combines

(or speed dating with robert rauschenberg)

 

john mingay

 

 

 

 

 

 

whatever can’t be done in a single burst

suffers from the unevenness of our spirit.

                                  (fernando pessoa)

 

 

 

 

for malps

 

 

 

 

 

 

untitled (ca. 1954)

 

she curtsies and the dance has begun

with an explosion of fragments of blushing reds

ever so critically contained as one by moppings of mesh

trashed from the legs of whores whose mouths once snarled

their venomous curses on the perfidy of mankind

 

but there is no music to dance to

 

 

 

 

 

 

red interior (1954)

 

what of stone bricked so straight so square

so shines so shines the complete and utter pointlessness

of mere mortar amidst this madness this melancholy

where no one holds fast to any one other than self

as if lost islands from which the living have left

 

so how can there be anything lasting to love

 

 

 

 

 

 

untitled (1954)

 

seen like this from here from where you say you see it

through opaque panes no longer constrained in rotten frames

I am slowly beginning to look like to feel so much a fraud

mediocre at best even though even best can on cue

so easily be bettered by the cutest darn and patch

 

you say the blood is there for all to see

 

 

 

 

 

 

untitled (1954)

 

expiring but not before finding our way to bathe in beauty

to be held in a crotch of gnarled fingers pointing heavenward

to tell their own tale in words that as always go unheard

where what is ever to be heard is neither here nor there

as we continue to bask in a sunshine that tells no lies

 

impermanence all the while a most welcome truth

 

 

 

 

 

 

collection (1954/5)

 

from a kaleidoscope landscape of snow and field

the hungry are fed an aesthetic purée of sentient sustenance

all to arouse feelings more necessary than the feeding itself

feelings that form the core the crux of what it is to be

of what it is to see without dread each sun each day

 

the urban famine forgotten in the moment

 

 

 

 

 

 

minutiae (1955)

 

as it stands from back to front in layers of time

on limbs so dissimilar as to suggest an ambiguous history

you look on aghast at its plenitude of dusks and dawns

drawn up into itself unshared in being so rarely seen

each of its screens scrawled with secret oaths

 

vows stretched into a single walking line

 

 

 

 

 

 

paint cans (1954)

 

cans become wills as in when all will be done

on earth as it is in heavenly dreams of spectra used now

as empty as what daily bread is ever given to melt our

hearts into dribbles and droolings over what is in truth

nothing to cause such anticipation of the cross

 

with blind faith there is no snake to handle

 

 

 

 

 

 

charlene (1954)

 

you are somewhere beneath this patchwork it seems

or maybe that could be you there headlessly melting in cream

or is it all just a pathetic hoax to check for new knee jerks

to tailor into the next fashion in attitude soon to be aired

pegged out alongside the rest of your dirty washing

 

understandably nobody is compelled to answer

 

 

 

 

 

 

untitled (1954)

 

held to ransom by the light and air the transom dams

like promises made but never kept for the sake of wanting

craving to give and take without considering the paradox

the obligation to be all things to all men while falling

unwittingly into creating teases and temptations

 

the final commons dead behind the glass

 

 

 

 

 

 

untitled (1954)

 

standing so peacock proud in linens and straw

only to be reduced to chicken strutting nevertheless

but now as the sole believer in its very own being

with so far already fallen and to fall some more

to shatter the mirror that tells its many lies

 

an empire can so easily die a naked death

 

 

 

 

 

 

bantam (1955)

 

caught on a bit of a sticky wicket without knowing quite

what to do about it without making too much of a to do over

telling whether the place or the fowl is meant or unmeant

or simply a name plucked at random from stark choices

scrawled on the wall in a chalky list of prospects

 

baring all and slipping into a sea of yellow

 

 

 

 

 

 

satellite (1955)

 

through an unfettered landscape of nameless wilderness

where all the day is laid out with neither method nor madness

you appear aloft enrobed in all your faded feathered finery

exposed to the unseen elements that ruffle your plumage

a simple arrow pointing to where you might have been

 

only with time do the changes ever show

 

 

 

 

 

 

bed (1955)

 

nothing comes of anything gone but for an emptiness

that would sleep deeply forever were it to be left untroubled

unruffled by the whispering of ghost talk on the pillow

of the last words of lovers lost to paroxysms of hate

grown through days that must each reach an end

 

a quilt no longer enough to muffle a voice

 

 

 

 

 

 

short circuit (1955)

