as though we dreamed it.
1.
I was watching over his shoulder,
listening as he whistled dryly through pursed lips
squinting through wire rim glasses,
his lines believing
exactly what they meant,
He was up there in the shaded studio
the blaring opera and fanned out brushes
I’d never seen so many before,
the model on the couch, arched her back
he was painting seemingly with no mind,
painting after painting, piling up
“COLOR not value,” he exclaimed --
always exuberant life
that Almadon bottle, emptied
on his birthday, I remembered
a summer evening, there were lobsters and salad,
going on with the never ending fervor for Art,
it had no definition in those days
it was life itself, it was hard to separate--
we were out there in the woods
I loved every thing about that life
there was his daughter
posed upon the rock
by the lake, the swimming raft and
the dining hall bell ringing over the water
the paintings were unloaded from the car
they were back from a trip to Quebec
a horse in a corral, blue green mountains
as layers going off --
looked like Maine to me! It has always stuck
in my mind-- always the picture I wanted
to make, so seemingly unmade
just there, as "Vermont throws itself together,"
and so obvious
I was a lucky part of this life.
a trailer of cats and chairs
Oh! and the-- chaise,
all loaded up for that life we would remember
Out in Long Island-- I was shingling
a roof that kept the old paintings dry
an old shed, some paintings from the 60’s
this was 1972-- dark Cubist looking
things from the workshop of Leger
looking like Picasso
easy to see why one wouldn’t want
to continue that, with
this out of doors color at hand,
this classic America,
right here, in the back yard
the pond across the way-- the motif
continuing under the table,
connecting the sky
the row of trees, and the dead one
the hill rising up from behind
the summer’s days chugged on, clouds
off the ocean to the bay beach
hot days followed by evenings
the speakers blaring Jelly Roll
from uncut grass
big glasses of vodka and ice
doused in pepper,
how could one forget
the paintings, still so alive
and happening, the beach-- painting
into evening, the barbecue smoking,
turning with paint stained hands
the hamburgers, the last swim
and packing up the strewn beach,
the house hummed at night, the radio
"WINS news time all the time"
always these amazing breakfasts, the left over
steak cut with sharp knife through cold fat--
coffee, that chickory smell from Louisiana
that summer there was the Watergate trials
seemingly taking over every thing
a constant buzz, between
fishing the blues,
the kyack there in the middle
of the Montauk highway--
rocking back and forth--
as the new age came forth,
our bicycles now losing, against
the steady tide of cars
the Montauk highway--
and Granny and Trapp's routine
Trapp and his lawn mowers
always another to fix, it seemed
the frustration, kept the paintings coming,
the Benson Gallery and fall
was in the air, a last party
at the Freilicher's,
Larry always commanding
in that world, the attention with a broken
something or patch on his eye
time to get going when Kenneth
tipsy-- stepped up to the diving board,
and we took a last walk to the beach instead,
watching, the progress of the receding dunes,
the big houses,
Sail a Way—
2.
tumbling into the ocean
wasn’t that the house that was driven--
moved down the beach?
another was designed by a naval architect
that’s why it looked like a ship, he said
Jan Tripp, the Pan Am guy--
so many stories going
into one, the late summer bred
those perfectly peeling waves
small body surfing waves
just peeling off into the orange sun
at Georgica Beach
We’re all back in Manhattan, now
and the Figurative Alliance is starting up
We had an enthusiasm for all this stuff
fueled by a thrill of some romantic
future, that there was a job
to be done and only we knew it--
but it was a funny mix of ignorant
frenzy, spouting of false wisdoms
the enthusiasm true
I think he was the only one that ever said
anything memorable down there at those meetings,
I could remember, anyhow-- he
bouncing off Siani
who steadily grew apart of what ever--
as a side to take,
the artists from the real world
dropped their neat packages and ran
we loved to heckle them,
this was "our" world, a world away
and safe from the likes of--
HA! away from
the tidy minimal,
and the stained abstraction,
Saved!
