Poetry
for Stan Brakhage
“…..the equivalent of many behaviors…” - Brakhage
( a poem in one long take based in part on the words of Stan Brakhage from the 1975 interview The Seen published by Zephyrus Press )
the seen urgently enough a personal state slumped foward like a long day
out the watery window a milky anticipation moves thru accelerated nite
( …like a train …. )
myth of text soundless paint & its equivalents breath of friend & lover
rain that is not wet summer’s never coming & spring
hasn’t arrived
all day long wind pushes watery window east moving clouds toward another eventuality
as the sky passes thru my hand jerkily as the motion of a tripping lens
random memory one frame for example blinded clicking waiting
the child’s face as big as a SUN sucks @ evening’s breast
descending crystal of everchanging SHADOW & LIGHT
falls like the breakage of wind upon the climber’s back
falls like a tray of ash upon a field of stars & dogs & barely audible men
Men who have just begun to speak speak in volumes but have little to say
barely having acquired the ALEPH of Life sound & limitation
quivering dancing glass
they speak listening to their own hearts but barely hearing
skin pounding in the ear like the drum of the world a final scream
but who there to absorb it? we listen to ourselves too much & not
enough symbol there like name merciless insistence
reforming habits of EGOS
the MUSIC is in the silence & the movement exhausted & standing in the way of MYSELF
metaphored the images expand & change & all things cycle again
& the sky shifts again
& the climber’s limbs grow heavy
as the words come gentler
& the symphony ends
titles appear squiggled the film disappears
what will last is this not moonlight but mystery poetry & instruction
the name disappears
& what will last is…………………blurred
steve dalachinsky nyc 5/03
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Patricia Spears Jones is author of A Lucent Fire: New & Selected Poems and nine other poetry publications. She is an editor, literary curator, anthologist, cultural critic, and playwright. She is an Emeritus Fellow at the Black Earth Institute and organizer of the American Poets Congress. She was the 2020 Louis H Rubin Writer-in-Resident at Hollins University. Originally from Arkansas, she calls Brooklyn home.
