Untitled

Untitled

(“The rich and the poor are met together; the Lord is the Creator of them both.” Proverbs 22:2)

I.

He wandered the galleries
circa 1970
of the New Berkeley Art Museum.
The gray concrete Brutalist building
housed Warhol and Pollock,
and in a shaded enclave Richard Brautigan
read,
with easy inebriation,
his newest poetry. It was magical in the 70s;
He was 15 in 1970.

Brautigan paused. Or maybe he finished.
The students who drove through the Caldecott Tunnel
could not be sure.
Some of his poems were scratches on parchment,
some rambled the east bay hills. But, after he
put the last drop of whiskey to his lips and
sat down to light a cigar,
the curious teens wandered the galleries again.

He wondered at some of the installations,
walking around pop art and soup cans
and curious to their meaning,
looked at every label in the gallery.

Untitled.
There was more than one. Un
titled.
And questioned the creativity of
leaving off the name.
For him the title was a gateway to the meaning,
a miniature explanation of the dots and explosions
on canvas or melamine sculptures. There was no one
to ask
when the card read
un
Titled.

He vowed to write an anthology of poetry and,
right in the middle of his collection,
leave one page blank except for the title:

“Untitled”

II.

Half a century later, labels mean less.
Perhaps we come into the world as the perfect
artistic medium.
Perhaps we do not need the titles. They may not
be
gateways to meaning at all,
but a tin box lithograph with “sardines”
on the label.
The name tag was affixed so early
the artist’s name has been forgotten.

Untitled Songs

 

Untitled Songs

(“The rock: his acts are perfection! No doubt about it: all his ways are right! He’s the faithful God, never deceiving; altogether righteous and true is he.” Deuteronomy 32:4)

It is a mystery treat.
Hometown, you remind me of the memories
inside me. There are
skeletons in the walls,
mice under the floors;
they are hidden, you don’t see them,
but they are there, you can see them on
the five-cent tour every new year’s eve.

I’ll be here, nowhere else to go.
I used to spend the eve with 30 people or more.
And yes, the voices got louder as the crowd got younger,
but sometimes silence makes you stare at the clock when
the minute hand never moves.

It occurs to me I may have bought my last guitar,
It amuses me, I will not finish the books I have bought
before my time is up, before my eyes close for the last time
to see the sun.

Hometown and nowhere to go. The lonesome has changed
since I came home. I’ve traversed the desert in pain,
dwelt in the cavern where darkness swaddled my brain.
Hometown, and no friend to find. The night time has changed
since I returned. The same stars wink at me,
the same moon sometimes laughs at my mood.
And the clouds are curtains closing the stage at the end
of the play.

I survived the darkness (thus the sarcasm of the moon),
I have not escaped my madness (the stars understood),
and now I await the faintest snow, a song to sing while the
apple trees never cry in the winter of their fruitlessness.

It is a mystery I did not retreat. Tomorrow the hills will run with rain,
the doves will take cover while a fawn or two drinks at the river.
All things are not new, all things, though, are reviewable.
And in those things, though my voice is ragged and my fingers
still,
I will sing untitled songs for friends who recognize their names.