 

your discoloured rainbow lies open spotted naked

yet only subliminally seen for the everything it is and was

and is still to be when it takes on the short way round

as if no long term solution no enduring answer

exists to ever survive beyond tomorrow

 

the circuit complete though void

 

 

 

 

 

 

odalisk (1955/8)

 

with barely a leg to rely on you pose there waiting

your nakedness leaving all to see all of your promises

laid bare in the emptiness of your seraglio cloister

the hush only broken by the clucking of time

passing as if in a pillowless freefall to hell

 

paradise is only a narghile dream

 

 

 

 

 

 

untitled (ca.1955)

 

segmented into eighths and silently chorded to stand

guard over what there is of some part hidden traces of living

a life of forgetting and leaving it lost or of modestly chewing

the cud before going without a care for this field left empty

but for the fighting cocks fighting their endless fight

 

the distractions of war spent hosing away the blood

 

 

 

 

 

 

rebus (1955)

 

you can run but you sure can’t hide from the bare horror

of seeing the sun appear again with yet another day as ever

to follow but then give nothing away of its many riches

its most knowing of what’s known of anything more

that’s worth retaining of the ruins of polity slain

 

a crossed box changes nothing in the game

 

 

 

 

 

 

interview (1955)

 

your smile awakens the matadors folded up behind

a door where they begin to strut in a parade of paradoxes

heading hellbent towards death disguised as artfulness

while knowing layer upon layer that they’ll have a ball

and you will still be sitting naked in your naivety

 

the picadors too aspire to be these fêted killers

 

 

 

 

 

 

levee (1955)

 

how long is the shift that tells us how far we have come

across sleepy stretching yawning waters then through forests

of trees scabbing over hillsides cut and torn by ice and wind

how long is this shift on the way to a nowhere where you

and I will look into a mirror your face the only one seen

 

takhos takes on a greater sense of urgency

 

 

 

 

 

 

hymnal (1955)

 

clutching at straws you have reached an impasse where

everything is nothing and there is no way back but to praise

a lord you have come to have only a most cautious faith in

wanting only what you have always wanted of direction

and a death for those ghosts scratched on the wall

 

each pasted scrap holds a clue to itself

 

 

 

 

 

 

gloria (1956)

 

she bites her tongue hard as if not wanting to finish the words

she has already thrice begun like I do and to have and to hold

whether in sickness or in health or whether somersaulting

through the air her heels over her head with sentences

spurting out in spirals as her lover laughingly looks on

 

neither knowing quite when their game will end

 

 

 

 

 

 

rhyme (1956)

 

I am with but never a part of this monstrous conformity

of half truths and lies you claim as reality without the irony

a more cynical mind may have added just for the hell

just for the fun of smelling your innards laid bare by

the fire of the sun seen framed in the winter snow

 

the rime yet to settle where it falls

 

 

 

 

 

 

hazard (1957)

 

around the table the symmetry of every aspect is chance

swaddled in its uniformly monochrome tucks and the crispest

of taffeta dreams as if all to hide behind while the real world

is evermore endangered by the greed that grossly passes

for growth in an ebbing world beset by shaft and screw

 

the impossibility of aspiration is increasingly clear

 

 

 

 

 

 

painting with red letter s (1957)

 

if today’s the day a red letter day when all in each circle is

imagined to come to fruition to come to its anticipated apogee

then what of it if the pattern we are trying to go with is hidden

bar the faintest fringe to hint at a hometown long denied

and what of it if news of it is only now received in red

 

what you see is what you get is only a probable truth

 

 

 

 

 

 

wager (1957)

 

these near empty streets have made you what you are

as if the few secrets you have quietly placed are to suffice

in drawing the odds in your favour if it comes down to it

if the circumstances demand it if there’s nothing else

for it aside from these scant offerings found in time

 

some say only the random can make a difference

 

 

 

 

 

 

memorandum of bids (1957)

 

it all seems all the more mapped out the closer comes

the end of it all as though the ante has already been upped

with nothing left to proffer to offer to feasibly put forward

with any hope of breaking free from fate’s fickle route

nothing really left but to hold your tongue and wait

 

wisdom would have silence a virtue to grow into

 

 

 

 

 

 

factum I (1957)

 

so often inadvertently we get so far ahead of ourselves

with what’s to come already squeezing itself into the present

that it becomes hard to decide whether life’s bitter inferno

has been or is yet to come to hide living’s sullied laundry

and to bring an escape clause in a script formed to a t

 

nothing changes the madness being here has become

 

