EMBLEM BEASTS
To start, adopt the childish one,
the Snow Lion, much like a frisky dog,
a leaper, a perky trickster, but then
comes trickier work: to match the pace
of Tiger, whose strength and fearlessness
grant him the gift of humility,
and next to rise like the great Garuda,
vast bird who crosses the universe
on a single flap of wings, and last
to enter the silence
where Dragon dwells:
invisible Master of Secrets.
A SMALL, ABSTRACT PAINTING
This painting seems to represent the dither, the joy in patterning
of a much-conflicted small animal
who wonders what life might be like for Woody Allen
if he were reborn as an lemming.
A thing-in-itself, an almost grip-able poesie pur,
the painting transcends all blah-blah
through insouciance,; it avoids self-vaunting effects
as if at pre-dawn it felt fearlessly invulnerable.
Billions dream in their pacified bodies.
O loved ones, creatures, O weighty self,
may it not be brutal, our exit, but like
the ashing of a stick of incense.
SOMEWHAT PARATACTIC
Can these many lives of ours,
these many selves, be eased into one,
as when two lovers become
one column of light?
The big bruisers hulk toward us
down the football field,
no hope for survival
short of our famous open-field run.
Imagine we'll each be a finished star,
another black hole in the universe
whose former light speeds on toward those
who receive us in memorium.
Think of the stars as somewhat slowed-down
bits of God. Or, if you'd prefer,
consider kaleidoscopic explosions,
spewing God-shrapnel, need I say more?
Well, only to add that here where we wonder
whether to buy the black Fiat Coupe,
We're scared to death to encounter the headlines
yet bravely approach the morning's news.
WHO PUT A LADDER IN YOUR BACK?
after the title of an imagined poem by Robert Krut
and where would we get to if we climbed it?
hard to resist that first step -- hold still! --
that non-reversible commitment. Can anyone
use the ladder? Ah, now I see
why they call them shoulder blades (I'm high
already, honey, shortly the view
will extend for miles toward the future). It says
don't use the top rung, but why have a top rung
if it's not to be used? Okay,
we'll play it safe...wait, wait, what's this?
Another guy's suddenly right in my face
from climbing the ladder up your front --
will we get along? Not to mention the Valley
Girls inching up your sides: there's a whole lot
of climbing-you going on, we'll need
extra oxygen toward the top, but of course
that's whimsy, you're literally not a mountain,
in fact I don't think it works at all
to compare a woman to a mountain,
like saying she walks in the dainty way
of an elephant. But still, we'll continue.
Your delicate walk's like an elephant's
and you are a mountain, and we are your climbers,
and that's how immense you are, so now,
what's next? Uh-oh, there goes that poet
Krut, he's a-teeter, he's risking the top rung
(just like a poet!) watch out there, Robert!
Dear Reader, when we started this poem
did you give a thought to the fact it might end
so tragically? But there you go,
rushing in to read stuff the way that you do!
RECENT ARTWORKS
I've been painting a lot of pictures.
Nothing takes place in my mind while I paint.
I could even lease out my headspace as a movie house
for classic silent films.
These paintings, some they're called "Kit"
There's "Kit #12 and so on, and of course the original "Kit."
Also I paint pictures of beautiful women.
One is called "Orange Girl."
She's orange, mostly.
Make of that what you will.
Oh, and my best, my very best and most favorite recent painting
is called "Little Karma & Big Karma."
You see there an image of Big Karma up at the top
and you can maybe just make out Little Karma off to the far right.
There's also a painting called "Work Without Hope Is Water In a Sieve."
Look as hard you'd like, you'll find no water in it,
and no sieve either (it doesn't want to have a depressing effect).
Then I should mention my painting "Pretty Girl,"
a companion piece to "Orange Girl."
God, but those girls are pretty!
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Barry Spacks has taught writing and literature for many years at M.I.T. and
UCSB. He’s published individual poems widely, plus stories, two novels, eleven
poetry collections, and three CDs of selected work. His first novel The Sophomore has just been brought back into print in the Faber & Faber Finds series. His most recent poetry collection (Cherry Grove, 2012)
presents a selection from ten years of e-mail exchanges with his friend Lawrence
E, Leone. It's called A BOUNTY OF 84s (the 84 being a stanza limited exactly to
84 characters, echoing the traditional notion that the Buddha left us 84,000
different teachings because humans have so many different needs, are all of
them so differently the same).