### ### ### ### ### #### ### ### ### #### ### ### ##### ### ### ### ### ### ### ### ### ### ##### ### ### ########## ### ### ########## ### ### ### ### Underground eXperts United Presents... ####### ## ## ####### # # ####### ####### ####### ## ## ## ## ##### ## ## ## #### ## ## #### # # ####### ## ####### ## ## ## ## ##### ## ## ## ## ## ####### ####### # # ####### ## ####### [ Hesiod And The Muse ] [ By Doug Tanoury ] ____________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________ Hesiod and the Muse Poems by Doug Tanoury Hesiod and the Muse In Moreau's painting "Hesiod and the Muse" There is a preponderance of blue That softens the sky and subdues everything Into a twilight background Except the poet who stands naked with his lyre Embraced by a winged Muse A long sword hanging from her girdle She seems to hover somehow above him Hesiod wears a garland of laurel like a nimbus His face androgynous his features feminine and fair More light in frame and delicate in form Than the Muse that supports him Not a farmer not a sailor not a craftsman But one who sits on soft pillows And sips sweet nectar at the table of the gods Hesiod is painted a poet Suspended in the blueness of sky There is a temple a single bright star And winged creatures fly far above The ground where blossoms touch bare feet Music In Albinoni And all baroque masters Who flourish and shake my desk With trumpet, organ and harpsichord With cello, flute and violin I am taken for a moment To a child's world Of playfulness that escalates Slowly toward full riot and Honest innocents that moves In stages to pure simplicity In music weightless and light That floats graceful Through my ears In Overtures Of unending variation In preludes Of unexpected brilliance I hear gleeful sweetness My children's laughter The giggles that grow To shouts and yells And I go on to ponder The substance of sound That touches me like a spirit And moves through me With ghostly freedom That passes through my walls Without hindrance and enters Through unopened doors In the softness of bassoon and flute My daughters whisper And in the shrill voice of violin My son whistling A Season In am stuck In the middle of this is a reluctant season Within its heart of slowness Its self-centered sloth In a holding back in bashful reserve Where the sun never shines And the clouds hide a shy blue sky Over trees sleeping so soundly In self-conscious reserve They do not dream of buds Indeed this season I am caught in Is the triumph of timidity And I too celebrate it In my holding back for my touch now Is uncertain reserve and I am paused In tentative indecision for a moment An hour A day A collection of days Until there is nothing left to touch But the starkness and realization Of all that is missing A Study In Form I have mastered the art of approach The dance of improvisational movement Around a subject Like the low brick facades on Main Street Articulated by second storey windows The movement of muscle Sinew and bone An expression of torso and limbs My body bent into a word Moving in a phrase My breath upon a line of verse Of what is and why Toward what could be and is This is the art of pose and stance Rhythm and tempo For I have mastered the approach And am a channel for burning forces That bubble up in blood vessels and brain In nerve endings and spine Twisted in all the expressions of form All the permutations of shape Nativity Church There is a Romanesque basilica With a tall bell tower that rises Above a neighborhood on The near east side It stands stately high above The squalor and poverty below Topped with bronze dome And ornamental urns Solid and stately and strong I remember looking up at it often As a child like some talisman It protected me from all Uncertainty and want and weakness As I played in the shadows of Wood frame houses in need of Paint and repair It reminded me always Of a larger world Outside the borders Of Iroquois and Cadillac Beyond the yellow sunrises Above Pennsylvania Street and Behind the swirling purple sunsets Hanging over Gratiot Avenue Expressionist (A Hollywood Park Poem) Shall I paint the night sky Neon indigo And her sequin dress That catches light Cobalt blue and glows With what seems Some inner luminescence That sets her ass to shimmer And makes her breasts gleam As if she were wearing nothing But fish scales on her skin Shall I paint her movement Accentuated by a trembling Like aspen leaves On an August evening That dance choreographed In sunset colors and Grow toward darkness If I should see her dress Strewn carelessly across the floor It would look only like a blue gill Washed up on the beach Last Will & Testament I have often said that Old poets Never die They simply lose their voices They get quiet Fall into silence Forget and are forgotten And I know that I am on my way Toward the great wordless I see death and it is The stark white page The eternal pause A period And a blankness An eternal Search that stretches from The back of your mind To the tip of your tongue For a word That is never found I am moving In ever so certain steps To my quiet time Like the hush On summer evenings As I lay in the backyard hammock Still and unmoving As a figure carved in the cover Of a sarcophagus I see the signs And read the foreshadowing Yes old poets never pass away They just somehow lose their vision My eyes are going bad and I can no longer see to write I fancy myself Like Homer A sightless poet I am blind as Milton And one day soon The only way I'll scribe A line of verse will Be to give dictation To my children Who will grimace And make faces That I cannot see As my senses leave me And my faculties flee And all the muse Take flight at once Hear this from me now That those the gods Would destroy They first make mute Then take their sight So I bequeath to you All pretty phrases To you all sunshine similes To you the moonlit metaphors I give you All lightness and alliteration I will you words I leave you voice unending --------------------------------------------------------------------------- uXu #572 Underground eXperts United 2000 uXu #572 Send your submissions to: submission@uxu.org ---------------------------------------------------------------------------