Ken Bolton
poem, the terrific days of summer
the fabulous limp calligraphy of the afternoons
(the terrific mornings !)
zorro !
*
little rictus , & the mystique of normalcy
*
spiritual miles distant from the thought of you
*
intricate days
terrific, the way Elvin Bishop can make you feel (his guitar) ex-
pansive, & rolling,
with a fabulous 'well-being' type of swagger
in (it)
(him) !!
the months of the year !
( fantastic phrases
blond & profligate, philosphical &
french
the James Dean factor of her silence
the physiology of the day )
the sky : relentlessly unforbidding
sometimes it really seems
as if "girl" is such a whispered gentle word (& that) just
similarly
the function of you (of your lips) is to excite us
endlessly ,when we want, by being available
- your lips look like this!
((days of desire))
desperateness
desperation.
the whole of
a poem
about being desperate.
full of
tension nervousness & summer.
& fitfulness. with things in it like
so nervous I must go out
I go out mail a letter
& to the Wine Bar. there is
no one there I know
& ending, falsely,
"Back home,
with
the third glass I've stopped
shaking
a fabulous soporific blues ( ! )
that is fast / but 'soporific'.
& fabulous clean live jazz !
I listen to Luther Allison sing his slowest version ofRed Rooster
it has a
very down home, on the porch, quality
- a contained relaxed
restlessness.
I play it,
over & over.
*
the air risks itself among her hair & everything
is aroused
the air & things are all aroused & everything, & that.
it was like some sort of 'stuff'.
*
the terrific days of summer
are here again,
already the sun is making the pool rooms
in the British Lion too hot in the afternoon or soon will,
& the carpet stinks of beer again
& parties have begun - Colin's
got a job til Xmas, guaranteed.
lists of adjectrives for days:
-
terrific days,
inelegant days,
eloquent days, days
like spring & days
like summer,
impenetrable days
literal days
the saddest days,
days that are stoical, classical or cool
*
days
which the art
in our mind makes.
days like paintings
-like the Piano Lesson,
like Braque! & terrific days
like Jackson Pollock
*
'hermetic' days .
New photo-realist days
the sort of thing that for some people, presumably,
is conjured by a lawnmower ad on television
( - from the air
we see a man move
from one side of the lawn to the other
- the man wears shorts
& we wear jeans,
- the lawn looks 'lovely'
& we think
summer is
is it really effortless? is it
really so smooth & green?
- or, more dyonisian,
a sprinkler ad
( - on television ) !
)
like your chest is full of brows
suddenly / ceasing
to frown, now smiling.
- like epiphanies in Pop-art films
: "from the sun,
glinting
on his glasses, he optimistically detects
some process like the one that happens
with the flowers (called "photo-something"). -
- they are
growing on some distant hill. (they
make a pattern like Warhol, Renoir or the pattern on the
Tampon packet & this is beauty."
liminary days & days
when the pulse beats furiously.
(the sea)
&now - risky as
rapids "inimical" appears & out of the blue we're
out to sea (past the falls, past the harbour)
diving for / pearls
daring, excited/threatened
,in the deep blue close inimical blue.
the cool ironies
a cool dry irony - real, but brief as anything
is felt
& suddenly our wit, our whole
frame of mind, becomes more acid
( & suddenly (ha! ha!)
the poems of Reverdy
seem mannered )
incredibly
long days.
days
of what must be
a legendary chromaticism; days/
without parallel,
& days, days & days of them, that are all
exactly - the - same
*
frankly stellar
*
the brilliant sunlight more brilliant
than the sunlight is from your view, in your
apartment, is flashing existentially
in the water's blue
bleaching on the shore.
dolorously.
dostoyevsky ?
is of you, is of your
fabulous eyes,
& the smell of your sweat sleeping, in the sheets in the sun.
days without parallel,
of)
let's go sleeping
&)
leaving Bondi beach at dawn :
After, we got into the car & drove. Gary drove very slowly,
sticking to the coast, up & down these hills through the suburban houses that are built along the beaches. It was beautiful, & so slow - the very early sun so that the light hit things & made the houses white or else, down in the valleys, hardly showed at all & they were dark, & on the right, constantly reappearing, the sea & beaches. Sometimes it would fill the whole windscreen; Gary driving at 20 miles an hour; no one saying anything. Louise asleep between us; the car eventually becoming no longer cold but warm.
