Critics Page
Poems
All Day
So this is reality too, come in
and now you’re here, all swept
up for you the floor shiny
and our wonderful pal, the
antelope clatters its little hooves
on the floor to eat from your
hand, all the pictures
you love on the walls and
your favorite books read
themselves aloud, and you
can leave if you want to, just
turn the page or have the kids
come over for cake, little Louie
from downstairs, he likes you
so much he brings his friends
too, the twelve year old girl,
She loves it here we give her
shiny hair and crackling
petticoats. It’s always
just after school and
just before supper. The
flower in the flowerpot smiles
all day in the sunshine
and waves its little
leaves when you come home. Such
a bright yellow floor and
such a big cozy bed
It says Hey Get Up or
You’ve got a temperature or
Stay here with me
let’s watch TV all day.
Sometimes there’s a moon
when we’re alone but
like always the grinning
kind that hangs from a
thin wire. Oh yeah, the
stars have five neat points
The coffee pot giggles and
the dishes wash themselves with
their little rubber gloves
squeaking and laughing.
You have that effect on things
and even the bathroom,
so often left out of things,
is happy, when you’re
home.
Oct 25
1978 RR
Boy Running
Is the boy who runs
Away
Gently begging you
To stay?
Perhaps he genuinely needs
Some rope and knots
To keep him here…If that
Is so…
Go away I don’t want
you here that
way
unless you
Bring the rope
yourself
Rene Ricard
2006
Galas We Missed
Helen + Brice?
Very nice!
But I am missing
a slice
So if you want
me there
Invite me
Twice
R.R. 2006
Vatic Utterance
If I love you
There is no limit
But love is Luxury
Housing
The rent must be
paid
The lease expires
Evictions are noticed
And a new Tenant
Moves in
2005 Oct 24
The Secret
The Heroin mixed w/ the
Free-Base and apparently I am
Having Blackouts. I say
Apparently since I’ve no
Recollection of — Sacking my
Already “who did it and ran”
Apartment. The neighbors
Complaining about the loud fights
In my place. I was alone!
I’d surely like to remember if
Someone were there w/ me — Even
A fight to quench this Sahara of
Loneliness I’ve placed myself
Within.
Do I have a secret
Life where I am even engaging in
Domestic quarrels? Wouldn’t that
Be civilized! From me though it
Is probably one of a multitude of personalities
Showing off for the others.
R Ricard ‘06
And,
If I could see to
The end…would it be you
There – waiting for me?
No. The
Waiting days belong to another
Not to me. Vanity –
No. Beauty – but who
Knew? Well, Bye,
To all that! Now, to
Let it go with dignity.
Ha! Ha! Dignity! Fuck
That. A nasty old man, Me.
Rene Ricard
June 20, 2005
Have a Good Day
Lola S.
Have a good day
But not just today:
All the days that
Come around today—
Like yesterday
and tomorrow
Yesterday, today and tomorrow
Love them all
nice days
The Perception of Time Under Stress
Bernini has poor Daphne
in a whirl
Surging upwards, she’s torqued
for escape
In the Borghese Collection
A ‘this isn’t happening to me’
horror
To the ends of her finely drilled
hair
That repeats in miniature the
Solomonic
Spiral in St. Peter’s baldochino
In all this she more than
resembles
Her sister statue, resembles Persephone, who
Archemedeanically
Demonstrates her version of the twist.
She doesn’t stand a chance:
Skin is to marble what a
Screw’s elevation is to its
plan:
In elevation it moves—in plan
it don’t
They share a room, however in
this civilized gallery
“Look, his fingers dig into her
Skin. That’ll leave a bruise”
—English tourist
circa 1908
Now, Daphne’s farther along
Cardinal-proof with bark
She’s already half a tree of
bays
And Apollo, auditioning for
King of France
So it appears,
Is too late.
But our Edwardian
knows
It wouldn’t be like this
She would walk slowly
out
Off the veranda and
onto the lawn;
The gentleman of the piece
Has even gone back for
lemonade.
It’s taking so long.
So, who left who?
Since I still love him
He can have this round
au revoir
But the boy
I love was never the boy
who stood before me
I love an abstraction
The pillage he conferred
I never unspooled
upon his silent face
So...who left?
I just wanted to look at him
He was 19 He's older now
and wants to
Regale me w/ hints about
His wide-mowed swath
For my edification
I'd rather walk away.
So, my love
What's the point in cheating
Once I've stopped keeping score?
Take the trophy
This victory, hollow, is yours.
If in hell
the flowers
have no scent
and the food
no taste
why should
the flames
have any heat
Sleeping Beauty Rents
Snow White’s Crystal Bier:
awaiting kiss
“This could be an eternity,”
thinks Sleeping beauty, making the rounds
of clubs and bars
“This round of clubs and bars
Will endure an eternity.”
Sleeping Beauty sighs deeply
Into a cell phone, entering a taxi.
