Stanley Pacion A BIG BOOK OF MY OWN: Video Art

Showing posts with label Video Art. Show all posts

Sunday, September 1, 2013

ALWAYS, After Pablo Neruda

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ALWAYS, After Pablo Neruda

I'm not concerned about those other men,
The lovers who came before me.

I could not care less! Forget about it.

Your friends, those guys who had previous claim,
Who boasted title to the blood rush of your heart,
They mean nothing to me.

Come to me carrying an old boyfriend on your shoulders.

Show me that picture,
The one which has a hundred men sniffing your hair.
Conjure up a mother goddess image,
A thousand guys nestling between your breasts,
Or tell me that you have had acolytes adoring your feet.

Flood me over as were your memories
A monsoon river torrent, when in mid-July it empties
The mountain-gully slopes of Goa,
And speeds the great, red earth out into the Sea of Arabia.

Roar into me with the tidal wave of all your mementos.

Show me the wrecked hopes,
The twists and heaps of those tokens which at one time spelled
The bleeding-heart intent of your now-drowned lovers.

How wretchedly long the debris stretch,
How deep and far your keepsakes tear inland over the coastline!

What vanity dreams to withstand the timeless motion of the surf!

Yet here I am.
I wait. I am waiting for you,
No matter what, or who it is, you may bring along.

We are alone, we shall always be alone,
We shall always be you and I.

And here -- here is the time,
The place, where, through the ages,
Through worlds and worlds, through universes apart,
In a flash out from the cycle of life after life.

We are now at the moment.

Our affection reaches beyond the stint of ordinary dimension.
It has settled in for the term we call immortality.

Sunday, March 17, 2013

WITHOUT YOU, George Street Heartache

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WITHOUT YOU,
George St. Heartbreak

I am sick with watery eyes and body aches,
I fear I have the flu.
A congestion of the lungs has me coughing constantly.

Insomnia stains my eye sockets;
They look as though charcoal had blackened them.
For the first time in my life,
I look older than my real age.

Years ago, when a child,
I read auguries in the snarled patterns of clouds,
And practiced divination in how snow
Accumulated to subtle differences of height
On the post rails surrounding the corral.
I examined the frozen breath of horses.
I hoped to see some hint of good fortune,
But abstracted solely gloom and heartbreak.

Today, desperate and preoccupied,
I try to pick out the future from the way
Antenna wire twists against the white walls,
And runs up and down
Along the molding in my bedroom.
Once again, all readings seem dismal.

My mind has fallen into a trench,
And, like some foot soldier, I dig a deeper hole,
Hoping to escape an enemy barrage.

Yet I fear my own defenses, that mud may bury me.

I keep to the apartment all day,
Flipping over playing cards,
Looking for my destiny every time,
A queen of hearts appears from the deck.

It's going okay tonight, not too bad.

'Don’t be wearin’ that stickpin,
The one with the opal on top.'

I found it rummaging at a local swap meet.
I have heard about the reputation of opals.
Many people consider the gem as a bearer of bad luck,
Especially should one buy it for one's own self adornment.

My luck isn't very good in the first place.
I don't think me wearing an opal
Changes the outcome of life that much.

No eulogy for this affair of heart.
No photographs left here for me to remember us.

I see no people down the street to witness
Me driving off in the Ford alone.

Rainy and cold outside today,
Happy couples walk the avenues,
Huddling close, tight, one to another.

Your name has been deleted from my speed dial.
It has vanished from my computer screen.

I guess these musings are the closest
It may ever come to a biography of us.

I must wonder if this whole fantastic romance
Does it amount to no more now
Than make-believe, a wild course of my imagining?
Is it a footnote in this big book of my own?

No children will be named for us,
Not that you wanted it anyhow,
The children being named after either you or me.

No admission will ever be charged
For entrance to the home where we once lived,
Spoke ardently of love for one other,
And I attempted verse to celebrate us for the ages.

And despite all the noise coming from the street,
All the appointments I have to keep this evening,
I can only lie on the floor and look to the ceiling.
The light is going out of my eyes.

Some people lust after money.
Others seek a hundred different lovers.
Lots of people crave more than a fair share.

I, I just want you, your love, dear,
And while life goes on without you,
I feel increasingly impoverished.
I have fallen into awful ingratitude.

A grand poverty of spirit besets me.

