EVERYONE A PARSIFAL
You have just entered the room;
Our eye contact is a moment old
But my face retains the expression
It held long before you appeared;
There’s a flicker of actual time—
Persuasion in a void of reason
Or reality without consequences;
There’s an art to doing nothing
As something for something—
A revelation of ordinary love
In majestic images that cure me
Of art for art’s sake—a oneness
Of abstract form and feeling—
A spy forever in enemy territory.
HYPERION
Reverence for a lit match
Plays portal to the volcano—
The funeral pyre pulls us in,
Destruction in renewal charts
A course to force the door
Of a furnace open and enter
Into the mystery of its fire—
Burnt head a globe of pure
Intelligence freely wasted,
The body wears a burning
Gown with dazzling folds—
In the heart of fire, death
Is no longer death consumed
By fire saying farewell to fire.
—
Artwork: Brian DeGraw, "Drifter ( unquantized )," oil, tempera, flashe on unprimed canvas, 76 x 84 in., 2023. Photograph by Steven Probert.
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