The following poems are written in the voice of Bay Area artist Jay DeFeo (1929-89), most famous for her huge painting THE ROSE but whose works included sculptures, jewelry, photography and many drawings as well. She was one of the bridge figures connecting the Beat scene to the psychedelic era that followed.
m i r a g e
toward the end
a sort of baptism
cloud of road dust
barely recalled yellow summer hills
a boy’s glance a flame a hand a jaw
bone in the draw
cathedral of dust following father’s car
through depression towns
i could block out the rest
angry words
rotten fruit
heat its own law
through haze sometimes the mountain
i was thirsty i needed something to drink
maybe a mountain
cool with snow
a river
yes some water a cool plum
a sunny apricot would do
wasps drifting long-legged
over the windfall
car towing its church through the shadows
then light a shaft a black hole
sometimes a whole wing
santos de polvo
rising again
an arm swept across a brow
men in rows bent
to short hoes
a hundred suns through straw
i felt what i saw
open mouths of birds in blue twilight
their great wheeling flight
s p a i n
sometimes i dream of the eye
of the bull which of course i couldn’t see
from where i sat but no matter
there was a glint in the night of it
when he faced the cape
red not to anger him as i’d thought
but to mask the blood
when the matador plunges his blade
between its heaving shoulders
i preferred the verónicas
man and beast sizing each other up
the man holding the cape like a curtain
like the piece of cloth saint veronica handed
to christ on his way to golgotha
that he might wipe his bloody brow
below the weight of his cross
the beast trots past it
what a marvelous sweep it makes through air
when the man pivots and who doesn’t think then
of the death to come
and the severed ear of the bull in hemingway
that romero gives lady brett
i was trying with my palette knife
to capture the flourish of the cape
that loveliness and grace
and its opposite the eye going dark
the cry unanswered
n o t e n d l e s s
not a road not a thousand roads
not one point of convergence not the ladder
sheathed in paint not the cat watching me work
nor the billowing fog
its blue petticoats
not occasional truck thunder not water
hammering the pipes not bobby singing
how does it feel because i tell you it felt pretty good
most days i did not walk the via negativa
but tripped the light monastic my rose
neither prim nor wild
attracting pilgrims who shared cigarettes and wine
and stared at her
while i added or scraped off layers
raked by headlights after dark she almost seemed
to breathe one night a bat got in
crawled across her before flying
over the bed then out the window
i imagined its mouth
on the lead-laced petals its small face
brushing the paint
it made me sad
it was as if i too were small before my fleur
not knowing where she planned to lead me
after fillmore street after we moved
have you ever seen a bat’s foot
so like its hand
in the morning i could just make out
where it made its mark
t h e w i s e & f o o l i s h v i r g i n s
if there is something i resist
it’s sentiment it ruins art
i’m not talking about tenderness or the love
that makes work possible but a mawkish
attachment to symbols that leaves a hangover
a sluggishness as from a sugar crash
please don’t go on about the soul to me
unless you admit its entire gamut
gamete to maggot
in the parable the wise virgins
as the right reverend gary davis advises
kept their lamps trimmed and burning
but their foolish sisters ran out of oil
the lord swept in while they were looking to resupply
point being they missed their holy bridegroom
but could a case not be made for what they learned
from their broken hopes how grief sharpened
their senses imagine marriage to god give me
a little serpent any day i thought as i painted
rose after rose after rose i threw all of them out but two
i guess that was somewhat lordish of me
but they reeked of tearstain an addiction to sorrow
i wanted something more
las rosas mysticas
i wanted you to enter them like a bee
to become lost in their scent and textures
to not be able to say
which one is foolish
which one wise
e y e s
three pairs of owl eye windows next door
made me laugh i imagined birds
two stories tall installed by say huac to spy
on us everyone here a poet or artist
you know dangerous
i was drawing eyes then
maybe mine very very large
if j. edgar’s birds were watching
dammit i would watch right back
i was almost 30 never could guess
what was coming next i just drew and drew
lashes brow hairs and when the eyes got too spooky
verticals a kind of screen
at night the owl eyes glowed the birds stone silent
not like the colorado owls
of my youth all night calling hoo-hoo-hoo
i didn’t draw in pupils wanted a fortune-teller stare
two crystal balls
what did they see the rose probably
when years on a vandal bent on the cyclopic
defaced one eye
i worked through my grief drawing rounds
the sort of record shape a nod to basie
one o’clock jump i was past
the midpoint of my life the stones
had a hit that summer miss you
a lot of oo-oo-oo
i kept time with the count
i drew and drew
d i s a p p e a r i n g a r t i s t
when the handle of your knife
dries & pulls away from the blade
here’s a fix a cup of water
will swell the wood
sometimes it’s best to go under
for a while not into abasement
but the shadows of a kelp forest
let your jazzy doppelgänger
ply the life raft above
pay the rent teaching
become a disappearing artist
tighten your groove
when your edge returns make time
shoot everything the netted breakdown couch
the fan acanthus dew-dropped cabbage leaf
your dental bridge
look forward back
your dear rear window athwart a slant incision
a few strings to periphery
wick wisdom’s ambiguity
what a slosh of day & night
what pink immortal intimate
something plain to drink from
a simple fired cup
Leave a Reply