I exaggerate my mood,
And in a panic I envision a national calamity.
My citizenship revoked, I am a refugee,
Lost to my wife and child and forced to flee home.

I have abandoned my bed and kitchen utensils.

I know it wrong for me to venture
Such outrageous scenarios;
Yet when I sit here alone, still I feel,
That prayer fails and in my life today, Abomination.
I am bereft of Succor, as if, God punishes me.

Sadly I postulate notions contrary to the faith of millions.
The awesome numbers whose testimony concerning Grace,
Its power in everyday life, mirrors the notion,
The every hair on our head has been counted.

And, too, I betray a personal belief, which chief tenet holds --
The breath of life requires daily thanksgiving.

The wind and rain seem harder now,
The storm windows occasionally shake,
Yellow leaves are being driven into slithering sheets,
Upon the sidewalk and curb stretching along George Street.

Lost in other worlds, mind running a narrative from guise to guise,
Assorted characters riotously clamor in my head.
Some appear as wisps of smoke, resembling ghosts,
Hazy semblances, others as identifiable faces, ancients,
Or people from my everyday life both current and past.
Sometimes they appear alone or they chatter all at once.

They seem to plead for life, or to want to live again.
It could be that they wish for some sign of recognition.
I guess they want to be remembered, vainly hope that these lines
Increase their chance at immortality.
I see and hear so much anguish from them.
While they continue in their importuning,
They throw me a line or two, even a stock phrase.
They try a hapless image, or urgently intone a fetching conceit.

Someone just whispered in my ear that I should tell you,
I write a verse which is a tear drop on the face of time.

Any chance to play a part, any bit in the script,
Causes them to go on and on,
Plaguing me with endless story lines and denouements.
Those voices, their ghost-like figures and faces, ultimately exhaust me.
Then they prevent me from falling to sleep,
Demanding a fierce edit,
A late-night rewrite of this or that aspect of the tale,
What might have been, what has been,
The bright white light, the turn to bloody, stinking thinking,
All promise of happiness broken, the terrible details of remorse,
Me being here planing refuge in warm, sunny clime, an expatriate;
You back in you native land breaking chunks of ice
Just to enter the front door of your home.

It really does not matter where we are for the fact remains,
You no longer on the bed sleeping next to me.
Your body warmth is unavailable to me

Yet how I sort and file our hearts' drama,
However I work the backwards and forwards,
The comings and goings, the delete, the copy and paste,
I am at loggerheads. I feud with myself.

Was I born to loose you?

Whether I direct the faces and voices to entrance or exit,
Stage left or right, the players, all their insistent monologues,
The show in its entirety, all of it
Falls upon the end-point of this, the one central moment,
And nothing remains but this very minute,
Right where we are, at this place, at this instant.

Was that you? I could have sworn it was you.
Were you waving at your village's web cam yesterday morning,
Believing that by chance I was watching?
Had you wanted to wish me a furtive hello?

Remember the old, Sunday school lesson?
We are meant to share the Curse,
Adam's Fall when once he bit the apple.
Time itself remains nonredeemable,
All mortal experience always, eternally present.

Do I hear an objection?
Darling, do you suggest some musing about our future?
Perhaps we have another day, another place.
OK. We shall call it 'Chapter 28', yeah, yeah sure, that's the ticket.
We set sail, and merrily make our way, find home in a land,
Far away, on the other side of the baths of the eastern stars.

What powder or liquid allows us to suppose a tomorrow?
Our minds pretend our continuance!
That phantasm that we awake and have another day,
Who can guarantee the next sentient instant?

The telephone is not ringing,
No mail in the box.

I must wonder if anyone manages to bear with me?
Would such good person allow me one more turn of phrase.
I wish to take this sad poem and make it better.

At least I am not drinking.
And given severity of my current heartbreak, thank God.
From Him what strength, what glory of accomplishment!

Sunday, March 10, 2013

21:59, Time Flies

21:59, Time Flies

Tempus fugit,

So the ancient adage goes.

But it prompts me to say,

Hey Virgil, this is stupid stuff,

Because for me at home alone

The clock has stopped.

Then, when I take another glance,

I realize from the timepiece's face

That I had been mistaken, my impression wrong.

There has been some activity.

The clock’s hands have apparently moved.

