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disgraced during the war, or forgotten by everyone.
Posterity, let us hope, is overrated.
Crafty as ever, Pablo will outlive me, yet who can say that either of us shall survive to influence future generations?
Who would dare predict that any work of art will last,
that anything touched by the hand of man will live beyond the stench of this murderous, mirror-painted century of pain?
Mike: Hydrogen Bomb Test (1952)
mike
x-ray x-ray x-ray
moth dog sugar moth dog sugar
diablo diablo diablo diablo diablo diablo
whitney grable whitney grable whitney grable
wheeler easy john yoke huron able dormouse yeso wahoo
magnolia magnolia magnolia magnolia magnolia magnolia
starfish prime starfish prime starfish prime starfish prime starfish prime
cactus yellowwood frigate bird mohawk franklin priscilla union kepler
oak juniper fig quince tobacco rose oak juniper fig quince tobacco rose
umbrella umbrella umbrella umbrella umbrella umbrella umbrella
tumbler-snapper buster-jangle tumbler-snapper buster-jangle
vesta oberon rushmore evans wigwam plumbbob hardtack redwing
fishbowl sunbeam tightrope fishbowl sunbeam tightrope
anvil antler shrew boomer mink fisher gnome mad ringtail
armadillo armadillo armadillo armadillo armadillo
danny boy hudson ermine hognose
dead
nectar
how how how how
eel
white
black
marshmallow
haymaker climax checkmate
Frida Kahlo: Self-Portrait with Death Mask and Amputated Limb (1953)
my owl my awfulness my Aztec mask
my plaster casts my mummery my idolatrous army
my bandages my blackbird wings my needle and thread
my orb weaver my spider monkey my widow’s web
my veins my serum my hopelessness my sorrows
my homicide begged and suicide borrowed
my formaldehyde my morpho butterflies my museum pieces
my necklaces my décolletage my umbilicus my sex
my power and my fruitfulness my useless caresses
my shorn hair my despair my convalescence
my still life my gangrenous dreams my stump my spine
my calvary my reaper my shock of corn
my crown of thorns my laurel wreath my curse
my mirror-muse my noose my bloodthirsty nurse
Akira Kurosawa: Seven Samurai (1954)
Now rain. Now chrysanthemums. Now the barley harvest.
Now mud as if the feudal age will never end.
Now hoofbeats, dust in calibrated shafts of stable light,
dragonflies above the stream, the mill wheel turning
and turning as if the feudal age will never end.
Ink, blood, smoke, rice seedlings, always the wind
and the forest which would consume it all—
village and field and social order,
devotion to illusions for which one need never apologize.
Sanctity, honor, the sublime.
Once more we survive.
Picasso & Françoise Gilot (1955)
Picasso
Why is the world so strangely literal, why are people so simpleminded in their desire for consistency?
If I say one thing now, and later another, it may be mere whim or an erosion of long-held belief—it is not a lie
unless I wish to deceive, and even then I often tell lies merely to add color to a boring conversation.
In the arena of color I have long admitted my inferiority to Matisse, news of whose death has reached me today.
He was the master of emerald and viridian, while I dabble pigment on canvas as a chef adds salt to shellfish soup.
Yet it is no lie to say I am the greatest matador in the world, even if the one bull I never vanquished bears Matisse’s name.
In my art I am not only a hero but a god, yet in my life neither; I do not deny my failings, though fate has played its tricks upon me.
With Eva, perhaps, I might have remained content forever, and all the endless difficulties with women that followed,
their needs and jealousy, their mewling infants, everything I have sacrificed to wives and lovers might have been salvaged.
That was my chance, turning thirty in Montparnasse, solvent and unassailable—then the war began its parade of death,
my father and Apollinaire gone, the good dog, Frika, beautiful Eva taken by cancer, even Cubism fell to the epidemic.
No, I did not triumph over Matisse, nor was I defeated: I avoided the corrida that afternoon, staying home to draw doves and whores.
Françoise
Inevitably I question if I was a fool
to have given him what I did,
unconditional love and devotion
expecting nothing in return.
No—I was headstrong and drunk
on liberty as only the young can be,
before Claude and Paloma
and all that transpired between us.
It was enough, at first, to feel free,
to be with Pablo and support his work
and live within its aura, enabling
and participating in greatness.
But for Pablo love was a role to play,
like a spoiled toddler trying on attitudes,
a mask he soon tired of
and threw down in selfish outrage.
He would not harm an animal
but he would gouge a person with words
and think nothing of it,
as with Olga and Dora Maar,
as with Chagall in Saint-Jean-Cap-Ferrat,
destroying a friendship
of thirty years over lunch on a whim.
Pablo will die a child, his soul
untouched by true feeling.
You were a Venus when I met you,
he said to me, at the end.
