In tribute to Anne D'Hanconcourt by Valery Oisteanu

Remembering Anne D’Harnoncourt
Valery Oisteanu
Poets & Artists Surrealist Society


Poetic coincidence? Unlikely
You were born three days after me, September 7th, 1943
The artsy-Virgos have a special role in art history
We met at the Dal’-Centennial 2004 in St.Petes/Tampa
Her story was a golden one, from MoMA to Dada
To the underworld of Surrealists and Abstract Expressionists
Anne the quintessential collector and guardian of avant-garde
Duchamp spun the magic wheels for “the tall girl”
His ghost is still a host of the Philadelphia Museum of Art
Anne has a rendezvous with Marcel and Alexina -Teeny
In the basement by Étant donnés’ door
Which hides many ethereal white shadows
Brancusi waves his hat: “Welcome to the Avant-Gods!”
CŽzanne paints a peach inside a giant peach
Dal’ brings his soft piano as a present
Dal’-spectrum shines as a halo above her head
Alfred Stieglitz and John Cage create Silence for you
Frank Gehry running with drawing to catch you
The vision of an architectural expansion of PMA
Frida Kahlo and Lee Miller salute you
For breaking cracks in the gender-ceiling
Bravely educating Philadelphians
Without breaking a sweat
Exiting quietly, suddenly, June 1st, ‘08
New summer moon is broken
We pray for you Anne d’Harnoncourt,
The Saint of artists and a Captain of art.


Valery Oisteanu: zendadanyc@earthlink.net
Copyright © 2008 (Valery Oisteanu).
Journal of Surrealism and the Americas 2:2 (2008), 253

Practicing the blues for you

check me getting blue to write for you

trying to figure it out but can't

my first try at tanka

I went on the internet to read about tankas and then tried my hand at it. Tell me tanka readers, does this make it?

Trees Love Me Tanka

I'm warm in here
Out there it's
20 degrees
the trees
are confused

They ask me
If they should
bud or go bare
they're aware
yesterday

Was 50 degrees
Today it’s snowing
My heart is
Virulent
Like the weather

REWRITTEN  

I'm warm in here 

Out there it's 20 degrees

the trees are confused

They ask me

if they should bud or go bare

They're aware yesterday 

Was 50 degrees

Today I'm clueless

My heart is virulent 

Like the weather

Blog Postings & More

I don't want you all to think I'm not writing, I am. I'm just slow to posting (forgive the pun) write now. Thoughts come and go, my life comes and goes, take care & hope to see you there. (hey Coyote, did you steal that line from me or I from you) I have it in a previous post, 15 Minutes of Fame.
I've written 2 more blues poems that I'm still thinking about. I promised myself to write a series & to sing a few lines when I read. This is very difficult as my Dad was a musician (indeed his entire family were musicians) & Dad always told me I'm tone deaf but DubbleX has me convinced I'm far from it. DubbleX pointed out I always recognize a sour note!
I'm also considering removing my gcast player from way back where it is on the beginning of my blog and putting it in a new entry up front where it's more accessible. This way people who have already listened can turn it on & off more easily instead of searching for it. Really at this point, there's so many writings on my blog that friends of mine have commented that they keep trying to keep up with my writing but there's too much there. I could just recycle everything.
Let me tell you what's going on. It's 27 degrees out and I'm trying to force myself to go to the Post Office & pick up a few things, but I haven't left the house since Sunday last. Am I crazy? I never denied it.
Artistically, I have been producing poetry but neglecting my novel and I'm up to page 183. Also the CEO of Augustus asked me to submit another short story for Lipstick Diaries II but I haven't gotten around to it yet. I am also supposed to put together a poetry manuscript for him plus I have a childrens' story and my artist needs to give me the drawings or we may lose this deal. Hear that Heather Levy? I also am helping Bernard Alain with The Cartier Street Review. In addition, Roxanne Hoffman from Poets Wear Prada Press offered DubbleX & I a chapbook deal which I am more inclined to work on right now & get together than the full length book of poetry.
The other thing I always do is remember others. When I get requests for submissions I look them over and pass them on to people that they seem appropriate for. I also started the fan club for Ira Lightman, and yikes, how it's grown. Get the point? I like sharing. That's what makes life worthwhile. On that note I encourage you to check out Renee Dwyer's blog, Pocketing the Anvil.

