art music poetry

Portrait of a Lady

Your thighs are appletrees
whose blossoms touch the sky.
Which sky? The sky
where Watteau hung a lady’s
slipper. Your knees
are a southern breeze — or
a gust of snow. Agh! what
sort of man was Fragonard?
— As if that answered
anything. — Ah, yes. Below
the knees, since the tune
drops that way, it is
one of those white summer days,
the tall grass of your ankles
flickers upon the shore —
Which shore? —
the sand clings to my lips —
Which shore?
Agh, petals maybe. How
should I know?
Which shore? Which shore?
— the petals from some hidden
appletree — Which shore?
I said petals from an appletree.

***

Benthams’ Calculus
By Jonathan Huey

I offer a defiant variation:

“Berlin has placed mankind
under the governance of two
equally insane masters,
the criminal larva, and crocodile ecstasy,”

I endeavor to enchant your mind
with a new systematic etiquette
beyond your ethography

what does the eunuch know of pleasure?
what does the masochist not know of pain?

The collective bestial awareness
a mentality cut-off from meaning

beyond cyanide reflection
beyond temporal bone

Spasmodic writhing
pestilential influence
from Chicago to East London,
and coffers of erectile teeth,
the bankers of fantasia-

the calculative eye
a poetic flinch,

pyramid froth
of trench warfare,

incandescent gases
of Valhalla

secret society
of the common leech,

needles in
vertical position,

these variations I offer,
as a salute to creativity
beyond a bipolar understanding
of human existence,

repeating decimals
are rhino droppings
in mathematical mind,

and I am a soybean,
beyond pleasure and pain.

©2000 Jonathan Huey

***

Cafe Expression
At the table
outside the cafe
I sit by myself
wanting you
to stop and talk.
we’ll put on our shades
and share another round
watching the steam rise
from each other’s latte.
we will share some words
a few jokes
and opinions.
then you’ll leave
I’ll watch you go,
studying the delightful
way you walk.
and I will know
it’s been a good day.

© 1998 Paul Gilbert

***

Stay With Me Tonight
By Paul Gilbert

Stay with me tonight
Stay with me tonight,
allow our love full expression
let us move slowly
to this experience called
passion.
not fumbling quickly
and lose the sense of
intimacy
but slowly, slowly
growing in the grace
of each other’s presence.
stay with me tonight,
let us begin a journey
of discovery
with each other.
***

THE TALE OF THE ART SCHOOL AFFAIR
Sara L. Russell
12/7/98

She looked like a Pre-Raphaelite:
a haze of red hair, ashen skin,
a black skirt under a smock of white,
lips like petals carved in sin,
and you were my Eros, framed in gold,
lush curving locks around your face,
she stole the friend I had dreamed to hold,
body and soul, with her stealthy grace.

She lured your eye with no effort at all;
I began to disappear.
I became transparent, small,
I was the voice too low to hear.
You and she were everywhere,
in all my favourite college haunts –
Eros and Pre-Raphaelite-Hair,
with silent looks that pierced like taunts.

The pain grew deeper, a dull ache,
a self-devouring, dark despair.
Hearts beat on. Only egos break
mine shattered as I saw you there –
until your hormones overcame
your face, to cover it with spots.
How I laughed! Oh, what a shame,
now the golden Eros rots!

***

BEAUTY PARLOUR BLUES
c. Sara L. Russell 6/10/98

One day, at the beauty parlour,
Miss Betty Bea Vanilla
found herself in the waiting room
with a large, depressed gorilla.

“What are you in for?” she asked,
as if nothing were amiss.
The gorilla sighed as it replied:
“Electrolysis”.

(From Sara’s multimedia book Pinky’s Little Book of Shadows
published by Kedco Studios

***