Pink dress. Cleopatra hair. Standing, she leans to her left, arm slightly bent behind , hand on a table, fingers straight. There is a pink sash at her waist, somewhat constricting it. The dress is patterned. What we take away from the image is voluptuousness, a woman of 22, who wields something invisible, a whiplash perhaps. She may be a slave girl or an owner in ancient Rome, her eyes go either way. Her face resembles the Mona Lisa, but prettier, that dreamy expansive expression, forming a dark, full, heart-shaped image. I link it to Dylan’s Sad Eyed Lady of the Lowlands, to whom no man comes without invitation, a spectre that dissolves with the blinking of an eye. In other words, she comes as a dream, perhaps from the bottom of the ocean, or as a waft of perfume from passing a garden. The only way she will stay is because we have her. On a rectangular piece of paper that we keep under our pillow at night.
Tag: poetry
THE ARTIST WITH HALF A SOUL
The artist with half a soul makes half art.
He makes his art for people who have no soul and would like at least half of one.
He speaks about himself as if he had two souls (at least).
He tells us that his art is transcendental, i.e. It transcends good taste.
He dresses like he is going to apply for a job at the neighbourhood bank
When actually he is going to buy the bank.
He thinks that banks are works of art if they are captured in the right light.
The artist with half a soul does none of his own dirty work.
He knows the state of our culture and has invented a wind to blow with it.
Many artists would love to be in his place.
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NAUSEA
I felt dizzy today. I never get dizzy, I get nauseous, quite often, in fact.It comes from a place beyond my body, I won’t say my spirit but in that vicinity, and it travels inward and out at the same time. It tells me I might not be living, that part of me, a large part of me, is dead. And I walk around as this semi-corpse as if nothing is wrong and I say all the appropriate things and do all the necessary things even as I feel the need to vomit out disgust, (not despair) closer to rarefied revulsion, on my fellow passengers in our postcard voyage toward doomsday. And then I say why bother, it would just be a waste of fluids. Then I might eat a peach or tickle myself or get to bed and steel myself against the impending darkness. I don’t have actual nightmares, but instead the dullest dreams imaginable that make me believe hell must be elongated boredom, an eternity of waste, a state of neither pain nor pleasure nor feelings, and I must in the dream scream to get me out of this place. Of course, nobody hears me, mainly because everyone else is screaming the same thing, all silently, in an orchestra of futility. The bars in my dreams are made of paper, yet I can’t leave, for some reason, I cannot relieve my sickness, my nausea. It is as if I were born to it, and I must survive it, and always coiled in an anger that I do not discharge. I should have been…I think…I always thought I should have been a killer, maybe for profit, a gangster. a hitman that everyone admired for his smooth delivery. I imagine there must be a sweet cessation of pain at the point of murder for the giver as well as the getter and I could have taken either side enthusiastically. Kill or be killed I would be comfortable in. Alas, it is too late for that! I am too old to whack anyone. (It is bad form, after all, to inform that one hides a killer’s heart. Let me add that I could blow away the human race in one breath if incited. I am a human atomic bomb. I should not be trusted with the Nuclear Code.) As for this prevailing spiritual desolation, it is apt to inquire into a remedy, no? Is there one? People live with incurable illness all the time and do not resort to violence. It is perhaps a test of machismo that makes me think I can do the same. All manner of disturbance can be regulated to the degree that it is bearable. Most of us inhabit a frontier space between sickness and health anyway. I might just be entertaining a mild cold as far as spiritual desolation is concerned. I might just get over it, in some future life perhaps. Suck it up! As they admonish in the military. Am I that weak that I can’t take a spell? Do I have the right to whine? Yes, the questions, yes, the recriminations that latch onto each other like train cars with no answers, Until I realize the absurdity, that nothing is answerable, that our lives are made up of only question marks, not even periods, other than death, and the realization makes me laugh and laugh and laugh. And I am still laughing when I have my fatal heart attack.
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A SEA-CHANGE
Hunger indicates lack.
