"statuary" poems
All summer we moved in a villa brimful of echos,
Cool as the pearled interior of a conch.
Bells, hooves, of the high-stipping black goats woke us.
Around our bed the baronial furniture
Foundered through levels of light seagreen and strange.
Not one leaf wrinkled in the clearing air.
We dreamed how we were perfect, and we were.
Against bare, whitewashed walls, the furniture
Anchored itself, griffin-legged and darkly grained.
Two of us in a place meant for ten more-
Our footsteps multiplied in the shadowy chambers,
Our voices fathomed a profounder sound:
The walnut banquet table, the twelve chairs
Mirrored the intricate gestures of two others.
Heavy as a statuary, shapes not ours
Performed a dumbshow in the polished wood,
That cabinet without windows or doors:
He lifts an arm to bring her close, but she
Shies from his touch: his is an iron mood.
Seeing her freeze, he turns his face away.
They poise and grieve as in some old tragedy.
Moon-blanched and implacable, he and she
Would not be eased, released. Our each example
Of temderness dove through their purgatory
Like a planet, a stone, swallowed in a great darkness,
Leaving no sparky track, setting up no ripple.
Nightly we left them in their desert place.
Lights out, they dogged us, sleepless and envious:
We dreamed their arguments, their stricken voices.
We might embrace, but those two never did,
Come, so unlike us, to a stiff impasse,
Burdened in such a way we seemed the lighter-
Ourselves the haunters, and they, flesh and blood;
As if, above love's ruinage, we were
The heaven those two dreamed of, in despair.
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Having a Coke with You
is even more fun than going to San Sebastian, Irún, Hendaye, Biarritz, Bayonne
or being sick to my stomach on the Travesera de Gracia in Barcelona
partly because in your orange shirt you look like a better happier St. Sebastian
partly because of my love for you, partly because of your love for yoghurt
partly because of the fluorescent orange tulips around the birches
partly because of the secrecy our smiles take on before people and statuary
it is hard to believe when I’m with you that there can be anything as still
as solemn as unpleasantly definitive as statuary when right in front of it
in the warm New York 4 o’clock light we are drifting back and forth
between each other like a tree breathing through its spectacles
and the portrait show seems to have no faces in it at all, just paint
you suddenly wonder why in the world anyone ever did them
I look
at you and I would rather look at you than all the portraits in the world
except possibly for the Polish Rider occasionally and anyway it’s in the Frick
which thank heavens you haven’t gone to yet so we can go together the first time
and the fact that you move so beautifully more or less takes care of Futurism
just as at home I never think of the **** Descending a Staircase or
at a rehearsal a single drawing of Leonardo or Michelangelo that used to wow me
and what good does all the research of the Impressionists do them
when they never got the right person to stand near the tree when the sun sank
or for that matter Marino Marini when he didn’t pick the rider as carefully
as the horse
it seems they were all cheated of some marvelous experience
which is not going to go wasted on me which is why I am telling you about it
by,
FRANK O'HARA
Mar 13, 2013
Mar 13, 2013 at 12:27 PM UTC
Through the miracle of meteorology, up high - little by little
parts of me was made, without form within a clouds middle,
and eventually, formed in unique designs, lighter than feathers,
temperature and water work together to produce, a period of weather.
When shapes, never repeated - but in approximation, begin to fall, as snow,
feasibly forecasted, sometimes not so, down on to the surface below.
And so as blanket laid, across town and countryside, fields and city mews,
changing the familiar, smoothing contours, into new landscape views.
The material soft, white glistening snow so miraculously delivered,
at earliest opportunity is introduced to excited shouts, laughter, and shivers.
Fittingly gathered by adult and children's hand, with the goal - to build a man.
midst joyful sounds, travellers moans and snowball fights, the creators plan,
By rolled ball pile and heaped snow I was born, created by many in several places,
some small and really, lovingly made. Others large with various, curious, hats and faces.
All - to stand appreciatively of of the makers time, to create me and proudly put on show.
Winter feeds our lifetime span with cold wind, colder nights and, temperatures low,
we stand as white statuary, where children play, soon - will come the expected day
a thaw, will take our sustainability of cool, and so little by little I, and others go away,
with saddened countenance creators watch as we bend, wither and slouch,
stoically accepting this is, as is. Snowy days will return, snowmen too, I can vouch.
It’s a happy sadness for snowman builders and snowmen too, who together
wait in anticipation for fun and creativity, the joyful side of snowy weather.