Now you are a Christ.
No—I am a somnambulist
seeking to escape
the clutches of a despotic dream.
If cruelty is a prerequisite for immortality
then perhaps Pablo will live forever,
as he so violently desires.
If waking up brings freedom,
I am free.
Mao: On Freedom (1956)
Struggle is eternal, peace ephemeral, and conflict
the necessary means of resolving dialectical contradictions.
Therefore dissent is essential, and so I
have said to the people
let one hundred opinions contend,
let one hundred flowers bloom.
Of course, students eagerly seize such opportunity
to debate and contest their opinions,
forming political groups with romantic names
like Bitter Medicine, Wild Grass, Spring Thunder,
affixing wall posters and launching oratorical attacks upon the Party
for practicing “feudal socialism”
in an “arbitrary and tyrannical” fashion.
Well do I remember the enthusiasms of youth
and the danger they pose to the state.
So much has been sacrificed for the People’s Republic.
I myself have lost two wives and two brothers,
Xiao Mao and his sisters, even my grown son, Anying,
killed by the American Imperialists in Korea.
Thus, untethered from human attachment,
I am like a shepherd
watching over his flock at all hours.
In the absence of warfare there is little but sex
to occupy my nights
in the Study of Chrysanthemum Fragrance
with girls selected for beauty and Party credentials
from the Cultural Work Troupes or the Bureau of Confidential Matters,
sometimes three at once in my oversized bed.
It is dangerous to accord too much power to any individual,
and were it not for my own inviolability
I would fear for China, as under Emperors of the past.
Old age is a tireless foe, but my fame as commander
is based on guile and patience—
draw the enemy in deep, then counterattack.
If instead of fragrant blossoms
the people confront us with poisonous weeds
what choice have we but to chop them down?
Elvis Presley (1957)
Here comes the train, Elvis is thinking, that must be the train
I been waiting on, coming out of the darkness now
swirling like floodwaters around him, out of the darkness
and over the muddy river, down from the hills, out and down
and over the river, cast from shadows, wrung from the ink of it,
rolling all night through Mississippi, through Tennessee,
cross those hills and along the creeks and silent valleys,
past sweat-collared towns on soft-paved roads
with the crossing light flashing, past cotton fields and carpet mills
and hog pens and dented corncribs, clatter and rattle
coming down the line, coming round the bend,
echo and reverb in the hollow body of that torn-raw country,
Elvis is tapping his fingers restlessly, alone in the moonlight
on the darkened platform, Elvis is never alone,
where’s the Colonel, he wonders, where’s the fellas tonight,
Elvis is eating a hamburger at Chenault’s Drive-In,
Elvis is eating mashed potatoes and brown gravy
and fried chicken and his mama’s special coconut cake,
Elvis is shopping for clothes at Lansky’s with all the sharp dressers,
the Colored folks who have an eye for that stuff,
an eye and an ear and a style Elvis honors and amplifies,
Elvis is driving all night to the next gig with Bill and Scotty,
the next roadhouse or Elks club or high school auditorium,
stopping the car to buy firecrackers at every stand they pass,
Elvis is headed to Shreveport, Omaha, Jacksonville, Houston,
Elvis is headed to Iuka, Mississippi, and Leechville, Arkansas,
and all the little towns and cities scattered across Texas,
Roy Orbison catches the show in Odessa,
Buddy Holly in Lubbock,
Elvis is onstage snarling and yelping and fucking with them,
strutting, tomcatting, spitting his gum into the audience,
Elvis is acting the fool, the bad boy, a punk in a kelly green suit
and the shoes of a divorce court lawyer
and the hair of a truck driver and the voice of a hillbilly
and the swivel of a Beale Street bluesman,
surly and longing and swaggering and joyous
as if to erase the centuries of dust and brute labor,
as if to eviscerate his people’s long history of desperation
and Depression and war and impoverishment,
though not of the soul, surely, for he loves Jesus as a brother,
like a fire, that spirit, like a candle, that devotion,
that desire, that honey-coated tongue of longing,
what does he want, what does he want
popping handfuls of sleeping pills at the Sahara,
blacking out the windows with tinfoil and masking tape,
what is he hungering for if not the rhinestone glitter
of the cat’s-eye in the ice cubes spilled in red dirt,
searching everywhere for that sparkle and shine,
for the quicksilver he’s been chasing since he first felt it
walking the streets of Memphis at night so long ago,
singing spirituals in church, driving his motorcycle
fast and reckless with a girl’s arms around him,
June and Dixie and Anita and Priscilla,
searching for something he has never been able to name,
even in the only language he has ever spoken with fluency,
music, the upsurge of song, the seizure and release of it,
searching for beauty in a world of tarnish and obligation,
a world of homespun dresses and Formica countertops,