COUNT YOUR BLESSINGS

Over the last three years,
three women tried to steal my sperm
one was true, she really loved me
she wanted to birth my baby,
I agreed cause I loved her

The other two said
they were on the pill
They just lied
I’m tellin’ you this
cause I know you’re concerned
you’re my very best friend
and I have to get it off my chest

And I’ll tell you right now:
I forbid you to put this in a poem,
I have dominant genes
for some recessive disease,
that although I don’t have it
my children will

Almost all the men in my family
are blinded by this malady
It’s a plague that eats away their sight
It starts in mid to late thirties
they’re stoned blind by fifty

So when Renee, the love of my life
says she wants to have my babies
I had a feeling I never had before:
that overwhelming primal urge
to shoot my sperm within her loins

and watch it swell into a baby
but when we tried
the seed failed to fertilize
And I discovered I was sterile

GOD HELP ME, I WAS DESPONDENT
EITHER WAY, I COULDN’T WIN GENETICALLY

Now I’m brokenhearted
Renee I loved and would’ve married
But she returned to her former lover
and implored him
to seed her female garden

Since then Renee begged me
to remain her friend
and I did because I
didn’t want her to think
I wasn’t man enough to do that
And to this day
I still love her

Now, I’ve got three to take her place
But don’t worry,
Let me set your mind at ease
I can’t be tricked into
being a blind progenitor
and I mean that both ways

I know I should be grateful
But none of them excite me
And although it’s satisfying,
I’m very lonely
for the woman of my dreams

I Sing The Blues For You Today ~ FIRST BLUETRY

I want to do poetry like Billy Holiday singing the blues
I want to do poetry like Ella Fitzgerald
I want to be me singing my holiday blues
Billie’s songs are poetry so fine it makes me think I’m her doing rhyme
Thoughts about Billie make me go off line, hook line & sinker; she puts me back in time
I sing to my lover, I want to make your poetry mine because you spout rhymes
Observing my life become an unending grocery list of things to get done
Your life or mine, yours is on my mind - the list of to dos keeps growing exponentially
Number 1, try out a mattress, 2, buy it, 3, buy new locks to keep someone out number 4, find someone to install it, make 10 million calls. Keep writing lists. What did you say? How many sessions, any lessons in storage? Will the Divine power of intervention help?
I don’t want to bore you with the details and derail you from my song.
Damn, wonder if I’ll ever see Willa Dean again– oh man, you know the women I mean
Kept her head wrapped up like an African Queen with her creamy coffee looking self.
Willa said the secret to good potato salad is to go heavy on the mayo
Willa Dean days, they’re all in a haze now. I was so high back then.
The memory lingers, listening & watching while she told stories. She’d whisper, her voice barely a breeze, tell me about her lovers, say, “I’m gonna get me some.” … I’d get confused & asked, did she mean her husband or lover. Willa’d have dinner waiting when her husband got tired of driving a cab & came home to rest. She’d show me wilted lettuce and bring it back to life telling me about her lovers, drugs, & children while making potato salad.
I thought - she’s a woman of many talents, a stoned cold junkie and a working mom combined
The nose that knows, her preference was coke, good moist coke at a good right price too on the upper - upper west side in Washington Heights, 162nd street to be exact
Willa was friends with a famous New York jazzman and his wife, a New York City teacher. Willa had class & style combined; she took me to dress models at the Ritz one time. Got paid for it too. It was such a pleasure to do. I even got a pair of designer gloves out of it.
People accepted Willa everywhere we went –
We were at jazzman’s apartment, small tight crowded living room upper west side 90’s.
Willa’s friend sat across from me staring at my big breasts. I can see how tight your muscles are.
Let me massage you she said aggressively
hurting me so bad physically we had an argument instead.
Passing through hundreds of lives so many colors
Let me take you back to what we share - strivings for love – wanting to go somewhere –
Wanting to discover who we really are ~
see ourselves through the eyes of others and – finally see who we really are.
Extend this power to the umpteenth degree. We still wonder who they think we are ~
Uncover recover to turn to return to who we want to be
Dreams are reality - stop thinking, dreams are the color of my true love’s hair
Beyond the color of my true love’s hair, his dreads caress my bare hands
A whole-years grocery list pressed into a foggy mist of autumn red
turns bright chartreuse before bleakly the list dissolves before my eyes
True colors make my heart sneeze amidst a perpetual mist of violet-blues
a dream more real than a memory