From a Snowman
Michael C Crowder 23rd January 2019
Jan 25, 2019
Jan 25, 2019 at 5:09 AM UTC
THE true faith discovered was
When painted panel, statuary.
Glass-mosaic, window-glass,
Amended what was told awry
By some peasant gospeller;
Swept the Sawdust from the floor
Of that working-carpenter.
Miracle had its playtime where
In damask clothed and on a seat
Chryselephantine, cedar-boarded,
His majestic Mother sat
Stitching at a purple hoarded
That He might be nobly breeched
In starry towers of Babylon
Noah's freshet never reached.
King Abundance got Him on
Innocence; and Wisdom He.
That cognomen sounded best
Considering what wild infancy
Drove horror from His Mother's breast.
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Because the pleasure-bird whistles after the hot wires,
Shall the blind horse sing sweeter?
Convenient bird and beast lie lodged to suffer
The supper and knives of a mood.
In the sniffed and poured snow on the tip of the tongue of the year
That clouts the spittle like bubbles with broken rooms,
An enamoured man alone by the twigs of his eyes, two fires,
Camped in the drug-white shower of nerves and food,
Savours the lick of the times through a deadly wood of hair
In a wind that plucked a goose,
Nor ever, as the wild tongue breaks its tombs,
Rounds to look at the red, wagged root.
Because there stands, one story out of the *** city,
That frozen wife whose juices drift like a fixed sea
Secretly in statuary,
Shall I, struck on the hot and rocking street,
Not spin to stare at an old year
Toppling and burning in the muddle of towers and galleries
Like the mauled pictures of boys?
The salt person and blasted place
I furnish with the meat of a fable.
If the dead starve, their stomachs turn to tumble
An upright man in the antipodes
Or spray-based and rock-chested sea:
Over the past table I repeat this present grace.
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.
Alive as a stone is cold, frozen,
Unmoved as drying statuary -
No blood was running in my veins,
No song was sung behind my brain.
Was I black as rock in wintry shroud?
Was I a phantasm that caught your eye?
My ends were sewn, threaded with hands,
That room, with you, was clothed in dream.
And I slept in a loft that chastened all airs,
I lived in a box which you buried out there,
Out in the hollows of the winds and rains,
I fear I was dead, before we became.
Aug 12, 2016
Aug 12, 2016 at 12:47 AM UTC
What I learned yesterday...
The curator, surrounded by object d'art,
Told me a story, how he had to re-learn to see.
Da Vici said,
Paint what was visible and what is invisible.
Fancy and fantasy, same Latin root.
We are all subject to the tyranny of
Form and function, unable to find the time
For seeing beauty in places easy-dismissed
As pretty but pointless.
Today, they preach against gold, delicacy,
Beauty for beauty's sake,
Want clean lines of steel and gray.
Dismiss the objects that are glorious
For the patient skill needed to create,
But have no purpose obvious.
What I learned yesterday?
The next and the next time
I visit an art museum,
Will walk the corridors
Aimlessly but purposed.
Will stop before a single creation,
Matters not the period,
Sculpture, painting, statuary, jewelry.
That would have been prior ignored,
As dated, just another...pretentious piece,
Among the twenty like it on the wall or in the case.
Before that objet I will sit,
For hours, till I have understood
Each pore, inflection of what
Inspired a man to labor over it.
If I am disciplined,
Might get ten or twelve done in a year.
But now understand, that there will be greater value,
In taking ten randomly, living with them
Body and soul, and treasuring their nuances.
When I return home,
My art to write, seeing new in a new way,
Perhaps I will set aside the urge to fast complete,
Instead, craft and care, labor over each sound, syllable,
Kiln bake, hand paint, each letter.
Oct 20, 2013
Oct 20, 2013 at 4:38 AM UTC
WELL, KISS MY POPLITEAL FOSSA!
I remember the golden
tassels of my dress
touching the back
of my knees
as I was kissed
for the very first
time bent over
in a clinch
as if we were
statuary.
The tassels' touch
exquisite in itself.
Much more sensual
than the actual kiss as
I wondered( his tongue
dancing with my tonsils)if:
there was a name for that
sort of thing
( the back of the knees
I mean ).
"Ok Freddie!" I commanded
seeing as I seemed
to be in command here.
"...that's quite enough of that!"
Shattered he
reluctantly
took his tongue
out of my cheek.
"Cheeky ****** I thought
"should never have let him go
...that far!"
Crestfallen he
stammered a sorry.
"You won't tell my mother
...will you?"
Hid his ********
with his topper.
I went in at once
and asked of father
"Is there a name
for the back of the knees?"