searching in Tupelo, in Beverly Hills, in the cold Kentucky rain,
Elvis is courteous and deferential and patriotic,
Elvis is posing for publicity stills, gracious and patient,
Elvis is a natural, Elvis is eager to please,
Elvis is eating crowder peas and burnt-crisp bacon,
Elvis is in three movies a year, real Hollywood movies,
Elvis is a gunslinger and Elvis is a race-car driver
a pilot a photographer a soldier a tuna fisherman,
Elvis can hardly bear to sing the songs
for the sound track album, man, this shit is awful,
Elvis is water-skiing, playing touch football,
Elvis is renting out the Rainbow Rollerdrome for his cronies,
Elvis is pranking everyone at the studio with a joy buzzer,
even the head of RCA Records, the Colonel
nods his disapproval, not the place or time for it, son,
the Colonel with his percentages and dimestore stogies,
Elvis is watching the yellow vinyl 78s emerge from the press
at Buster Williams Plastic Products on Chelsea Avenue,
“That’s All Right b/w Blue Moon of Kentucky,”
you can’t knock success, now, I’m just thankful to the fans,
thankful my mama and daddy brought me up right,
thankful I could rise above the trials and circumstances,
Elvis is eating it up, Elvis is having a ball, Elvis is dying
to escape the little house on Lamar Avenue
with his daddy fixing the car on the lawn out front,
to escape his mama with her peanut butter and banana sandwiches
and her pains and her never-ending worry for her boy,
Lord knows how much he loved her
but the world is bursting into flames now, Mama,
the world is igniting with all the glory of teenage desire,
as if his heart was on fire with it, burning up with it,
shouting and bellowing, praising and inciting it,
throwing gasoline onto his own funeral pyre,
as if fame were an act of self-immolation,
the world is opening the throttle and rattling down the rails
because there has to be somewhere to get to,
he can feel it in the balls of his feet,
in the stutter and dip of knee and hip, he can see it
and hear it there, across the street, across the river,
coming round the bend, coming down the line,
Elvis loved his mama but the Lord called her to Him,
SHE WAS THE SUNSHINE OF OUR HOME
they engraved on her tombstone and it was the truth,
Elvis loved his mama even when she understood
that her boy was changing and slipping away,
that she was losing him to the lure of show business,
maybe you ought to come back to Memphis and drive the truck
for the electric company again, son, despite all the money,
how the Colonel would chortle at that, well now,
the Colonel with all his machinations and glib charm,
that’s a lot of money to turn your back on, Mizz Gladys,
maybe we better ask Elvis what he makes of all this,
now Mama, there’s nothing wrong with being famous,
everybody wants to be famous, that’s just how it is,
but already the girls are scrawling their numbers in lipstick
on the side of the Cadillac wherever he parks it,
already they wait day and night outside the gates
for an autograph, for a wave, for a glimpse,
and it is not quite natural, she sees, their desire
to touch and to worship him, her darling boy,
to wipe the sweat from his brow and tear his clothing to tatters,
to rend, to salve, to proclaim, to glorify,
fetishism is not a word in her vocabulary, why should it be,
how could she know, how could any of them imagine
that America would feast upon his body,
devour him like wasps consuming a rotten pear,
there is no rock and roll until he ennobles it,
there is no Baby Boom until he enables it,
there is no cultural commodification until he embodies it,
there is no cult of celebrity until he enacts it,
Elvis is kissing Natalie Wood, kissing Ann-Margret,
Elvis is on The Ed Sullivan Show watched by 82 percent of the US of A,
Elvis is tossing his ruby-jeweled eagle cape into the crowd,
Elvis is demonstrating karate moves at the studio in Nashville,
tape is rolling and the band is getting restless, they haven’t cut a single song,
Elvis is a prisoner of the merchandise and syringes,
the gold sequins and white leather furniture,
Elvis is nodding off at the table, falling asleep
with scrambled eggs slipping down his face,
one of the boys rushes over to fix him up,
Elvis is staring into the yard behind Graceland
at the motorcycles and chicken coop and the pillars
around the swimming pool shining in the moonlight,
Mama won’t be feeding them chickens no more, son,
his daddy told him, the day they laid her in the grave,
Mama won’t be feeding them chickens no more,
Elvis is riding through his mother’s tulip bed
on the lawnmower just for a lark, how she hollered at him,
hollered and then laughed, everybody laughing,
they’d just moved into Graceland, he bought it for her,
Elvis is crying, Elvis is swallowing pills by the dozen—
Demerol and Placidyl, codeine and Dilaudid—
but the pain won’t go away, the sorrow and confusion
and the sound of the train coming closer,
everything is clouds and fog and darkness on the platform,
silver light against swirling shadows, like a movie screen,
Elvis loves the pictures, loves the velvet mythos of it,
