Javant Biarujia



BRAZEN POLISH

And when the living creatures went,
the wheels went beside them; and when
the living creatures were lifted up from the earth,
the wheels were lifted up.
—EZEKIEL I; 19

“Idolatry shmolatry! Fin dus makht sie a lebn?” (From this she makes a living?) When my neighbor and now dead friend first saw it, he exclaimed: “It’s from the Book of Ezekiel!” (Alvyn, who read his way through most religions in his quest for truth, had recently been “reborn” — AIDS was more of a death warrant in the early 1990s than it is today.)

     You know the story — how does it go? … The priest Ezekiel, son of Buzi, had a vision as he sat with the exiles from Jerusalem by the Chebar River, in Babylon:
                                                                            ruakh

                cherubim (Their faces did not turn when they went)

                                                             flammulations

     on castors (Near the figures were wheels, whose rims were full of eyes, and which could move in all directions when the figures beat their wings)

     Henry’s already staggering punch-drunk at the vernissage; the tumor was spreading. No harm would come to him. Geometry. Certainty. Physics. All men’s sciences, reason, thought, to an abstraction, discernible bits, discrete patterns. Edge. Edge of Reason. À quoi bon? All this skirting round the edges of language. No one can speak the word. Your face says it all.
                                              Your face says it all
     … if you can infer anything meaningful from physiognomy. We came lighthearted, with our chequebook, offering to buy (I’ve always wanted one of your sculptures, always): Brazen Polish. But art lovers kept you away, flummoxed by their drive for more wit, more kitsch, more from the Bad Mother. (Hermes, god of trickery, where were you when we needed you?)
     Who would choose to cling tenaciously to such a life? As a goddess capable of resurrecting life, however, it’s clearly another matter. Isis carried back to Egypt the chopped liver that was Osiris once Seth was done with him, and, y’know, brought him back to life. (Need I remind you of the nexus between respire and inspire?) Like you said — this was before Max went to jail over the Tucker scandal (For Whom the Bail Tôles) — gehakteh lebeh is beser vi gehakteh messieurs.

     Mesdames et messieurs, step right on up! Mesdames et messieurs!

     VOICES FROM THE CROWD:
               Tsi bistu meshugeh? (Are you crazy?)
       A miesseh meshuneh! (It shouldn’t happen to a dog!)
Ich darf es vi a loch in kop! (I need it like a hole in the head!)

     On the one hand, neither curse nor poem — it’s the END OF THE WORLD ANYWAY — could even come close:

     A woman, prised open (Woman, Open Prize), a ribcage of dinner forks (Shekina, the feminine force). Ruach, breath, Hebrew in the feminine gender, neutered in Greek and transmogrified into the masculine as Spiritus in Latin. Torso as valise. A “cuntlery” box — Freud, folg mich a gang un gai in drerd! (Freud, do me a favor and drop dead!) Imagine my disappointment to discover Brazen Polish, far from being a sassy Pole or the Defiant Jew I thought you were alluding to, was nothing more than an exquisite corpse (see Osiris above) of Brasso®.…

     Nicole Newman ist zusammengebrochen — un tsigeshtikevet!

     Look, I’ve made you the Warriors’ handbag!

And a hand reached out, gave him a scroll, closely written on both sides:

THOU SHALT NOT MAKE UNTO THEE ANY GRAVEN IMAGES, OR ANY LIKENESS OF ANY THING THAT IS IN HEAVEN ABOVE, OR THAT IS IN THE EARTH BENEATH, OR THAT IS IN THE WATER UNDER THE EARTH.
[Exod. 20:4]

“So the lawyers who drew that up (did you read the fine print?), made art four times as dangerous as murder. Mmm.” “C’mon! You know well as I do it’s the ninety-eight percent of lawyers who give the others a bad name.”

