Notes at The Met, NYC
Georges de La Tour, The Penitent Magdalene
Magdalene, you lived a life Of flesh, desire, and want.
Yet you are easier to embrace Than the one they call Messiah.
I recognize myself in your face, Turned away, the skull you hold
In your porcelain fingers, and The candle flame you gaze at,
Against which I too desire to hurl My body, walking in from the dark
El Greco, View of Toledo
The raven city perches above The ravines, placid and watchful,
Waiting for innocents to be burnt At stake and drive away its darkness.
Zurbarain, Virgin Mary As A Child
Master, I just wanted to point Out that all children, naturally Have halos around their heads.
Velazquez, The Supper at Emmaus
These three could be bohemians Dressed in funky clothes, seated
At a table in a Starbucks around The corner, arguing about something,
Till you eye is invariably led to That delicate gash on his hand
From which a nail had Been freshly removed.
Lotto, Venus and Cupid
Voluptuous Venus, bride to be, Reclines on her thick creamy Haunches, and little Cupid, That imp, as if to demonstrate His jouissance at her naivety, Urinates over her desirable body.
Solario, Salome with the head of John the Baptist
Salome gingerly receives The freshly chopped cabbage Top of Grim John. And yet, You can’t help wonder, why is she Not grinning with satisfaction?
Holbein ~ Herman Wedish
Contemporary political truth Stares at you from a three Hundred years old canvas:
Veritas odium parit, i.e., Truth breeds hatred.
Lewis Carroll ~ A Photo of Alice
Uncle Lewis, when did you Get out the Wonderland tunnel To be stalking Alice Liddell, Seven years old, dressed as A beggar maid, with your Bulbous glass eye?
Rodin – Madame X
Madame, since you didn’t like The nose the master gave you
We are forced to examine It very, very carefully.
Rodin ~ She who was once the helmet maker’s beautiful wife
Title of a Chinese hermit poem.
Few jottings made at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, one of the world's greatest, if not the greatest musuem, before art fatigue set in.
My Poems
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NYC Chronicles
After returning from the larger world, and a journey of three thousand odd miles, he feels out of sorts, as an isotope would well beyond its half-life. Folks at home base ask him to tell them everything, yes everything he saw, did, experienced etc. And even though he had filled a small note book with pithy observations, short notes, rough haikus, jokes and conversations overheard, he feels handicapped in a way he can’t explain to himself, why he can’t undertake such a Proustian task right away.
He is also reminded of Italo Calvino’s ‘Invisible Cities’, in which Marco Polo spins narratives of cities he supposedly visited or passed through to the Great Kubla. While he senses that any narrative he might construct out of his note pile would be that of his own invisible cities, and not any real city, which as he saw it doesn’t exist anymore anyway! But he must begin somewhere, if only to unburden somewhat the sense of dullness, and to retreat from the cave, into which his mind seemed to have sunk after his return.
So he begins with the thought that was running through his head as he stood under a jet of hot water, in an attempt to cure a headache, and the thought is that of subways. He finds these rat holes and tunnels hidden under the city he had visited to be in a dreadful fashion, terribly riveting. He thinks Minotaur would be at home in that crossed maze, as would it be a great setting for more of Jack The Ripper kind of stories. And then writes a poem set in the subways.
My Daily Notes
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Carlita’s Subway Tune
Carlita, traveling in these tunnels
Beneath the behemoth city I think
Of the simplicity of those summers
Where in the magnolia shade you Constantly hummed these tunes heard First, by your granite faced ancestor in
Those hills filled with rhododendron Hells. Carlita, how did I come upon You, under which overturned rock
Did I find you, Carlita, Carlita? The birds here are all strange even If they are called by familiar names,
And I am a costumed stranger playing Fiddle tunes for bits they fling into my Upturned hat. The heart, what can I say
Of the heart, Carlita? That it is an empty Hat which always stays bare, bereft of any Emotion, going through deadened motions?
Carlita, your name is the only tune my bow Draws from strings, your name is the groan Of steel wheels on steel rails. Carlita, you Are the ache whose rumble keeps me awake, A ghost living in this endless subway dark.
Thoughts of New York City, interlaced with thoughts of Appalachian hikes and fiddle tunes.
My Poems
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