Saturday, April 3, 2010

4.30 After Anselm


I want to roll in the hay
of his canvas
hear the crack of brittle paint globs
as destroyer
blanket myself in earth tones
somnabulate under that night sky
this huge piece
of many huge pieces
from an artist of texture
document, layer, installation
spackle myself in sand shades
and hidden swaths of green.
I am already frustrated with my words
because they are not as perfect as hours
of charcoal, sketch, idea, thickening agents
and mythological reference keys:
Isolde, Serpent
saga, opera, Biblical
human versus human versus earth.
At first, Keifer paintings appear ashen
post WWII obsessed
with burned fields
farms of rain
bent sunflower heads, whisps of corpse
but then a big dipper appears
stars
flames
a sky of blue
a stalk of plant growing from a body
a wing
cloth fat texture.
Standing further back from the mural
I am stargazing at the beach, dunes of sand
(or are they waves? the moon is off the edge)
on a chilly night, without binoculers.
Closer
numbers emerge
names of places where people were held prisoner
richer swirls, crevices
wrinkled mounds of paint
fissured clay shapes and
I remember, am confronted
with the temporary
the earth is just the earth.
It is free and fine and beautiful
even in wintered coats
beige, blacks, browns
decay as fodder
The constellations
would still be stars without our mapping
in connect the dot games
the need to name, letter, fix
to number
to superimpose our bondage
on the sky
over skeins of fescue
in ordered rows of plowed things.
The world is beautiful, wild and free
expansive, muraled and littering
offering redemption in the simple palate
of soil, cloud, star, Februaried grass
barren
in a spit to our ugly.

2 comments:

  1. boo. i lost all formatting.forgive. :(

    ReplyDelete
  2. "The constellations
    would still be stars without our mapping
    in connect the dot games
    the need to name, letter, fix
    to number
    to superimpose our bondage
    on the sky"- sounds like what they try to do to queers! -Malika

    ReplyDelete