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

Sara

Sara

A smear of pink yellow purple
Garden in the rain
Makes it impossible to be
Awake and quiet
My mind full of memory
Sailing at dawn past Sicily
That summer


My aunt with her sly smile
Is eighty today
My distant family gathers
Like the ancient Roman senate
A forum of disconnection
As we sip wine and pretend
To enjoy chicken and fish

Marcie reminds me
The wind and rain erase it all
Except the image of my high buttoned
Grandmother standing in the garden
Sun on the azaleas
Her daughter Sara
Smiling like the Mona Lisa

--Jack 3/28/'09

Stimulus Package

Stimulus

In these days of winter lethargy
Economy falling like sleet
Shiny and cold
You offer us the warmth
Of your stimulus package
Diverting us from couch consciousness
Waking us up with your elan
Vital to our every interest
That big big package
Making us want to spend
More
With spring so close
We can feel it
Wanting the ecstasy again
Unlimited wealth unlimited credit
Surely those screaming children
Out on the merry-go-round
Spawn of exuberance
Past
Will take care of it all
One day
And we can feast now
Aroused by your stimulus

--Jack 2/'09

Somnia

Somnia

Every night
Sirens
Screaming fire emergency crime
I see Atlanta burning
I see gun shot wounds
I see the darkness
Before dawn

Each night
Sounds
Stopping sound sleep
Tinnitus
Inner sirens whistle
Ear and brain
Heart beat breath

Every night
Machines
Click on off on
Heat air condition
You in the adjoining room
Restless as I awake going
From computer to staircase out

One sound alone soothes
The train with rhythm and horn
Carries me away

Jack
2/'09

Knots

photo from
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quipu

Knots

Khipu colors harmony
Contrast the lackluster life of routine
Of nots
Of not a leader, not a nabob
Not rich not poor not flying
First class to Bariloche
Not Cuzco not Peru
Not young not famous not mother not father
So defined gives definition to this
Journeyman lover of one Inca
Poet thinker teacher seeking
Music rhythm passion epiphany
Weathered and eroding like Macchu Picchu
Wanting wisdom on a cold afternoon
Thinking of the rise and fall of cultures
So many knots unraveled
So many drops of blood secret secretions
In the aesthetics of khipu


Jack, 1/'09

Bouquet Obama

Bouquet Obama


What has it to do with me
What new flower will bloom in my garden
As this gathering of two million
As this multiracial leader
As this handsome bold man
As his regal glam wife
Walk the White House lawn

Will wealthy moguls no longer
Skim the cream from our milk
Will the mercury cease to infect fish
Will the air clear at long last over
The Grand Canyon
Between rich and poor black and white
Gay and str8


From my winter garden filled with eager buds
Comes hot desire for a full bouquet.


Jack Miller 1/21/09

Moon River

Moon River


Such a trite name for a song
The house I enjoyed that summer
By the river now called yes
Moon River
Who could have thought
Of such a vision a full moon rising over a river
A moon like tonight big round white
Obscured by a river of rain

We lived there that salt summer
Naked in the garden the postman
Scandalized we kissed too two men
On deck chairs facing the river bees buzzing
Johnny Mercer and his wife sweet as rain
Cto visit he tipping his Greek sailor cap
A memory in the winter rain

Moon River in the Marsh
Narrow at low tide I imagine
Allen Ginsberg
Sitting on the dock
Dilapidated dock and he before the moon
Buddha of the swamp grass beatitude
All the anguish of eight acres dispelled
Not quite dead despite the
Smell of marsh gas and
Cawing flapping crows...

--Jack, Jan. '09

House of the Poet

House of the Poet

Beyond the split rail of your balcony

Lie the Blood of Christ Mountains

Backdrop adobe peaks white as spirit

Rise before black clouds of snow

Storms to cool the passion of kisses

All the way from Peruvian Andes

By the mantle of your hot fire

In the gift giving room adorned

For Noel

What warmth can compare to

Fire inside when from each window

Snow and ice spiking downward

Lights your skin smooth and pure

As snow flickering with flame

Here in Hal Bynner's home

Jack Jameson 1/'09

What'd I Do?

What'd I Do? 

Editors don't want experiment.
"What'd I do," comes my mother's voice,
What did I do?
Keep it mainstream; rhyme is OK.
Say it clearly.

Ring. Hello.
Mom is in the hospital. 
Pneumonia.
The way you handle time is crucial.
Time passes. Mom heals. Then,
Ring. Mom is in the ICU. She fell.
In the hospital?
An attendant dropped her.
Broke her hip.
She was to leave tomorrow. 
Now they have to operate.

Drive. Drive. The endless empty road to
Savannah.
The way you handle space and spacing... crucial.
From the ICU,
"Another day in paradise."
First words Mom says as they remove the breathing tube.
"What'd I do?"
Each day, every day, the same sentences.
Then, "Sue the fuckers."
Avoid obscenity if you want to publish. 
Good, rich diction.

We return home.
Mom stays in the hospital
A week
Until they haul her to a nursing home,
Hip not healed, yelling obscenities, 
Wanting  home.
Keep it short and sweet.
Ring.
Mom is dead.
What? Dead. Friday.
Cardiac
Arrest.

--Jack, December '08

Tonight, bright and white
As madness, the Moon
Makes bones of the trees,
Opens my wounds
Like a laser.

