to forget
from where I had never
come
from
And from our first tryst
she was careful to explain that
it is never the shadow bringing the light.
This, of course, illuminated nothing
I was hooked, however, on her ominous banter
Lack of curves, and cubist edges
Hooked and ready for processing:
In her presence, I allowed myself to feel
That I was such a pretty thing
while she kept me under wing...
kept me as her play thing, and
this I allowed for much to long
With her I felt
but could not see
thus I paid the price for wading
into the shallow end of identity
We journeyed through the desert
for a thousand years while I satisfied
my thirst with a state of dementia and
was rewarded with emptiness for doing the time
This infatuation transformed my youth into
disenchanted wisdom and I finally understood that
It’s never the shadow that brings the light
Which for some reason, illuminated everything
Once you know that
you can find freedom in addiction,
wealth in poverty, purity in excess,
then step by step, ferociously
you can find peace
at the top of the mountain
while losing your identity
and finding your self
Mar 7, 2019
Mar 7, 2019 at 10:28 PM UTC
They sit in the humblest of frames,
Faux wood-grained plastic grotesqueries
Purchased long ago from some doomed Grants or Bradlees,
Though one or two enjoy something nicer,
Left behind by some long-timer taking a buyout
Or a sympathetic youngster denied tenure
(She has, for the better part of three decades,
Cleaned up the detritus of middle-school children,
A bit stooped from the work,
Not to mention the burden
Of any number of she’s just or she’s only
Tossed like so much bric-a-brac in her direction.)
The approximations of old masters equally eclectic in origin:
One or two gallery-quality reproductions
Blithely abandoned by some haughty faculty matron
Mentoring children through noblesse oblige,
The odd promotional piece from a scholastic publisher,
Mostly things she has cut from magazines or discarded texts.
She studiously avoids pieces tending to the dark or muted,
No Stuart portraiture or pensive Vermeers;
She has a strong predilection for bold, boisterous Gaugins,
Mad cubist Picassos, lush Cezanne still-lifes,
Even the odd blocky *******
If you pressed her to explain her fetish
For the brightest of the great masters,
She would likely be at a loss to explain,
Having no academic bent for such things
(Though she has been known to curse the shortcomings
Of lithographers and pressmen under her breath)
And, as she freely admits, I’m not much good with words.
There would be the uncharitable suggestion
That their purpose is to mask cracks and pockmarks in her walls
(She has, to be sure, lived in a long series of such places)
But she has never, consciously or otherwise,
Used them for such pedestrian and utilitarian purposes;
They are, to her anyway, beautiful, and that is all they need be.
Dec 23, 2016
Dec 23, 2016 at 11:17 AM UTC
I don't think I actually know what I look like.
I feel like pieces of me are these really ugly misshapen puzzle pieces I stitch together to make a cubist painting of what I could be. The mirror sometimes shows me a girl that's worth something but in pictures, I see a pair of arms, legs, eyes, ears, a nose, a body. Someone's body. Out of 380 photos I take, maybe there's one good picture, but that one picture usually doesn't even look like what I think I look like. Is that weird? Once in a while I catch a glimpse of myself and get a little startled because I don't look like what I thought I did... but then that moment passes and I turn back into the puzzle pieces that don't make sense, even to me. I then return to the cycle of piecing them together again, trying to figure out what the hell I actually look like.
Feb 17, 2018
Feb 17, 2018 at 2:29 AM UTC
a song of secrets,
a twisted hum--
builds till it splits a
witch's speculo, speculo
on the wall.
into silver spiders--
her
cubist vanity of jumbled
pose.
cockeyed with the ugly
beautification of truth.
Feb 21, 2019
Feb 21, 2019 at 12:37 PM UTC
/ I was spotted covering my eyes by a dentist whose childhood had stopped disappearing. how big is your family and who wears the mouth? is it true your dad sold to a city gargoyle a spray-can of piss? that your mom had no baby tired of being born? that their suicides filled a madhouse with cubist maids?
/ year nine: your birthday spider is put on film for biting. your sister takes one look at my brain and remembers what to feed and how to clean a cricket.
/ year eight:
Apr 11, 2016
Apr 11, 2016 at 2:17 PM UTC
A cosmic tiger
Now turned
Cubist cat
Hangs on a wall
Proudly recounting
The tale of when
He served
As a vehicle bearer,
For the most
Potent energy form
Known
To human kind
In the entire cosmos
© 2017
Oct 14, 2017
Oct 14, 2017 at 3:18 PM UTC