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‘Artist’, ‘Chopin’ and other poems by Carson Pytell

By: Carson Pytell

Artist

Nature cannot help herself,
But we pay no mind. And less.
What is the punishment for stepping on the Gioconda?
Or farting louder than a nocturne? Freedom.

Onto snare roofs she brushes rains,
Into cornet sky she breathes our gain.
Her timing and tone: unique, arcane.
The pace of her play must bring her pain.

Across peaks and steppes she sweeps her prose
And her verse, with the waves, does ebb and flow.
The Old Count would weep, and did, to know,
Like The Young Tubercular, how far theirs will go.

She lights and sculpts and paints and carves
Self portraiture endless, vignettes unbarred.
Though artists will try, those artists still are
But dark empty space between light of her stars.

Of time’s ephemeral law nature is free.
No, not a soul has it so unlucky as she.
Though, even if nature knew time as do we
I’d bet she’d still not rest, nor care if anyone would see.

###

Love

Love, they say, is only chemicals
Jumping at the sight of a suitable mate.
A reaction common to all animals,
And there is nothing special in our feeling it too.

That is, beyond what is special about anything human;
What we give meaning inherently is meaningful.
Besides, if that is what they say love is, what do they call lust?

###

Chopin

We’ve never heard Chopin,
Tolstoy was far too repetitive,
And Hopper just won’t play in Kuwait.

Context, background, a docent could help,
The carbon copies have done quite well,
And Rubinstein had high-test hands,
But we’ll never hear Chopin.

###

Sea

In from and out to an empty sea,
Into and out from shallow tides;
Silence perturbed by tried, tired gulls
Where by corporal’s hand we abide.

Yet between the raucous, still,
May we claim our lulling lake.
And sure as the scars it’s banks impose,
It’s false ebb balms the ache.

Though all lakes dry in time,
The vapor’s speed we cannot judge.
Then beckoned to the sea, we are,
As to fire are the bugs.

But be the sea is crowded,
Be to it no divide,
What, then, for the wading
In those utter depthless tides?

Nothing and no one. All, and in all,
Our reasons just to be;
Excuses not to vex us
On the nature of the sea.

###

Remember

If ever you feel you’re living
Don’t forget that you will die;
That all the effort you will give
Will mean nothing by and by.

You’ll simply come to nothing,
To an absence free and final.
If you think your life means anything
You’re only in denial.

The world will not stop turning,
The birds will sing and fly.
Everything besides your presence
Will be just the same when you die.

3 COMMENTS

  1. More examples of the depth and deep emotion this author possesses. Each one thought provoking and deep.

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