STOPPAGES

The Stoppages Tree (Julia Guerin)

This poem was inspired by Marcel Duchamp's concept of "Stoppages." A "stoppage" is like a measuring stick, only each stoppage is of a different length. Each section of the poem is a "stoppage," a different measurement of experience. My daughter, Julia, composed this painting based on language from the poem, and using images of "stoppages" from Duchamp's work.

                              1

I am seduced by the stoppage of time,

like Bruckner with his endless symphonies

pushing back the inevitable

silence of the unattended moment.

For the next ten seconds nobody dies.

Late afternoon—the maple goes darker,

cell by cell darker in the slant sunlight.

I can’t be sure the leaves were just as red

ten years ago, or that John Milton’s blood

wasn’t a fraction thicker than my own.

                               2

            I wield shears

                beneath honey locust—

            tenant-neglected,

                grown to ground—

            scissor and step back,

                watch the fluttering

            stem-bound leaves

                follow the branches down.

            I bundle new deadwood;

                three green needles,

            like fangs, guard each twig;

                black bark thorns,

            driven by the gathered droop

                of leaves being lifted,

            pierce through leather

                the flesh of my palms.

            My mind, cuspidate

                in my fingers, moves

            through the patterns of thorn

                proliferating pain.

           

                               3

            The sound of somebody

            dropping the doorknocker

            just once . . . I flee

            unremembered phantasms,

            hold eyes closed tightly—

            tongue like paper—reach

            for the glass of water, seem

            the glass in the dark

            and dilate waking.  Setting

            the glass off the table

            edge, grope, settle it on

            the corner.  More sleep.

            Go to sleep.  Eyelids pinch

            a thread of sunlight spinning

            through the curtain dust.

            The radiator knocks . . .

            just once.  Vagueness spreads

            an exit through counted time

            past another me I meet

            fading, questioned in sodden

            stillness and crepuscule.

            Quick manufacture of deep

            inconsequence—someone not

            I overhears singing I have

            not composed, conversation

            rendered without regret,

            the voice of the homunculus

            at the core of the blood cell

            and metaphor.  I’m billiard-

            brained!  Blood and ivory balls

            percuss on clipped green

            and blue crystal; in each

            sphere a ray is loosed

            to sublimate the ricochet.

            The angel’s share offered

            and unattained (air breathed

            in sleep), a rarification

            of spirit I can’t sniff, taste,

            pour into existence, but

            think is a wonder of wines.

                              4

What interior thing sleeps with memory,

knows the certain locus of nothing

and the time of any new thing only

in the night-light of its circumscription?

What does this slumbering watcher feel

waking beside a lover of years past

who’s discovered herself under wild skies,

in a land contoured by the height of sand?

His eyes pinched, his ears stopped,

his dream-worn senses insinuate

the wonder of that endlessness

and expatiate like a ticking clock

on what he thinks he knows of his own death.

Seeking out the reality three

dimensions deep within himself, his mind,

that strict lump that can explain a bird,

that cagey bastard, calmly discourses

on phantom and fading gods, while his warming

beauty evaporates and mingles with his breath

ecstatically generating weather.

                                    5

        It was perfectly smooth, the earth

        I woke to—featureless, without

        mountain, grass, sand, bird, lion—

        skin-tight, a bald head.

           

        Balloon on which plaster is packed,

        this world before a world; I stood

        in dark after moonless dusk, and

        said, nonetheless, this is my world.

        I recognized the horizon,

        the leavening of gravity,

        the proximity of sky.

        A fit of rain sprayed my face.

           

        The lazy Susan landscape threw me

        down.  My first sweetheart limped

        up on the brace of her polio.

        Naked, I rolled on my belly.

        I woke, the nixie gone, salt water

        on my lips.  The moon rose, pulling

        water back into a great wave,

        holding it back above my head.

                               6

            Johann Sebastian Bach is

                        walking

                                    into this room.

            Buddha croaks

                        and Bach

                                    still

                        walks into this room.

            Walk the road,

                        stop, cough,

                                    crack the bone

                        of sound—

            Bach is walking

                        into this room

                                    whirling

                        a grager.

            Through stained glass,

                        scan

                                    berry trees

                        and sun swizzle—

            Bach is waltzing

                        into

                                    this

                        room.

            Clap your eyes!

            Johann Sebastian

                        Bach is

walking

                        into

            this room.

                                                                                

                              7

        A creaking ecstatically extended

        wakes me early in the night.

