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Ten Inspirations
1
You decide to make soup.
You do not have any carrots or onion.
Any celery or chicken or leaves.
You have water and salt though.
Boil ten minutes. Serve.
And afterwards this simple soup
may be used to wash your face.
2
You decide to make a masterpiece.
You do not have any paints or thorns,
any genius or paper, any pianos
or sticks or rubber.
You have air though.
No doubt about it,
a masterpiece.
3
You decide to make a god.
Don't have no commandments,
no Renaissance altarpieces, no
relics, tax-sheltered televangelists,
funny hats.
You do have yourself.
Wow, gods act like Walt Whitman.
4
You decide to tell your sweetheart
how much you like humping him or her
but even as you're coming,
his/her nipples stiff as pearls
under your palm, you know
there's something deeper you love.
5
You decide to make a flower.
You don't have any seeds, bees,
bat guano, engravings, pitchforks,
sunshine, scarecrows.
You have a feeling though.
Presto.
6
You decide to make a gift.
You have artificial eyes, education,
lightweight wing material,
electricity, sugar, chlorophyll,
a bedroom, doo-wop.
I can't wait.
7
You decide to make a moon
then realize you don't have room
anywhere to put it.
One moon will have to provide
enough rhyming opportunities.
8
You decide to make a suspension bridge.
You look through a toilet paper tube.
You have the day off.
Call Tony but he's on his way to the Cape.
Watch a TV show about paratrooping supermodels.
Wipe gunk off a surface.
Your cat tells you it's dinnertime
but it's only three o'clock.
9
You decide to make a match.
Don't have any sulfur
or magnesium. No striking surface,
accelerant or slogan. You give up
and sleep and a bride-sized spark plug
tells you to look within.
There's a sea horse.
10
You are in your pajamas
eating cold pizza
when you decide to make a coyote.
Now all you need is a pregnant coyote.
― johnny crunch, Sunday, 1 June 2008 21:55 (2 years ago) Permalink
ROTHKO'S YELLOW
What I don't understand is the beauty.
The last attempts of the rain, my shoulders
aching from all afternoon with the ladders
and the hour with her. I watch the rainbow
until I have to focus so hard I seem
to create it. Thinking of her watching
this storm, wanting him. This lightning.
This glut in the gutters. Now only
the yellow left. Now the blue
seeped out. The purple gone. The red
gone. People downstairs playing Bach,
the quiet attenuated Bach. She must
have tried and tried. The holes drilled in.
The small man in the movie who looked
like laughter would kill him. The carnation
farmer who left snared birds for the woman
he loved. Who would hang himself after
stitching her ribbon to his chest,
What I don't understand is the beauty.
I remember the theatre in Berkeley where
we sat eating cucumbers, watching the colossal
faces played over with colossal loss.
I would get off early and meet her outside,
her hair always wet. All last night
I listened to the students walk by until 3,
only the drunk left, the rebuffed and
suddenly coupled. What did I almost
write down on the pad by my bed
that someone lowered me into my sleep? One morning
when she and I still lived together,
the pad said only, cotton. Cotton.
Sometimes it's horrible, the things said
outright. But nothing explains the beauty,
not weeping and shivering on that stone bench,
not kneeling by the basement drain.
Not remembering otherwise, that scarf she wore,
the early snow, her opening the door
in the bathing light. She must have tried
and tried. What I don't understand is the beauty.
― johnny crunch, Monday, 2 June 2008 21:14 (2 years ago) Permalink
1 year passes...