Vado, vado, io sono andato

 

"What goes well with jungle boots is a pair of leech socks to keep the blood suckers out.".

Saturation
Sick bay whispers of treaties oblique
Battle fatigue sets in
I mark time on the corner, transparent
Buses unload camouflaged hostages
Old soldiers shovel the snow
Nobody beats the draft

Troops pour into my gristmill encampment
I shove down the roughage and debate my weight
Belching exhausted, disabled veterans
Army boots beat my head into shape
All in a day’s war
The pentagon wants my autograph
The children are calling me Joe

Down by the river the fleet verifies me
We consciously move in an unconscious stream
Forces uncharted, unenvied, uncouth
Dribbling victory, run down my chin
Fill up my boots with your strategy
My union suit is full of holes
My phantom flesh is soggy
ctc (Leocadia)

 

 

Requiem for a Friend - Rainer Maria Rilke and Paula Modersohn-Becker

1906 by Modersohn-Becker

Paula Modersohn-Becker (1876-1907)

 Tragically, Modersohn-Becker died at the age of 31 shortly after childbirth. In her seven years as an artist, she produced over 700 paintings and 1,000 drawings - remarkable, considering she had no recognition from the art world or fellow artists. Now, Modersohn-Becker is recognized in art history for helping shape the transition from the Symbolism of Gauguin to German Expressionism, and -- belatedly-- as one of the most famous female artists of the 20th century.

In 1907, Paula Modersohn-Becker returned to her husband in Worpswede, despite period correspondence that indicate her desire for independence. She wrote in detail about her love for her husband but her need to delay motherhood in pursuit of freedom. Paula continued to express ambivalence regarding motherhood; she was concerned about the ability to paint while raising a child. Her daughter Mathilde (Tillie) Modersohn was born on November 2, 1907. Paula and Otto were joyous. Sadly, the joy became soon overshadowed by tragedy, as Paula Modersohn-Becker died suddenly in Worpswede on November 20 from an embolism, caused by a misguided medical instruction, 18 days of bed rest after labor. She was buried on the Worpswede Cemetery, her grave is preserved.

In 1908, Rainer Maria Rilke wrote the renowned poem "Requiem for a Friend" in memory of Paula. The poem was born from the impressions which Paula's life, death and friendship had left upon Rilke.

             Rilke by Paula Modersohn-Becker 1906                       Rilke in 1900, aged 24

Excerpt:

Requiem for a Friend


 Rainer Maria Rilke

Are you still there? Are you in some corner? –
You understood all of this so well
and used it so well, as you passed through
open to everything, like the dawn of a day.
Women do suffer: love means being alone,
and artists sometimes suspect in their work
that they must transform where they love.
You began both: both are in that
which now fame disfigures, and takes from you.
Oh you were far beyond any fame. You were
barely apparent: you’d withdrawn your beauty
as a man takes down a flag
on the grey morning of a working day,
and wished for nothing, except the long work –
which is unfinished: and yet is not finished.

If you are still here, if in this darkness
there is still a place where your sensitive spirit
resonates on the shallow waves
of a voice, isolated in the night,
vibrating in the high room’s current:
then hear me: help me. See, we can slip back so
unknowingly, out of our forward stride,
into something we didn’t intend: find
that we’re trapped there as if in dream
and we die there, without waking.
No one is far from it. Anyone who has fired
their blood through work that endures,
may find that they can no longer sustain it
and that it falls according to its weight, worthless.
For somewhere there is an ancient enmity
between life and the great work.
Help me, so that I might see it and know it.

Serenade in Five Movements or The Privatization of Purgatory

PURGATORY

 Sergey Tyukanov 

Russian artist Sergey Tyukanov works in many mediums creating both large and small-scaled, highly-detailed pieces, bringing back a familiar Western Medieval style of art with contemporary themes and subject matter.  Tyukanov currently resides in both Kaliningrad, Russia and Chicago, Illinois, USA.

Serenade de Schubert

Serenade in Five Movements or The Privatization of Purgatory

I

It’s all a load of crap and you know it. 

Get off your high horse and don’t take

any wooden nickels from the chicken man. 

I made the mistake of doing that once

and ever lived it down. 

The problem started with

those yellow shoelaces,

but I guess you know that.

Still, I should have known better. 

I was warned. 

It’s interesting to wake up and find

the third floor of your house missing. 

I tried to explain this to my doctor once. 

He told me to eat more oat bran. 

I don’t like my neurosis

being shoved under the rug. 

I keep tripping on it. 

You can laugh all you want. 

It won’t change a thing. 

They still pick up the trash

every Tuesday.  It’s amusing.

 Carlos visited yesterday

Brought me some bananas.

I will put some on my oat bran

 and think about Dr. Cyborg.

Eventually

everything will fall together and

I will get back to work on my

volcanic cranium simulator. 