Hunger
for anything, really,
tells us we are incomplete.
And our anxiety requires there be
some change
in order for us to feel at ease.
This constant unease is the root of invention,
The cause of civilization.
But humans hunger
for
temporary satisfaction
and then on to the next quest,
the next emptiness.
And so it goes
in momentary aspiration-frustration.
Religion assuages some,
love can too.
Yet the heart of this matter
is even more mysterious:
Because
What we hunger for, actually,
is to cast off our human form,
leave our skin.
Transformation is the end game.
We are sick
of being human,
we have exhausted our possibilities.
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A SORT OF MARRIED COUPLE
I try to picture us on beds,
you on a bed of roses
me on a bed of nails.
Still, we are here together as before and
before that,
a sort of married couple
who live at separate addresses
and meet for dinner and snacks.
I drink liquor and you plan my heart attack.
I have problems and you have nerve attacks.
What a pair, what a team
we present!
Even if we live in different worlds
until we have to pay a bill.
I feel good knowing you’re well,
You feel good when you give me hell.
Then I go into action mode,
I have a new knife, you know.
All is settled in a minute, though.
And we come together as lovers should.
We kiss and cuddle on the rug,
And you plan tomorrow,
I just shrug.
But we are more alike than different, you know.
We were brother and sister in another life.
We toiled the ground and lived on a farm.
We made friends with lots of breeds.
In Italy, everyone has peculiar needs.
But back to now in 2021.
Our love is strong and tough.
We are old, but we give enough.
You are still lovely.
A mask of the sun,
your light is strong.
I wear dark glasses and hope I’m not wrong.
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CHARLIE WATTS
He had a thin face
And cowboy eyes
Sat still till he had
To kick in a beat
Then the arms came alive
Two sticks on the skin
And the band followed suit
To move to
The drummer man
English gentleman
Not in elegant wear tonight
Only a t-shirt on his back
Showing finely muscled arms
Swings his sticks to the beat
Required
To party to the hilt
And the crowd going wild
With this rock and roll sound
One Animal in fact
As he sits upright
At the back
Perfectly serene expression
Like he knows
knows it all
Been there
lots of times
Bemused by the appreciation
From the crowd all around
This goes on
This rock and roll sound
Right on the skins
Impaled on his soul
Till his dying day
Charlie said it all
So many sad faces
Imagine
Charlie is gone
Death is
What it is
Is weak
Compared to the beat
Laid down
By a master of Time
That will go on
The heart beat
The alive beat
We all live for still
Where he is
If anywhere
There is a jazz band there
That soothing sound
And Charlie in the middle of it all
Can’t stop smiling
Can’t stop waving his arms
Hitting the skins
Thinking of his friends
Of his love for the sound
Charlie Watts
Rest in Peace
And
In rhythm
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BOOK OF POEMS
A collection of 140 poems by Ron Kozloff is featured in Edge of Humanity magazine.
https://edgeofhumanity.com/2023/01/12/twilight-dances-by-ron-kozloff/
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EPHEMERA
What do any of us leave when
we leave this world except a
blemish, that is, a smear on the face
of Time that may appear further along
in the sphere of someone else who recalls
its authenticity in the form of say a word, an
image, a remark, a posture of body that enters
likely by Chance thru a corridor of Memory in
association with other factors or none
and then passes on again without us really
having had anything to do with it at all? We live on
despite ourselves in pieces and our fame,
justified or not, prevails.
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IN SEARCH OF A TORTURED PAST
I wish it didn’t have to be like that.
At least for the purposes of creating art,
A comfortable childhood is unsatisfactory.
But mine was, it seems just that, and
After having just reviewed a stack of
Old photographs I come away with the
Impression that I was a much loved, happy
Child. Now how to account for my miserable
Adulthood? I have to blame it on something,
Don’t I?
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A WINTER LANDSCAPE
Black and white is cold,
Correctly cold.
The bare sky a smudge
Forbidding entrance.
A bird passing overhead and
Disappears.
The air as quiet as stone.
