“I have absorbed, dear God, and transmuted
everything you have given me,
even the ability to do it.”
A Gallery at 77
HAMMERKLAVIER
Adagio sostenuto. “I cannot hear the pain!” Andràs, D. Dubal
Both find it there; the whole world finds it there; I partially deaf
Experience simply beauty, stutter in my hearing throat a shudder
As I scan the Purgatorio, Tara’s drawings just beyond a spindled
Disc. A quiet agony? Soulful decubitus? Tic douloureux? Mad
Fit of wondrous continence? “I cannot hear the pain!” Event?
We skim the final movement. This poet’s mute. No visual truck
Or trick to ease the passage beyond the very dazzle real as any I
Ever assailed to mastery. 106 remains a stubborn mystery. 10
Thousands hooked, mesh of jagged labyrinth, a ghastly burden.
Even a suppliance at the polished boots of Warden cannot jerk
Or treble cosmic boardroom. Am trapped in “gorgeous, APT!”
AUM
Hectic dialectic: a Gott is torn and healed upon this rack. Heaves
Father Mother Son. Each thrust addresses, spurns the other. An
Ache scream spew. Such God is you: tangled umbilicus, radiant
Cord, spittle, clot, persistence scrofula of birth unending, whine
Wine, attack. Each cyst insists. Slash ordains. Gordius wails this
Knot. All Gott is caught, all path taken, an aching wakening, id
On earth. No dearth of birth. Triptych of stare eyes fickle Eden.
Our Eden’s eaten. But sprouts the center. Such flouts immortal
Cantor. We lick unleavened. All Church-lurch-synagogue-temple
Tempi’s frozen. Decubiti in Stalin’s flank are frankly chosen. Odd
Syllables retract; this swan is on its back and Leda tickles. Thrust
Fahne under. All sickly’s sickled by the Kochs & gilt’s a wunder!
AUM II
Creation begets; Preservation endures; Transformation remits; all
Restores: generative cough of a cosmic whore? Thesis invents;
Antithesis preserves; synthesis transforms; all informs: ‘tis primal
Gesture [fester, cluster, Ester, Schwester]. Rather the dance of carnal
Motion, such the potion, cold devotion, such her rapture, verse or
Chapter? To breathe: & summon Pollux, Castor, eye each wrinkle oddly
Cast there? Jesu imbibed his cup of blood, asked his Maker was or
Would? Coming nails to eat his hands an opted plan, forsaken, man’s?
A God’s demand? Virgin mother, dangling fetus, Church’s fell search for
What defeats us, wrought salvation cruel and hard. Eye the chapel
Burn the bard. Father, Mother even Son, Godly shun; a Hegel’s faking.
Priestly catch needs subtle baking: lick the lesson, baste the aching.
AUM III
So many inattentive light-years racked with pain. Bodhisattva smiles?
Place of eternal bruise this being we name Earth! Here is all birth!
Dialectic swoons at Gott’s deception, that wakening to an ache is
Godlike seeing. The trinal rack is what one makes of evolution, is
Beatific path of endless solution, weeping the calmest center. We
Sense his bent there, wicked Christ. Here! Precisely here is carnal
Summons. Suffer all children come unto Thee. Sweet endearing font
Of poetry! The movers of his vision simply muse manure, glazed
Ceiling. ‘D have us wound the summit. Feed even the crippled sportive
Stasis, Godless enrichment, stench the basis. Koch cooks an amp,
An imp, ‘D lick the platter. Blond mane is sane no matter. We reel
With obscene chatter. We siphon all Deity unto bruise. Such use!
AUM IV
What focus could thwart the very horror of incarnate ingestion?
Whose mantis-like suggestion? Impeccable matron stoop to devour
Her fetus? Such notion feeds us? How sad the sonnet of gnashing
Teeth! Where dwells a soul that fails to seethe? 3 spirals lock us
In a God-some belief. Such is the hectic, dialectic. Such is attack.
Such is the rack. Tender to take it back. Primordial fact. Look aside
The image lingers on the eyes. Immaculata spreads her thighs? Or
Conjures a role for wayward metaphysics. Reduced to excreta modern
Physics? Cloud bursts and rain descends more vacant than pebbles
On a deaf man’s roof. Ludwig’s aloof. Opus was 106. Über his
Paramount tricks. Conjure a mad impairment. Such has the stare
Meant. Mad vivisection. Godly dissection. Painless defection. AUM!
HEAD OF PIERRE . . .
Rodin, captive to the center, made bruise the texture of his vast
Life. To stroke an aging breast, one must live a wife, or find all
Being in the given strife. To milk a cow, one cheers as well his
Steer. In the pasture of disaster bloom the very blades to bend,
A confession Essen, a well of drunken thirst. AUM is clarity of
Water first. “Grant us the wisdom, Lord, to choose what must
Exist.” There are countless smiles of the same twist. Breath Of
Blossom, nectar’s awesome. AUM is a gift without an audible
Sound to its leader in 106. Gift is the rift that heals all division.