and we drowned
in a fueled hope
a whole cast of sorry characters
memorialized
in that huge Whitney painting, a monument
of all those free from the criticism
of any-- real critical--
thought, the dreamed of, triumphed --
well, I bought it — whole hog
I was straight from the
small town American, dream-- too
this was the big time to me
The news was blaring as we ate
Oh, my God! the MELTDOWN was real
amazing moments-- we really
wondered if we’d have to escape--
the nuclear plume,
we would escape with our lives,
still somehow
free from the rest,
The dark brown interior
the light leaking in to nourish the rubber plants
stringing their way through,
This was nature
here in the city,
Paul and Lisette in an embrace--
I had to get my own life some how
that Taxi driving wasn’t it, maybe this
janitors job at that church--
really wanted that loft
a place to surround myself
with those paintings
Summer always came and it was assured
I could go somehow, a shack by the beach,
tattoo Ernie
crawling into the window--
I had no studio so I built the fences
to paint on, Paul helped me
we found the wood out in the Northwest woods
he told me stories of the Whites
and all their kids, too
and the rain for two weeks straight
Al Held painted the spaces between the trees
out there a dog barked us away
and I forget
the other story of that place, maybe the fresh
oysters from the mud, I could never find?
Fairfield was there in the backyard
he turned around to paint the cars
the Ford and Plymouth
he was pretty quiet,
Paul was painting his portrait
his flushed cheeks, boyish cowlick
that old retriever at his feet, limped up
to play with the first Hoppy
I forget which, just that when he was hit
by the car, the cat sniffed the spot or I think
that was the second Hoppy, sniffing
and hopping off Happy, to see the kitten
was gone, Paul having buried her
that morning
from where she also was killed,
the Montauk highway took a lot away
traffic light blinking in the fog
3.
that was the summer my
Dad called to say Mom died
Hank and Roy where out there
Patty and Susan helping to make the scene
Patty stretched out over the table
in the farmers field, the pressing reality
of the world revealing
that we would never have this idyllic
world for ourselves,
not even be able to paint it
Carlos was out there watching
Bugs Bunny with a Millers beer and thimble of Night Train--
climbing out the window and off
we were to the Talk House, running around
in the moon light, the ocean’s waves
over nude bodies, what
a scene, pebbles thrown
up to sleeping windows,
running around in the night
we went on
fishing, beaching, summers
after another, it would never stop,
there
was always another barn to paint in,
we thought
the spinning world,
speeding on
one sleepy morning,
a limousine pulled up, outside
I put my dirty old paintbox in the trunk,
the black car sped
on to Carnegie Hall and, poo’r Light’ng--
and Clifton Chenier, there was no turning back
from this
the figure in the barn I could hardly
make out in the dusk as we drew on--
I asked Jane about Larry, she glared at me
I guess she thought I knew more
he was a hero to me in the other world
of that Alex Katz like, Rosenberg party
the Artist as Critic--
all Paul ever talked about was being
unself-conscious--
in fact that was the battle with Siani--
no one would ever believe the story
about the SHARK at least seventeen feet,
as long as the Folboat, or that oar busted
over my forehead, as the wave crashed over
us, trying to get out in the surf --
though Lisette, saw it happen!
“Which way 's, Spain?”-- Paul yelled
and another feast
into the future
Who wouldn't want all this? The stillife flying—
taking off for France,
all the old masters
revolving, around, Pompeii,
those Villa mysteries
Massacio, and Giotto, Piero, Mantegna
Titian and Veronese,
Bosch and Breugel
the pictorial ideas, gospels,
something to believe
just desire--
Paul seemed to
have it all over Fairfield
and Jane and although I didn’t realize, there
wasn’t a contest
Porter so understated, off with Anne
and Jimmy, the Swenk’s…
it was the point
the milk carton, icon
of the simple morning arriving
the hero located in the every day,
all doubts, faded paint and touch
the overturned book of Wallace Stevens
poems and the afternoon nap
one day into the next
Jane’s fish and kittens into cats
city into summer, following the mists
of ocean softening every thought
and perception--
Long Islands humid pastel influence
the heroic figures danced
and frolicked
in the Sagaponac field
the landscape and stillife into one,
the figures, the final say-- mythic figures
against the pressures
of reality, Nixon and Kent State
Martin Luther King, Bobby Kennedy
Lisette paving the future with banquets
which made us the kings, though
the field across the way is a horse farm, now
they’re growing grapes for a vineyard
different idea of King ship, didn’t understand
the Bum style, we traveled through
California views
carrying the word, and ocean vistas
wondering
4.