"Of course there is my love!
It's your popliteal fossa!"
I tingled
to my toes
having discovered my first
erogenous zone
and knowing
that one day
I would become
a doctor.
Apr 19, 2015
Apr 19, 2015 at 6:36 PM UTC
Frozen in rains, cloistering,
So severe in the dark of day,
Is the walled clutch of garden,
No one escapes, a gilded reaper,
Born of fears, promises beyond,
Of joys on the oak nailed pews.
Above the lost naves, who stand
In worship to a ghost, bones bent,
There are cast arches of old sorrows,
Veiling the lighted eyes of the cosmos,
Shutting out even mercies, heavenly
Lights duly smoked of incense.
And slated roof, so statuary cold,
Of aged rock and moss under spire,
That even the doves, as they coo
Are grounded, up muted hollows,
Chimes that merely echo guilts,
By shadows of faithless pride.
Mar 26, 2016
Mar 26, 2016 at 3:26 AM UTC
.
Frozen in rains, cloistering,
So severe in the dark of day,
Is the walled clutch of garden,
No one escapes, a gilded reaper,
Born of fears, promises beyond,
Of joys on the oak nailed pews.
Above the lost naves, who stand
In worship to a ghost, bones bent,
There are cast arches of old sorrows,
Veiling the lighted eyes of the cosmos,
Shutting out even mercies, heavenly
Lights duly smoked of incense.
And slated roof, so statuary cold,
Of aged rock and moss under spire,
That even the doves, as they coo
Are grounded, up muted hollows,
Chimes that merely echo guilts,
By shadows of faithless pride.
Mar 30, 2017
Mar 30, 2017 at 3:02 PM UTC
Abjure the bones broken in,
The first lift frissoned by
The moving trees slain on the shift,
Rivers and risen flowers cut,
My statuary lurches betide
The nap of bent wing saluting.
My aviary is a fluttering bed,
The scattered head REMs my flight,
My feet in cloud extend for landings
Tings the belled bound legging.
My falconer bows with pride
In the stall bent wings stooping.
My clawed creature glides for only
The pitching sun or shining moon
And my flights execution, the hooded
Head, end trails my falconer.
My days, fowl to the lunar kite,
Assail the winds open wound.
Jul 12, 2012
Jul 12, 2012 at 8:50 PM UTC
I don't feel the want, to talk too much
her touch, and eyes say more
every stroke, tender kiss
reaches, to my core
A subtle caress of motion
an embrace of words, pure art
statuary built from scratch
moving in my mind, and heart
So don't stop, or pause
on the path, of silent need
hand in hand, we'll wander on
and on each other, feed
Nov 13, 2017
Nov 13, 2017 at 10:01 AM UTC
we layed in the room
with the peeling wallpaper;
the sweetly painted flowers
now crinkled and drooping;
you swallowed your heart and
i asked you where it went.
you said you didn't know
what i meant.
but when i curled my toes around yours,
they were stone cold;
and i could see that your eyes-
once a habitat of wild floras and faunas-
had turned to granite.
i nestled my body tightly against
this unfamiliar tombstone
that held the sculpted angles of
your shoulder blades
and the empty lost echo of
your heart beating.
Jun 29, 2013
Jun 29, 2013 at 10:00 AM UTC
He had been working for days
A simple man
With rough hands
An eye for beauty that rivaled
Botticelli's
Dukes and Duchesses had paid well
For flattering statuary that would
Live on in granite repose
Chisel and hammer tapped away
Sweat poring his brow
He worked in silence
Though the square below him
Played the symphony of daily life
It was his hands that listened for him
He may have been born deaf but cherished he was
Treasured
By a woman who could have no more
God's gift she had prayed for
Then thanked for every day after
He knew the story
Lived her gratitude
As he finished the final curve
Placing tools on the side table
He stood back to survey his work
Realizing it was his greatest piece yet
For it was the brightest memory
Of his mother
In her face he saw God's grace
May 9, 2014
May 9, 2014 at 9:02 AM UTC
*My scars did not lose her, my hurting did
And did not. I did it, maybe, maybe not,
Like losing that one breath over the essence
Of a weak-willed wind, kissing the sad waters.
I did it, like time wasted over saving precious time, like
One of two great doubts has finally believed
In the other, becoming a painful truth,
A shadow, a light, a boat, an anchor, a clocktower,
Like I fully understood a green-colored sun
In a coloring book. But what does it matter?
