The Death of Naomi Vine

Ad Reinhardt
Abstract Painting, No. 34, 1964

Death of Naomi Vine


Like an Ad Reinhardt painting
Black comes the news that you
Died seven years ago
For seven years I had thought
You were choosing art
Had imagined you sitting
As in the painting of you
Nude surrounded by art
Being art
Imagined what museum you were enlivening
You younger than I
All your energy creative verve
Vanished
Into the spirituality of the paintings
You love
Black as the purity of night.

--Jack Miller
For Naomi Vine
4/30/2009

Image from the National Gallery of Art
http://www.nga.gov/fcgi-bin/tinfo_f?object=52391

Who's Facebook

Who's Facebook

We are being sucked
Down the net the internet
World wide web
News source meeting place
Sextronic intertwine
Reading messages massages
Longing for email that is not
Spam

McLuhan saw the face in a tetrad
Media mad where hot or cold
"Past times are pastimes"
Our nerves our nervous systems
Linked connected hooked neurons
Electrically excited into an ethernet
Like "The Lawnmower Man" lost in
Cyberspace

Whose face book photos jpegs
Videos word processed power
Point to our displacement
Our dispersal our discontent
As Shakespeare disappears
Into that nexus only browsers
Grasp in their paneless
Windows

Jack 4/18/'09

Lost Fear

Kara Walker 1991
from a video by
Jack







Lost Fear

Looking at your images baring all
How is it that yours was a life of
Naked fear
Seeing you dance
All confidence all self assurance
Abandonment to rhythm for us to see
How is it that you were in
Throes of anguish

Have you now
Undone that fear overcome what secret
Sorrows you endured
Seeing your vision of Southern
strife abuse pain surrender loss
Oppression
Have you healed yourself
With your art

Has fame been a confirmation a
Burden another source of fear
Will you emerge from the shadows
Or flee back into them
Will you find peace of mind
In the gray between of
Black and white
Transcending the past

-Jack
for Kara Walker
4/'09

April Thunder

April Thunder

Dark bruise clouds
Thunder tornado snow
All in the first week of
April

Pink and white
Scattered azaleas and dogwood
Green yellow sludge washed from
My red eyes

Over the hills of
Georgia

--Jameson 4/5/9

Below the sternum above the gut

Below the sternum above the gut

My pain is right here
Below the sternum
Above the gut
Dead center
A stab that keeps sharpening

Is it too much sugar
Coffee acid fat
Grease from pizza
Excess of packaged food
Gas

Or Is it you

--Jameson 4/3/'09