 

 

 

 

 

factum II (1957)

 

back again with something new of the same if I can put it in

those terms a number two if you like a someone always around

to ask where it was we were going before we went the wrong

way too far off course to do anything except to come back

again with something new of the same as if a tally is kept

 

even a precedent requires some kind of myth to survive

 

 

 

 

 

 

the tower (1957)

 

a blue light flickers beneath a bladder blackened although

unrelated with neither ever clearly the consequence of the other

even in the turnery in the spire built to appease the rain gods

even in any smoky groundation from which hopes are taken

neither is ever clearly the consequence of very much at all

 

happenstance leads reason astray too well

 

 

 

 

 

 

coca-cola plan (1958)

 

there you were laid out stretched out on an imagined floor

planning to fly if only to match your soul to your surroundings

to keep swigging at life like it’s some sort of unlabelled tonic

offsetting every absurdity in a world hooked on absurdities

addicted to as if mutton to orb with the fences closing in

 

your wings are your single salvation

 

 

 

 

 

 

curfew (1958)

 

left it too late to go far with time’s steely tip menacingly now

already tapping at the door through which one day I must leave

abandoning you to your ghosts hiding in the shadows of grief

yet aware none will come and none will be there to help you

to decipher the joke in the homonym you can’t understand

 

there’s familiarity around the corner from everywhere

 

 

 

 

 

 

talisman (1958)

 

somewhere just there in the hanging jar see why doubly are

as if to typify a perfect concentration ready to be handed a flower

starting with the letter s with too subtle a scent to even conjure

any memory of summers gone nor of the flatteries they held

a flower too sensitive to send its seed beyond the verge

 

unsurprisingly time can’t help but bury the past

 

 

 

 

 

 

forge (1959)

 

replicating the future as though believing it could be lured

from the memory of the shadow days already been and gone

you seem to become entangled in the first instance of deed

done with my dangerous fourth lying a single step beyond

the sea to be an alphabet of arid sands caught in reverse

 

for even the least moisture can come to create a storm

 

 

 

 

 

 

migration (1959)

 

this and that and these and those and moving along still

to where in time an x will mark the spot reserved for secrets

never to be told never to be confessed to gossips or crows

to where the birch barks doggedly in welcoming us there

to its colourless world through which only blood seeps

 

in coming of age there is no going back

 

 

 

 

 

 

summerstorm (1959)

 

tied to a t that knows no boundaries to its feral dance

across the surface of blotches and smears and scraps

of memories at no time lived and only seldom dreamt

of in sleepless nights beneath a slit in the tarry sky

we are pitched together to watch its tango unfold

 

as is always said the show must go on

 

 

 

 

 

 

trophy I (for merce cunningham) (1959)

 

an alarm bell clangs its cast brass tongue as a caution

to warn of having taken a step too far from yew bow to stick

to balance as only a part of the suite by chance but aware

that what follows is always fated always destined to be

whether finally at four score and ten or more or less

 

there is no avoiding the ashes and dust

 

 

 

 

 

 

kickback (1959)

 

if what you want is to fly with the blackbirds in the sky

then what lies beneath the waves will go forever unseen

with your hands tied by your being confined by angle

and your eyes straining to see the horses gallop on

towards an unnoticed finale with no known return

 

you are the making of more than where you are

 

 

 

 

 

 

canyon (1959)

 

sleep soundly as though suspended only by a string

and wave in such a way as others will see it as drowning

mistaking your gesture for the cold torment of descent

of being drawn into that social net that has no weight

but the waiting for the swoop of desire’s vile wings

 

with the wanting comes a lifeless life

 

 

 

 

 

 

backwash (1959)

 

to see what’s washed ashore on the tidewater’s surge

is to know what there is of our living’s inescapable detritus

with what we want so much more than the little we need

all told of in twisted secrets all to be swallowed whole

all to exchange the creed for another no less insane

 

there are messages for the future left in the sand

 

 

 

 

 

 

inlet (1959)

 

cooler suddenly with all the implications this twilight suggests

rushing in through the narrowness masquerading as an escape

from the inescapable obscurity of night and its corkscrewing

bird-dance encompassing the skewed and scarred moment

when arrogance and ignorance collided to become the rule

 

a losing battle only has heroes who sink into the mire

 

 

 

 

 

 

broadcast (1959)