What veil could hide the melancholic moon
Forever? I love her, like I did, like truly now,
But did not, like her absence anchors me to sanity,
Like missing her was to teach the stars of something,
Something like geography or mythology, like hazards
Buoy me to the chronic pain of safety, like to free-fall,
Quickly, as lightning or the peregrin. I loved her,
Like failing to whistle with two fingers, like
Reinventing Miro's Blue Star at a canvas, over and over,
And bungle at it. I love her, like it means to love her now, like
The urgency of loving me when I cannot love myself,
And she did. She did. I love her, I know,
I only know, because I never did.*
© 2015 J.S.P.
Feb 21, 2015
Feb 21, 2015 at 3:57 AM UTC
Abjure the bones broken in,
The first lift frissoned by
The moving trees slain on the shift,
Rivers and risen flowers cut,
My statuary lurches betide
The nap of bent wing saluting.
My aviary is a fluttering bed,
The scattered head REMs my flight,
My feet in cloud extend for landings
Tings the belled bound legging.
My falconer bows with pride
In the stall bent wings stooping.
My clawed creature glides for only
The pitching sun or shining moon
And my flights execution, the hooded
Head, end trails my falconer.
My days, fowl to the lunar kite,
Assail the winds open wound.
Jun 29, 2013
Jun 29, 2013 at 11:41 AM UTC
Abjure the bones broken in,
The first lift frissoned by
The moving trees slain on the shift,
Rivers and risen flowers cut,
My statuary lurches betide
The nap of bent wing saluting.
My aviary is a fluttering bed,
The scattered head REMs my flight,
My feet in cloud extend for landings
Tings the belled bound legging.
My falconer bows with pride
In the stall bent wings stooping.
My clawed creature glides for only
The pitching sun or shining moon
And my flights execution, the hooded
Head, end trails my falconer.
My days, fowl to the lunar kite,
Assail the winds open wound.
Nov 27, 2013
Nov 27, 2013 at 7:51 PM UTC
Abjure the bones broken in,
The first lift frissoned by
The moving trees slain on the shift,
Rivers and risen flowers cut,
My statuary lurches betide
The nap of bent wing saluting.
My aviary is a fluttering bed,
The scattered head REMs my flight,
My feet in cloud extend for landings
Tings the belled bound legging.
My falconer bows with pride
In the stall bent wings stooping.
My clawed creature glides for only
The pitching sun or shining moon
And my flights execution, the hooded
Head, end trails my falconer.
My days, fowl to the lunar kite,
Assail the winds open wound.
Oct 18, 2012
Oct 18, 2012 at 7:19 PM UTC
Abjure the bones broken in,
The first lift frissoned by
The moving trees slain on the shift,
Rivers and risen flowers cut,
My statuary lurches betide
The nap of bent wing saluting.
My aviary is a fluttering bed,
The scattered head REMs my flight,
My feet in cloud extend for landings
Tings the belled bound legging.
My falconer bows with pride
In the stall bent wings stooping.
My clawed creature glides for only
The pitching sun or shining moon
And my flights execution, the hooded
Head, end trails my falconer.
My days, fowl to the lunar kite,
Assail the winds open wound.
Jan 30, 2014
Jan 30, 2014 at 12:42 PM UTC
High atop shining mountains,
Where Gods glint as they spy
On wanting mortals, cast in heat
And toil, in heavens that are always
Basked by sun and days of grape,
That flow from the endless pour
Of golden casks, give mirth to always
Blue veins as they revel in mighty
Perfection and beauty, enameled
With imperishable face and statuary
Form, who thunder above feathery
Cloud, rumbling beyond all earthly
Ken and dream— in these heavens,
Is there myth only of desire?
Or do they yearn in cradle sleep,
As all those landed babes in need
Of mercies and fable, do gods shape
Subtle creations with the music of love,
Of blood in a touch, of dawn and hope
In the flowering of family and learning?
Can the gleaming child ever know needs
As they are met, held by eyes and lip,
The windy caress of kiss and nod
And rarest time as it wanes?
On radiant, fabled Olympus, where
Eagles, golden in the sun, only rake
The rims of Elysium as they song glide
So effortlessly, unlike the perilous, shy,
Wandering tribes basely set so far below,
The sun clad Titans home eternal, who always
Are held, perpetual in ever engulf of skies, rest
Starry, in their sparkling, immortal cloaks
Of milky cosmos and ambrosial aethers.
Above the murmuring clamours
Of the under strays and dogs of plain
And sea, do chose children of light ever
Quake or shudder in awe, never moved,
Or are they but weilders of storm and fierce
Lightning strikes, burnishing in judgement flame,
Never to be struck by leaves that come in fires of autumn,
Such monumental peace in a seasons turn, the simple joinings,
Of lovers, by a hearth, by a road, by rush of mountain streams?
