The Broken Pine (Akseli Gallen-Kallela)/ Broken Oak (Guerin)

#120
I

Am I what I think more than what I see?
An obvious thought and pernicious truth,
It seems; thus, we have made a mess of things.
A broken tree is just a shattered knee.
The logic of zealots, rampaging youth --
The loner's automatic weapon sings.
The smaller trees surround the fallen trunk
Like children appalled by their father drunk.
We teach them to love our wide-eyed blindness,
To rationalize even one's kindness.
The painter's tree is no truer than mine.
We see the same, sad ending of a life.
But all of his splintering is a sign
Of unnatural and murderous strife.


II

If a tree falls in the forest....the old saw goes.
That cliche has become the source of all we know --
The answer being the answer is no answer.
Our consciousness is a kind of benign cancer,
Creating forests by invading their silence;
By dying we wreak universal violence.
Consider the wreckage where each tree broke apart,
The sundering of sinew, the breakage of bone,
The surrendering of structure to mere air, blown,
By what, all in the creation of works of art.
To see, to think, to know, to make, and then unmake.
To discover, to climb and fall, and then to break.
The happiest man revels in uncertainty.
We are the tree-makers or we are the tree.

“Comment une conscience se fait univers (peut être)” (Roberto Matta)

#119

What if the universe is an illustration,
Matta seems to say, just our assembly
Of images, some structured, and others,
Colors bleeding, a crystal seeking formation,
Ideas spinning with empty possibility,
Something the end of consciousness smothers?
A pilot, when the moon is full, will say,
"What a nice night for flying," but in space
Every moment is the same starlit day,
Or is it, without pilots, or the human race?
We strain to create boxes, not a shape
Found much in nature, only to escape
The elements, and that is how we think --
Though even boxes vanish when we blink.

Note: Loosely translated, the title means,
“How a consciousness is made universe (maybe)”

Magic Mirror (Escher)

#118

this moment this moment this moment this moment

Dragons on graph paper and images of beasts
March to assembly, an army at war within.
A propped mirror is the instant when time is rent,
What's done from what's about to be released,
That instant we neither recall nor contemplate a sin,
(The mirror internally, eternally lit),
Since we're in the act of committing it.
We are those silver, faceless, and unmoving orbs,
Who, before and after, our reflection absorbs,
While the dragons, a danger, but oblivious,
Circle us endlessly, meshing, silent terrors,
The jailers of the placid, dim, and unconscious.

the mirror mirrors the moment this moment mirrors

A Sudden Gust of Wind (Hokasai)

#117

I lived in the shadow of Pikes Peak when a wind
Knocked a tall Ponderosa Pine onto our home.
I watched it cascade down and feared the roof would cave.
The wind blew all day like the words of a mad mind,
Or endless release of energy from a bomb.
A thousand trees went down into an open grave.

Beneath Mt. Fuji the wind, fitful, capricious,
Is believed to be a spirit, both mischievous
And, at certain times of the year, avaricious.
Unbidden and unlooked for, it suddenly gusts,
Making kites of hats and snow of poets' pages,
Stirring up despair like blown kisses fanning lusts;
Or, like a petulant child, it writhes and rages
At the cold, dry mound it has suckled for ages.

Dream Caused by the Flight of a Bee Around a Pomegranate a Second Before Awakening (Dali)

#116

The floating nude -- not tigers disgorged by a bass,
Nor a bayonet pricking her flesh below the elbow,
Nor a stilt-legged elephant toting a pinnacle of ice -- 
Is the real dream, the painter's hypnogogic lass.
She's sleeping the secret to what we seem to know -- 
Above her stoney bed and fearsome precipice,
What a bee buzzing at a pomegranate means -- 
Consciousness is a dream of a dream of a dream,
A broken fruit released of its prepotent seeds, 
The begetter of perceptions, ideas, and deeds,
No more real than two hovering mercury beads.
She wakes and the tigers are leaping still,
The elephant's laughter soothingly shrill.
She can forget them all at will, and will.

Silence (Odilon Redon)

#115

I cannot tell you what I know because I can't.
You hear only what you imagine I can say,
Which is everything: what is evanescent,
And why you hear, or what is already empty.
I'm impossible, the opposite of being,
As darkness is the false negative of seeing.
But, if you can seek me out, I am a music,
Composed and at rest, a tune without beat or notes
(The Sirens would have shrieked, blasting voices
Into cracked larynxes just to mimic),
A sonata unwhispered I unlearned by rote,
My own sweet refusal to make any choices.
Now be quiet, if only for a moment
Stay your life, if only for a moment

Nude Descending a Staircase, No. 2 (Duchamp)

#114

Light is invisible until it strikes our Eve,
When her body becomes an object we perceive.
It might have been there all along if we believe
That what we cannot see we can conceive.
Though unclothed, she steps quickly to achieve
The bottom of the stairs. Her limbs slice and weave
The air she's turned to gold, all to deceive
Lust her modesty can only hope to aggrieve.
Nothing of her is lost that we cannot retrieve
With a blink. But look! While looking too closely, we've
Dissolved her, like pouring Chardonnay through a sieve.
From oblivious blindness there is no reprieve.
Failure to see, to see, to humbly and with love receive
Such beauty, condemns us criminally naive.