_________________________________________________________________________ AESTHETICS by Toby Olson _________________________________________________________________________ AESTHETICS- 1 *Paint what you see* is already a philosophical problem: a blood-spot on the eye's membrane absent in the still-life. Still life goes on, possibly somebody buys the painting who is slightly blind. And how can we agree on beauty even in women these days? What you see is what you get. The student asks: just how does reading Joyce relate to my life? & answer: it is in your life. ___________________________________________________________________________ AESTHETICS -- 2 as if all these things were part of memory that we invented: a passionate existence for ourselves, a fantasy of great glory Speak of the fine name *Anzio & Citadel,* all very hazy as if seen thru X-ray or on a silver screen Invented in all its loveliness in all its cool distance & magic Bones and the shadows of flesh on the X-ray our sweet History. ___________________________________________________________________________ AESTHETICS - 3 I still remember the shape of Doyle's pot Weed Pot and half golden like a paradigm she held in her hand Then took us to her place to see her craft, she said and had grown flowers and a multitude of good weeds lining the drive A woman of obvious passion opened the garage door to us hundreds of misshapen objects she called pots: plenty of imagination pure ugliness. ___________________________________________________________________________ AESTHETICS - 4 Take the animal, always in its insouciance down a path of glory we say we lust for that place of heart where only passage defines us. Sylvia talks of the young boy brain-damaged & foul who finally recognizes himself on the video-tape, that's me, he says. Take the cat not knowing itself in the mirror, is it better ? ___________________________________________________________________________ AESTHETICS -- 5 *(for T. W.)* what is white in me is not like black is not enuf to say bewilderment, the cause of death the same. and understand I'm speaking of myself. respect the body's temple as a thing impossible to enter, or I put my tongue inside a poison heart The operation is successful: both of us are dead. ____________________________________________________________________________ AESTHETICS -- 6 the theme runs counter to the plot the whole lacks unity the symbol of the great church as a castle as a phallus as a mythic device is weak when it rains it stands for death the butterflies however, stand for life the crack of the tree's twig in the night wood is obvious success depends upon the acting. ___________________________________________________________________________ AESTHETICS -- 7 Trees in the distance given the name and we find ourselves believing in explanation as the real world Cause & effect are properties of language The trees beckon us across that distance and into shade The name framed in our minds we do not enter, but forest. __________________________________________________________________________ AESTHETICS -- 8 My friends make judgments about others, those known in the flesh or otherwise intimately, thru some art. they have given us too little of themselves, they say. they say this poem is dumb X has a broomstick up her ass Y is an academic. They have given us a little of themselves is why we know them well enough to talk. Z enters the room. I bless my friends who know a little of the grace of silence. ___________________________________________________________________________ AESTHETICS -- 9 The language being the same thing I speak here of Ethics: one man in a torn coat one resplendent in Mink. 'what the rich can afford to buy is better' is a fact: the dense meat of the rooster more succulent than the hen. The rich would have us believe in our own myth of their decadence, the soothing lie. The feel of Mink is exquisite, the seats of the Rolls Royce conform to the owner's spine, you live longer. ___________________________________________________________________________ AESTHETICS -- 10 The subject was boats or roses or the State of the Nation's Capitol on a windy day Say it was a finer thing like the Rights of Women or a casket of ambergris. Whatever ...we cannot think, we cannot think: we cannot therefore say what we cannot think.' The Rose Bud opens in a Freudian manner: names we have taken to hide in, the perceptual solipsists we all are. *The paired butterflies are already yellow with August Over the grass in the West garden.* The woman's eye is the eye of the man focused, '...thereof one must be silent.' Talk of the quality of life not withstanding Standing, beside you in avoidance of emptiness: 'Whereof one cannot speak,' that is to say translate. ____________________________________________________________________________ AESTHETICS -- 11 The intimate acts of the body are a private thing not wholly caught on film or the stills of pornography and yet 'a sweet disorder in the dress' and in the viewer's eyes and in the public nature of the act the snap of garter or a run is irony. The body's beauty lives beyond the nature of its intimate acts home movies document our social contract and our family loss. These pornographic stills are hard to date because they are a mirror and an art they document the public nature of