self-portrait in soft gray mud
He has painted one or two portraits which have turned out well, but he insists on working for nothing. It is a pity that he shows no desire to earn some money because he could easily do so here. But you can't change people. (Steves and Openshaw, 237)
– Theo to his mother about his brother, Vincent van Gogh.
Here in Lansing, Michigan, which is to say if you are reading this: here in the whole width and breath and gasp of the western half of the West, America and beyond, we await the next impressionism movement. Not Impressionism, that funky European style of art with bright saturation and scary faces and exhilaration to love color. No. We are waiting the next big thing, we want to be there to declare how much we love van Gogh, how much we love slasher movies or Pet Rocks or whatever it was our ancestors ignored, scorned and shunned. Make no mistake, people didn't "get" Impressionism. We do not want that to happen to us. To be seen as prosaic, pedestrian, earthbound. To let another van Gogh slip through our hands while we obsess about what is "in." What is "now." It is so now. Like mud. I am earthbound. I am pedestrian. I am prosaic. I am like mud. That is why my poetry does not sell.
If you look at a van Gogh painting, take his Self-Portrait with Gray Hat, it is hard to imagine the future as it is now from those lines. It is hard to imagine anyone taking those lines so seriously that they'd spend their lives hunting for the next impression instead of making, doing crafting their own lines. It is all about crafting our own lines. It doesn't matter what. We say so much. The trick is to do something, anything, effortlessly and yet with a hint of mystery to it. Like breathing a clay body to life. It doesn't matter what you think, you still need mud to do it. Mud and words. Words and all this mud.
To heal. Words
to heel. On a leash.
For a bone. On my
boots mud. In this
mud, boots. What
doesn't depress me
makes me weak all
I ever wanted were
boots maybe a cape
maybe gloves but
boots instead I got
an alphabet who needs
words when a drum,
when this breathing
slows, slows, slows,
up to my chin, in
a hole, in mud, in
my mud, this mud
all this blasting
snow, up to my chin,
and shadows, my feet
dangling below, up to
my chin and then what
came? no wolf. no
crow. up to my chin
in riot glow, in shadow,
up to my chin to be
woke, to be a wake,
awoken by a snore,
by rain, by rain-glow.
Who needs alphabets?
Who needs this process
of words? Who needs
to heal from this
pointless, pointless
game? Across the frozen
ground. Mud.
My mud. This mud.
All this mud.
Work Cited
Steves, Rick and Gene Openshaw. Rich Steve's Mona Winks. Emeryville, CA: Avalon Travel (2001)