Graft of revision, yard of the curtain, passive but certain, oddly
Diversion fused to the given fact, roar without tact, shout seldom
Sought, bartered, or bought, canceled or caught: IS without Not.
DOUBTER [CARAVAGGIO]
Merisi spares no hook; ensnares us. Finger penetrates all flesh as
Son guides wrist, intent in lowered glance toward Thomas in the
Very clutch. A pale of chest accentuates carnal obscenity of act
As if nipple itself seems ravished by intrusion. Disciple rakes or
Rapes Messiah’s chest? This Gott were misstep crept from Hell!
Delineates each crease and fold emergent from damnation. Two
Witness pair’s mutual desecration, 3 hands, a carnal feast of rapt
Apt proclamation. Come Tom, impeach your being in my breast
That 20,000 years can assert this spot of ugly wonder. That death
Of Mine holy infernal blunder? Have innards even absent from a
Soul? Let none impeach the title, chapter, “Three days to molder,
Stink, ascend.” Gott calls me Hence! To Fit of flesh? Contend!
FRANCIS BACON
No large portion of this face would scare the devil into Church.
And yet it oddly competes with his debut study at the base of a
Crucifixion. Nor derives its manner of mortal solace from teeth
Protruding buttocks in one openly wounded stare. Some welt of
Sustenance is there. Eyes mimic mouth, which has sucked on all
Odd moral, moribund cosmic teat. Face itself is battered by the
Chiaroscuro light that’d have the bard of roadkill naked all or no
Man to endure. Fantasy regards beaded rose saliva’s dribble from
Weak chin, a trace of jowls, bagged EYE, mute howls, imbibing
Our certain death furtive in fashion, a guileless stink in a lineless
Focus of eye’s mate. No chance that one’s irate. All quarrels were
Among a captive crowd our Francis raked. Gott had them quake?
BLAKE’S HELL
A strange and malleable Good Friday here with Dante and Blake
To assess my sins of Omission, a greater gap than my contrition,
Neither untold wild or meek or mild but lesser cause-effect than
This cosmic CEO enduring pain so direct it purses pinch of lips,
And lands him in a hellish bracket, earn a to Inferno, gaps two
Incisors, swollen tongue parched glance, CA drouth perchance,
Orbs ohne iris, glistened nose, flush meaty visage, a mealy mirage
Cooked to serve an inner speak [Truly blessed are the meek], from
Closure to foreclosure stock to debit datum sheet, all merde the
Market in retreat, a spell of doubt, a knell of doom, from cubicle
To corporate corset this damnèd broker without salve to soften
Taxes halve God’s wounds, sniff boardrooms, fright the faxes.
DANAID [RODIN]
At 2 AM I woke from listening gently to a friend who severed ties
Years back. Ron phrased me of the death of his beloved wife. Her
Terrible bout with pancreatic cancer. “I grieved her passing. As if
She’d murdered me our wedding night.” That bard’s accustomed
Harshness ebbed to gestures of a mild professor, celibate, and she
His Shirley? somehow Danaid weeping strands into marble block.
Jean Escoula for Rodin sculpted 1 [50] wives, somehow removed
Ron’s cruelest weight, a struggle to get it right, the 49 of 49, sons
Of a brother smothered by her being. As there being no time to
Properly ruminate, I emerged from attic cot to the designated jug.
An old man in his parallel exigency pissed fiercely into it and set it
Again on the floor. That much I had lost, sad to reiterate no more.
FOOTBRIDGE [MONET]
Torment of ripe age? Cataracts alone produce a fiendish assault
Of parallel beauty. Loveliness renders more than duty. To loom
In bleeding haze against slashing arc 1923, Giverny and Monet’s
Willful vision. Construct at labor cost all impetus at ripping fog
From eyes, to seize the size, receive a cataleptic seizure, endure
At leisure the usual pleasure jagged, felt, a thirst, a jaguar’s pelt,
The flagrant claws, the limbs teeth jaws, a welt of heartache in a
Blur of blossom, penetrated structure fictive, contradictive, that
Ache is blessing, turmoil indulgent in the warp it’s stressing, odd
Chatter, wail that tale entails, an ancient’s final reach, bold death
Impeached. All Nature conflagrates endures. From seek to treat
Syphilitic sore faction traction transom ransom spirochete spore.
STARRY NIGHT
Copernicus would stab his eyes for murdering the massive. For
Steeple’s mute, minuscule against sky’s rage or torment’s passive.
Even the shaded hills relent a quiet turmoil. Earth boils in pain
And Lucifer endures. We witness simply spores. Yet larger than
All beatific suasion. Universe a curse? Or covets our Vincent’s
Deluge in the vaster cradle cupping Gott. Is what we’ve GOT?