In the middle distance
In a wash of absence
A figure appears like a solitary
Hair on a skull.
The camera intrudes on
a man
In a long dark coat standing as
Still as death
Surrounded by impersonal space.
Vacant eyes stare into a glass world.
Where is the garden, the apple tree?
Where is the touch?
This might as well be the moon
Or a planet of silver
Remember the smoke
The grim parade
The separation,
How?
He is as stuck in place as a tree,
No step available in any direction
Outside the realm of history.
They promised.
Oh, well…
Nothing forms on his face.
By force of habit a machine still works
Inside of him and he shifts with its engine.
The other side.
Brief glimpses of a hand, his mother’s,
The dress she wore on his twelfth birthday.
He is blowing the candles in a picture that was taken
Of the event.
It is possible!
Below
looks as inviting as wool although it is made of snow.
Then his view is pasted over with streaks of black shutters, like when the eyes
Blink too fast and the thought disappears.
An ocean opens with a sigh, there is fanfare and happy applause
on the other side of it, a choir of ruddy faces cheer like summer,
breaking down the cold
At last, an opening…
There is a rustle of excitement in the notion as when a gift
Is being undressed
But the body still resists. The machine will not give way.
It is frozen in its atmosphere.
What if the package is empty, she is not even there
There are no swimming souls either
It was all a mistake made by apes?
You are left with bats’ wings instead, and motor complaints,
Vinegars
And graduating degrees of spirit ache.
What if they keep you awake?
Or nothing, much like this and less, and you have no way of knowing:
Eternal discontent.
Not there.
A gust of wind catches him on the cheek.
He thinks he will wait.
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THE CELEBRITY
Celebrity figures invade the dream lives in the dullness of us, incoming from WIFI zones and boredom channels. The slick images of glamour lay claim to our delicate private spaces, our individual inner worlds, lodging there like squatters, spreading the virus of appearances. The gleam of the celebrity figure is what used to be the bauble in the child’s hand that fascinated and then was relinquished. What the child has discarded, the adult now absorbs through the media, marketed by the celebrity and their environment. There must be a constant bombardment in order for the celebrity to be successful in their quest, which is desirability. It is important that the child’s mind in the adult remain engaged. The celebrity is salesperson as well as product, which ultimately serves to establish the sanctity of the system of the marketplace and the vaunted appraisal of its goods.
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A ROOM
When I speak of my heart
I describe a
Factory after hours. Light from
Half-open windows
Illuminates the dust
On the machinery
and faces, like rags,
lay scattered throughout,
ghosts of family, friends, lovers,
enemies.
Each one is given is their due
and passed over.
In this room, the temperature
Remains tepid, static.
A placid, windless vacuum occupies
The air.
Is this a comfort zone or a cell on
Death row?
Is it the bottom of the night where
We hide from blood, from fire, an
Asylum from the living
Where
We are beside ourselves or behind,
in a perpetual, pervasive
Shadow land
When
There are wars to be fought,
Children to be protected,
Skin to be investigated
All outside the
purview of this room.
Yes, outside, far away,
Nearly nonexistent.
I can see it all too clearly.
My heart is a room.
I have no use for certain rooms.
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I TRY
I try so hard
I try so hard
I try so hard to love you
I try so hard to live with you
I try so hard to know you
I do not know you
I cannot rule you
Fact
I am blue not gray
I am just made that way
I will just fade that way
Now
The lamp’s down low
How low will it go
Into the dark
Our natural space
Our silly place
I try so hard
To win the race
To end the race
I try so hard
To find my place
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NIGHT
The fat brain can’t get up today
The slow familiar dead end crawl
Nothing appears at the gate
The clock doesn’t move at all
Faces come stop and stare
Through the very vast night
Birds have gone to sleep for good
The wise limp instead of fight
Within this dreamless ancient place
Music sour grates on everyone
Behind the door something waits
To make a move and overcome
The children don’t exist at all
They shoulder guns and strangle dolls
They have never known another place
Where monsters don’t make the calls
While phony women shallow men
Pretend to dance a pantomime
They kiss the air and then themselves
They make a dash on a dime
The anesthetic must soon wear off
On all these wild-eyed toothless men
Who carry around a human form
And hand you a poison pen
The future must appear some day
Even in this airless room
When people will scurry out to see
The lost ambiguous forgotten moon
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NOVEMBER’S CHILDREN
The way November falls on you like a bleak vision,
The way November rolls over you like a bone crushing incident
The way November empties you like a vampiric spirit.
