"pollock" poems
He has taken rake and shovel in hand,
Taking advantage of the light,
Rare in these climes this time of year,
Still welcomed, though rendered severe
By the sun's reluctant trudge above the horizon,
The type which, sauntering through a window pane
(Falling upon a crucifix anchored above a cradle
Or some ancient, gilded frame
Containing a photo of some grandparent's wedding day,
Exploding into full undifferentiated diffusion)
May possess a dram of warmth, albeit resigned, nostalgic
A bittersweet reminder of what has gone by
(And in the shade, the air is filled
With the portentous chill of what lies a few months hence)
But there nonetheless as he tends to those final farewells
From the trees bowing to December's inevitability,
The droppings not the Pollock-esque bursts of October
(Those having been collected and consigned
To the normal corner of the back lot)
But dreary brown-hued things, not welcomed by eye nor heart,
Simply corralled perfunctorily and dismissed.
One could contend that such activity is unnecessary,
The mere vanity of all endeavor,
As the snow will come soon, and steady as well,
Performing the seasonal, cyclical function in its own time,
But he soldiers on nonetheless, a unseen one-act nearly-farce,
Painstakingly raking and bending and scraping
To leave his patch of green uncovered for a little while
Until the locking time comes to seal the earth's secrets once more,
To be revealed to those
Who shall receive the teasing ministrations
Of the fickle, fitful March equinox.
Jul 23, 2018
Jul 23, 2018 at 1:44 PM UTC
like Pollock's paint splattering on canvas
like Warhol's Campbell soup in print
like Cunningham's democracy on stage
she loves him like that; she loves him like Art
Apr 15, 2014
Apr 15, 2014 at 8:49 PM UTC
~**My portrait was painted by Jackson *******
<|>
“***there are no lines or lies in my writings
there are no definitions and perception is only your truth.
Therefore,
my poems are splats and drips, you make them into paintings that hang in your own private museum,
but signed by me as first passenger***”
<|>
when did I write these words?
can’t recall, though undated,
they seem all too familiar, and thinking that if I didn’t,
I should have…
for the title of this ‘poem painting’ has lain in quietude,
a resident in my file of
“someday writs, awaiting,”
when the itch demands you will
essay
**the admixture of words and swords
that will cut a newborn corded reciprocity of thee and me,
an unbound bind that ties and frees us
from and by our shared senses…**
today, an inadvertent blinding sunlight stumble is demanding a
fulsome scratching
<|>
the portrait of each is the irrational intersectional of splats and drips,
each viewer, reader, filters the image through a common
uncommonality,
which is as it should be,
**for if we are each created in His image,
how glorious is the diversity of our deities,
each of us a tiny drop of paint on a tableau
of a small planet, insignificant but
uniquely beautiful intelligent species of godlike creatures,**
human
<|>
the précis of this conundrum conversation bewilders,
a single word drops,
of plaint, paint, blood,
a seconds blush blurred
that is the building blocks of imagery
I state is mine,
but now realizations swiftly fertilize,
**the portrait is not of me,
but of me blended into thee,
and this poem,
is our composition**
that hangs in each of our primary
museum,
newly re-titled,
A Passenger, Realized
Sep 14, 2023
Sep 14, 2023 at 7:10 AM UTC
“there are no lines or lies in my writings
there are no definitions and
perception is only your truth”
**Jackson *******
*my poems are splats and drips.
you make them into paintings that hang
in your own private museum,
signed by you, truthfully, forever,
as first viewer,
and thus as,
co-creator*
Nat Lipstadt
Sep 29, 2018
Sep 29, 2018 at 1:27 PM UTC
I see great ***** every day
in the subway
and, suddenly, my favorite Hitchcock movie changes from
Rear Window to Vertigo.
The movement of the train calms me down and I fall asleep quickly,
dreaming that I'm in Kerouac's car, quietly hitting the road
like ******* hit his canvas.
I see great ******* every day
on the bus that takes me home,
but not one single *****
for me to lay my ear on.
The dream comes to a crossroad where me and Jack have to part ways.
He'll go down in history like a great writer
and I'll quietly go down on memory lane in oblivion.
Memory disappointed me
and left a bad taste
in my mouth - literary *********** ain't what it used to be.
Jun 9, 2017
Jun 9, 2017 at 1:56 PM UTC
My dad dug his foot into my back like a shovel breaking soil.
If I do enough push ups, can I put a smile on your face.
If I move the earth for you, will meteors stop me.
I carried sparklers in my hands while cannon-kisses erupted in the sky,
and my cousin swore that I'd hurt myself.
