Category Archives: Poetic flux

Tell me your side of it.

To Frank O’Hara

 

 

You’re clearly, clearly not a poet, Frank;
More a symptom of modernist sickness.
Inflict no further such rambling thickness
Upon your readers. Here it is point-blank:
Beat-up prose scribblers’ quaint observations
May charm their author—but bore us to tears.
Dull poems age poorly. The passing years
Condemn them as quirky obfuscations.

Your buddy Ashbery: another dud,
Remembered by Department Heads, at best:
Abstract expressions that fall with a thud.
Bury them in a chap-book with the rest 
Of the beatnik bards, whose typing careers
Only confirm our worst poetic fears.

 


PROMPT #3:

write a poem that obliquely explains why you are a poet
and not some other kind of artist –
explain why you are that and not something else!

 

I’m not the only member of the Frank O’Hara Fan Club !

 

To a Yogini

 

         मोक्ष

You with the Hindu tattoo: Namasté.
I wrote you some verse. There’s no other way.

We met at the Moksha conference last spring—
Just wondered how you had been worshipping.

The God in me greets the Goddess in you:
As sure as one must be followed by two—

Listen, I was thinking: before you buy
The used mantra set from that guru guy,

I meant to ask: How’s your situation?
Still affected by Siddharthafication ?

You all prana-ed up?  You might need to sit,
Just to lower your vibrations a bit . . .

Sure as that there are only two genders,
There’s only one God. We’re all offenders.

Contemplate that. Breathe. Just be here right now.
(Don’t mean to act holier-than-thou,

But the stench of truth is wafting your way
Like a whiff of bloated carcass rotting in an Apple™ sweatshop.)

 

 


PROMPT #2 : write a poem that directly addresses someone, and that includes a made-up word,
an odd/unusual simile, a statement of “fact,” and something that seems out of place in time.

All My Exes Live in Codexes

 

… spare not, lengthen thy cords, and strengthen thy stakes…
Isaiah 54:2

High stakes are rapidly being pulled due to the current administration.
Cultural stakeholders in music and the arts find themselves stranded in the proverbial Florentine steakhouse without a steak-knife. Mistaken codexes may see Aztec options traded for Ozzfest action very soon, exchanging obsidian blades for mixed Mixtec motives.

Missing appropriate terms, cultural brokerage firms get woke!
Inappropriate cultural  appropriations delay reparations for needy nations. Dada knows best how to transform prima-donna monody into payouts to the marginalized periphery while enjoying the polyrhythmic algorithms of an exiled Afro-Aztec diaspora.

Patience, choir. Payouts to Azania-Aztlan are in the mail. Ease up on the basso bufo.

If you repaired recipients STILL complain, you may be sent on a tropical triptych or get dipped in a topical diptych until you artistically own your own commodified appreciation. Upon final evaluation, artistic values must be and shall be revaluated until named parties come to realize that this is ALL Donald Trump’s fault so FREE PALESTINE !

 

¡VIVA AZTLAN/AZANIA!

 

PROMPT #1:  we challenge you to take inspiration from this glossary of musical terms,
or this glossary of art terminology, and write a poem that uses new-to-you words.
For extra credit, work in a reference to the Florentine Codex.

 

Can’t Re-cant: Hierophant

Francis Bacon: Study After Velázquez’s Portrait of Pope Innocent X (1953)

Try penning a portrait poem of your own:

Council of Trent ate his Diet of Worms—

Seeds of Satanic masses were sown;

The parasitical demon squirms...

Portrait of someone well known to you:

Abomination to misconstrue;

Something that is full

Of papal bull.

(poem inspired by an actual painted portrait)