our intimate acts they show the humor in the sweetness of a crotch. ____________________________________________________________________________ AESTHETICS -- 12 I love you for sentimental reasons, be said and those same reasons are why I live alone I mean: nothing is in the present tense and) that be not accurate which is immediacy. This is my first affair, she said so please be kind. to each his own: you've the soul that snaps my control or) I'm a creative play-thing. __________________________________________________________________________ AESTHETICS - 13 And if I saw the Harbor Lights my friend or your face as a glowing substitute until the lights were lost in the fog and became one light or possibly only your face now standing, as you are on the pier Assuming I am in a boat coming at you your face, therefore, a beacon And if you stood still tall as you are, your face at light level what sense would it make or difference that it be a face in the light, or a light or a face of light, but that it guide me. it matters only to be able to say it. ____________________________________________________________________________ AESTHETICS -- 14 These days it is not difficult to feel Look at the Images processed into a fine edge of sentiment. even the cars you buy are touched by women the simplest cereals eaten for sexual gain. And we are allowed joy in groups laced with self-knowledge, directed back into childhood sanctions allow us even the touch of our own sex. No, not left or loosed into the possibilities of weeping, but that it is a recorded gesture we can talk about. We are never alone anymore nor need we fear being caught up in the accident of sorrow. ____________________________________________________________________________ AESTHETICS - 15 Speech, being what it is a term of distance nouns of The Intimate Letter made for a face standing only in memory I speak anyway, and that's a trust perfect burden. what does it matter if you listen, that I sign "Sincerely" ? Dear Sir or Madam, that letter you forgot to send me that you hand it to me blushing, hoping I'll read it elsewhere. ____________________________________________________________________________ AESTHETICS -- 16 *(for P. B.)* Death is a Bitch's Brew, goes around or under us cuts our legs out as we go unheeding to the Bijou or down the street for a friendly harmless drink. what can any of us imagine: stop smoking, drinking, get in a box? Locks also protect against nothing. we can avoid traffic, the small marvels of travel, sex (possibly) fame (certainly) money and love, but not if they bear up the song THAT is not possible. ___________________________________________________________________________ AESTHETICS - 17 *(after Sassoon)* After a while the dead come back to haunt us in a manner of speaking) we say I'm sorry that it had to end this way. We mean their lives of course and that's a burden They're dead and gone beyond all care and feeling. Once upon a time there was a war and that was painful. Even as I say these things the Moon gets Blue. I'm getting sentimental over you. _____________________________________________________________________________ AESTHETICS - 18 If you will bring me that peach -- If you will just bring me that basket of fruit, cross the room, those flowers -- Then I will kneel. If you will bring me your severe body, ribbons, your leather garments, the straight plumb of your walk Your strange energy -- Then I will behave myself Kneeling . *stand here for me.* Call me your father. say: 'my father' call me 'a bad boy', only touch me, brush into me. Bleed for me. drain yourself for me. (if we could just watch ourselves, just being ourselves in this strange movie. ____________________________________________________________________________ AESTHETICS -- 19 *(from Kraft-Ebing)* Gorgeous the night Gorgeous the false stars on the ceiling, painted, your black room smell of leather and rancid oil and our makeup Gorgeous and black. I'm a stag, your green contact lenses Gorgeous of incense & candle, the real black night thru Venetians a dark green. Handle of no whip but of velvet, your glove pulled, half- moon cuticles of white on your scarlet nails. I stood among a host of friends and was wounded. You went out to meet people and they turned away. Strangely do we touch Gorgeous who were once shunned. And we speak our rules, "Animal Woman" you call me "White Stag" bring a basket plum, apple and pink rose, jar of honey Do we circle Do you call me the magic name here, the black room turned to white light cooking Gorgeous against all pain of surprise. ____________________________________________________________________________ AESTHETICS -- 20 Dickies under the jackets of school boys Cheeks pressed in the eaves of houses a nail head, a chair's legs I stood at the foot of the mountain. *That's where your father hit me with his hatchet* she said. *Oh, right in the* cunt, he said. I complimented her on her dickie and she blushed. You held the head of my spike in your fingers You stabbed out with your velvet stiletto Squeeze *my cherries* you said my *cherries.