But I explained to him that history repeats itself,
and that my hurt is unavoidable.
Like the hug of a grieving grandmother,
and the staring off into space,
as her tears stain my white oxford lie.
There's no way to get out of this place.
Finding new ways to live in death.
I don't want to be cool. I don't want to be cool.
And her fingers left a ******* on my back.
And my mouth melted onto hers.
I love her until my eyes **** in sleep.
And it's deep. And it's deep.
The swirl of the ceiling sank down
like a child being drowned by his mother.
And I missed my brother, and I missed it all.
I don't want to be cool. I don't want to be cool.
No, not anymore.
Jul 8, 2014
Jul 8, 2014 at 11:49 PM UTC
Them bastardized youths fell outside, dizzied by a reality unsolved.
Their maws scowled judgment and drooled Pabst down improbable bodies each of them lay in the stink of subtle conformity.
Fiercely unique culture beasts starved away in suburbs; Wikidrifting, those drugged litterbugs scampered.
Dropout fish fast against the current of their time, tired from dancing through desperate crowded nights and disparate lonely dawns, dangling degrees and the specters of success burning incessant their pride.
They were the ******** made so over time contracted by blind parents to nine-to-blithes in which quiet desperation, credit nooses, and irony were the small print.
They were carpenters afraid of their hands. With chisel to headstone, they lied on the hoods of used Japanese cars, panning the radio for a real connection and gazing up at vanishing constellations.
They were their poison and they their elixir, but a cold cigarette was a much quicker fixer of Helplessness Blues and the back of a Bible where a brief intellectual wrote “I am suicidal.”
For how does the turn of the epigram read to those who care less with every new beat of a drummed-up society so high off its piety that seeing stars vanish is simply a shame?
Those ******** dropouts tragically remiss, those Supertramps, Kerouacs, Cohens, and wits.
They were the alternative, urbanite fools that littered alleys with Greek fables and Tibetan tattoos.
Criterion flash cards and the literary canon allowed them to flirt with god in verse and art clues until Pollock’s canvas did rip off their eyelids which left them to know only Socrates knew.
They danced and they writhed, then ****** to pass time, and kept on their passions till lost were their minds. Then they all died, those blasphemous ********
But at least they washed on the back of their crimes.
At least they danced.
At least they were.
And there may be something to movement in chaos.
Oct 29, 2012
Oct 29, 2012 at 8:06 PM UTC
The glass patters in the darkest hours of the night
Exponential reverberations resemble that of a radical earthquake
Disrupting the peace; serenity.
The erratic patter splatters, exemplifying works of Jackson *******
A stain on the cloth of happiness, it spreads,
Disrupting the normal pattern degrading matter
Corroding, yet it creates.
Feeds, but it drowns.
Creates smiles, and forces frowns.
So simple, although complex
Dark patter.
Jan 14, 2014
Jan 14, 2014 at 6:56 AM UTC
_New York
after a trip to Mexico, & not finally explored_.
In 1991, shortly before he died,
Motherwell
remembered a "conspiracy of silence"
regarding Paalen´s innovative role in the genesis of Abstract Expressionism.
Upon return from Mexico, Motherwell
spent time developing his creative principle
based on automatism:
"what I realized was that Americans
potentially could paint like angels, but that there
was no effective creative principle around,
so that everybody
who liked modern art was copying it;
Gorky was copying Picasso;
******* was copying Picasso;
De Kooni
ng was copying Picasso;
I mean, I say this unqualifiedly,
I was painting French intimate pictures or whatever:
All we needed was a creative principle,
I mean something that would mobilize this capacity
to paint in a creative way, & that's what Europe
had that we
hadn't had;
we had always followed in their wake
& I thought of all the possibilities
| [ ], [ ]
of free association—because I also had
a psychoanalytic background
& I understood the implications of—let's just say it
might be the best chance
to really make something entirely
new which everybody agreed was the thing to do;"
Thus, in the early 1940s, Robert Motherwell
played a significant role in laying the foundations
for the new movement of
Abstract Expressionism (or the New York School):
"Matta wanted to start a revolution, m [a movement w/in
Surrealism].
He asked me to find some other
American artists that would help start a new movement;
it was then that Baziotes
& I went to see ******* & de Kooning
& Hofmann & Kamrowski & Busa & several other people;
& if we could come with something;
Peggy Guggenheim, who liked us said that she
would put on a show of this new business;
... so I went around explaining _the theory of automatism_
to everybody because _the only way_
that you could have a _move - - - ment_
was that it had some _common_
_principle_. It sort of all began that way."
