Self Portrait -- #32

His uneven beard, dark black (which seems strange considering his brown hair that gets so bleached and brown-blond in the tropics) and thick growth on the cheeks, white at the chin (he will be 50 in 13 days), appears uneven—like fields and crops ravaged by drought, up near where he wishes he had thick sideburns(like Elvis, like his dad, even)—instead just wisps of whisker and spaces of smooth skin leave a gap of an inch or so up to the hairline at the top of the ear. (He has said that if he had full sideburns his high school acting career, in fact, his life would have gone another completely different direction).

 

Idiot.

 

It’s just another symptom of his Dostoyevsky period, as he calls it.

 

Oh, and as he paints these words, he battles ennui, of course, and melancholy and his own peculiar inner struggle with demons, old and new. He wonders if there is another way to say this, then gives up. Yet he proclaims some kind of satisfaction using a double negative, thus disavowing the need for happiness.

 

He wants to cherish his individuality and unique depressions--like a romantic poser. It’s always the same feeling, for what else can it be? He doesn’t analyze it too deeply, or care to, because his mind is too eclectic and super-charged, hungry for more knowledge and insight, this acts  as a counter to his ennui—you lovely dark lady, you.

 

He looks at the notes in his yellow legal pad and realizes that what he types here is all out of order, muddled, transformed, transmogrified from his original conception. Fucking Dada, when he wants to paint the Mona Lisa. The work will probably go through many incarnations until it is unrecognizable from this very script you are reading. So what he writes now may not be what you read—that feeling is there again, just off in the corner, fuck off Emily, no wait, I love you—and Dostoyevsky save a chair for me. but you know, I must say, "I find happiness with Emily over there behind the cupboard."

 

Music plays on the stereo (he still calls such things stereos); the Kenwood sound system that he and his wife bought three or four years ago over the Christmas season. Bach is conducive to writing. The cello suites, Pablo Casals, and yet he would play Landslide by the Dixie Chicks, over and over again—until it became a joke—he even heard it on David Letterman afterwards, applied to the President. It seemed like poetry, at the time, something from Wallace Stevens. He was moved by the thought of aging, death, time, aren’t we all? Sometimes the simple is most correct; Ockham’s edginess and perspicuity, says it all. He didn’t try to figure it all out. He just let himself go in the flood of tears and emotions. It was so different to him, crying like that.

 

The air in the room is chilly, he likes that, he says he came to Sapporo to be close to Russia and to live in the cold weather and to enter his Dostoyevsky period, he would read Russian writers here, in this very room, where he is now writing. His introduction to Dostoyevsky was through “The Master of Petersburg” by J.M. Coetzee, the South African writer. Fantastic book, he loved everything about it and fell in love. Demon possession, my ass.

 

He lived in South Africa for six years—from 1980, arriving the very day of John Lennon’s assassination, so how could he ever forget? Now you understand. He stayed until October 1986. You won’t see any of this in the self portrait that he paints right now. It’ll all be way under the last coat—deep down, layered, deep…almost inside the canvas.

OKU, The Deep Interior

On living in Japan

     *** 

So far ahead of you--I waited.

Time/space/light meant nothing.

Traveling far, dressed smartly, yet without wisdom, beyond reason,

my shallow fears aged my jeans until

            they were rags.

The t-shirt you tore off my chest, a badge of honor,

            used to humiliate me

Its ragged edges soft but viciously torn

Stopped—Again—Waiting

Next time, I'll be traveling light, I said.

 

 

If you care to remember, I had to throw it away (the t-shirt).

            Oh, and my sandals vanished, too.

Then I was naked, a baby, again, so old with pain — I know, blah, blah, you are not  listening again.

But that’s how I measure time, that’s how I try the tedious hours.

In stasis, I created nothing, but with indolence,
           

returning—I found vacancy and space.

Inn Reverse, (allow me some lazy doggerel, because I will never grow up),

 

where I wrote a verse,

            In that place where you found me, counterpoint and then fusion,

And so, we lingered;

I remember the tatami—the pungent aroma, particularly;

             you do too,

If you are being honest

You enjoyed the view from the window on the balcony.

Magnum Opus

Magnum Opus

 

If this turns into

Such a work let it be true;

It is a small thing.

 

Without Question

WITHOUT QUESTION

I lived,

         But you were the best

I loved;

        There is no Question;

You

        Bedewed with such sensuous luster

That  

       I became lost in your soft

Hair

        Glorious wreaths of luxuriant, silken pleasure,

Full

       Of the moisture of life

Soft

        Under the desert breeze

Midnight

        At the oasis, like that song, you touched my

Soul

        This I declare in the courts of deep thought

Sacred

       Memories of when we were lost, knee deep in

Green

       Grass and watery birth, among

Flowers

        And dreams:

Truth

       Only accessible in that flashing split-moment of

Bliss,

       When we vowed by groans and moans,

To increase,

       No words were necessary

        In that sea of haste

Our desire,

        Expressed in the poetry of sound

Without irony,

       Without question.

 

____________________________________________________

 

BOUND FEET

BOUND FEET

By jtbleu

 

Stride

On cobble stone

The dead

Road like snowflakes

Mingling

In gentle descent

There is no resurrection

These particles

Only fall

Even if one

Awaits human touch

Some imprimatur

Yet they will die

Upon the soil

On this sweet earth

Rocks are cold

Hibernating

Plants and microbes

So minute

The weight of

Iron wagons on

Flat trails 

Ride the piles

And the white leaves

Pale traces

Of congealing gray

Pure

In the gloaming

A mass

Most holy

Of pied porcelain

Pounded

Icy and cool

Cold

Freezing snow

Silent icicles

Crushed hard as

Tiny feet

Stir the sherbet

To taste

The just dessert

Of their labors

And many tongues

Devour the flakes

Unwittingly

Changing the shape

Of nature and

Arouse these

Mended beauties

Continually in motion

Dreaming of luscious

Respite

But like Roman

Legions

Advancing

On the frozen world

Tonight—and so long ago

Vanquishing empires

Wooing the male beast

All are ground under

The pressure of light

Impressions

And the quiet

Moon—goes by

And they go by

Bound feet

Wrapped or shorn

A poet’s sad

Plaint for form

And structure

Out of slush

And piles

About to melt

Forever gone

Using mere words

To sculpt

A salvation

For them

As they stride

Or slide

Tripping along

Or awaiting

The gentle

Spring

The lark’s song

To live

Again

 

 

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