        Winter air binds board in stone (a

        hairline runs down the façade,

        splitting bricks, parting mortar from its

        hold) one more fraction of an inch.

        Prone, I imagine the house shift

        off its load-bearing edge

        and topple into the basement.

        When will it stop, the house grind

        out its antagonism of stress and nail

        to silent, unlevel motionlessness?

        Or will I stop waking to this house?

                            8

            Water on the beach

            and the pebbled surf—

            the air is full

           

            of milk.  A hand

            touches me; there

            I hate, but not

            the hand.  Nature

            is the second

            displeasure, when

            the first tips

            the world and drinks.

            Round, hard, the pebble,

            and black.  Not

            much else.  Wet,

            it shines.  Dry,

            dull.  I keep it

            in a dish of green

            water.  The blunted

                                               

            shard of glass,

            the charred stick,

            the aluminum bent

            to a coin, the

            dimensionless dream

            of sand, calm

            if I look at them.

            As I age it is not

            that I like people

            less, but have less

            to do with them.

            I can say the one

            thing—about the pebble—

but the other comes

in white noise,

            water on the beach.

Fog Day Painting (Julia Guerin), Sonnet #382

The country fog made driving a bus dangerous,

So they cancelled school and the sky was clear by ten.

Some days we escape the day and flee, not often

Alone, but it’s fine not to be too generous.

She had the easel up by noon and a canvas,

Gessoed and ready, a blank window on a field

Of milk thistle, nimblewill, foxtail and bentgrass.

She wondered, will all this come to me, will it yield?

She left herself, wandered the field as she painted,

Circling back every hour or so to find

If her seeing was approximate or tainted,

If the scene was precisely limned or loosely lined. 

As she packed, she thought, it’s worthy of a fog day.

The photo let the easel and the painting stay.

Untitled (Julia Guerin), Sonnet #201

Night, then thought-crushing life-bleaching lightbang
That burst your house before the thunder rang.
When it's right above you, it slaps your soul;
The sound turns the valves in your sacred heart,
And leaves your mind a maelstrom of a hole.
(The gods threw a lightning bolt like a dart,
At each other, playfully, or at men,
To prick forth their prayers again and again.)
Last night the city's lights withstood the storm,
But I, briefly, succumbed to its thunder.
A detonation ripped apart all form,
Idea or emotion, buried under
Avalanching nerves, reflected in skeins
Of lightning, and bare trees, stuttering veins.

WINGS, Sonnets #174 and #175

Cicada (Julia Guerin), Sonnet #175

The flight of insects has none of the grace
Of the bald eagle or the albatross.
Yes, they may have eyes, mouth, even a face,
But anthropomorphically, a total loss.
They're occult, as no other creatures are,
Colonists from a misanthropic star.
In late summer we find the chitinous
Emerald corpses, wings perfectly preserved,
Strewn up and down our root-ravaged sidewalks.
Why where we jog? Maybe to remind us
That flying is not something we've deserved.
Perhaps, too, their blaring summer song mocks
All wingless and unarmored nobodies
With insistent, monotone melodies.

Sea Eagle, Sonnet #174

The Japanese anthropomorphize birds
To understand flight without using words.
The soaring of the mind, or of the soul,
And the attenuation of time
Are the filling of an empty bowl
With the sound of a one word rhyme.
The eagle stands one-footed on the air,
His wings feathering balance with the wind.
He isn't hunting, but ready to plunge
Into the sea to make sure it's still there,
To purge himself and others who have sinned.
Diving a fathom he'll surface and lunge
Into the air and soar away with its prize
In clenched talons -- a thousand moons rise.

Yei Be Chei Dancers (Julia Guerin), Sonnet #172

From six to six the Yei Be Chei dancers,
Blessing herbs, heads in white and turquoise masks,
Shout and chant and stomp to summon answers
To ageless questions the Navaho asks.
Comic relief, the Coyote capers,
Makes faces, mocks the gullible gapers.
A Yei Be Chei also, he's serious
About making laughter delirious.
Only through disorientation
Will blessings descend upon the nation.
They are true spirits while the dancing lasts,
And as night becomes morning the sun casts
Shadows on faces in the audience --
At that moment the universe makes sense.

Please click the image to see a larger version.

