Wednesday, February 28, 2007
An Impatientist In Baltimore!
I was knocked to the ground earlier today when I did a Google search for "impatientist" and came across this article about a Baltimore painter who calls himself an "impatientist". Here is the thrust of the column (which is about Baltimore schools):
"Raoul Middleman, one of Baltimore's great artists, teachers and raconteurs, calls himself an "impatientist" with the brush, and if you've ever experienced the glory of his presence - when Middleman paints or talks about his paintings - you quickly get what he means. John Dorsey, the former Sun art critic, once described the impatientist style as "a combination of energy, quickness of mind and the urgent need for self-expression." I think the impatientist spirit has a lot to do with fear of death and the desire to make your time in this life meaningful - for yourself and as many others as possible, as soon as possible.
We don't have enough impatientists making policy in Baltimore and Maryland."
What is uncanny is not that two separate styles of painting/art would appear in two very different geographic locales but that the Sun art critic above describes the impatientist style (what I call impatientism) much as I would. Energy and the urgent need for self-expression. That is right on. This is a great day for impatientism. You can read more about impatientism at the Impatientism site.
All this said, Mr. Middleman's Impatientism looks nothing like the impatientist paintings I started doing last year. Perhaps they are more reminiscent of a looser style of impatientism, like that of Joseph Portera. In any case, it's the spirit of producing art that is paramount and the "impatientism" moniker seems to fit both approaches.
Sunday, February 25, 2007
Walter the Red
Are your pillows fine
I asked them
& they said yes until
they started to complain
about the way I
spoke: muttering
dust into air,
apparently skewing
the TV reception.
Dust? I said, Where?
& they said, In
the dirt, with the
iris and the pupil;
In the happenstance
of creation
O, Creator.
Where are you from, they said,
Bosnia?
They knew it wasn’t Serbia
even though I never followed
that war
I was too young; all I could add
to newscasts was,
Is that thing still going on?
But now I'm drawn to the way
the conflict is
treated in movies—
with Owen Wilson or Helen Mirren.
The Queen. That’s what they call me here.
Not like the rock band
but like the leader
stripped of his power to
keep the pillows clean,
who grew up thinking that all maps were final.
Countries were rocks and their capitals the centers
of everything that happened there. But
what became of Yugoslavia? And what of Belgrade?
I asked them to call me
The King instead,
but they said that name
was RESERVED.
For who? I said.
And they said,
For the one
who will quiet the channels,
who will still the atlases,
who will keep the damn pillows clean.
They said He was coming tomorrow to change the wallpaper, too.
Wednesday, February 21, 2007
Laclede the Artist
He is at home
in this match-book town
warmed by the nuclear power
brewed out west
(though he never calls on it
(the gas neither.
When he runs out of ice
(commonly, I’m afraid
he just walks down to the river
and hacks off a chunk or two.
‘Sea ice!’ he boasts to guests,
‘Never have a better drink in all your life.’
Sea-hattans he calls them,
and sings a song to the tune of “Sea Captains.”
His sideburns red and wispy
His boat a studio afloat
His paintings acts of revenge.
As he traces lines on the canvas
making valleys of paint
and rivers thick with barges
he imagines
a searchlight in his hands
And through
clouds clouds fog
the river a mile wide
he believes he has lost his painting
only to discover land.
Sunday, February 18, 2007
Line for Billy
How are we gonna
heat our house this winter?
One mourner has a stove
but it eats a lot of wood, he says,
standing in a line
barely any light left and ten degrees
behind an IGA
and no place for parking.
A great loss…
A great tragedy…
He sold me mulch…
He sold me flowers…
He taught me how to hunt…
We hoisted one together.
We followed The Dead.
Here we all search for understanding
on our feet for how many hours
at this crowded Northfield funeral home.
It’s not like trying to find a lost watch.
It’s not like re-building a house.
We know the faces
(but some of the names escape us…
He’s bearded,
no tie,
his hands folded for the Lord’s Prayer.
I can’t pretend I knew him
but plenty of other people did.
As I’m writing this a multitude pays its respects.
I’m sitting in a rental car drinking a beer.
For him, I say.
All’s I remember is the maroon Corvette
he couldn’t get started after JB’s funeral…
Yes, they knew him in this town.
The barber knew him.
All these people standing, freezing
in line knew him,
their noses dripping,
their bodies huddled in wool coats against the wind.
And the cars keep coming.
Out past the funeral home,
at the edge of the woods
is a gaggle of turkeys
a herd of elk
one lonely moose
& a party of game.
Not yet stuffed
these animals are glad to see him go.
They will not become his trophies
(though as trophies
lonely they would not be….)
The Massachusetts Randalls.
They are a family that knows each other.
His nieces are crying.
His sisters are trying to stave off that infectious hurt.
His son…
His mother robbed now twice
of men fifty years old.
“There are no men in my house.”
Inside, warmth. Thank God.
