One a Day: Daily poetry and journal posts: (for Sandra, while modeling)

I don’t write in a journal everyday, but I have accumulated many entries over the past 50+ years beginning in 1966. Some items evolved into longer works. Among the leftovers little pieces survived. I thought a collection of these with a piece culled from the same date in a past year would make an interesting yearbook. The consistencies and inconsistencies of mind, skipping back and forth across time, provide varied perspectives. It is difficult to remember the context of the past we’ve lived; we also make suppositions about times that predate ourselves.

The few alterations from original drafts were to improve clarity. The worst of my work is not included. There remains enough mediocrity and immaturity to make me feel humble and you feel smart. There are also moments of accidental insight and incidental humor.

Author Stephen Crane referred to his little pieces as pills…apparently they were small and somewhat hard to swallow, but good for you.

Comments Welcome!

Sunday, January 21, 2018

(for Sandra, while modeling)

from this week, 1971 (I was 26)

(for Sandra, while modeling)

nude poem #1

Line and form

from surface and substance

Drawing a nude is a process of elimination

and another of translation,

Look and what is it?

get it out

or get it down

nude poem #2

Body bulk demonstrated

mass of flesh and gravity

underscored

nude poem #3

When does the student become artist?

When does he legitimize the model’s nudity?

When does a zen koan have answer?

nude poem #4

All my poems are nudes

and some of them have names

separate from their parts

or gestaltic sum of them

I have defined for you

feet shoulders and forearm

but you see only thighs

and utter praise of my substance

I have posed forms

athletic graceful and constant

but you see only a reflection

of your own transient sensuality

nude poem #5

How you sit there

feigning unaware

just as I ignore

all I knew of you before

to turn your body into words

Out the window

night birds cut your curves in air

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