* She blushed when I complimented her on her dickie her knees gathered the body of the cello You sharpen your soft arrow on the soft blade of my hatchet I stand at the foot of the bed. ____________________________________________________________________________ AESTHETICS -- 21 A little loving is a dangerous thing, a weak knowledge; taste is finally uninvolved. a child has an aversion to spinach he has not eaten. a man leaves the theater after the first act. A little loving is a sure thing to determine freedom uninvolved. taste stands firm against bondage: a dangerous thing. All true knowledge is carnal. ___________________________________________________________________________ AESTHETICS -- 22 Put the anchor in the prow of the boat the boat planes quicker given the weight. up front are intricate ways an increase of speed understandable notions. Think of *the weight of a man's life kept in a balance.* Never stand up in an open boat. Like a term torn from an argument the boat planes quicker, crosses the lake at a distance full of intention -- (this flat body of water (a singular island. A man I think it's a man stands up in an open boat in the middle on balance full of intention -- a term torn from an argument or *his long hair caught, in the grinding engine.* ____________________________________________________________________________ AESTHETICS -- 23 I came to wonder, where had I got this song? Spikes of memory press of a weight of hip on leather only one phrase at first (a shadow figure) minus the lyric. and we were standing under a clear sky in the country watching the moon thru binoculars. It is never isolate of song full blown into consciousness, the ultimate. false sense of judgment of the quality of such things. It was Brubeck, it was *I'm in a dancing mood,* a brief variant of phrase on an alto sax, juice of her wise body I was in. Dumb and exultant we watched the moon come round in binoculars we were touching against each other this snatch of a song came to me. It is never isolate, never a man sitting in aesthetic distance listening to good music: Byrd the early Armstrong; it is continuity. Brubeck, specific tilt and figure of a room in a history, or talk of the full moon which is certainly not art. ___________________________________________________________________________ AESTHETICS -- 24 Given the concerns of these times so common of the way men compromise themselves and their friends, strange that all is not vanity. Their wives are excluded from the act, so sad that we cannot imagine that they touch each other, even that they tilt toward each other in public places. and we lead our lives, O Jaded that we see each one like a structure of belief like an agency, so common at this point in time. ____________________________________________________________________________ AESTHETICS -- 25 If I see blood I will take blood, if a sad case made for lovers an extraction, a black hole I am easily incited. friends die and relatives die and one goes into the street on occasion and accepts any philosophy. deny it: cracked sidewalks, spit, the real and insane lovers of garbage, crude signs and flowers, and beautiful women truly beautiful women. Incited: 'she who doth walk lightly in the midst of garbage' (no good song is an argument. the blood came from her mouth it was beautiful: that arc ah! that color. ___________________________________________________________________________ AESTHETICS -- 26 ... in which my hand took yours and placed it on my body, a risking no less difficult than the touch tho I divide them structured into a manner of speaking that is not touch, but distance your hand, that withdraws itself more or less into language richer than gesture ___________________________________________________________________________ AESTHETICS - 27 It is not that lives are as plastic, the new rich provided by sweat of hard work with money It is not usury. The pen aches and the paper aches, and the rich go forward in cashmere It is not lust or technology. Good things and the lack of them, women and men snowed under: the days of our lives, a clear weight of substance within which floats a snow field but of roses! Today I admired the crystal the plastic holder and had no power to avoid. _____________________________________________________________________________ AESTHETICS -- 28 *(a coda)* Tired of words, the indirection of the times, that enter into the body and make it sick Informed, that people quit their fiends for politics instead of sex or a new life, fundamental in its change -- no way moving out do we come to song, but rhetoric. That place I met you first is still alive in memory at least one place of solid structure we can trust although it lead us forward into complexity and lack. Together we carry a double burden Of dismay, our backs are hunched and bending under it It is a load of words, not song, but shit no marrow oozing from the bones that bear it up -- my love: time and imagination is our lives' deceit, discretion when we should be bold leads into waste and caricature. But that I take your sweet smell and your ointment into my mouth and ears, and wash away my eyes' tricks and the foolishness called subtle wit & judgment, fill by self with body's cure and with its silence and with skin until I can sing again. ___________________________________________________________________________ AESTHETICS (presented here complete) was first published by Membrane Press, Now Light and Dust Books. Copyright 1978 by Toby Olson ___________________________________________________________________________