if we’d have to escape? this paradise
lost, I remember a painting of a small silhouetted
woman against a huge grey green sea
this romantic story
we transposed in the city
In the studio, that magic kingdom, city space
Vivaldi
welling over banquet scene
all of all us old friends embittered at what the world
forced us into shape, gone the freedom
of the unselfconscious,
though Paul had won that battle,
high up on the balcony
the music blaring,
the fourteen foot tall RED,
blaring forth
the dogs ripping him apart, his friends--
Diana the muse, all of them the enemy--
that would trod the “blue suede shoes,”
the bristles wearing down
the ivory soap, the creased palm
all those brushes, the smeared caked floor
painting through a life
there were a lot of years gone by, there
were curly golden haired grand children
Aurora the Dawn!
France was so far, and too rich to tell
a night of food so fabulous,
I thought I'd burst out there on that Seaville jetty,
we were out there
ice cream filled waffles after rabbit
and goose, buttered potato and wine
France the life, the grand style, the Chateau --
the "La Champagne"
the tradition steeped studios,
this one from
the 14th century,
that wall the 15th,
this painting
the cavernous space
of the 16th century,
the 17th century windows,
these swallows
and swifts through and marble halls
and steps winding,
hearth and brass potted kitchen
the rich red glare behind the stillife
after stillife, of champagne bottles refilled
with jet black ink corked and rat tailed brushes
strewn through pencil
shaving and conte dust
watercolor tubes squeezed and discarded
their contents transformed into the scenes
they made there,
spaces of Old Masters, dusty and still
the lives created of painting upon painting
the fictions, the stillife, high
lifted into the sky
the centaur circling, the roped tail and apple
head swirled in the broken glass
of green shape
tumbling
to the ground,
who has seen the land?
the light on this place?
we won’t forgive this man, his life--
that Hoffmann opened to-- freedom
never to be bound in theory
beyond immediate use and abstraction
bringing the story alive
not to kill it, accepting what
refuse might result--
fighting the tyranny of
photographic space,
such complications
getting in the way
and ignored and even viciously fought ,
if they attempted to ensnare
this FREEDOM,
Long live the King,
the Bum style
the nudes comfort! on the chaise
of beyond -- in the line
scrolling enclosing shape
the form is really the story
and those
that would begrudge
this pleasure
in the smeared thumb
in the color always
in the color subtly shading a space,
the sensuality in paint, reminding us
of what we’ve
given up,
to be
here without, this life
these paintings
what we dreamed of for a future
at an end it seemed,
but here it seems
5.
the answer lies
that our souls are to be made
and how to find these worlds
which seem so naive,
so false,
are exactly those of Art, the
Castle somehow won, the real possession
like Midas
painted and possessed
in this domestic scene
a wildness sustained, sleeping
up there, immersed in the work
the dreams rage on, the evening
news repeats a story
as dreams, reach height and fall
unfold unseen, the trucks continue
their rumble down Walker St,
the silent undressing of the model
the discreet moment of taking
off a stocking,
watching unseen
humming the tune, some song
Sweet Ema song, continuing
reel to reel
still another smoked bluefish, left
the old smokehouse, tumbled
the piles of mussel shells falling,
the shucked Delft ware piled,
the lemon peel trailing
still the trumpet vine, the Jerusalem
artichoke, the cats still chase
the mockingbird, the pond from the cut
still empties into the sea
the summer ending, the kids are
still asleep in towels with blue lips
there is still another cumcumber
sandwich for lunch with Reingold
beer,
one more trip to Montauk
for oysters, another excuse, to paint,
the lighthouse
to shop the thrift shops,
to partake in dollar
bag sales, to stock up
on yet another pair
of yellow Brooks Brothers pants,
panama hats, and seer sucker jackets
and there are stories
and paintings of stories
there are lifeguards with stance like bulls
watching the profiles of the girls passing on the beach
posing on the sand, bending to pick up a towel
wrapping it up,
changing in the light, moving
or turning ever so slightly,
a shape making a color
remembering, why the pleasure would
be so great to recount,
to spend the time
to refine the moment,
remember the painting
those dreams rot in storehouses
or on walls
the dreams are ours
we lived them
and we are
through an order,
through beauty
and aesthetic,
this was our religion
of life,
the moments
seen,
the look of,
what we saw, what we felt.
Gregory Botts, NYC, 2000- 2008
