I straighten sand, filings, coffee Grounds into square containers, Sponging the sides. The coffee blackens The sponge in blotches I will remember Tomorrow after I mix the grains and flakes With paint; the next painting of my atelier Needs a dark corner—a solidity Overseeing the cutouts suspended From the atelier ceiling.
Yesterday, my war wound answered When Pablo, tapping his teeth, said I should believe More than my studio cutouts like streamers For a child's party. My scar Reminds me nothing else has meaning.
The flat, aluminum cutouts of bottles, apples, Bowls, turn on their quiet wires. They move me; I wave breezes to make them Live, die, and live Into many torn views.
Today, the buxom neighbor carrying blintzes Egged me not to care about What's not flat. She forgot To bend, clanging together Some fronts and sides. I told her pianos Sideways in the street were what We hid behind. Bullets played Clanging tunes like Schoenberg. The dead ones grew grayer than The piano shadows they lay inside.
Front views cast grey shadows on The profile cutouts. The atelier easels And chairs dapple their colors Onto the slightly warped aluminum. The smooth edges glint When they take sides With the window light.
Cutouts of still things move Into all the sides of flatness.
Formidable. The images of pianos, bullets, the greyer dead in the grey shadows of the pianos are arresting, poetic headlines from the unending war.
Great closing lines -
"Cutouts of still things move
Into all the sides of flatness.
We have to break into enough lies to see."
Yes. Good poem, Tantra. Wonderful imagery. *
Great juxtaposition of destruction and creativity. *
"The dead oens grew grayer than / The piano shadows they lay inside."
Love this pun!
Strong poem.