Untitled, Oil on Canvas, 60 x 60 IN, 1960. Courtesy Manoucher Yektai Estate | New York, NY
Soundtrack for a Seascape
Breathing was never that easy
it’s said you once lived in water
according to a breathless calendar
timeless corridors of waves upon waves
life on earth comes to its glorious end
wondering why a certain sound is dealt a certain name
homophony of longing for the moon
the left hand’s exasperated resistance to the wind
the sun caught napping, an ocean disassembled
its freezing point decreases as salt concentration increases
the best notes are always unnecessary
salt enters through the pores
a sudden thirst for quotations
some regrets I never managed to feel
flood tide makes its way toward the sky
drapes in warm fluid a planet you won’t know how to miss
Two Lips Pronounce One Word
A true poet would destroy the world utterly
bury me in sleepless sleep
the poem after the last poem
as if lost breath were real being
a falling leaf is what I am
clumsy fingers of the breeze
crack the silence around
resplendent under cloud cover
and only now you tell me
my sound makes no sense
what seeing believes is just that
the devil has the best details
he met me back there in the weeds
and called out cloudhead, cloudhead!
Everything But
Will they go back to writing about flowers and moons?
—Viet Thanh Nguyen
Decline and fall revisited, a time beyond recognition
they’ve already begun remembering me
in the odors of a burnt-out forest where
you administer my creative deficiencies
ideas that touch only where they’re broken
keep talking to myself but don’t listen
sipping tea cooled with blood and cream
they start eye-gazing
and (paused, ghostly image) never stop
the preceding verse should be reduced in level
filtered slightly darker to make the transition clearer
fire runs away up the hill singing
how far America lies from my heart
I spy the sublime of miniaturization in the pupil of an eye
where stormy skies welcome balmy weather
your hard work only makes it worse
an eye is a moon in all its phases
and that tiniest reflection in it
is it just me? or the roses I proffered
with love, an unnatural business
reassuring myself against the landscape
a music built just of chords that assail the world
in my final days of healing
use a rose as my microphone
Wine with Everything
To earth’s favorite enemy
time’s phosphorescent bride
happiness is a warning against
drowning in the silence of a more pensive face
this attenuated mind
long delayed in its privacy
now pours out from everywhere
an imitation in moisture of the gathered economic flux
lipstick-warmed voice, its hinged expressions
lost in amorous nightfall
hating everything I agree with
my language seen through a dirty window
but you can’t drown in the same river twice
let fury have its way for a moment
the all having been reduced to many
the best spot to see it from is here
Happy Snow Day
The ones who saw and entered the building
words we said and came to regret
you’d expected a knock at the door
or the bell of someone’s name to ring
alarmed to see yourself asleep
a character hard to reconcile
with waiting out the day in hiding
mistreatment attends a swoony melody
out there the great unknown is back in style
sky the color of your former eyes
clouds you seemed to shape by hand
industrial noises deep in the background
scattered exclamations overheard
us through a cracked window
music out of nowhere settles among
pots and pans, snap and stop
building is an abyss you take for granted
this nightmare’s name is not the world
persuasive shadow love pursuit by omission
totally friends fake fur mirror play
Pages from a Japanese Photobook
Ever-waning presence
an exasperated taste for simplicity
its oily yet grainy mouthfeel
like when your dull voice
plumbs my throat, deep
no future in the mirror
without shoes these ghosts
most welcome in the silence
each too immature for the other
their poses Elizabethan, melancholy
can’t bear to stop them
or trouble their difference with
smiled assumptions of respect
relieved salutations of
the possible, ignored
a horizon left in shreds
when beauty exceeds imagination
its touchpoint holds stubborn
a nail your sweater’s caught on
you need a face trained in happiness
to manage that, almost
Goodbye Rhythm Changes
Music over, papers in order
bitter moments powdered with sugar
chewing abolition in advance
ready to pull scattered bones together
sounds with no rhythm in their step
a bitter light in the middle of the sky
just a drizzled noise, its final texture
a rain you heard tell of
seven come eleven: my double on the road
tried to write me out of the poem and
much said he and I just listened
took very seriously his calm and comradely suggestions
missed the maternal music of your cloudy face
the final flower of my sleepless night
Life as a Flotation Device
People also ask: what does obsequious sycophant
mean? what does effulgence mean?
