Here Come The Wild Birds Again - Frank O'hara, Barnett Newman, & Cy Twombly Poem by Warren Falcon

for Barnett Newman, Abstract Expressionist Painter,
Cy Twombly, Sculptor/Painter, & Frank O'Hara, American
Poet, Art Curator & Art Critic

Two seasons upon your forehead.

Horizon of your brow now tilts toward sunset.

Stratus clouds lift above the major line
parallel but with telemetry of their own —

symmetry shifts, music notes
stretched flat on the scale.

'Below all this your eyes two suns setting'
though it is redundant to say so,
a poem line tracing horizon, what
lies behind it below we leap or
can, happily, to mental verticals

such are these birds
flying out to sea such is
this our land giving way
beneath all their push.

*

We lay together, two wrecks, Love,
wooden ships conjoined by forces
too great, too objective to blame.

We stretch beside a shoreline,
eels play in the one rib of our
opened selves,

our rarer fingers
share at last a gesture, horizon
to stars,

even Sun/Moon entwine
before/behind centering
a presumably

expanding circumference
curving inwardly toward itself
which is an

affection, a longing,
a bottom upon which even God
can lay

hidden from secret admirers
such are mirrors whose surfaces
are rarely breached.

But there is reach.

Many ways to say the word love

which, redundant to say,

sparks,

and we are returned to some

notion Platonic beyond higher

math

of over-said,

over-reached

'Infinity'

of which Barnett spoke to
Frank about, rather,

'the [ Void ]'

...

can the word bear a capital?

...

...

may the word bear a capital?

...

[ V ]

his fear of it, 'discomfort'
to be exact, not knowing
Frank would be in it

[ Void ]

not far from the saying of it,
the mention, the beach that
day, hot (or so I have read) ,
crowded though Frank chose
a [ voided ] spot to recline
to sun upon when the tanned
dune buggy ran over upon
his tanned radiance

like attracting like

his broken nose
his brilliance
of the Sun Eclipse

it's job done

fated fell forward

into the 'wine sea'

as did Frank's soul

sudden cherry dark,

an

Amarone

most homophone

he may have till then denied tried at
least decried died trying to name it

(soul a starfish painted say by
Cy)

work an image dead mariners

make wishes

upon within

as do we also

wish, or can.

*

I wish you, Love,

beyond within all [ Voids ]

- is the [ Void ] one or plurality? -

a painter on a near shore to
paint what we have become:

One (he must be) beautiful,
a man, radiant, who raises
a thumb to rearrange

^^^^^^^^^^^^^the horizon^^^^^^^^^^^^

***********************************************the sky*****

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~the moving line~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

~~~~~~'un~~~~~du~~~~~lant'~~~~~~aslant

of the sea where we without
breadth heave each our separate
selves and each other into,
squint, a promontory, shear,
one eye to gauge, the other
allow a thumb's scan by any
other intent acknowledgement
of worth perceived:

waves wayward clocks (become)

adrift migrant birds, scores,
always crying at the unending feast.

We are not the least of these
but know ourselves too beyond
bondage to time which is to say
'hunger' in spite of rhythm.

*

Love, let us live without

rhyme


the sun go up the sun

go down

the Sky-(Amor) -Wheel-(Fati)

turn and return

with feeling

Let the painter lonely be

alone

pinned to shore with

his paints, his brushes,

his thumb-gauged vision

in relation to ourselves,

and [ Void ]

without intended

rhyme trued

true to ourselves.

Nature too is true.

May he use the color blue

Carelessly

Tubes of it

.

We once were that, too -

careless without


Now wrecks


Vaulted


Now become

weather without

foreheads


without

cloudnecks


Vastness

in the making

(if such
is made at all)

but is aporetic

euphoric

a condition,

a given hard

thumb

against

a sky of

tubes made

and of

squints made


we are then a

'striving after'

beyond cream-colored

foam/form

churned by storm


Here come the wild birds again

*