 

hidden from hearing their melancholic cries for help

no matter how the airwaves are combed for even one

they become disoriented in the confusion of strokes

while we fumble impotently with our deafened ears

struggling to compensate for our humanly failings

 

some sounds are so small as only to be smelled

 

 

 

 

 

 

double feature (1959)

 

a tick to mark it done aloft in a heavenly garret

where angels starve for want of nourishing words

half-hidden if need be if only ever to be checked

or half-seen if seen from another point of view

from where an equine dilapidation descends

 

the tally of days spent scratched on the wall

 

 

 

 

 

 

magician (1959)

 

hocus-pocus then hey presto and the voodoo

is begun the black blade invisibly spinning hacking

the letters of the poet’s curse that plummet into

a heap of misunderstanding and construal

no-one any the wiser not that it matters

 

the curse of course is in calling himself poet

 

 

 

 

 

 

pail for ganymede (1959)

 

running here and there and pushed and pulled and again

over and over as now a thrall to the gods and their thirsting

for the situla’s purest waters they guzzle at having paid

with infinite youth and a love never to be spoken of

and all the while you pine for more modest times

 

yet how to know when the eagle is just that

 

 

 

 

 

 

bride’s folly (1959)

 

where she went wrong was in going sticking a

fork in his eye viciously unexpectedly with neither

rhyme nor reason suddenly to be a crazy witch

lashing out through her frigid frustrations and

an insanity born of jealousy hate and need

 

anything can be a fantasy after all

 

 

 

 

 

 

winter pool (1959)

 

way down below down ladders to take tea in cups

coated in mosaics of previous calamities unmourned

for lack of someone to mourn them or to howl at life

as if anyone could honestly give a monkey’s just

as long as the teapot is tipped way down below

 

beyond the basics decorum lives a fragile life

 

 

 

 

 

 

monogram (1955-59)

 

it’s too tiresome to try to tame the wild bezoar with

just a promise of things to come when the days reach

the peak of rosy domesticity without a care to allude

to the fenced fields and tethering twines that will

become the fate of all confined in this cloister

 

for what is civilisation but coercion disguised

 

 

 

 

 

 

gift for ileana (1959)

 

you say your god has answered though to me

the question you asked remains brazenly vague

unstill in the way a ray of sun dances in leaves

like those you have come to use so sparingly

to veil your modesty albeit a hollow mount

 

we all hear voices not all of them real

 

 

 

 

 

three traps for medea (1959)

 

whether by accident or intent three are no more

to remember the warmth of your swollen breasts

sagging now from all that has been of a living

lived only to fleece those heroes you caged

with your heart to prove the line of descent

 

our mothered men’s minds are moved to madness

 

 

 

 

 

 

painting with grey wing (1959)

 

you can stand and smile or take flight from where

there is only a numbered emptiness held in shackles

beneath the city lights that climb up to the heavens

as though some modern-day babel rapt in night

and teetering under its own unrelenting weight

 

boundless growth blind to the writing on the wall

 

 

 

 

 

 

allegory (1959-60)

 

when the sand rains on the fable’s opening phrases

we can take what we want from everything left unsaid

make what we want of the nothingness left behind

and find what we want in fancied scraps and rags

of a middle and an end to the story unfolding

 

we are our own gods in history’s long making

 

 

 

 

 

 

nettle (1960)

 

there’s only a chain’s length between here and rust

an any-length that could go on ad infinitum or stop dead

in its tracks before it even gets going to wherever that

would be without it being anywhere but rust as ready

to envelop time as to release the past from its pain

 

the sting of each minute no exemption from the next

 

 

 

 

 

 

diplomat (1960)

 

you can only hope you weren’t meant to see the dialogue

taking place because that’s not what’s supposed to happen

in the marks made that come from within rather than only

through the eyes as of old in times without plate or reel

when to digest reality was worth every detail drawn

 

easy to forget an elsewhere can now be closer to home

 

 

 

 

 

 

pilgrim (1960)

 

take a seat and wait for the sky to collapse around you

while you catch a breath from walking your yatra in hope

your journey of faith that holds out more of a promise

than of the heavens falling where you come to rest

as if to goad you with an enigma of soul and flesh

 

each pause along the way stretches the riddle further

 

 

 

 

 

 

summer rental #1 (1960)

 

from amongst shards of words we’ve never heard

spoken by angels in their falling from heavenly grace

we begin to make meaning of what we’ve been told

in another tongue lolling its black orange and flesh

over the colourless polar purity of the unspoken

 

of a single word a thousand others are born

 