Tonight, clear and sublime
as ice, the light
Pierces through the night
To expose my heart
And all its broken memories.

Jameson

Pears

Pears

When you appear in my memories,
What I see first is your face,
Your frown, as if you tasted something foul.
Instead, I alter the view,
Recall your breasts, welcoming,
Gentle, round and perfect like pears.

My face goes to your breasts, to embrace
You there. To smile the reverse of yours,
A smile of delicious comfort that for a moment
Dispels your loneliness and your sorrow.
Was your sadness there from your time before us
Or was it from the life we did not beget?

When I conjure your face, that regret
Comes too. You will never admit, I know,
But that loss we shared is set
Against a love our bodies felt,
And that our minds never could.

Jack

Thirty

Becoming Thirty

We were thirty miles from Tulsa
Behind us the West stretched
Back in memory to San Francisco
And Yosemite

As we sped over Oklahoma
The hitcher we gave a ride drove
He joined us at Half Dome crossing 
Utah with us and Colorado and Kansas

Today I reached thirty
You gave me your present your hand
The summer night was warm
Warm as the flow of my pleasure

The intimacy you gave me
Shared with the young stranger beside us
May have been less than in our tent
On the heights of Parry Peak

But it was no less astounding an act of love high
And clear as the stars the night I turned thirty


-Jack

Mocking Bird

Descartes, doubting, could never know
Beyond my open window
If the singing bird is dream
Or real.

Descartes, to believe, required God
To guarantee not trick, not evil,
But reason to make the birdsong
To exist.

Neither reason, nor God dispel my doubt,
My solipsism. It is pure joy, not logic,
Assuring me this mocking bird
Sings.

--Jack

Photo:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b7/Northern_Mockingbird_USA.jpg

My Brother's Birthday

This morning, filled with sunlight,
Is as cold as blue Czech crystal
Off which the sun sparkles.
Cold, too, where my brother,
His daughter and our father play,
Chucky Cheese in Savannah.
As I write to my friend in England,
Playing Gloucester in Lear at the
Globe,
Space and time curve inward
Upon themselves.
Sunlight arcs across our
Curtains.

--Jameson

Poems Revisited

Solstice on the Half-shell This winter we'll have summer The unkind cold will slip away Beneath us As we sleep high over the Equator We shall know tango We shall dance below the Perito Moreno Glacier Near the strait that saved Magellan for one more Ocean We'll play in Llao Llao land Beside the blue blue lake of The Andes And sip rich, red Malbec From Mendoza Feast on Pampas-fed beef We'll stroll the streets of San Telmo and shed a tear for Evita The world my Love is our Cape Horn of Plenty Our Ushuaia Oyster. --Jack, on the eve of our trip to Argentina, Winter 2004 View from Llao Llao Argentina 2004 photo by Jack

Poems from the Past

Miter Man


What woe we feel.

Our Heirophant is dead.

Gone to Heaven--

We're sure, as we carry him

Down to the cellar. The Crypt.

Our Expositor, who so wisely

Told the youth of the world, (the one that goes 'round the Sun)

Told to those afraid of AIDS and billions of babies,

No condoms, please.

Or you'll burn in Hell.

No homosexual love, please.

Or... the flames.

How we mourn. Millions of us.

Rome is a sea of tears filled with wails

(echoing the wails of those the priests abused).

On every digital screen we see him,

Lying stiff on a platform. All dressed up.

Who, now, will tell our women to cleave to men?

Who will offer us compassion,

As we suffer the Cross like Jesus --

The Cross of Christian existence in a sad, secular, warring world?

Goodbye, Daddy Pope.

Rest assured,

No one can fill your empty Hat.



--Jack Miller on the funeral day of John Paul II



Poem written to a friend murdered in 1986:

22 Years On

This spring the azaleas are pink cotton
The red-tips are making a come-back
The feral cat keeps squirrels choking
In branches of dangling oak pollen.

Your bones lie still in the dirt of Tulsa
You would love this new Sarah Brightman
Song, I muse. How would we be
Now that New Age is old?

Don't stop thinking about tomorrow
Has become Live one day at a time.
War we thought gone thirty-four years ago
Is again: Mindless mayhem. Blood for oil.

Monarch butterflies flit just as ever
And the springtime birds are singing.

Jack Miller (spring, 2008)


Transition

Shall we move as smoothly as fingers, gliding in scented oil,
Down each others spine, from touch to words?
What idea shall we share, what repast
Eat, what warm stimulant sip, what game of words
Play, unless the letters we choose spell out
The intimacy of the substance spilled upon each other?
Our words cannot come only from the language of thought;
They must arise from the inmost tissue of desire, surrender.

When we look with peace upon each others face,
When our eyes enjoy the familiar glance,
we see the closed lids of our kiss--unspoken words given
Tongue to tongue. Our open eyes, in empathy, see still
The tension, strain, release and outpouring of our flesh.
We hear the words from our lips when we feel
Their touch and taste.

When we do sit side by side, at last, two old bodies
Porched in rocking chairs, our embraces, our nights
Clasped together from lust to childhood sleep,
Will rest upon us like the healing hands of Jesus
On foolish brows. Like our own hands in the morning shower
Cleansing away from each others flesh
The soil of the soul's solitude.

(For Dar, 1991) Jack Miller