What one mad soul has sniffed and caught, a Cherubim a fever.
Let Hawkings rot forever? This virus in the very heart of pain.
Shall wield and wield again. The very strain is darkly vivid. All
Host responds. Jehovah’s livid. Where has this impudent goat
Derived its being? ALL marvel at the scope of what it’s seeing!
Such odd ambition captures mother Night. Veins leak the sight!
DEAD MOTHER [SCHIELE]
Umbilicus would shout what death’s about, for childlike, fetal all
But large expressive hands demands a fearful bloody surge, even
To mascara, rouge, a painted tragic slut under black quilt’s wrinkle,
Orbit. Ach mother’s demise nears finite in the massively welted
Shudder. Tri-fingered hand would predicate distant comfort but
Shrieks itself toward some untimely stab, cessation. Egon gives
Brutal lapse a secular Madonna nuzzling cancroid crèche. Cheek
Seeps toward darling terror. All infancy’s an error. Worm spits
A masticated fury. This passive passion’s furry. Tentacled decay
Shall have its say: “Tread here with caution; this womb laments!
God smothers infants in their alabaster tents; world moans and
Discord’s chord intones; all poem is truly eaten!” Cursed Eden?
ROTHKO
Step inside you find him. See it wholly’s murdering measure, the
Death of massive. Soak in brown in blue in green. All implodes
The stack. Stack attacks. At the very end of these, sliced crooks
Of his arms, wielding Gillette, careful of his fingers. An MD had
Him reach no higher than “his waist” all balance of its living but a
Waste, all art confined to posters pretty for the masses. He’d Id!
Deify their asses? Coronate the small? When large was all! Had
A dabbler for Schwager turned them into installation, 30 chips of
Dung no larger than a rhino’s tongue, most moist most fitly tame
As if all zeros summed the error of a Master’s psychic terror OR
Rothko indeed himself just shy of PhD, cunning as ordure, all in
Culpable order, no blue just blots “Forget me” without the NOTS.
BLUE POLES [POLLOCK]
The guy that did this was in pretty rough shape. In fact, if story
Has it, 2 poachers worked upon what ended in Australia. Where
It rests content despite the misery in its birthing. A Jackson that
Whelped its final completion was wild man, died so. It wasn’t yet
Winter and the Cadillac was of beauty, one of which went to her
Untimely death. [I’ll catch my breath.] I count 8 lovely, blue-black
Poles from the board he marked it with in an instant of supreme
Sanity. He had been filmed at it years prior in his vanity. Tangle
Of labyrinths litter the glitter. Yellows emerge like script. There
Are grays and eggshell pastels, quite prominent. He wasn’t merely
Lounging on his fundament. Had I means 10 billion might pry or
Pray it to my attic. All that greatness! And nothing, nothing antic.
LEONARDO
Sweet Gott of mine, what trace of enigmatic chaste confronts
Odd severed kine? Docile. Photogenic. A pliant comfort to
Its lady, rumored Cecilia. And she a mystery beyond the lesser
Transgressor hand mimics. 3 sculpted transcendent snouts, all
Poignant to the Magdalene she wields, no doubt levels even a
Lisa’s playing field. For which of each’d yield to Master? Awed
Awe odd hand, to heft a brush, and leave scant trace on grace,
Perfection. A Lass impales, a sacral blush, wields tears, disgrace
Through all that’d summon grandeur toward her impassion’d
Poise. Ah now at the zenith of her beauty with decades left to
Conquer. Miss Gallerani, the force of genius bent your hand a
A sculpted wound to every source, all witness and his torment.
MAGDALENE
Saucy wench of lad slew giants? Na ja source-less sunk wood-pits
Eaten out of grief in a boney frame praying hard for pliant. Slung
From tattered soul, from swollen truant. Admonition surges past
Wrists to fingertips, knotted chest, drape of expressive rag-braced
Solely garment. Waste shade sucks tears hot as Lear’s for fictive
Cordelia despite a risen Christ? ‘Tis yet-regret not God or gotten.
Spills from darkest hole a stab of sight no onlooker ‘D bear. Even
A Yankee edging past who’d had his fun with Donatello’s David.
“BY Christ we dropped this on Nagasaki! OR dredged IT UP?”
She lacks the beggar’s cup, appeals from no man. Such widow
Wedded Christ? Spread comfort to a doomed Messiah? Heart
Cried? Heart lust? Fierce pariah? Passerby? A? Come to Dust!
MOZART [D. DUBAL]
Here has him ernst, genius toward the close of “Amadeus.” That
Bio was a whit giddy, but then even Ludwig Ursa Major twinkies
At requisite distance. To properly entomb I’d dig the latter. Even
Elder’s odd approach to inner worm’s a hazard. Liken his thunder
Mugs a mourning after. What spews after startling glamor? Craven
Crepe? Requiem? Rarified beer-fry? The primal missal reads final
Severe. Lunging toward geriatric, officially graceless? All honors
Traceless? Even Sebastian knew decline? Recover? Simply hover?
