No Art is Ever Ended

—Poems by B.Z. Niditch, Brookline, MA

—Photos by Denise Flanagan, Newton, MA
 

WE ARE PASSING

We are passing
to another world

with fresh anemones
in our hands

they will survive
all barbed wire

beyond the wheat of the pale
in villages of freezing grey

My heart hears feathers
counted on flying wings

beating on tall grass ravines
and murmuring shadows

Heaven knows each village
all branches of a lost family

by the light of river
and now at peace,

though the rain
falls on six poplars

it is quickly covering over
the sky memories of Autumn.

_____________________

WHAT IS A POET

Line by line up
in the shadow

of a translation
from landscaped heirs

of the oracle bearers
and miracle enchanters

off islands of the sea
where adventurers

carry the hero body
to the Homeric figures

in the rising thermometers
of added voices of Ulysses

by the unwelcome home
of another generation

augmented on sons and daughters
boats pass by as Penelope watches

a heroic mirrored face
returning from warring winds

So many years of poetry
recorded by farewells appear

even on a Synthian and Ural
jeweled crown and spear

by the loving gate keeper
playing on words

writing as a rival fabulist
with a navy in review

as an iconoclastic scribe
along the flower river breakers

not abandoned by absence
or times of devotions

hearing a tribal chorus
wait on blinded voices forever.

IN MY ARCHIVES

In my archives
small teeth of words

bite years of experiments
with language fragrances

partitions of proverbs
fragments of alphabet soup

with celery sticks
and oyster crackers

with my joy knowing others
discombobulated by life

will have a rooted communion
drinking in my globular ideas

reaching into my Kultur files
and spells to know more

than any abandoned exile
or rosetta stone prophet

than a moment
before your flight

before you are translated
in a return of wisdom literature.

_____________________

A JAMESIAN MOMENT

Needing a Jamesian moment
in Manhattan or Paris

when you are always here
over five stories to tell

love from a mismatch
from an old understanding

to catch an abandoned train
of the master's thought

only for art's forsaking us
do we speak in luminous tones

an all-clear signal
by the deserted wind

to signal for tendrils
and exiles by the river run

that he too trembles
with us at this hour.

IT IS SO IMPORTANT

It is so important
a passport of memories

going nowhere
as a Mozart miniature

on the grand piano
about-face with my initials

engraved later on an
acoustic guitar case, a tree

in Central Park
hearing a ram's horn

by a touched-alive
metronome by notes

of my restlessness
until my uptown recital.

______________________

THE RETURN OF CHUCK CONNELLY

No art is ever ended
or left on a scaffold

or roped off, drip dry
in a museum or mansion

but is a liquidity’s
of color and shaped

expansion of your eye
in an antennae's extension

for second viewing
and third showings

here in a museum
in your art house

no misguided lights
of cameras are inside us

but emerge
from others’ sabotage

like a Van Gogh ear piece
on hold back cul-de-sacs

in loveliness
of stone

from geometric shapes
of flesh in a tour de force

we are resurrected
as art like jazz atones

in anecdotal riffs
on an ambivalent landscape

through terrifying voices
in self-inhibition

until the time is ready
for a measure of disclosure

by significance
of a catalogue or recollection

absent on art wall anonymity
from the wold's envy or enmity

no invitations sent out
from original cave artists

in aboriginal connection
with new-found fossil bones

waiting for a gallery exhibition
in abstract modernist expression

Chuck Connelly, you do not return,
you never left us.

HAMLET'S SKULL

Inexpressible except by verse
open in the mouths of angels

are your remains not buried
or burning a Blakean soul bright

in the snow of grave winters
of old England or in new chapters

you live because we live on stages
in a reckless age of ground zero

often dulled by, abandoned
by popular entertainment

or abomination of universal will
we play you again

shaped by fortune in nature
or skilled in majorities

of the dull politic
and chattering classes

that we approach you
with love in dreadful overkill

but you are dear Hamlet,
be still and know no grief

we invite you to watch us
with new costumes and cast

for who wrote of your past
had an understanding of belief

that your skull and skill
in my hands will outlast my words.

_____________________

CALLING ME SHAKESPEARE

At a stage
in a bright walk-on

from my many costumed
make-over for the competition

before The Original Theatre
got off the ground

sounding off-off-Broadway
in a broadside ticket

for a free performance
for the matinee's green tea

when a massive snowstorm
hit our rehearsal

and all the roles
were in context reversed

for a once-in-a lifetime
Sixties midnight showing.

_______________________

OPENING UP

Opening up
to tendrils of clouds

in epiphany absences
of escorted souls

lost on blind dates
of calendar blackouts

in dream sequences
of life departing as an anchorite

finding a love letter
in a prayer closet back East

next to the Russian
abandoned tea room

where fortunes are made
with chocolate cookies

by dying faultless
on lingering sleep houses

until your free dream
turns into daily nightmares

of ocean liners sinking
or war's landmine fears

or your future poetry's double
is not a spouse showing up

we will be optimists
not matter what prognosticators

say about the rain or snow
in the forecast.

________________________

Today’s LittleNip:

BY THE OCEAN-FRONT GAZEBO

The air turned cool
by the ocean-front gazebo

Alone on the sandy beach
near the rocks and stone

of this home harbor
to hear sea-voiced echoes

or share my art prints
in abandoned frescoes

a solitary bird draws us
emerged from the dunes

he too was searching for
the living waters and bread

as my cello string
broke into a Bach solo.

________________________

Our thanks to B.Z. Niditch and Denise Flanagan for their tasty work in the Kitchen today! B.Z. writes: Here are my poems with your theme last week of abandonment. My poem on Chuck Connelly is about an artist played by Nick Nolte in Life Lessons, part of a trilogy of short films in New York Memories, directed by Martin Scorsese in 1989. Also: My new collection, Everything, Everywhere (Penhead Press, Chapbook Series #4) is available on Amazon. 

Congrats on the new book, BZ!

—Medusa

—Anonymous Photo