The Furrier and Me

Tuesday I wore that small and pretty feathered hat
Kathy and later Judy asked, where did you
buy that hat? It was oblong, covering only
the top of my head in a thick four inch band
that curved cylindrically down to my ears

Rightly it seemed they should've asked, when
did you buy that hat, because it was nearly twenty
years ago and although I knew very clearly where
I had bought it, I didn't tell them. That store doesn't
even exist today, and I'm sure the old man
who sold it to me is no longer alive anymore
... I thought about all this and never said it

The old man must've been in his seventies, back then
Tall and slender, bent by time and hunched
he made an impression on me and helped
me realize seventy year old men
are as lecherous as young ones.

It was a small furrier shop on 27th Street
near Broadway in the New York furrier's district
The store looked deceptively small from the outside
with a plate glass window through which
I stared at the display of beautiful, furry things
inside that I wanted, such as big, red bushy
fox fur ear muffs so I rang the bell
resting near the lock on the iron gate

He buzzed me in and came out
of a metal cage to greet me
Over his left shoulder the view opened
to show a space - big, wide open, and deep
Everything fur you could imagine
coats, jackets, stoles, of all sizes
shapes and colors, and he told me how

now-a-days he sold some new furs
not so many as years gone by, now he
traded old for new, sold used and antique
He did a booming storage business

He asked how he could help me and when I
said I came in for the bushy red ear muffs,
he offered them for cheap or free if I
would only let him touch me, so I bought
a small ratty old sable stole for 15 dollars and paid
10 dollars more for the ear muffs and at that moment

I spied that golden auburn feathered cap
and put it on and it was mine
It fit so well, styled for another age
but looked as though it were made for me
which even the old man could see
He said you can have that for 10 dollars more
So I took that hat with me and have
worn it specially several times a year

That hat is the bargain of my lifetime
I'll use it, re-use it till one of us goes off -
I thought about that shop often but never
went inside again although I wanted to
and even passed by occasionally
but still I never did go in again
Now he's dead so long ago
I've lost my chance to ever get those
marvelous irreplaceable
bargains I'm sure I'll never see again

Now I'm sorry I didn't go back, take a
chance to see that crazy old coot again,
to bargain with him, put him in his place
... I know I didn't answer your question
- So in case you're still wondering -
... I never - ever - let him touch me

philosophical meanderings

Psychological warfare inside my head
Yeah I heard it before
Been there before - done that Mary Lou says I’m not interested
Sorry to admit I am, I’m not you I do my shit a different way
Interested or not what difference does it make if you brag to me you been down this road before and it didn’t get you anywhere

My option or yours
This road - that one - you have your choice I'll make mine
One road or another - not as much overhead as you suppose
You run a risk here or there
That fork in the road I finally get it’s not so much about you or what I do, in the end it’s about the struggle the good fight the light at the end of the tunnel

Don’t fuck with my feelings
I didn’t commit murder
I’m not meandering about your tender feelings

People keep telling me retirement is bliss
I’m thinking it’s same-o - same-o – day-to-day shit - can I get a witness - it's just different this shit than the before the day before this shit -
See! a new philosophy
Living means having problems

15 Minutes of Fame

A moment opens to eternity

Fastidious & attached to passing moments
I live in Warhol days
An open heart mends wounds
Are you for or against them?
What’s your political game?
Everyone's got his15-minutes of fame
Are you on their side or mine?
Is it them or is it us
Is there an us anymore
Who is us anymore anyway
Anywhere I’m supposed to know?
Did you know …
My headache keeps me awake to cover the worldwide news
An open wound
Nightly sound of the evening news
A bleeding ulcer seeking to be healed
Closer to home news too,
All news is bad news
Except the rescued puppy thrown in to control you
A news-forecast makes everything worse –
Ignore the news a week or two
Say your regards to Pluto
Ignore my bleak forecast of doom
All of us are doomed
As we all are doomed anyway
The more you do - the more gets done
When you stop doing there’s no more to get done
Another open wound
Always the dream remains of
Another go-round
Take care
Hope …
To see you there
If & when there is another go-round