The paper is going well. 

Just a few minor details to reconfigure. 

Do you remember the time we crashed

the party at the Teetzleburgers? 

Ronnie shoved gherkins into his pockets

and you played the piano with you nose. 

What was it? 

Schubert’s Serenede?

“Softly my songs implore
you through the night;
down into the quiet grove,
beloved, come to me!”

II

I wish I had more time to explore all of this 

but Nostradamus is calling via that tingly

thing I invented when I was three years old

and you know what that means. 

Dinner tonight or is it tomorrow night?

I will have to tingle him back to make sure. 

He may be out on his snow mobile

just another  of his many toys

purchased at my expense

with brain droppings he scooped

up when I wasn’t looking. 

If only he wasn’t so negative

we might could probably would

make a go of it.  It has nothing to do

with incest but try telling that to

the naysayers down at the coffee station. 

They’re so hung up on taboos.

They see them everywhere then

hunker down and develop code words

which they finagle into Christmas cards.

Like we’re not supposed to know

those messages the elves

leave on the kitchen table

are more than butter wrappers. 

I don’t trust anyone who says

“Use these to grease you cake pans.”

Nope, I’m not falling for it. 

That’s just the way I am. 

I’ll call Nostradamus later.

After my pedicure. 

Petrified in Pink or Furious in Fuschia? 

Decisions, decisions.

“Slender treetops rustle, murmur
in the moons radiance;
dont fear the hidden listeners’
malice, my dearest.”

III 

Up here on the third floor the wind howls. 

Everyone I talk to says ignore it. 

Sometimes that’s hard to do. 

Just because something is missing

doesn’t mean it isn’t there. 

That’s the first principle of

my Hi Ho Silver theory.

Go ahead.  Laugh. 

But don’t come running to me

when it hits you in the ass. 

Of course if you want to you can,

and please bring some of those

wonderful little exploding cigars. 

The one’s you turned me onto in Mississippi.

Ah, I remember, not always fondly

(except for those times

when I forget the details and

only have to deal with the gist

which never eludes me) 

the air was so sweet after the rain

and that hat you swiped from the judge

while he was screaming in pain from

a self inflicted though unintended

blow from his own gavel,

well that just speaks volumes. 

Oh, yeah.  And, coincidentally,

have you heard the news that

our favorite tropical island has been

invaded by the ghost of Annie Oakley? 

I know it’s hard to believe,

and even harder to accept,

but sharpshooters happen

and one must be vigilant and

prepared to dodge bullets

even in Paradise. 

Cough, expletive, cough. 

“Do you hear the nightingales singing?

Ah, they appeal to you,
with their sweet plaintive tones
they’re pleading for me.”

IV

I purchased a new cerebellum. 

Couldn’t resist when I saw they were

having a buy one get one free sale. 

I know, I know. 

But the price was right and I’m

thinking about giving the other one to Nancy. 

Do you remember Nancy? 

That woman who lives on

a houseboat down at the marina? 

Well, I’m thinking,

maybe a new cerebellum will turn her around. 

She’s a fortune teller but doesn’t have a clue. 

The CIA infiltrated her crystal ball. 

She thinks she’s living the good life on the Ganges. 

The whites of her eyes have turned yellow. 

She’s got an evil rash that defies treatment. 

It’s not a pretty sight.

Last time I saw her she was

shacked up with a military man. 

Jumping when he said jump

and hitting the floor much too often. 

Yeah, she’s got great upper body strength

but what good is that when you’re tied

to the pier selling bait and tackle.

There’s no fish in that river. 

She ought to know that. 

A new cerebellum might cure all her ills. 

Of course, I’ll have to

disguise it as something else. 

Haven’t figured out how to do that yet. 

She’s crazy but she’s not stupid. 

Note to self:

‘contact the support team at Biotech Inc.’

“They understand the hearts yearning,
they know the pain of love,
touch with their silvery tones
every feeling heart.”

V

Okay, back to Junior Jackson. 

He’s in purgatory. 

No date set for release. 

Junior says it’s not such a bad place. 

A hell of a lot better than limbo. 

Whoa. 

Hold on a minute. 

Someone just threw a rock through my window.

Hmmmm.  There’s a note attached. 

Hmmmm.  It’s a ransom note:

‘If you want to get Junior

Jackson out of purgatory

say two million our fathers

followed by

one million hail marys

followed by

five hundred thousand glory bes.’

Signed – SayPay,

a division of Whackanut. 

Hmmmm.  Well,

Junior’s a cool guy and all,

but that’s an awful high price. 

Not that I’d mind paying it you see,

but with the recidivism rate

being what it is, Junior would only

be out for a week or two and then,

wham,

his ass would be back there again. 

And not only that, I have certain principles

I must adhere to, like

never encourage, enable or contribute

to the privatization of purgatory.

