The Irascible by Owen Harvey
De Kooning.
Like light on silver,
de Kooning is
looking at water
reflecting water
reflecting standing
like a clam-digger
or a swimmer
being touched
by the silence
of water.
Pollack.
Pollack is breathing
after swimming in the salt ocean,
cold lungs filling with breathing
like smoke out of lungs breathing
like swimming out of the salt ocean
like smoke over the salt ocean
like the salt ocean swimming in smoke.
Smoke and salt caught in a rose-bush.
Newman.
Imagining red imagining yellow imagining blue.
Light as tall as the sky.
Light as wide as the horizon.
Light to the edge of the plane.
Light to the edge of the canvas.
Light disrupted.
Rothko.
Spilt wine on our bed sheets,
the sun is stuck under water.
A rainbow spills
like color resting in oil
forgotten on the pavement.
Morning is the sadness
of wine after rainbows.
Still.
The sound of broken glass unable to reflect color
as it drags like nails across the dark blackboard.
A loud ca-caw ca-caw
from the murder out our window
as rained birds wait
with wet plumage
for the sun to dry their feathers.
Rienhardt.
To paint the last painting
is to paint the last painting
that one has painted
before painting the next last painting
one is going to paint last.
A black tarp is gently layered down,
black clay over the naked earth:
a blackout boogie-woogie.
Gottlieb.
Exploding fire
above the terra-cotta,
the unfixed
with the fixed,
a modern baroque
broke like words into image
like image into soul
like soul into hieroglyph,
a language without tongues.
Motherwell.
A bloody tissue accidentally lost
in your pant pocket.
A widow’s laundry hangs long dark
and shadowed
on the clothes line
after a hot summer’s rain.
The pain of remembering something
while it is being forgotten.
Kline.
A doodle is gesture
is stepping is dance
is air is breathing
is cosmos is epitaph
written in the mystery
hidden beneath a mustache.