In 1942 Motherwell began to exhibit
his work in New York and in 1944
he had his first one-man show at
Peggy Guggenheim’s _“Art of This Century”_ gallery;
that same year, the MoMA
was the first museum
purchase one of his works; From the mid-1940s,
Motherwell [ ], [ ]. ( )
became the leading spokesman
for _avant-garde art in America_;
his circle coming to include
William Baziotes,
David Hare, Barnett Newman, & Mark Rothko,
with whom he eventually started the Subjects of the Artist School (1948–49). In 1949 Motherwell divorced
Maria Emilia Ferreira y Moyeros and in 1950 he married Bettie
Little,
with whom he had two daughters
Jul 28, 2018
Jul 28, 2018 at 11:18 PM UTC
We are two animals trapped inside a glass box
Nothing to say or do that isn't lost inside our thoughts
You hope to find an inkling inside the broken chatterbox
But mostly deny what's inside the two time Goldilocks
Is it too cold, too hot, or just right?
Hit me up on the flip side and I'll keep you lukewarm tonight.
Who's eyes light up your insides like a rotten Jack O'lantern?
Who's argyle style lies in all the wrong patterns?
I'm loose like a cannon or a bad set of tie rods.
You can hear the truth speak when you read it in my scrimshaws.
Bear claws
I'll Tear apart your life like the jaws of life.
Tear you apart like a knife like jaws did Richard Dreyfuss
What?
Say what?
This guy writes like Jackson ******* drinks
And paints like Charles Bukowski.
His life pours out in lines like the inside of a chocolate factory.
When asked where is his mind he pointed to his heart,
and said to them:
"you shouldn't play with knives when you're dancing in the dark."
Oct 29, 2016
Oct 29, 2016 at 6:15 PM UTC
I fell in love with the weird, the chaotic.
I mean.
Have you ever considered what the shaky man at the end of the street was screaming?
Have you ever found order in the chaos of a Jackson *******
Einstein may have been famous for E=MC squared,
but he also determined that S=KlogW.
Order tends to move to disorder as time progresses.
Tell me you don’t warm at the sight of a toddler with ice cream down her dress, sitting in a mud pile with only one sock on one foot, one pigtail half done, and one smile plastered across her indifferent face.
The road of exes I’ve left behind is wrought with Star Trekkies, cult members, and bi polar ********
but here I stand begging for more.
My BFF Becky,
who’s really my therapist Karen,
says I’m seeking inspiration.
But the shaky man on the corner who sometimes thinks he’s God
says that I’m Galileo.
And I’d rather believe him.
Feb 5, 2013
Feb 5, 2013 at 10:40 PM UTC
I once knew a woman from Nantucket
Whose heart was so big she couldn’t hide it
She once sat surrounded by friends that loved her
Whose words about her were non truer
Jul 21, 2014
Jul 21, 2014 at 4:05 PM UTC
if we were to assign emotions to colors -
passion would be where magenta and orange kiss the horizon at sunset,
joy would be the yellow of my socks every easter sunday that i can remember,
and melancholy would be just another shade of blue.
i told him,
i am not done with you yet.
three weeks post breakup,
we shouldn't feel as unfinished as we do.
like, in the ridiculously complicated narrative of he and i,
the author got up one day,
scribbled a quick ending,
and then set the novel on fire.
i read an article in an obscure magazine
about Shelley Jackson,
an artist
who got thousands of people
to tattoo a singular word
from a story onto themselves,
and then sent them back to their scattered existences.
maybe that is what this is,
another scattered story.
another vaporized narrative.
i can feel it in the air,
but not pull the phrases together.
it's like trying to hold onto smoke.
our story slips through my fingers and gets in my eyes.
if we were to assign emotions to colors -
my ribcage would look like a Jackson *******
my head would be a paintball arena.
i am so full of indigos,
and mustards,
and crimsons,
that Van Gogh, himself, would dip into my palette
and claim to have never seen such beautiful sadness before.
*i don't know if it hurts because it still matters,
or if it matters that it still hurts.*
i feel the frenzied ache of creation in my gut.
i am not a painter,
but my mirror is showing me
the immaculate collection of brushstrokes
i have become.
a few weeks ago,
i was approached by an artist who offered to paint my bruises.
to collect my contusions with watercolors.
what a beautiful intention,
to immortalize the growing pains,
memorialize the bumps along the way,
to make something permanent
of these perpetual transitions.
if we were to assign emotions to colors -
my pride would be gold-plated and rusting from use, like my grandfather's watch,
courage would be the pure green of every bud that has dared to grow through concrete,
and love?
love would be prismatic,
like spilled oil on asphalt.
a rainbow one moment,
vanished the next.