 

 

 

 

 

summer rental #3 (1960)

 

what can’t be said tumbles out anyway hither

and thither scattering its smattering of mattering

into a waterfall of shimmering shards of letter

after letter each an escaping echo hell bent

on being heard above the unceasing din

 

what shouldn’t be said is for another time

 

 

 

 

 

 

studio painting (1960-61)

 

carried through the lines your sentences spark

as you wait as if anticipation is the length of rope

on which you will soon sink like a weighted sack

strung up in the air and deaf to your every word

though still hopeful the lines will go on carrying

 

what persists is first considered

 

 

 

 

 

 

trophy II (for teeny and marcel duchamp) (1960)

 

any stretched septet may be something more

than happenchance while others may not quite

make the grade and be destined for all time

to bumble along with nothing really to say

caught up in the question of connotation

 

yet with seven the same can be said of one

 

 

 

 

 

 

trophy III (for jean tinguely) (1961)

 

were you ever anything more than what you are

now that you come to mention where you once lay

stranded on springs long since given way to rust

stretched on a scaffold just hinting at the ornate

were you ever anything more than confused

 

and is it true what they say about bedsheets

 

 

 

 

 

 

black market (1961)

 

there’s only one way to skin a goose or cook a cat

and for both at their lines’ end with time running low

only a cracked crock of crap to show for it all

the kind of crap that’s taken or left as if ever

to be anything other than a dying memento

 

a metaphor says more of a man than a man ever can

 

 

 

 

 

 

first landing jump (1961)

 

installed as if an unmoving fixture without escape

so as to strangle all dreams dreamt of an elsewhere

to be to see the ever-closing circle finally disappear

like that late-night dot that would flash and vanish

to mark the transition from day to darkness done

 

the worst of it all is that it makes immaculate sense

 

 

 

 

 

 

third time painting (1961)

 

this has been the hour of our betrayal by quislings

our world suddenly smaller and the picturesque now

an open prison from where to persist as a thorn in

the side but continue to wonder who we can be

without the links in the chains of who we were

 

it’s said we cannot help but be controlled by time

 

 

 

 

 

 

pantomime (1961)

 

behind you the wind blows through on an evil squall

bringing the blackness of night and the scarlet of blood

to mark out the days ahead finally following our hearts

our minds unable to disagree with the inevitable any

longer any more while servitude’s chains remain

 

what was left to laugh at soon takes on a sterner face

 

 

 

 

 

 

aen floga (1961)

 

a signal of sorts stands proudly erect ordering a stop

to all that would otherwise pass then to become ghosts

now to grasp the possibilities beyond the probabilities

to be given the chance to dream a short time longer

though never immune from the encroaching light

 

dreams are what we take with us to our graves

 

 

 

 

 

 

trophy IV (for john cage) (1961)

 

even the light becomes an anchor to tie us to reality

as though what we see in the dark is only a dreamland

of zero use and so of zero worth and so of zero note

but not to all not at all is such madness ever done

these few minds drift forever on their raft at night

 

there is no normal for the owl nor for the lark

 

 

 

 

 

 

empire I (1961)

 

grounded by a weight of wall wrenched from footings

and abandoned to drag to a halt any thought of escape

we have become rooted in the ground yet fail to grow

to show to tell where better begins and failures falter

so we wait in silence for the spokes to speak again

 

a carrot-and-stick may offer a galvanising solution

 

 

 

 

 

 

empire II (1961)

 

what counts most is for the exhaustion to be self

inflicted if it’s to be considered at all real and not just

like three wheels pretending to be four for effect

shamming on the shore to an absent audience

a line finely drawn in sand marks our worlds

 

without our own ice we cannot skate

 

 

 

 

 

 

rigger (1961)

 

buttons buttons I can do up buttons and do away

with the elocutionary righteousness foisted upon me

by an angel to hang heavily like a threat on a thread

of bourgeoise intolerance towards everything other

than what’s right and proper in god’s perfect world

 

a deo salus is only said in a plummy paisley voice

 

 

 

 

 

 

door (1961)

 

investing in the future with plastic cap collateral

the returns beyond this side of a firmly closed door

you can only stand and wait and hope the chicken

will stay to support your miracle of infinite growth

all the while ignoring the inevitable end of being

 

any child of snow or sun can easily fathom this

 

 

 

 

 

 

first time painting (1961)