In high heavens do even the Gods not dream
Of deep, down, sole earthly pleasures?
Apr 10, 2015
Apr 10, 2015 at 2:13 PM UTC
Fasces and olive branch on one side, tails;
wing-ed Phrygian cap on the head
of an image of the spirit of
Liberty, a fem.
Heads.
Dimes in the olden times,
when I was born,
1948,
dimes in America in those days
symbolized a long known
goodness for all men,
included in
we, the people, which includes
me.
Me and thee, we are we, only by virtue of my
words being written and your reading
of the same within our
terms of endearment
cookie.
Each we we are in, let us call a set,
but that confuses us, fuses us
to gether.
So, let's seee
See it like this. I am good. I repel wrong and
act right,
asif I were
polarized live in op
position to evil
evil live, have you seen it? Live,
did it prosper in your presence or was peace the final state?
Just, now. Please plea with your knower, don't lie.
Say never all you wish, however never lie
against the truth.
To thine own self, et al... y'know
in each generation of earth borne,
one hero is reared to play your role, dear reader.
Fret not,
know wisdom has been maligned as
calling us through each position
of the fool... there is a map
of these positions in a statuary garden
behind the temple of the golden buddha
in Bankok, visited with Mr. Boo in 1968.
I remember none of the poses but ai knows they form
a pyramid,
i
imagine it
peaks in some backward
footed kundalini pose,
which is bull **** I imagined. Wisdom is gentle
and easy to be entreated, okeh, heko.
Jul 10, 2019
Jul 10, 2019 at 10:43 PM UTC
I don't feel the want, to talk too much
her touch and eyes say more
every stroke, tender kiss
reaches, to my core
A subtle caress of motion
an embrace of words, pure art
statuary built from scratch
moving in my mind, and heart
So don't stop, or pause
on the path, of silent need
hand in hand, we'll wander on
and on each other, feed
Feb 1, 2019
Feb 1, 2019 at 1:14 AM UTC
.
Abjure the bones broken in,
The first lift frissoned by
The moving trees slain on the shift,
Rivers and risen flowers cut,
My statuary lurches betide
The nap of bent wing saluting.
My aviary is a fluttering bed,
The scattered head REMs my flight,
My feet in cloud extend for landings
Tings the belled bound legging.
My falconer bows with pride
In the stall bent wings stooping.
My clawed creature glides for only
The pitching sun or shining moon
And my flights execution, the hooded
Head, end trails my falconer.
My days, fowl to the lunar kite,
Assail the winds open wound.
Mar 23, 2017
Mar 23, 2017 at 10:09 PM UTC
an average of 2,830 cubic meters
per second of rich silt
forms an alluvial plain
spreads outward in a fan shape
from sedimentary deposit whereby
ancient Egyptian civilizations got built
adorning arid topography invaluable
like aorta pumping blood at the nape
of the neck, yet analogous context
engendered engineering feats without guilt
whereby artisans, craftsmen,
early geographers illustrated in frieze and drape
frozen timeless statuary exhibiting
phenomenal abilities to the hilt
associated from mainspring within
fertile crescent swollen like a plump grape
which longest river often overflows
banks whereby coveted materiel gets spilt
feeding the rift valley and allowing,
enabling and providing peoples to dominate
flooding the history of mankind
with accomplishments that marvel even today
epitomized by innovations -
alphabets, wheelwrights, pyramids, etc lives did create
baffling historians how each mortise and tenon
snug as a bug in a rug mortise and tenon block
construed edifices persons did intricately lay
perfect with near geometric exactitude
ranks as wonder of webbed wide world great
faint hints of daily trials and tribulations
recorded for posterity in clay
or shards of broken pottery pieced together
coupling revelations a mosaic plate
which functional artifacts
provided dietary staples
to pagan spirits populace did pray.
Feb 10, 2018
Feb 10, 2018 at 1:06 AM UTC
cloudy, deadly seashore
ruminating upon unknown
breezy wrath, cold bath
whereas grueling it became
fowl without any motion
driven with no emotion
rueful walk of solitary
stopped like a statuary
stream of tattered plates
awoken the mighty states
potent but yet languorous
fragile but yet amorous
oh, comfit, where'd you get lost?
your inside has frozen in the frost
yet optimistic, awaiting to get out
from the one irresistible rout
Nov 13, 2017
Nov 13, 2017 at 11:59 AM UTC