The sea got bluer & bluer & the beaches were a silvery blonde colour curled around the cliffs of the coast; & every time we came over a hill, it was like a surprise. The view would expand as Gary drove slowly over.
the effect of Donald Brook
the effect of Nigel Roberts.
the effect of Forbes, (the effect
of taking all their personal
effects
&
nailing them to a board & comparing them
& of thinking how that, in effect,
was like summer; &
the
effect
of looking at the city
& knowing
you could / be there.
Chevrolets ! Ferraris !
buses. getting off them & crossing the road.
like the blurred night speech of certainty
imprecate, clamour & insistently (this is the waves, & they do it
of you:) "Anna, ...
*
idolatrous days
*
never-to-be-forgotten days,
& days
that make one totally forgetful
(-the days when one's
important thinking is done; & we don't realize : like film they
take a while to print - & then! hurrah for thinking!
the terrific photos Colin takes then gets developed of us round
our different tables on the nights of the days of summer.
days
full of people (like the film
the longest day);
& a tiny day
- you occasionally get them, recovering from the others,
very small, & where nothing happens.
*
& days as if !
days as if nervous
& days as if
the whole world had stopped for the "pause
that refreshes" & could not get going. days
when walking through Glebe
is so multiplicit
as if everyone actually was 'marvellous'.
as if 'arid'
like a dry sandwich,
as if reproachful
: there are lingering opportunities for things one
must do
& one doesn't do them.
days
as if there is something 'prodigous' that is 'possible'.
& of
walking through Glebe
like an oceanographer. days
that seem as though meant for disaster & we don't care
about it
- all of us race around
doing something together while real 'meaningless' clouds
gather
& the rest of the world / looks awful
(& the next day when you wake it's rain!)
*
there is beer
still, in the glass. we drink the beer
we eat the olive. the day
is clear & grey-y blue, implacably
neither cheerless nor cheerful, & goes past
as the days go past when you are inside
playing pool. at the moment it is out the window,
almost lighthearted & not trying
to be attractive.
in the glass there is beer still. we take the glass. soon
the image of the olive reappears in our brain, almost
or more clearly than reality does
when we react to the concept of . . . . .
--------
from the fridge /
comes a beer, & as one fact supplants another
I lean across & light a match & light /
your cigarette
/ with it (applause). the beer supplants the olive like ...
When
does he get back, & when do we leave?")
we go to sleep & wake up
& spend the night,
which is not hot & clear, doing
'nothing'
- listening
to the Rolling Stones come from blocks away
(through the air ! ! )
- lines, their beauty consisting of their pursuit of the breadth of the page
beautiful & cool & tendril-like (like the arms of cranes above the tallest
buildings of the city.
days like tendrils.
elixir days, days like Miles Davis days /
like Alex Katz
I make another terrific coffee
& slowly decide / that I'll go for a walk
I look up at the sky
between the tin fence three feet away
& the eve overhead
& in the space left by the buildings
next door,
at a huge cloud
which is 'choiring' at me
indicating
that it is 'pregnant'
with ODES TO HISTORY (!) .
I feel great. & the cloud
looks so sententiously
'meaningful', that it tells us nothing in the terrific blue
sky,
which is exactly what I want to hear & when
I come out
again
for a walk, it's gone away.
effectual days
days like
"the mysterious armature of the poem" when I
almost thought he said ARMCHAIR.
"... expressive constriction... That is, he saw the forces at his
disposal - even the colours to which he has the greatest attachment -
as an anatomical source for invoking his personal responses rather
than as a physical enactment of them.
Invocation imposes a spareness
upon the artist's vocabulary & a deviousness upon his performance." o,
groan.
o ! the rules of the poem. glasses of water! ordinariness!
blue!
new theories of political science.
very minute
days!
days of wine & roses.
during the day, a physical thing
- very minute - can happen to you
& you will notice.
a-mazing days! cans
of Reschs pilsener! John's flipping through
Bean Spasms, getting ideas for poems & Anna's here too
doing a drawing
"there's a big difference between /
Bean Spasms
& Meanjin, isn't there" John says
& then he sends up Walter's way of reading : "the name Ossip
comes towards you" ( - I Saw The Name Osip Repeated 5 Times
In Gold,
- I Saw It In A Dream, I think) & now he's reading,
in the voice of
Walter Brennan : " THANKSGIVING
I bought the Maverick last year & my wife
& I are still real happy about it"
& the Bo Diddley record
is over. (ends)
white wine
days
full of tears, the tearful days.
mysterious days.
& days
totally lacking in mystery
living brilliantly
the terrific days of summer.