And besides,

Junior’s doing okay,

getting three meals a day,

listening to good music,

sleeping on the grass under a nice tree,

writing his memoirs. 

“Let them move you too,
my darling, listen to me!
Trembling, I await you!
Come, dearest, enrapture me.”

by Leo 

Dark and Deep

The Two Trees by William Butler Yeats

Beloved, gaze in thine own heart,
The holy tree is growing there;
From joy the holy branches start,
And all the trembling flowers they bear.
The changing colours of its fruit
Have dowered the stars with metry light;
The surety of its hidden root
Has planted quiet in the night;
The shaking of its leafy head
Has given the waves their melody,
And made my lips and music wed,
Murmuring a wizard song for thee.
There the Joves a circle go,
The flaming circle of our days,
Gyring, spiring to and fro
In those great ignorant leafy ways;
Remembering all that shaken hair
And how the winged sandals dart,
Thine eyes grow full of tender care:

Beloved, gaze in thine own heart.
Gaze no more in the bitter glass
The demons, with their subtle guile.
Lift up before us when they pass,
Or only gaze a little while;
For there a fatal image grows
That the stormy night receives,
Roots half hidden under snows,
Broken boughs and blackened leaves.
For ill things turn to barrenness
In the dim glass the demons hold,
The glass of outer weariness,
Made when God slept in times of old.
There, through the broken branches, go
The ravens of unresting thought;
Flying, crying, to and fro,
Cruel claw and hungry throat,
Or else they stand and sniff the wind,
And shake their ragged wings; alas!
Thy tender eyes grow all unkind:
Gaze no more in the bitter glass.

Birches By Robert Frost

When I see birches bend to left and right
Across the lines of straighter darker trees,
I like to think some boy's been swinging them.
But swinging doesn't bend them down to stay
As ice-storms do. Often you must have seen them
Loaded with ice a sunny winter morning
After a rain. They click upon themselves
As the breeze rises, and turn many-colored
As the stir cracks and crazes their enamel.
Soon the sun's warmth makes them shed crystal shells
Shattering and avalanching on the snow-crust—
Such heaps of broken glass to sweep away
You'd think the inner dome of heaven had fallen.
They are dragged to the withered bracken by the load,
And they seem not to break; though once they are bowed
So low for long, they never right themselves:
You may see their trunks arching in the woods
Years afterwards, trailing their leaves on the ground
Like girls on hands and knees that throw their hair
Before them over their heads to dry in the sun.
But I was going to say when Truth broke in
With all her matter-of-fact about the ice-storm
I should prefer to have some boy bend them
As he went out and in to fetch the cows—
Some boy too far from town to learn baseball,
Whose only play was what he found himself,
Summer or winter, and could play alone.
One by one he subdued his father's trees
By riding them down over and over again
Until he took the stiffness out of them,
And not one but hung limp, not one was left
For him to conquer. He learned all there was
To learn about not launching out too soon
And so not carrying the tree away
Clear to the ground. He always kept his poise
To the top branches, climbing carefully
With the same pains you use to fill a cup
Up to the brim, and even above the brim.
Then he flung outward, feet first, with a swish,
Kicking his way down through the air to the ground.
So was I once myself a swinger of birches.
And so I dream of going back to be.
It's when I'm weary of considerations,
And life is too much like a pathless wood
Where your face burns and tickles with the cobwebs
Broken across it, and one eye is weeping
From a twig's having lashed across it open.
I'd like to get away from earth awhile
And then come back to it and begin over.
May no fate willfully misunderstand me
And half grant what I wish and snatch me away
Not to return. Earth's the right place for love:
I don't know where it's likely to go better.
I'd like to go by climbing a birch tree,
And climb black branches up a snow-white trunk
Toward heaven, till the tree could bear no more,
But dipped its top and set me down again.
That would be good both going and coming back.
One could do worse than be a swinger of birches.

Dreamland

By a route obscure and lonely,
Haunted by ill angels only,
Where an Eidolon, named NIGHT,
On a black throne reigns upright,
I have reached these lands but newly
From an ultimate dim Thule-
From a wild clime that lieth, sublime,
Out of SPACE- out of TIME.

Bottomless vales and boundless floods,
And chasms, and caves, and Titan woods,
With forms that no man can discover
For the tears that drip all over;
Mountains toppling evermore
Into seas without a shore;
Seas that restlessly aspire,
Surging, unto skies of fire;
Lakes that endlessly outspread
Their lone waters- lone and dead,-
Their still waters- still and chilly
With the snows of the lolling lily.

