290 lines
7.0 KiB
Plaintext
290 lines
7.0 KiB
Plaintext
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Underground eXperts United
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Presents...
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[ Hesiod And The Muse ] [ By Doug Tanoury ]
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____________________________________________________________________
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Hesiod and the Muse
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Poems by Doug Tanoury
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Hesiod and the Muse
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In Moreau's painting "Hesiod and the Muse"
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There is a preponderance of blue
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That softens the sky and subdues everything
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Into a twilight background
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Except the poet who stands naked with his lyre
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Embraced by a winged Muse
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A long sword hanging from her girdle
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She seems to hover somehow above him
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Hesiod wears a garland of laurel like a nimbus
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His face androgynous his features feminine and fair
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More light in frame and delicate in form
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Than the Muse that supports him
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Not a farmer not a sailor not a craftsman
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But one who sits on soft pillows
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And sips sweet nectar at the table of the gods
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Hesiod is painted a poet
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Suspended in the blueness of sky
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There is a temple a single bright star
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And winged creatures fly far above
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The ground where blossoms touch bare feet
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Music
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In Albinoni
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And all baroque masters
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Who flourish and shake my desk
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With trumpet, organ and harpsichord
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With cello, flute and violin
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I am taken for a moment
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To a child's world
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Of playfulness that escalates
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Slowly toward full riot and
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Honest innocents that moves
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In stages to pure simplicity
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In music weightless and light
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That floats graceful
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Through my ears
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In Overtures
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Of unending variation
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In preludes
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Of unexpected brilliance
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I hear gleeful sweetness
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My children's laughter
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The giggles that grow
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To shouts and yells
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And I go on to ponder
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The substance of sound
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That touches me like a spirit
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And moves through me
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With ghostly freedom
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That passes through my walls
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Without hindrance and enters
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Through unopened doors
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In the softness of bassoon and flute
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My daughters whisper
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And in the shrill voice of violin
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My son whistling
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A Season
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In am stuck
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In the middle of this is a reluctant season
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Within its heart of slowness
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Its self-centered sloth
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In a holding back in bashful reserve
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Where the sun never shines
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And the clouds hide a shy blue sky
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Over trees sleeping so soundly
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In self-conscious reserve
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They do not dream of buds
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Indeed this season
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I am caught in
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Is the triumph of timidity
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And I too celebrate it
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In my holding back for my touch now
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Is uncertain reserve and I am paused
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In tentative indecision for a moment
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An hour
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A day
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A collection of days
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Until there is nothing left to touch
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But the starkness and realization
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Of all that is missing
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A Study In Form
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I have mastered the art of approach
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The dance of improvisational movement
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Around a subject
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Like the low brick facades on Main Street
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Articulated by second storey windows
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The movement of muscle
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Sinew and bone
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An expression of torso and limbs
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My body bent into a word
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Moving in a phrase
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My breath upon a line of verse
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Of what is and why
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Toward what could be and is
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This is the art of pose and stance
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Rhythm and tempo
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For I have mastered the approach
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And am a channel for burning forces
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That bubble up in blood vessels and brain
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In nerve endings and spine
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Twisted in all the expressions of form
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All the permutations of shape
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Nativity Church
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There is a Romanesque basilica
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With a tall bell tower that rises
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Above a neighborhood on
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The near east side
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It stands stately high above
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The squalor and poverty below
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Topped with bronze dome
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And ornamental urns
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Solid and stately and strong
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I remember looking up at it often
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As a child like some talisman
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It protected me from all
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Uncertainty and want and weakness
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As I played in the shadows of
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Wood frame houses in need of
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Paint and repair
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It reminded me always
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Of a larger world
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Outside the borders
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Of Iroquois and Cadillac
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Beyond the yellow sunrises
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Above Pennsylvania Street and
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Behind the swirling purple sunsets
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Hanging over Gratiot Avenue
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Expressionist
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(A Hollywood Park Poem)
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Shall I paint the night sky
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Neon indigo
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And her sequin dress
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That catches light
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Cobalt blue and glows
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With what seems
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Some inner luminescence
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That sets her ass to shimmer
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And makes her breasts gleam
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As if she were wearing nothing
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But fish scales on her skin
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Shall I paint her movement
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Accentuated by a trembling
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Like aspen leaves
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On an August evening
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That dance choreographed
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In sunset colors and
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Grow toward darkness
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If I should see her dress
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Strewn carelessly across the floor
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It would look only like a blue gill
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Washed up on the beach
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Last Will & Testament
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I have often said that
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Old poets
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Never die
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They simply lose their voices
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They get quiet
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Fall into silence
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Forget and are forgotten
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And I know that I am on my way
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Toward the great wordless
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I see death and it is
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The stark white page
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The eternal pause
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A period
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And a blankness
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An eternal
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Search that stretches from
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The back of your mind
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To the tip of your tongue
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For a word
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That is never found
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I am moving
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In ever so certain steps
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To my quiet time
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Like the hush
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On summer evenings
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As I lay in the backyard hammock
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Still and unmoving
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As a figure carved in the cover
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Of a sarcophagus
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I see the signs
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And read the foreshadowing
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Yes old poets never pass away
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They just somehow lose their vision
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My eyes are going bad and
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I can no longer see to write
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I fancy myself
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Like Homer
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A sightless poet
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I am blind as Milton
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And one day soon
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The only way I'll scribe
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A line of verse will
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Be to give dictation
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To my children
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Who will grimace
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And make faces
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That I cannot see
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As my senses leave me
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And my faculties flee
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And all the muse
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Take flight at once
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Hear this from me now
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That those the gods
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Would destroy
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They first make mute
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Then take their sight
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So I bequeath to you
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All pretty phrases
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To you all sunshine similes
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To you the moonlit metaphors
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I give you
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All lightness and alliteration
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I will you words
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I leave you voice unending
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uXu #572 Underground eXperts United 2000 uXu #572
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Send your submissions to: submission@uxu.org
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