November dances toward the precipice with gloom.
I love all her dead children blowing away in the wind,
such loveliness waving goodbye, opening the door
to the frozen heart of winter.
Blanket me in white.
Let me sleep a thousand years in your vault.
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MY PINK IN RECLINE
I am the sexy beast,
a sad clown
facing
the constant wall
of repetitive repetition.
I’m a house in Missoula Montana
broken inside
my pink in recline.
My mailbox is clogged,
My friends are nowhere to be found.
What to wear to my tragedy?
The young girl’s cheek is hot,
I can’t even find her jacket in my closet,
I thought the worst, that I would forget it.
Skull folks always fear public perception,
I donate earplugs, the virginal haircut to them.
Horizontal hunters number their disappointments,
Under the lamp, a matchbook coffin.
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THE SKY ANNOUNCES
The pain caves his brain
Like fast anxious fire
As
Outside,
The afternoon sun shines .
Nothing particularly untoward
reported . Only
A sense of the already been ,
The old islands of thought
Punctuated by angry siren swells,
stick figures and
Sweating somersaults of gloom…
But
There is a place and
There is a way that is
Better than possibility, the far-away sky announces
To this wreck it addresses
Whose head’s in the closet
In search for a bonnet
And a perfect drink.
The light moves fractionally (his head now out for a peek)
Yes, movement opens to a room in his parched
Brain, the pain subsides fractionally, and he hides for a beat
In a synapse of reprieve between his words.
‘Reshape this worldview ,’ the sky announces:
‘All is empty argument,’
Blinks the blue cool eye.
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AUTUMNAL BLUES
And, yes
Around us everywhere
The golden note
Autumnal glory, as you please,
Messaging the possibility
That ease may arrive
All dressed up as Sunday.
I lay in wait for Godot
With the same stumbling quality
With no ideology
No compass, no certainty,
All the spiderwebs that lead me here
That left me here bereft
The question marks looming
The leaves used up
The casual way they spread.
Perhaps I am dead
Like them
I had a home once
Where I belonged,
Now on my own I beg
Something miraculous must come
Yes, like the glory around us suggests
We are something other than
Appearance dictates
And presses so hard against
The thin film to
Evanescence and escape
Only motion and peace
And no suffering in the end
There is so much time to contend
And I am so tired of calling for
Something
Something
I don’t even know
What anymore.
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BECOMING
Sleepy in the afternoon,
sunshine bleeds thru my high windows.
Thank you for the transfusion this morning,
the digital dots that you connected,
as I sat by baffled by your sharp eye.
I felt like a statue (if statues could feel)
next to you and I was somewhat comfortable
with it. What is it about me? Have I become
totally redundant with age? Girls look at me now
with smiles that feel like charity, and I am
grateful for it. I thank everyone of them profusely.
Was it the aged Peter O’Toole who in a film begged
a girl for permission to sniff behind her ear?
I laughed then, but now I don’t! On the way out
modesty becomes us. It’s really all we have.
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CRACKS
Between the cracks I live
In a world between worlds
In the space between words
Like a twilight dance
A summer romance
A part-time dude
Someone who knew
The secret clue
That slipped away
Between the cracks
In memory in fact
It is what it is
It was it will be
An encompassing view
Both eyes well lit
On the party prize
That says we never die
Don’t try don’t stress
It’s here in nothingness
Between the cracks
Between the acts
Below the world
In flesh and blood
In skylight swoop
Beyond despair
Here and there
And everywhere
Ron Kozloff 