Bruce Crane, Late Fall, 1914

Looks like Winter to me

Winter Light, by Yours Truly

Winter light on a day with no sky apparent,

A breathable moisture, when through the window,

Merthiolate and bruise,

Sunlight lagging slices the gray matter

Inside and out.

R. C. Ellis

from The Teasers by William Empson

Make no escape
                          build up your love,
Leave what you die for and be safe to die.

Tarot Reader

When Death Comes ~ Mary Oliver ~

When death comes

like the hungry bear in autumn

when death comes and takes all the bright coins from his purse

to buy me, and snaps his purse shut;

when death comes

like the measle-pox;

when death comes

like an iceberg between the shoulder blades,

I want to step through the door full of curiosity, wondering;

what is it going to be like, that cottage of darkness?

And therefore I look upon everything

as a brotherhood and a sisterhood,

and I look upon time as no more than an idea,

and I consider eternity as another possibility,

and I think of each life as a flower, as common

as a field daisy, and as singular,

and each name a comfortable music in the mouth

tending as all music does, toward silence,

and each body a lion of courage, and something

precious to the earth.

When it's over, I want to say: all my life

I was a bride married to amazement.

I was a bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.

When it's over, I don't want to wonder

if I have made of my life something particular, and real.

I don't want to find myself sighing and frightened

or full of argument.

I don't want to end up simply having visited this world.

A Taste of Afghanistan, Rob Densmore, 2009

City sand has its own taste
Not the country’s dust,
But darker.
It’s stronger – bitter parts
Under infantry foot.
Under 500 years going and coming.
Kipling’s finest up and over –
Through the pass,
Through the places where soldiers stood
In stolid white snow.
Cemeteries in the pass where Alexander’s own
Fell on the square rocks.
Paved with smoothed over river rock,
This open grave – white, bare.
 
Kabul sand polishes everyone’s edges.
Tajiks sharp on the cusp
And Northern Alliance coming down
Hard in the fray.
They all want each other’s throats.
Their wives lost in the fight –
Save for pointed heels and
Gold bangled over fine red henna.
 
Eastern sand and southern sand,
Pakistan sand crooked as broken teeth,
Herati sand pure and rising to the top.
Nothing mixes and there is no space in between.
If God loved this place he doesn’t now.
If He breathed in the brass bullet casings
And the diesel air and spiteful prayers.
A place for lust and dirty children
And the things night can hide.
 
What things grown men can hide-
In the dark corners of their own children’s rooms.
In the big shadows of a capital with no master and no disciple.
No scope for all things to come together
The sand and the dust and the dirt that makes things grow-
When it is left alone.
 
But we’ve put our fingers in it
And the stirring and stamping won’t leave
Much for the growing.
Dust bowls and cyclone air will take the rest.
Every village is filled with it now –
Dust from our bombs and inside our APCs.
Dirt scrubbed from our rifle actions
And ground into our sweaty palms like Mississippi silt.
 
And still nothing grows.
I’ve taken a knee in seventeen villages –
On street corners and broken down roundabouts,
On highways and in shattered homes.
On helo pads and plywood chapel steps,
On the backs of dead men-
And screaming vile women.
 
They will, all of them, bend or break –
It is either them or me.
It’s either winning or losing
And putting in its place
What does not belong,
Sand of a different taste and hue
That cannot tell me it is sorry.

Ten Imaginary Still Lifes, by Joe Brainard

Illustration by the author.

Imaginary Still Life No. 1

    I close my eyes. I see a light-green vase. A very pale light-green vase. Right beside it sits something black. Something small. It is a small black ashtray. Getting smaller by the moment. Until--really--it is hardly more than--now--a tiny speck.

Imaginary Still Life No. 2

    I close my eyes. I see white. Lots of white. And gray. Cool gray. Cool gray fabric shadows. (It is a painting!) With no yellow. By a very old man.

Imaginary Still Life No. 3

    I close my eyes. I see bright orange. Almost red. A touch of purple. A speck of black. And a thick bluish stem. An exotic flower of some sort. Driftwood. Bamboo. A figurine. Chartreuse. (1953!) This is a Polynesian still life.

Imaginary Still Life No. 4

    I close my eyes. I see a white statue (say 10" high) of David. Alabaster. And pink rose petals, sprinkled upon a black velvet drape. This is a sissy still life. Silly, but pretty. And in a certain way almost religious. "Eastern" religious. This still life is secretly smiling.

Imaginary Still Life No. 5

    I close my eyes. I see a charming nosegay of violets in an ordinary drinking glass. That's all.

Imaginary Still Life No. 6

    I close my eyes. I see old fruit. Pots and pans. And various and scattered utensils. Brown. Art. Dutch. By nobody in particular. (Museum.) And so, on to the Frans Hals.

Imaginary Still Life No. 7

    I close my eyes. I see a lazy guitar. A little potted cactus plant. And the rainbow blendings of very bright colors woven into a poncho, slung across a hand-painted wooden chair. (1955!) This is a "tourista" postcard still life.

Imaginary Still Life No. 8

    I close my eyes. I see pink. And green. And gold. All mixed up together. But now slowly evolving into three distinctive shapes. (. . . .) It is a pink kimono, gently discarded upon the corner of a green dressing table, which enters the picture frame at a very sharp angle. Behind it stands a gold screen of three panels. In this particular Japanese still life one gets the impression that something is going on that cannot be seen.

Imaginary Still Life No. 9

    I close my eyes. I see . . . upon the corner of a black lacquered end table I see a clear crystal ashtray, containing a long white cigarette butt, crushed up into the figure "Z." Pink smears along the filter's edge implicates a woman. And now I can smell blue smoke in the air, lingering from a most recent exit, perhaps in a huff. A dozen dark red roses in a very tall vase completes this elegant--if icy--still life. A still life with a story. And probably a sad one.

Imaginary Still Life No. 10

    I close my eyes. I see something copper. (A tea pot with missing lid.) And dried cornflowers in an earthenware pot. Against a brown velvet drape. "Sniff": I can smell last week's clay still in the air. As Mrs. Black (my high school art teacher) leans over my shoulder, trying not to be too impressed with the dashing highlights I have no doubt overindulged in, to impress her with.