Yet far from time fleeting,

The hours drag, even the second hand --

Its motion becomes imperceptibly slow,

When you are gone and

Day and night must be faced alone.

And you write to me and say that before long

You will return home. You declare that

Less than three weeks remain,

Soon, you add, your absence today turns to memory,

And confidently profess, “time really does fly!”

But for me, however you may try to comfort me,

Your consolation, it does nothing to hasten the hours!

When I hear the clock, note the spaces

Between its regular tick-to-tock, those intervals,

They appear as if they were eternity, and your absence

-- Your face no longer upon your pillow,

Your body missing from your side of the bed --

You, you seem now to have been gone forever.

I know. I know. You suppose that I exaggerate!

Yet I am not acclimated to them,

These phenomena of your leaving,

Your terrible disappearances for the sake of business,

These separations, I may never become used to them.

You were reared different from me.

When you were still a child,

Your father was a frequent traveler;

You became habituated to the longing,

And you learned to practice

The ruse which had told your inner self that

He will be home before you know it.

I can hear you and your mother practicing the phrase,

When dad was gone and you two sat at home alone,

“Oh the days go by so fast!”

The electronic image of time before me

(to the bottom-right on the computer screen)

Its numbers read 21:59.

It sits. It waits. Woman, Darling!

Woman! Can't you see what you have done to me!

My condition is desperate.

The clock no longer runs.

For me here languishing without you

Time stops, and my life suspended,

My daydreaming becomes nightmare.

The universe endlessly expanding,

With its boundary beacons actually accelerating,

Points of light at outermost fabric of space/time,

Increasing speed, faster and faster, and distancing apart,

Separately hastening from one star-light point to another,

All of them at once farther and father from the other,

Each spot, incredible luminosity endlessly hurling,

At quickening pace, ever hurrying and hurrying,

Scurrying to extend, stretching

The cosmos, picking up speed at the edge of empty space,

How would I ever hope to expect the bright of your eyes

To bridge the black night,

Where time slips into nothingness,

And the law of gravity no longer applies,

Every principle of attraction confounded.

Me having seen your face in every flower,

My longing here for you

Mean nothing when all spheres turn to final ice,

All moment gone, all hope forlorn

The electronic numbers of my computer clock,

Still sit here and read 21:59.

Saturday, March 2, 2013

SERENDIPTIY

SERENDIPITY

I know it's cosmic!
It's like, heavy, man!

Mystery inscrutable to regular analytic tools,
A Logic whose outcome sits beyond
Scope of rational, academic exercise!

Even if I had my desk in library stacks
And with it ready reference to twenty, one-foot-thick
Ancient texts, I doubt any human learning might lead me
(However diligent my application) to fathom what
Great Luck had brought you into my arms,
And yet tonight sustains my rapture.

Perhaps I unduly vex myself?

Nonetheless I wonder how had it come to be
That in a parking garage, a great space,
Which on weekends became a swap meet,
A regular New York City in-door, flea market,
Offering all kinds of old and colorful goods for sale,
A jam-packed scene, row after row of tables and stalls,
Set against both sides of wide aisles,

Here's the question,
Had love found its way through all the material clutter?

Too, I ask, what Providence had prompted Johnny,
My friend, and my helper, a man,
Who always had kept to his own counsel,
-- This, the one time, for he never, never
Interfered, ventured opinion on any other matter! --
He interrupted the normal, business routine,
The booth's weekly setup.
He used all the resolve he could muster,
And reiterated to me, not once,
But on at least, half-dozen, separate occasions,
A notion that you and I were right,
Good, one for the other, in every special way.

Johnny said you wanted me.

You later objected,
Said no such thought had ever entered your head,
That his estimation about your feelings toward me
Was wrong, simply mistaken.
Later, when gently pressed, however, you also confided,
Women frequently flirt to their business advantage.

I had noticed you, to be sure!

You were a regular customer.
A tall woman, and skinny, you had long brown hair,
And a nice face with a quick smile.
I shall always remember
The way you hurried through your purchases
With attentive eyes and lengthy fingers,
How sprite your manner and step!

Still no thought of romance had entered my mind.
I had not imagined us a suitable couple.

No! Not at all,
Until that one, the one, very early morning, when,
During a heavy rainstorm, I drove across Brooklyn
To collect you from the hostel.
We were going antiquing.
It was to be our first daylong excursion,
And in what seemed a proper gesture at the time,
I stopped at an all-night shop, and bought you
A single, exotic flower in a clear glass vase.