With the amount of Beauty’s drinking
(The rounds of drinks that go
w/ the rounds of bars) Then there are the Beauty Drugs.
Keeping a large male Beauty asleep these days
is not the easily pricked
Finger on a spindle, “Poison apple, Dearie,” trick that once
Could enthrall a Beauty to sleep. Now, a mass of costly
And possibly illegal analgesics, designer and other pharmaceuticals
Prime the Beauteous Sleeper into:
The Mystical Moment of Surrender:
The Life not Life – the waking that is Sleeping – Beauty is asleep,
i.e. a life asleep is capable of Beauty. A Beautiful life cannot be
A Waking life. Sleep, my Love, The Beauty Sleep of your life.
Why waken–sordid, soiled,
Catastrophic, in a Life that is
“Empty,” you said?
Empty of What:
The Kiss is the final Drug; let us call it
“DETOX” – As seen on T.V.!!!
It wakes you, no?
So, this Fairy Tale is good for a spin.
If we write out the Prince, and living happily ever after
In Snow White’s rented Glass Sepulchre.
Rene Ricard April 26, 2005
To an Ironing Board
Nailed to a Bedroom Door
There are welts across the arses
Of the British upper classes
Then in France it launched a craze
Benamed “La Maladie Anglaise.”
All may crave this painful bliss; though
It helps to be Aristo:
“Oh please, Sir, Dukie, Duke, please,
Smack me just like the Marquise!”
Back and forth across the Channel
Pong and Ping the darling paddle
Raised her red retorts of pleasure
Forth and back in equal measure.
The wealthy Duke of Lauderdale
Does enjoy an unforced wail
From aproned maids, with wet red eyes
Who are ladies in disguise.
Our Sublime poet of rack and wheel
Was clapt into the dread Bastille
Deprived of Light and Day
By a Lettre de Cachet
So, well-born and standing tall
Leaves a greater way to fall.
Duke and Marquesses fall down on
Knights, Viscounts, and Baron.
This little doggerel of decay Brings us to the present Day
In this world of Bush the younger……….hunger
RR 2005
In Daddy’s Hand
For Rita Barros
In Daddy’s Hand
the swing connects
the leather to
your underpants
that separate your
father’s hand
from your pink
skin
and though the
cotton’s clean
and white
It’s also very thin
and the pain
gets in
gets in
gets in
They say you don’t
Remember pain but
that’s not true
Just propaganda
from a Sadist
to his kid
Because hurt it did
Have I
forgotten it?
Like hell I did
it hurts
again
and
again
It’s hurting still
There are molestations
that hurt more
than the sexual:
The fear to
enter rooms
he may be in
a coffee mug
without warning
or reason
Flying straight
at you
You’re only six
and don’t know
why it’s happening
But then he’ll
tell you why
Why?
“Because you
looked scared”
Now here’s a reason
these strikes and
spares do
not occur sporadically
They’re constant
and the
neighbors, your cousins
can’t believe
you’re growing
up
Since he killed
His first wife:
“Sugar”
and he’ll kill at
least one other
man
that I know of
Why I’m alive is
more that just a mystery!
“Chance Survival”
is the term
in
Archeology
The context vanishes
But there’s some little thing
Not enough to
form a theory
like, say,
the signature
on a plinth
But not the
piece
itself
June 19, 2010
Rene Ricard
Bridgehampton
Confusion
To do good
can be evil
give a beggar $
that’s good.
She buys drugs
That kill her.
Good intentions
paved a road
to hell.
Deliberately to confuse
(the suppression of clarity)
is EVOL
Rene Ricard March 22, 1999
When I Died
a glorious light
beckoned me
I could go or stay
I chose the
light
It was the Devil
Rene Ricard
Contributor
Rene RicardRene Ricard was a poet, artist, actor, and critic born in Boston in 1946. His books include 1979 – 1980, published by the DIA Art Foundation, God with Revolver published by Hanuman Books, Trusty Sarcophagus Company, published by Inanout Press, and Love Poems, published by CUZ Editions. His art reviews and essays were published by Art in America, Artforum, the Stedelijk Museum, the Whitney Museum of Art, Gagosian, and numerous other venues, and his paintings and drawings are represented by Vito Schnabel Gallery in New York and St Moritz. Ricard died in 2014 at the age of 67. His literary executor, Raymond Foye, is currently editing his Collected Writings.
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Rene Ricard was a poet, artist, actor, and critic born in Boston in 1946. His books include 1979 – 1980, published by the DIA Art Foundation, God with Revolver published by Hanuman Books, Trusty Sarcophagus Company, published by Inanout Press, and Love Poems, published by CUZ Editions. His art reviews and essays were published by Art in America, Artforum, the Stedelijk Museum, the Whitney Museum of Art, Gagosian, and numerous other venues, and his paintings and drawings are represented by Vito Schnabel Gallery in New York and St Moritz. Ricard died in 2014 at the age of 67. His literary executor, Raymond Foye, is currently editing his Collected Writings.