Saturday, September 4, 2010

Promulgating Pollock

Writing is a mysterious pursuit. So cerebral. So sedentary. So openly prescriptive.

What if I approach it the same way as Pollock a dance of energy a furious energy driving the words into cinnamon or simple fidgeting a dripping dropping drooling smearing smudging daubing lobbing energy of smells and textures evolving into a paragraph a mob of Möbius strippers a field of force a grammar of movement all the while stirring a pot of soup a transformation of words in movement in space turpentine and paint in a corner?

What would that yield? Beget? Engender? Erect?

What if I hurled myself into language? Dove into a pool of words? Rode a goat through a hurricane? Spurt syllables? Ejaculated nouns? Conjured slop? Diffused a lurid turbulency of concussive color and gusts of Hellenic muck? Fluttered around a paragraph dropping toboggans of kinetic cognition? Flicked my brush? Flickered my mind? Pickled my brine?

What if I bring something fresh and original into existence and a fugue drops out of my mouth assumes a life of its own paroles my cat loses my socks and marries my wife?

The signs are sounds cartilage and bone. If I had a hammer I would build a grain of salt a Freudian slip a plover a graupel a girl scout dancing in a graveyard of Greek fire nux vomica rosettes of tubulous cowlick a perception an existence a skin a color a shape a compilation of scales and fins a greed for expression trapeze and lions and women with sparkly feet.

I need to pry the air open and see what is there. Wrought iron balcony in Paris a wrist of water on an arm of mud.

The poem may be defined as an animal. It pops and crackles doing cartwheels on a nipple. It is a daub of black glistening and gloppy. It eats language. It wallows in languor. It lives for resonance. It bleeds Xmas.

Structure is irritating fluidity is lustrous please invite me into your mind for a minute or two I will pull a nebula of tongues out of my head charm you by balancing a tense in a blob of red. I will show you a stethoscope in a pool of mustard in a California garage. I will fold a napkin into a pound of summer or an ounce of fall. I will strum a guitar pregnant with ghosts.

This is a thesis in conflict with itself a testimony of muscle and blood a chiaroscuro philosopher in a Rembrandt quiet. A story unfolding in sand and wind. An ear with metal a bright and shining star dangling from a lobe. You may infuse time with description a fire glowing in the corner of a boxcar a grove of trees circling a pond a face on fire with rapture.

Does anything matter everything matters particularly matter. An array of objects in a soft blue room the ruminations of a cow a bug full of phosphor glowing on a Minnesota night black coffee in a yellow mug a pitcher with a crackly glaze of red and green. There is an ocean in my head sobbing with headlines. The surf is an angel the sand is wet the words are bearing the weight of a table in a New Mexico diner. Pepper and salt. Emily and Walt. Reuben sandwich and a raspberry malt. The rest is silence.

2 comments:

Steven Fama said...

Hi John,

On this Labor Day, may I adopt your "If I had a hammer . . ." sentence (which splatter slash drip splash drop swirl seems particularly Pollockian!) as a kind of motto?

Thanks!

John Olson said...

Sure!