 

an hour passes with sweepless static hands numb

to each moment melting into the next to form a string

and in those sixty minutes you vent your vexations

in living this life onto anyone you can find to listen

to those inconsequentials you believe paramount

 

such trifling blindly overlooks the bigger picture

 

 

 

 

 

 

magician II (1961)

 

cradled by wires by messages sent and received

our country is your country seen through solid rose

to conceal the real states of sad affairs where time

goes down on wealth ensuring everyone’s fucked

one way or the other in your nightmarish dream

 

the fascination with magic soon wears off

 

 

 

 

 

 

slug (1961)

 

in having laid our mucus-sodden trail of crumbs

of unheeded detail of who we are and were but still

missing the boat makes a nonsense of being lost

when every sign was there apparent plain to see

guiding the way with handless ace-less sleeves

 

now there’s only the years to pass in sitting-it-out

 

 

 

 

 

 

blue eagle (1961)

 

of the moving parts there is only one moves more freely

than all the others lethargic for lack of liberating lubricant

and this single part turns so far from the cotton-slogans

emblazoned by the smug to be unnoticed by the blind

so as to be lost and found only by following the light

 

and meanwhile the lead greys the skies above

 

 

 

 

 

 

stripper (1962)

 

one could make up all kinds of significances but then

maybe none exist in thrice flagging as to fall far behind

perhaps even the title reference is just wishful thinking

thought by the viewer as being what was thought by

the artist who may only have been thinking of paint

 

a nervous man once told me to assume nothing

 

 

 

 

 

 

trophy v (for jasper johns) (1962)

 

empty on the one hand with no view on the other

changes nothing really when you try to measure it

to pin it securely as you would a blushing butterfly

not even if the box echoes and the glass reveals

only the nothing of the nothingness that lives

 

it’s so hard to tell whether to stop or go

 

 

 

 

 

 

inside-out (1962)

 

been ready to go but go on waiting to be gone

door open and wheels all pointing in one direction

knowing it’s now too late with the veneer peeling

but never quite giving up on the dream to leave

to not even pause to say goodbye to the past

 

the wheel keeps turning in its triangular whole

 

 

 

 

 

 

wooden gallop (1962)

 

life lost to the perforation of salvation in custardy

yellow stuck there now onto panel and rusted metal

as if there had been something to say that stayed

unsaid held safe in a camouflaged can perhaps

for later maybe for never only a can can know

 

the living take their unholy secrets with them

 

 

 

 

 

 

ace (1962)

 

all there is still to be seen shines as dull metal

caught between isles of oil and once-upon trees

esoteric to the core in its abstraction of magic

culled from surreal dreams while you lazed

asleep to the world you hoped would stop

 

close essentially to a blindness of sorts

 

 

 

 

 

 

dylaby (1962)

 

hang loose he said far too often for it to mean

anything more than the platitude it had become

dropping it in like an iron falling fast to ground

like a sign of the liquid past at last coming to

join the party as if spring had sprung again

 

candour is only limited by the language used

 

 

 

 

 

 

art box (1963)

 

you called me from a crate to let me know

which way’s up in case I’d been snow-blinded

but I’d already worked it out like a work of art

deciphering the direction to take to be there

at the top in search of a name and a hand

 

where are we now that each of us is afraid

 

 

 

 

 

 

gold standard (1964)

 

or even when his voice is heard we know it

not to be the kahuna we had been led to expect

or even when an electric sunrise pushes above

the horizon there’s only one foot booted ready

or any number of other things sent to dazzle

 

it’s this distraction that keeps us easily tamed

 

 

 

 

 

 

story (1964)

 

the scarlet pulses southward still well enough

for the waiting hand to catch it in passing to drum

the rhythm with flesh against wood ad nauseam

and all of which in sum sabotages the strings

of the mute harp that has played throughout

 

there are times when out is the only clue

 

 

 

 

 

 

gift for apollo (1959)

 

is it before or after or simply beyond the pail

where we can open out or close down our ties

behind us as we go along with the wheels not

yet come off as if the faintest gesture of hope

in an otherwise hopeless confusion of mind

 

and even knowing is no longer à la mode

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

written between february 2019 and march 2020 in single sittings

from sparks thrown off by robert rauschenberg's series of combines

with each poem structured by five line-lengths and an envoi line

 

poem titles are as per combine title with date as archived at

https://www.rauschenbergfoundation.org/art/series/combine

 

 

 

 

 

 

© john mingay 2020

a facqueuesol paperless book