Sep 28, 2016
Sep 28, 2016 at 2:03 PM UTC
i fantasize about stomping on the gas,
hitting the accelerator
as i approach the on-ramp
for the 408,
launching like a rocketship
headed straight for outer-space.
careen into the concrete
headlong—
scatter my brains
and body-parts across the wall
like a ******* splatter painting.
as lights blur together above me,
my head goes hazy,
dazed in this fugue state,
half-awake and thinking absently
of the city-lights
drifting listlessly overhead
like unidentifiable flying objects,
hovering over this interstate.
i wish they'd beam me up.
kidnapped by aliens,
taken to a galaxy far, far away
so i could forget
the contours of your face.
Mar 11, 2017
Mar 11, 2017 at 12:51 AM UTC
Stifled existence
Limpness in my veins
In all things reticence
At least I'm free of any stains
Silent build-up in my throat
Semi-solid chunks of liquid fear
Worry what sickness might denote
Perhaps it's best I disappear
Better hope ***** is symbolic
Because now I have to go
And so, of me, my stomach's *******
Is all you'll ever know
Dec 22, 2021
Dec 22, 2021 at 8:07 AM UTC
Your pupils are black holes
and they tug and they tug at me
like how a tornado tugs at the gutter on the side of a tin roof house
in the middle of Oklahoma.
But instead of a gutter and rain
it's blood funneled through my veins
and instead of blood,
it's liquid love.
You're broken
and I like that and how I can just
wedge myself into the valleys of your cracked up porcelain skin
because I am, I am liquid love
and its a simple fact that liquids spread to fill the space in which they are.
Even a river.
But here's a little disclaimer: I never cared much about science.
I was only really interested in our chemistry.
And here is a little exclamation: I don't know anything!
Except that your bruises are actually interstellar clouds
and that spot right under your fingernail is the most comfortable bed of all.
I like how you're covered in speckles like a knock-off Jackson *******
But instead of freckles they are constellations
and I am a quasi-astronomer artist who believes more in zodiac compatibility
than Attiyah's Sun theory.
I think this poem is unravelling
like that sweater I left in your house once
and I think and I think and I think
these last few stanzas are the loose string.
But that's okay because we're falling apart anyway
like the pages out of my old sketchbook from ninth grade.
But that doesn't stop me from pretending that
you're a Gothic cathedral and I'm a hopeless romantic
in the middle of an architectural revival.
And that doesn't stop you from getting drunk
getting drunk off that fermenting liquid love.
And that doesn't stop our hair from growing or
the universe from expanding or
people from living in the core of tornado alley or
you from lining my heart, my heart with the pages
you ripped right out of my diary.
Jun 8, 2011
Jun 8, 2011 at 6:16 PM UTC
each day lasts forever.but the weeks are forcibly torn out.crumpled into the void like unwanted notebook pages-the years are the most frightening-just to slide by them.folded over like the rolled edge of a dull pocketknife. imprecisely honed. imperfectly lived. [memoirs of a boy scout drop out]there's something suffering (in the way you do those things) stumbling into the musky, razor-blade winters of jack london's finest fantasies.like a ghost seen walking in circles around the perfect spaces in-between the empty moments of gentle speech.mumbling softly over the warm murmurs of crackling embers delicately pacing distance between themselves(so as not to burn so quickly.)the hot tangy slurs of blood dripping from downward facing fingertips.teeth gnashed together, translucent grey flint-wheel sparks springing from the shadows-flaring nostrils coupled with rapidly expanding lungs.breathing in the ferrous red-a single hammerfallpulsation. arms interacting with the bitter indifference of the cold that snaps open the veins throbbing wildly in clumsy hands-letting the animal spirits trickle out unrhythmically-into jackson ******* droplets.
onto the pristine snow.
Nov 6, 2012
Nov 6, 2012 at 10:57 PM UTC
Can't call 911 for this,
I can't save you this time.
Open the curtains for the first time in ages.
The walls weep,
dripping yellow-brown nicotine,
crying brown tears for you.
Carpet stained spots of brown black blood,
a macabre Jackson *******
Stained, sweat-soaked sheets smell,
the stench of withdrawal and agony.
**** and mold growing on the toilet,
like tiny bonsai trees.
The sun catches your face,
lightly touching a cheek-bone,
saying goodbye in it's own way.
Hazel eyes wide open,
mouth frozen,
a sort of painful grimace.
I want to clean it all away.
I want to scrub every wall,
every moulding,
every inch.