The Reach of Time (Julia Guerin)

#155

All the clocks drowned in the gutter of time,
In wax melted from a trillion tapers,
The hours from face to face no longer rhyme.
Lady Gone, her head done up in papers
(She turned blue when her capillaries froze),
Buffs the planets on her thigh with a rose.
Our red Lady of Soon, pregnant with love,
Runs and with her hand reaches above
The horizon to push the moon away,
And instead erases its ageless gray.
The sky behind leaks through. Her baby's birth
Will be ballyhooed with a lunar frown
And Gone will steal the infant for her own.
No matter. Soon is soon pregnant with Earth.

The Cicada Killer and The Cicada (photo by Bill Buchanan, silver sculpture by Ruth Diamond-Guerin, drawing by Julia Guerin)

#130

We saw the hill of sand by the sidewalk,
The first time in the 30 years we've owned
This house. In twenty minutes the killer
Landed twice, clutching a cicada, dragged the bulk
Underground. Her wings made a rasping sound.
I drowned her with a gallon of white vinegar.
I feel some guilt at the sand wasp's demise,
But love of purity allows no compromise.
The cicada's song is the sound of all yearning.
His hollow abdomen and drumhead tymbals
Expand and contract, reverberating like symbols
Whose meaning demands a lifetime of learning.
Listen. The song, breathless, aching, intensifies,
Irradiates, irradiates the air -- and then it dies.

With this, the 130th sonnet in the "Brushwork" sequence,
I'd like to recognize my best friend and editor, Michael Antman,
who has read, closely, and critiqued every single sonnet. I 
appreciate his time, honesty, clear insights, and excellent advice, 
which I've invariably taken.

The Scoop Tree (Julia Guerin)

#94

Each bare tree is all that's left of today
And those with leaves will vanish soon enough.
My daughter paints what we call the Scoop Tree,
Home of a squirrel who never ran away
When nuts could be scooped up, frantically stuffed
In his cheeks, ignoring my child and me.
I wrote a story about the squirrel,
Read it to her often when she was young.
Now that she's no longer a little girl,
She's painted what the tree's been all along.
There is as much of life in line and ink
As in the existence of tree or tale.
Fail to see or to concentrate (don't blink!),
And what counts will dull, memory will fail.

Note: The day before I posted this sonnet, my daughter Julia
posted the following on Facebook. Her timing couldn't
have been better:

What a great day! I love days with little moments of awesome in them. All of my moments involved people, food or lights. First moment of the day was meeting a woman who seemed so sweet, loving, and wonderful that I couldn't help but smile. She has taken on 3 kids as their new foster mom. As she walked out of school, she swung the little girl that was with her over her shoulder and the girl looked at me with the biggest, most true smile, and waved as they walked away. What a difference this woman is making. 

The food was ice cream brought to me by one of my trouble students and sushi given to me by a customer at my other job. The lights were when the legs of the reindeer lights on Bluffton Road matched up with the beat in my music, and when I was dancing in my car at a stopped train, the car in front of me pumped their break lights in time with me dancing. Fun moment between me and a faceless stranger.
The best moment of the day, however, was when the chef at the restaurant came out and sang for the birthday girl. He belted out happy birthday in his language but in opera style. I didn't expect that at all. His voice was so beautiful and the gesture was so genuine that I almost cried. I love it when people surprise or wow me. Today was filled with moments that make me love humanity.

Secretarybird, Sagittarius serpentarius (Julia Guerin)

#76

Called the "archer" for his quiver-like crest,
He's a snake stomper, earth-bound hunter,
Stalking the edge of brush fires, gobbling
Reptiles and rodents fleeing their nests.
Like all raptors, he has no eye but hunger,
No thought that doesn't lead to swallowing.
He has the selfish absorption of an artist.
The world disappears, leaving him to create
A bitter order composed of what he ate.
Though he is never satisfied, never at rest,
He glides in flight like a dream of sleep.
His crane legs forgotten, his wings sweep
Away the wind. Soon, he'll wonder why he flew,
Flying just to fly -- something we can never do.

Lady With Birdcages*

Who would keep an eagle in a birdcage,

Or a heron or an owl,

Or the head of a woman of dubious age,

Or varieties of waterfowl?

The man in white with slitted eyes

Watches from the weeds

As the wraithlike woman saunters by

Oblivious of his needs.

The look in his eyes is coarse derision,

But the birds know why

The bird-brained lady has made her decision.

We each have cages in which we imprison

Things that would fly

If we didn't thus impose our lack of vision.

*Note: This is a verbal illustration of a painting by my

daughter, Julia Rose Guerin.