Boisterous younger lover? Odder L.B. too strung to get it up era
Of his Solemn Mass, swear it, hear it, even query. Fast track was
Gordian. Fogged by a weary maggot. Chasing Euterpe, Wulfi the
Spritely? Antonio’d Salieri? Beseeching the fairly? Quetching the slyly.
GAUGUIN
Tabescent God’s child screams, nay shouts hoarse into void far
Darker than despair. Some 7 yards of canvas sail rough-ribbed
AS very hands that forced it. Center a pale youth’s triumphant
Flesh accentuating slack of infant’s diapered groin, near absent
Crease or wrinkle. To left a deity, threatening hag there, here, in
About, painfully conversant with transcendence, a youth’s sheer
Plenitude, a slash. The latter exudes from blue, if aspic ash, all
Innocent of task, hugely rewarded token caste, a such, a balm.
Meander mender calm, a given. No price is either here or riven;
Gauguin paints stasis swirling against itself. All Christian notion
On the stealth. From neural ache to pagan health, remote from
Parsimonious wealth or venal commons. Greatness summoned.
KLIMT
A vast remove from Zika this paired gestation clearly swollen,
Quaintly bare, gilded ornate cousin, no edge quite given tuft of
Foison-scatter to the latter, her willful cerebration, patter. For
What rough beast could assay past or claim with willful brede
This matter, ladies’ fructose: gourds, pudenda, or lend a trump
Or limp defender, yield caution to devotion, starker struck or
Burnèd 3 beneath the yielding vibrant DEITY a pattern bourn
By usury, the very wealth of either privileged lass, Hope I or II
Caught in a flush of maidenhead, such lithely defined, virginal
At every grace from self-involved or coy [her face]. Just trace
The guarded in her glance as if we violate this solemn rumination,
Defile an ancient motion, brittle the matron shatter the notion.
KLIMT II
Just one lush maiden: nay, 6 and counting. Aesthetic cluster has
The choice on fire. Such lust to mate configuration, edge madly
Into wildest anatomic spray. And having the date right, LEAKS
RODIN. But here the image’s thin. No segment rules as would
The latter’s school. Biographic rapture seeks to capture lyric shift
To myth. One plode explodes to tumble of pudendum; a maker
Bakes her; master chef employs a visual concoction. Ah Gustav
Where’s your heart? Afford no means to start? A place to taste?
We rumble in to Klimt. No ENTRY! A silent sentry guards this
Soil. All soil has soul! We harbor infinite conversions, a coil of
Absolute assertions. All is for sale but defines no merchant. No
Wit is certain. Planck’s constant, Heidegger to Thomas Merton.
CRANE
Verse the pride of Gordius even H. Bloom couldn’t whack, took
Blades of a steamer bound nowhere past the legend, involved all
Decades seculars’d read though baldly fitful living if not dead, a grief
A bitter blaze, a curious, dipsotic icy affirmation. Had I space on
Wicked sheets I’d drum doomed pages rubied with grand citation,
Explication thorny as his chaotic final proposition, thumped idly
Crudely soundly, lending larger soul more myth, periphrastically
Donne-stung, as, despite the greater beast, eloquently purer than
Perplexed, certain of his Hart than of the Gift. Had he truly waxed
Bisexual? Even a pretty end, replete with twinkling cherubs hefting
His corse in silver box, adagios trimmed but birthing, a vertiginous
Final curtain, iffer sister Whitman wistful if exceeded in the bid for id.
DEAD CHRIST
Is it so much the grief of elders, torment in pierced feet, hands?
Or rather the stark virility, the hyper-realistic cadaver, puzzling
Son of Man? Even the folds gathered at groin proclaim this male.
A massive chest? The militancy in coiled toes bicep cheek, raking
Fingers. The man is starkly dead, scarred soles to countenance, a
Warrior so hardy hardly mild. Suppliant to oddity a child a quest
Who’d dare this faintly Jesus. The ribs the belly, nipples shout. A
Lacerated Psalm’s what he’s about. ‘Tis eloquence this moribund
Messiah? Viewer seizes fast to such decay? Macho Bent would
Have its way? Toward odor worm to stain we’d pray: carnal heap
A leak is taken? The tomb where such resides were torrid horrid,
Itch or tonic! Mantegna’d whisper wrench, blanch gut, demonic!
David Swartz [D.A. Vid] born in 1939, lives in New Jersey. “David Swartz is a poet who shouts into the Void but who is heard perhaps only by God…” (E. Sokolovsky. “The Great Poet”. “Slovo\Word” #91).