Bleach it all white.
Pull the **** across a giant etch-a-sketch of the scene.
And when it's clean,
When all of it is finally clean...
I will cover every wall like a canvas, with every note you ever left me.
Top to bottom,
wall to wall,
I will paint your words.
When I was away too long and you missed me,
when you wanted to cheer me up,
Or when you just wanted to say,
"I love you".
Nov 17, 2017
Nov 17, 2017 at 6:13 AM UTC
a day in the life: valedictorian at the school of hard knocks,
already committed to humdrum state university--full scholarship
she laces up her shoes, buttons her top, ever so slightly to balance
the constant feeling in the pit of her stomach
like that of a roller coaster moments before the big drop
each car horn and bird chirp plays into a miserable melody
raining down upon her withered teenage face like ashes of anxiety
burn-holes her already tattered clothes until they resemble swiss cheese
she breathes heavily.
each step is a hurdle,
each word a quarrel,
each conversation an uphill battle
every potential relationship another personal waterloo
dimples and straight teeth mask the dread coursing within her skull
just as her long sleeves and wristbands hide the things she shouldn't do
her body lackluster and tired, as if she hadn't slept for days
or maybe just worn from escaping the holes she finds herself in daily
or from her Jackson Pollock-esque arm motions when she splatters paint
because she thinks she can never paint else anything right
she opens the door with her right hand
her left hand remains in a fist, squeezing tight
her sweaty palms make holding the door a challenge
but it's best that she not let go.
Jul 3, 2015
Jul 3, 2015 at 6:07 PM UTC
I wonder if the big bang
was a response to god's loneliness
And maybe he sat alone for a long time
half braining ideas
about making things that
might love him
God never said
let there be light
he just put a gun in his mouth and splattered
stars across the wall of the universe
His black hole brain
something like regret
trying to **** all the stars back inside
And I think about the days you tried
But that's not like you kid
Even though you had blood
spilling out a hole in your gut
Bone white shallow breathed
There are still stains on the passenger seat of my car
Which I now call my living room
because I am homeless
And there are no walls that could hold the contents of your head
like jackson ******* bloodspatter
a pretentious painting titled
and homage to the ****** of failure
And you are not our mother
suicide cocktail
no ice
and you are not our father
an Alzheimer's ghost
Haunting a history
we never lived through
You are skinny like water
running down the zylephone of your ribcage
tinny laughter
Asking me questions like
if love is as powerful as they say it is in the movies
then why do people give up sometimes
I'll never give up I said
You asked me if I thought god was mad at you
the doctor chalked up you living
to just luck
and I think of when god made molds of men out of mud
and breathed into them
and the mud men lived
Mud must have felt lucky then
But for us its not luck
we make so much fuss
Just so the world knows
we're alive as ****
Jul 19, 2013
Jul 19, 2013 at 3:03 PM UTC
This poetry is bad art now
As fragile and as tasteless as a communion wafer
In the mouth of a murderer
I thought this poetry would make you love me
But your body stands like a marble statue
In a Stendhall suicide exhibit
Looking away is easy
Maybe I gave my heart away to easily
That flattery is bad manners
When everyone is a subject
Forgive me
For I have sinned poetically
Lived solely for the stories I want to tell later
So that my chest might be a campfire
And voice the gravel trail that slips beneath your feet
You listen to maintain balance
So yeah
I ****** up
I feel ****** up
Like poster board
Covered in Jackson ******* blood spatter
And called an "Homage to the ****** of Failure"
It's lazy
This language is lazy
My heart is lazy
Pulsing with the same low voltage of the moon
I don't care anymore
I don't care
May 1, 2013
May 1, 2013 at 5:07 PM UTC
I want to hang art in the vaulted ceilings of your chest
Appreciate the space like
footstep
echo
silence
Hang paintings of ugly beauty from the knives still stuck in your back
That was what all this pain has been meant for
To hang art from
Newspaper clippings of suicides still walking into heaven
Their faces finally happy
Maybe one is waiting for you
Jackson ******* rugburn that taught you forgiveness
Hyper realistic pencil drawings of people you wish you could forget
Featherless doves in cages with the latches open,
offering their freedom to you a feather at a time
Sickly psalms coating the walls like wet silk
Like paper papermachet prayer
Like a piniata
Take a baseball bat to it
Lose your breath like a hallelujah
There is so much beauty inside of you
Every ugly moment
molded
I want to hang art in the vaulted ceiling of your chest
Get lost in the museum behind your *******
Jan 30, 2013
Jan 30, 2013 at 2:12 AM UTC