Bass

The bass fiddle

is a riddle.  A violin

shape, but un-little.

It is the songbird's

king-size cousin

who ought to sing

but doesn't, whom

song could never teach.

One's hand must reach

for notes like thoughts

for speech.  Hence

it's known a sort

of magnet-driven

transport, how the root

of each chord

repeated moves us

forward.  The effect

is comic or eerie

when it ventures

a melody, like

watching an obese

trapezist: he suspends

our breath and expects

to tremendously

please us.

Here We Are (Hymn)

In mercy, let your arms extend;
Through us, befriend the fatherless.
I AM has come in word and deed;
To those in need, Lord, here we are.

We thirst to see the hungry filled,
Injustice stilled and light restored.
From darkened homes, make families;
And let us be your arms of love.

II. Woman

Flat against the far wall
of this little room at the back
of the Contemporary Wing,
you have no way of knowing

you are there, that your gaze
toward some target off-screen
is aimed at the wall on my left,
which is empty. The yellow curl

of hair grazing that jawline
I so admire looks as though it
could somehow be spun into gold
if I only knew your name. You

are curving your lips inward
as if about to face a mirror, or else
struck by a dull sense of tragedy
about to happen, and at once

I could kiss them—if not for the fact
of my body, since that which light cannot
penetrate blocks your presence... All this
just moments before the camera

must have closed its lens, and the room
darkens, though there yet remain quanta
of flickering film grain and a rapid click
as the reel continues to advance.

I. Zebra

after Elad Lassry
Ever since the glue you’d been
dipped in by the heel began
to peel, you’ve borne this
contradiction, yes and no
coexistent. The only sign

of inner agreement
is your tail: it flicks
in careless circles which,
in this instance, are larger
than the loop of 16mm film

which projects all your gestures
in parts as the camera pans
at a close zoom. It is as though
a few blind men are grasping at
the disparate natures of this flank

and snout and deliberating how
they can be reconciled, only
I am each of the blind men
over the brief progression
of frames.

After The Exhibition [revised]

after D. J.

Excuse me, Mister Judd?
I just couldn’t help overhearing
The silence in your latest work,
Untitled. It reminds me of a rainbow
In cross-section, freeze-dried and preserved
In monochrome, mounted but as yet unlabeled.
I’m as confounded as you, but when will you go
And see your stepmother at the Home?
She misses your piano playing.

You claim your hands will never touch
This sculpture, the ladder rungs by which
You could ascend to Euclid’s perfect world,
The only provable universe, if it existed.
So won’t you draw a picture for your daughter?
Today she especially loves butterflies.

Your desire to be and not seem—it’s as if to say,
Perhaps God’s bathroom could use some shelving.
A suggestion devoid, of course, of specific toiletries
(Which cleanser for the Necessary Being?):
Just green brass ledges for the Almighty’s loofah
And accoutrements, which I sincerely hope you celebrate
By letting your English terrier sleep on the bed.
Does he whimper at the door?

Somewhere beneath the exhibit, then,
Must be the shower drain, leaking into the earth,
Into the dirt of your garden uptown.
Your wife, who cannot help but put one second
Before the other, would so very much like
To tend it with you by her side, clutching the weeds
Through garden gloves and gauging the fresh headway
Made by the budding leaves which, Occam’s Razor aside,
Really are there, Donald, which occupy
The space between each of your boxes.

Why I Am Not A Poet

(thanks, Frank)

I am not a poet, I am a garbage man.
I take what’s been thrown away
To a place where it can decompose,
Some of it, and become a tree

Or a bird again, some new instance
Of itself. I am a clockmaker,
Too, but not a poet, just tinkering
With a meticulous little device

Whose aim is to accord
With what happens.
I'm also a mathematician,
Proving that X is X

Again and again, necessarily
And sufficiently, no matter
What operations are undergone.
I have tried my hand at floristry,

Arrangements of lilies
In milky water… Once,
In some past life, I have a feeling
I was even an embalmer,

Searching endlessly
For the unknown secretion
Or rare plant resin
That would make us last.

Unfortunately, it seems
There is too much simple work
To be any kind of poet,
Whatever that may entail.

Exposure In Black & White

[explanatory note: what follows is three poems.]

Bus Riders (George Segal)

Clara, Clara (Richard Serra)

Exposure In Black & White

after George Segal's Bus Riders & Richard Serra's Clara, Clara

Some time ago,
              You thought you were just waiting
To pass through
              On a certain street,
Parabolic trajectories
              The name of which
Nearly touching
              Still escapes you—

Would have been the best
              But, in reality, a clearing
Situation or circumstance
              Of the throat,
To bring us closer—
              Or at least a gesture
Until the doors open,
              Toward the ceiling

That is, of the vehicle
              Which carries a reason
Whose walls we imagine to exist...
              To curve toward one another.