The line moves slow
though at sixty heartaches an hour,
crawling toward the casket with disbelief.
As we stop to kneel at his coffin,
touch his arm once more,
tears fall apart on our boots
like melting snow,
the white birches of this land
bending over to help us up,
having grown ever more ashen
with the sound of bad news.
He can say more than most men.
He didn’t die drunk.
He didn’t die asleep.
He didn’t die in the office.
He died out there in the elements,
on a frozen, French plain,
on a machine,
perhaps to the voice of Jerry Garcia,
knowing his kids were safe at home;
he was casually busy
doing something he loved.
The line is still there.
Employees, co-workers,
men & women who worked this land,
who kept the greenhouses just warm enough
just damp enough
just bright enough.
The man loved flowers.
Not produce so much,
he was different like that,
his own man that way.
No, he was
grasses, & cabbage, & kale.
And mums. A whole field of mums
ya shoulda seen ‘em.
Neighbors, townsfolk,
his daughter’s basketball team,
a man in workboots with a tape-measure on his hip
and a limp,
maybe some DeadHeads mixed in.
Hunters. Hunters of seven states
and just as many kinds of meat.
Bear, coyote, deer, elk, pheasant.
You name it, he shot it.
And cooked it.
Who wants a bowl of bear stew?
Not a man of many words but (I’m told)
he could surprise you with a story.
So maybe he spoiled his kids a bit.
Maybe he was a spender.
No one’s complaining.
Except for the lack of parking
and how damned cold it is out here
and God it’s packed inside.
This wake’s supposed to end
in half an hour
but it ain’t gonna.
Not until everyone sees Billy.
Thursday, February 15, 2007
Hey, We're Goin To The Moon!
I, along w/
about 200 other americans
(and 200 russians, grumble, grumble)
boarded a ship
slated to launch
into space.
It was part of an experiment
to shuttle large numbers
of people
in order
to assess
thefeasibilityofthecolonizationofeitherthemoonormars
The ship was extremely large
w/ multiple levels.
During liftoff people were
roaming around,
acting indifferent.
There was an oversight during
pre-launch checklists,
and
a certain wire
wasn’t
properly connected.
But
they got to it
just before the engines
exploded,
and up we went.
The ride there
was uneventful.
But I remember the general feeling
around the ship
was that
IT WAS GREAT TO EXPERIENCE SPACE
but we would
probably not
survive re-entry.
Saturday, February 10, 2007
The Painting You Never Did
& Then Never Did Again
oh, the people will come, friend
they’ll bring their hangovers
& drive right through ‘em
like union men punching their tickets
oh, the people will most definitely come
they’ll ask for chairs they’ll say
how about height
oh, alcohol
leaves me manic twelve hours later
my friend, he said,
Art is in the doing
core one
he was a crazy impatientist fool
from backintheday, Texas
I believe
I want to, anyway
friend, let me say
I’m going to ‘mass
one of the great art collections
of the twenty-third century
It begins with your
co-masterpiece
and flies through mother-of-pearl woods on a nightstick cackling
It is where the wild things are
oh, yours is
a great & important
work of art
erupted from the cracked and chapped lips
of two laclede
working men
high in the apartments
of a grey and brick city street
oh, the people will come, friend
they’ll come to my gallery
not knowing why
and they’ll pay to see the hands
of men
sick with whisky
but having
the good sense
to lay down paint and tape
that single strip of tape
oh, genius!
to boast to the canvas
of loves they’ve known
purple women
the busted borders of night
seen despite winter’s mask
their bright eyes burning beneath like passion cigarettes
orange beyond all else
oh, friend
I am so decrepid in the midst
of my rejuvenation!
how is that?
who was that roman emperor?
Picasso once said
If only I coulda gotten that gal’s
legs open
art woulda popped out
your art, friend
Do you believe him?
but we’re not famous yet &
yet we’re not quite shuttered
shuddered
trying to stay warm in the attics
of unfinished houses
the acts, the attics
of druggéd houses
you know what started it all for me?
(the big bang!)
that painting of yours
the one you never did
& then never did again
do you ‘member that one?
it hangs on my wall
and no one can see it
but you.
Monday, February 05, 2007
Perky Corp.
Pillows used to be
made of dead ducks
but ducks won’t die
anymore; instead,
superhuman corporations
fill our headrests
with conglomerate
subsidiaries of snow.
Sunday, February 04, 2007
politico
snow is
cold rain
rain is
warm snow
that shit was weak,
then it was right, yo
“You would never run for President?”
Naw, I’m too old.
“Too old?”
Too young, then.
Thursday, February 01, 2007
Nothingness At Starboard
What time ‘s it?
there’s no clock to look at
but
I think it’s five o’clock.
like a whale breathing in the ocean
I keep to my breaths
in this orchid-touchy
cavern of mind’s silence.
Palms up!
The pen is an alien organ
my reserve body wants to kill away.
If I were a buddha
I would be a poem buddha.
existing only
when the reader read my way.