Brazen Polish (1989–1990) by Nicole Newman. Sculpture:
particle board, aluminium, stainless steel, plastic, paint, 118 cm x 84 cm

CRIMINAL ACTS AND AUTOGRAPHS

i masked him metaphoring the albino
vaselined down avantgarde in the blonde animal
anxiety made closeter
i coded him out
my assassination his condom cowboy
he fooled an atombomb
but i gunned him off
he hustled into a suicide

he flags all the autographs
identified off the bar
jokes with me
but he never taboos
he scandalises me famous
at fifteen blackmail
about body and bodybuildingmagazines
money murder naked opera

i am the beatles where he is cultureclub
maybe he ll just eurythmic it out of me
and never petshopboy again
paranoid

pulpfiction this suck scene with Joyce
he always portrays the artist as a young man

ON HUBRIS EDMUND WHITE AND THE PRINCETON RUB

city boy that s near my    nervous breakdown in lust
he does not know much of    the aeneids epoch
for women in Swann’s    way always “the double
sheets” of papercut sex    how unamerican!

sheets of papercut sex    how unamerican!
and a lot of mythos       clean american boys
broken spells hashish    and Gomorrah from his
fag jokes on Guggenheim    anecdotes on Auden

placing the ocean in it    golden handkerchief codes
for women in Swann’s    way always “the double
showers he could Venice    beach have taken the day
from his groin flowers grew    the primitive terror

the conquest of the air    dédoublement of their
map of America    muscled mustachioed
he does not know much of    the aeneids epoch
reader’s digests version    of the pillow book or

boy’s own story    noh have a martini
mask noon blonde betrayal    of the ruins of the
city boy that s near my    nervous breakdown in lust
he does not know much of    the aeneids epoch

FACTOR S

for my sister Sue on her birthday

Un éléphant est plus fragile qu’un papillon. Le futur est aux lépidoptères
— SALAH STÉTIÉ

1

action/thought
are your ambiguities
your angel or bees
or your little bird
that blinds all boredom

breathe secret dreams
that leave distant laughter
but you — butterfly — know
when they are not looking
without which they multiply

2

cage a cat or hide a clock in a cloud
colors that leave distant laughter
two crocodiles
(hands hidden in the eternity of)
deed/thought
delirium the wind ranging across
the countryside fires in
desire

3

the last letter weighs
mass becomes flowers
light in the garden broken windows

time knows how they act
ink in the interstices that
leave distant laughter

4

lightning where
               seas
                              accumulate
masks in the mirror
the moon over the mountain
               silence

5

S	os pinning the moon over absent tars

the thunder leaves its trace
violins zing! zing! zing! zingaresca
words scattered thruout their fields



Brancusi Études

étude II

il loro rosso straccio di speranza
— PASOLINI

tho
S
e
whO
a
r
eaf
r
a
ido
f
L
Ife
s
l
eep
i
T
Off


étude IV

in
the
heav-
ens
— ROBERT LAX

wH
        EnA
ki
        ngi
nV
        ade
sa
        cit
yh
        Eru
iN
        sit


étude V

La trama è di un’insolente assurdità
— ROBERTO CALASSO

s
ee
R
s

Ar
e

ma
de

fI
er
ce

by

fID
Elit
y

étude VII

abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz
— HENRI CHOPIN, “Le Poème alphabétique”

étude X

[creation myth]

god      god      god      gad      gadso      gadzooks
gadsman       gadfly      gadling       gadge      egad
coup     de      dé     dom      dom     dom    deodate
devinette       déwa       déwi      déesse      dédale
mon     dieu      oui     mon     dieu     non    adieu
tig      tag      theogony      theorem     thanatopsis
theotechny        tohu       bohu      tongue      gogo
graal       godailleur      godiche     dog     doggone
dogma       dogdays      dog      in     the     manger
doglatin      doggerel      dogtrick      doggo     dag
dagon     still     as     death    day     day     day
_____________________________________________________
quelle    diable    de    langue    que    l    anglais

Javant Biarujia, of mixed Mediterranean and Celtic descent, has published numerous books and chapbooks of poetry as well as appeared in over twenty anthologies worldwide. He has also written two award-winning plays.
 
 
previous page     contents     next page