You, sister, limestone island, Baltic woman,
I, who had sprung from the land-locked plains of Illinois,

Across countless markets and through
All the many wares we had examined for purchase,
For the decades, the year after year,
We had been searching,
Searching and searching, hoping for treasure,
Now there it lay before us,
A worth whose value surpassed,
The highest dollar bid at an Old-Master auction.

Consider the millions-to-one odds
Stacked against our favor, I... I, I mean, really!

I trust you have come to believe that
This thing of ours bespeaks no ordinary human convention.

Let us remember,
Whomsoever the divine designates together,
No mortal may draw asunder.

This is it! I do! I do love you!

Tonight the pilot naps in the back seat.
I sit in front, my hands on the wheel in the cockpit.
Yet I do not fly the aircraft. The bright,
Rollover arrows signal the glide path.
And over the wire direct to my ear,
Ten thousand watts propel the voice.
It says, 'You do! You do love her! '

Monday, February 25, 2013

FISH STORY, A Whopper of a Tale

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FISH STORY,
A Whopper of a Tale

I imagine that I must have surprised you,
What with your waiting game, your sport.
You exhausted me with your angler's skill.
You had me hooked, long on the line,
It was the lure, you;
I swallowed you whole.

I had not seen the great barb nestled in the fly;
Your beauty, I had become prey to it.
You must have realized, you must have known,
How beautiful you seemed to me,
How you dazzled, your shimmer, it fooled me,
And I ate you right to the lead sinker.

I was your catch.

I believed every thing you said.

Who might have divined it?
Given the great tensile strength of your nylon-reel wire,
Hard to phantom that I could break it;
But I took a deep dive toward bottom,
Then I broke surface with a five-foot leap above water.
A loud snap announced how taut had grown the tension.
All at once boat and bait had lost all connection.

Who would have envisioned it?

I swim with that hook still puncturing my mouth.
Your fisherman's string, its segment,
It still runs along side me for at least a yard.

My injury, it hurt me, and I shall have to bear
Its scar, the remnants of this encounter for life.
Yet I have set myself at liberty, yes,
Free to travel world's grand and open ocean seas.

And may I ask, again, take a moment, please, consider,
Who would ever believe my, this fish story!

But it is true; I broke the line.
I have broken from you.

Wednesday, February 20, 2013

WINTER LOVE MELANCHOLY

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WINTER LOVE MELANCHOLY

The seabirds cry at the harbor,

And in the distance a fog horn,
It, too, sounds a plaintive note;
All refrains freight my melancholy,
Repeatedly reminding me of my sorrow.

There is a damp, hard, winter wind.
It beats on me, causes a dire chill.

My jacket seems too thin.

No matter how hard I pull down upon it,

My stocking cap falls short of cover for my ears.

The nights remain very long;

I find no comfort in the memory --

Once a summer sun had warmed the day.

And now another woe besets me,

I dread that I might never kiss you again!

Saturday, February 9, 2013

THE WORD

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THE WORD, A Lover’s Exhortation

Well! What do you say, honey?
I believe that I say it right.
It is God alone Who knows
The one dimensionality -- the real tragedy --
The empty when we call upon the soul.

Only He can quell the hunger, quench the thirst.

But, sweetheart, hey! I tell you now.
Forget it! Fly straight!
Think of the Frick with its fabulous El Greco,
Small though that one painting is, it amply captures the fury,
When Jesus castigates the money changers.

The Word is clear.

No man may serve two masters.
God loves the prisoner, the downcast, the lame.
He loves the lilies of the field.
Grass need not care how it clothes itself.

Though great it may be to be King, what profit in it,
When the first shall be last and those with least,
Most, and beggars shall inherit the earth,
And children be fountains of wisdom?

We have seen the sorry example, what terrible precept!

Celebrated priests and magistrates have not known the Lord,
Yet once He had stood right there before them.

Tuesday, January 15, 2013

PASSION PLAY

PASSION PLAY

Yeeaaaaaaaoooowwwww!

I seek. I crave the whiff, your body scent,
Your fragrance, I remember, it’s as though,
You’re in my arms right here at home today.

My resolve, it weakens,
I want you back.
I’m lonely, turn the covers,
Find only empty bed and heart ache,
The awful pain of my regret.

