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Distrusting the hand which he
pulled back
the same for the eye at play
to land in the accidental as a fly his Lordship
buzzing beyond the flat of his
hand,
my father, the Painter, his brush between
lamplight & ruled lines, strokes the paper
arranging staves of landscape
traced
beneath it, labored red-eyed from Sunday magazines
Malaga Malaga the tufted hills
overtures of watercolor
routinely
atop the hills & inks for echoes surrounding
dark figures heads bowed
at the end of the road, roadkill
the nether sky, each mile, regardless of weather,
close to night, the disdainful son migrating
a meteor, getting the hell out,
ablaze, a welder's light for utility, a shooting star
to deliver the death wound, no blanks
for father, a formality for the
offspring
in art, as elsewhere, the focus on Distance,
both eyes beyond the elements, the gazes
across boundaries wide as
tree-rings from
the rotting core, the cataloged limbs come down
sick.Paul, a half century later
praised the whores of Barcelona
they say might have infected Pablo the watcher
his herd of cows vying with the Prado for
his swaggering attention lost
in half light fading into the spill
of fountains, courting Velazquez & disruptions
of which Paris, modernists to
dance halls & sheet music, when he arrived with
Casagemas, a glacier of old busts &
early self-portraits.
Casagemas, the dumb-ass, heart
on
his sleeve for Fernande, her shivers
congenial only with his suicide
she & Pablo, blue after the
burial,
punctuated their fucking with tears of avoidance &
Pablo found this an artistic lift &
adopted a blue palette for his
brush
to grope.Whispers to reveal, thru the sunny skylight,
the hardships engineered for art
& art legends.The women he
discovered
didn't improve with acquaintance hung from the walls
by their hair, the Munch touch, mal du siecle,
the Collectors loved it,
nocturnal
cafe life suffused with exploded light garish
the muted women on his easel
washed up from the river
to launched him, an echo of religion rose-red
on their tight reserved mouths,
mournful his atelier a bitches'
habitat, &
those he didn't bed he painted from prison,
their profession advertised by disease the older ones
walking in confused circles,
mumbling, traces
of the passionate beauty they started out with
defining his hold on God, a Spanish thing, Death
No a fabrication, the gaunt male
of
La Vie an X-ray revealed he originally had
Pablo's likeness his face repainted as Casagemas'
beside Fernande, saving himself
for Harleguin, the immigrant victim & his antedates
from which Art arose, enamored
black petals, the cycle gathered
a rose ensued, a prosthetic rose of Consciousness
peeled back for the canvass,
the early self-portraits.
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