By the lakes that thus outspread
Their lone waters, lone and dead,-
Their sad waters, sad and chilly
With the snows of the lolling lily,-
By the mountains- near the river
Murmuring lowly, murmuring ever,-
By the grey woods,- by the swamp
Where the toad and the newt encamp-
By the dismal tarns and pools
Where dwell the Ghouls,-
By each spot the most unholy-
In each nook most melancholy-
There the traveller meets aghast
Sheeted Memories of the Past-
Shrouded forms that start and sigh
As they pass the wanderer by-
White-robed forms of friends long given,
In agony, to the Earth- and Heaven.

For the heart whose woes are legion
'Tis a peaceful, soothing region-
For the spirit that walks in shadow
'Tis- oh, 'tis an Eldorado!
But the traveller, travelling through it,
May not- dare not openly view it!
Never its mysteries are exposed
To the weak human eye unclosed;
So wills its King, who hath forbid
The uplifting of the fringed lid;
And thus the sad Soul that here passes
Beholds it but through darkened glasses.

By a route obscure and lonely,
Haunted by ill angels only,
Where an Eidolon, named NIGHT,
On a black throne reigns upright,
I have wandered home but newly
From this ultimate dim Thule.

Edgar Allan Poe

The Dummy

The Dummy

Reports are in.   

Grades have been posted.   

No one’s as smart as they thought, 

it seems, especially me.   

Ground-breaking ceremonies are next.   

A monument will be erected on this sight, 

dedicated to the dumbest of dummies: 

Me.   

Me, with my nose in the air, 

before I knew I knew nothing.   

What arrogance I displayed.   

Knock-kneed and pigeon-toed, 

on my way to the top, 

inverted of course, 

and in mid-nosedive.   

I am:

• A landmark for the lost: “Make a right at the dummy and continue on to the second traffic light. “

• A meeting place for old friends: “Let’s get together for dinner.  I’ll meet you at the dummy about eight o’clock.”

• A background for photographs: “Let me get a shot of you standing over there in front of the dummy.”

An example for future generations:  “Don’t let this happen to you.”    

by Leo

Goliath

Goliath

by Leo

Goliath

In embryonic half-clad sorrow

the Philistine unknowingly

projects his sad inheritance

over great and glossy apparatus

His shadow lies

Accordingly he penetrates

His purpose moves and then it fails
and then it moves again

I feel him feeling nothing

Include this incipient

beater of drums

ans pardon my pagan for showing

It isn't easy ecstasy

that propels the climate

of my imagination

into a no man's land

of motor oil and misinterpretation

I beg and borrow

a cyborg here and there

under the thunder brush

It doesn't matter

there's always the incinerator

a madman to lead the way

I hook it and crook it

wear it around my neck

eat it

beat it

It doesn't matter

when your head is in the giant's lap

and your mouth is broken

Leo

One life is all we have and we live it as we believe in living it. But to sacrifice what you are and to live without belief, that is a fate more terrible than dying. If I am not in the state of grace, may God put me there; and if I am, may God so keep me.

We declare that you are fallen again into your former errors and under the sentence of excommunication which you originally incurred we decree that you are a relapsed heretic; and by this sentence which we deliver in writing and pronounce from this tribunal, we denounce you as a rotten member, which, so that you shall not infect the other members of Christ, must be cast out of the unity of the Church, cut off from her body, and given over to the secular power: we cast you off, separate and abandon you, praying this same secular power on this side of death and the mutilation of your limbs, to moderate its judgment towards you, and if true signs of repentance appear in you to permit the sacrament of penance to be administered to you.

A portion of the final sentence pronounced to Joan in public after her trial

Long Ass Note From Joan

To whom it may concern:

Just wanted you to know

I enjoyed my informal visit

to the nut house on the strip.

Everything was cozy and clean.

The belligerent being however,

who manned the manure moat

and lowered the bridge

for the special privileged,

was not very nice to me.

Even though I had tons of I.D.

he insisted I wade through

like all the other losers.

I wish I had listened to Mother

and packed my hip boots.

Nonetheless, the atmosphere

was jaunty and the regulars,

once they got to know me,

were full of goodwill and advice

which they offered freely

most of the time and charged

for the remainder.

All in all it was an experience

I shall always forget

and even now as I pen this

note of gratitude and degradation

I can hardly remember

your solicitous smile

or the particular name of your monkey.

Please don’t think me cynical,

hoity-toity or sarcastic.

I’ve shed those three demons

thanks to you and your

hilarious crash course.

Now instead I’m wearing

light weight armor to protect

my delicate new skin

until I’m on my feet again

and no longer flinch

when I brush up against reality

or get knocked off my pony

in a jousting match.

Sirs and Madams,

you have been incredibly kind;

you saved my ass,

opened my eyes

rearranged my innards,

directed my feet,

purged my heart,

and sent me home

on a bus full of bozos

and bawling babies.

Not in a basket.

Not in a casket.

How could I be anything but

Respectfully Yours,

Joan

©Leocadia