Sadness fouls my face.

Oh, how I hate the resolve,
Never to see you, again,
Have nothing more to do with you,
No matter how long the length of my days,
I swear to it and mean it!

Yet I want you. Wish to see you, once more,
Your form behind the shower curtain,
Ghost figure in the steam,
The water running full throttle, the heat,
The great comfort, I close my eyes,
I fall to vision; it’s incredible, beyond belief,
How do I describe glory that had come and gone.
I fail in my recount, you, you, my darling,
And in this, my own confusion
I reduce myself to greeting-card sentiment,
I have come to believe you were heaven sent.

Can’t you see I’m at your feet!

I wish to witness your getting dressed,
You, in the morning naked in our bedroom, and
Naked in the room whose door opens
Opposite to the foot of our bed,
Hurrying to get on with the day,

And then the other part, morning, noon,
Or night, when you are in our bed,
And I hold you open to savor over and over again.

I want to see your smile, and utterly to embrace you.
Were I to steal – now and forever – all your pain away!

I would be finished with you, I want you out,
But you, devil, trickster, you and your incantations,
You practice arts you learned when young,
When you and your mother spent all that time,
Back and forth on boat going to the Bahamas,
You use high-tech, gigabyte millions,
You work a black magic,
Have you command of infectious virus?
The computer’s screen beckons me, keeps me awake.

Believe me. I tell you true..
I hear your voice, your whispers,
Behind the sounds, behind the hum of the circuitry,
Witch! You sit among the cords and the monitor lights,
You befoul my every electronic connection.

Then there are the notes. I have mail.
You use email posts.
Sometimes you tell of your day, the pleasantries,
What you made for dinner,
Or how your plants fare in your new garden.
Occasionally you include incidentals about your business,
About your family and friends, your recent travels.

Your chief concern you, how you feel,

Hoping to fill, to close up the empty between us,
I am compelled to read,
Though the letters do not include me,
Of course, not word, nothing,
Nothing about how things might be going for me.

Why do I care, why even open your communications?

Hapless, I look to figure how I might fit within your plans,.
Hope somehow that you might write something personal to me.
Perhaps how you wish that I were there with you at home.
Maybe you might say that you miss our intimacies,
Or claim that you would love to hear my voice.

I search out your script, find no satisfaction.
I try, and I try to extract some tiny comfort between the lines

Instead the wound reopens, my cut festers,
The pain surrounding the punctured, the hot.
The ripped and torn, the awful marks of the lash,
There has not been time enough,
Will ever there be time enough,
My flesh, properly, to heal?

And forgive me the blasphemy, forgive!
Lord have mercy, save me!

I am reminded of Jesus after the beating,
When the Roman soldiers, who had torn off the purple,
Returned Him again to everyday garment,
Then at Golgotha where they stripped Him,
Before they nailed Him to the cross,
Yea, they stripped him, once more,
The pain of those wounds, opened and reopened,
Inflicted, over and over, oh the burn, every time,
Every time you write me, and I hear from you again.

Sunday, January 13, 2013

CHICAGO THEME

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CHICAGO THEME

Hey! She can't do this to me!

I'm an American!
I was born and raised in Illinois.
History taught me about Lincoln's Volunteers,
They were the ones who burned Old Dixie down.

I'm the Pepsodent kid,
I have hung out on the skin of my teeth.

My uncle was a dog catcher.
From him, I learned to capture animals in heat.

Where I come from -- there is no foolin' around.

Where does she get the nerve?
She leaves me home alone for months on end.

I've known speeds, man, faster than Flash Gordon,
I can fly from planet to planet,
Find and live amongst a whole new breed,

What do I need her for?

Got to be kidding!
I mean... she can't do this to me!

I have studied how the West was won.

Wednesday, January 9, 2013

DENAIN

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DENAIN

You were born a Catholic and God cherished you.
But your having forgotten His Mercy --
That all outcome of human endeavor,
His Will, not your own -- angered the Almighty.
He delivered you into the hands of the Heretics.
You suffered at Hochstedt and at Ramilles.
Yet when you returned to the Lord,
Thanking Him for all that He visits upon you,
The Lord saw your gratitude,
And knew that you had been restored to wisdom.
He blessed your courage at Denain.

Stanley Pacion A BIG BOOK OF MY OWN