what does apodictically mean?
how do you use apoplectically in a sentence?
as if a camera could begin to take an interest
in what it sees
that was me until today
I shape an image of you as the entire sky
falls into nothing and wait
with more fear than a minute can hold
for the police to show up
until then my solipsism keeps me busy
molding found sobs into a solo jazz project
the ill-timed tomorrow of another flashing light
Ritual of Disappearance
Addressing every word by name
this calm terrestrial face, firm but fair
accepts even what you think you can’t
the outstretched hand, a thought as big as air
the book pulled down from the highest shelf
two-body motion being always planar
communicable colors break loose
through a tiny crack in the plaster wall
stray notes of a bright but desiccated music
dark pockets you keep turning inside out
for the unhappy ending where things
start to look more similar to themselves
you are not there to be written to
whose heart is yet an unripe fruit
yes, agreed, there’s something incredibly funny
about being, just being
they say you’re nowhere until
you’re everywhere and that’s only
when evening stirs lazily on the horizon
pretty voice and not much to do with it
teasing a flame that shivers constantly
a click track for your ears only
birds hang at loose ends declaring their exuberance
rising vapors adorn the residence of time
and gather as a fog installed between us
feeling that something very chancy had arrived
and you stopped to ask what was it
Flies in the Face
The sole beginning, this one:
a face lit by two drifting planets
death hardly noticed my disappearance
these scraps of a painted landscape
a little tune I call pure consciousness
its melody behind a veil
a momentary intonation
just to ask the simplest thing
there’s a blush on the horizon
some roses offered to the muse of laziness
crows held at a fabricated distance
drawing profit from a passing cloud
is this something or nothing or in between
the shrimp must be deveined
How to Let Go of Time
Look deep
into the sun-drenched eye
no staring now
what color is your iris
sphincter muscle to constrict or dilate the pupil
the color of everything
only the blue aches with memory
an ache in which truth reveals
a word to be translated
by whoever
feels a fog stuck in their throat
look deep
into the eye of the future
the one place
midnight lasts forever
your darlings all immortal
grace and favor won’t watch the clock
a true storm
felt the ache of time
flooding down from the sky
things I’d never want to control
I said you were my freedom
to paint with the color of everything
memories that will hereafter be censored
sunken reflections
another fluorescent moment
yet so much like you
in the week since I left my body
I lost all interest in work
building clouds out of spare colors
the eye desires
a place in the mud
the mud had forgotten
it’s not true you can make nothing of it
though it can be safely assumed
a thing can only be made of things
rendezvous with a goblin child
whose body changes color every day
and can’t hold still for hunger
or fear of the violence of men
who said it would go hard with me
that madness is the need to be desired
the minute you wake up
or the hope of keeping form alive
in a museum housed in a dream
of the lunatic freedom of time
From the Downtown Flower District
All the clocks are running down
buds still blossom in silence
let me feel your touch while my body’s still
near perfect
set knowledge in the past tense
keep it warm and porous, dear heart
and call it a night
they want to thank us for this emotion
at least we’ll die simultaneously
followed by a temporary resurrection
warm and porous
love was an aroma that filled the room
or a natural shelter, maybe a juniper tree
furnished with lava lamp
meant to ask for the most private bouquet
all the tenses switched off at once
a ringing in my ears made me forget whatever it is
I used to know
there is no world but the world
a quantum space, frothy and quietly churning
in the ever-changing eye of another planet
inaudible turquoise, azure, robin’s egg, celestial
like oxytocin
❂
BARRY SCHWABSKY's new book of poetry is Feelings of And (Black Square Editions, 2022) and he has also just published the chapbook Two Sequences (The Song Cave, 2022). He is the art critic for The Nation and co-editor of international reviews for Artforum and has published several books on contemporary and modern art, among them The Perpetual Guest: Art in the Unfinished Present (Verso, 2016) and Gillian Carnegie (Lund Humphries, 2020).