On Prayer Rugs and a Small History of Portraiture

65 peter gizzi On Prayer Rugs and a Small History Of Portraiture If water were to boy as boy is to bird then swim in air the folktale might go this day opens a keepsake. Closing and opening unlike a keepsake the face in the portrait is still. So still it is no longer itself just microwaves decaying in their orbit around my polarfleece. • I am angry today, that the face, the transmissions the being alive not being is so easy to imagine or why there is a grain to the voice a striation in blackness calling, gnarled and throbbing like earthworms after rain. • CRSUM09 poetry.indd 65 5/22/2009 12:37:03 PM 66 I awake to like to light on grass, the ungovernable green of grass lit out this window the day is gorgeous. The day is thrilling in the good old sense of that word when the world sat by the fire. The fire is raging, has raged, was raging. • The figure in green blossoms too next to every rotting blade, every bleating sow, bird decaying with an aroma of green, word transmogrophying green, the mint in the flame, the heat of the brain expiring steam, steaming thought and the piles stacked archival thinking pyre. This is the drudge of fire. • CRSUM09 poetry.indd 66 5/22/2009 12:37:03 PM 67 I am alive today, yes alive not being alive being with the lost ones and the living lost within the lost hours lost faces lost who find tendrils of smoke and shoots bursting forth in rain, from rage raining wavering bursting sight this way and that plume this day that day. Where was I? • Holy exhausted sparrow poor little sparrow of figured time conferenced addressed flattened beatified fallen to my knees forgive my indulgence calling you on the carpet by the bookcase, this figure all the time falling forgiving not forgotten. At least not today and not by me. • CRSUM09 poetry.indd 67 5/22/2009 12:37:03 PM 68 Every day a portrait. Every day a point. A pirouette into ought awe, off-centered asymmetrical lighting alive in contrast, alive to contest. Away in itself in itself a way out of here of transport panning the scene or skein of sight the syncroflash of being dear sparrow. CRSUM09 poetry.indd 68 5/22/2009 12:37:03 PM ...