The Thin Museum
Verse by William Dennis
Paintings by Michael Guinn
Gallery 2
A Woman's PortraitTo guess the case this tower suits, who can?
A pillar purpose-built as need arose, of gift-wrap, pipe and prop, not really planned-- beneath it all, you feel you’ll find a woman. Gorgeous, here; protected, there—exposed by awning-striped bazaar-cloth hidden hands might snatch for use from life—counterposed to gravity, all angles of approach are bent to fit her shape by how she stands, that is: between two points, the shortest curve. Here pictured, treading grain without reproach, misleading lines before a curtained arch deflect the eye from what it might observe. A whistling girl, a crowing hen, what then? She keeps her syrinx tucked with extra starch and harbors something of the gondolier while over her left shoulder, once again, the peering moon suggests a baby’s head. Alack-a-day, away with girlish fear, she’s taken up the oar and means to steer! |
"We have to raise the consciousness; the only way poets can change the world is to raise the consciousness of the general populace."
Lawrence Ferlinghetti |
Sir Thomas Moore Approaches UtopiaThe path of solitary inquiry,
justly rendered here as up-hill journey-- even as the destination's lamplight lends transparency to night, its nature stays unclear to him, whose spotless staff supports a full kaleidoscope's conjecture. Could what he sees there on that height be Plato's oligarchy, Silver, Bronze and Iron benignly ruled by scholar-kings of Gold? Perhaps, along with fairer distribution of resources, might he even get new foot-gear he has earned and sorely needs? Utopia must answer many calls. Could this Utopia's foundations lie on economic sand, and founder now on planning failure of the common sort? Philosophy has its existential use, for at these heights sea pink, Armeria, grows and he may stuff his holey shoes with Thrift. Could this be capitalist Utopia, its Atlases constrained from shrugging off their fatal confrontation with omission to address the chance of market failure? He hones his Lunatic: TANSTAAFL, chum! Will dancing hippies greet him with their love? Despite the fact the land is sparsely grown, it may have been gone back to in love's name. Could this be Heaven, union with the Godhead, as before the universe was born? Will non-believers be permitted there? Is it Eden, garden of delight, a Heaven for incorporeal souls, or Moksha, freedom from the wheel of re-birth, or Nirvana, deeply tranquil mind? Perhaps Utopia never needed builders, a pleasant place, the locus amoenus lost by Adam, which Columbus found, that suits the sort of men right to the ground who hunt and gather, primal Eve and Adam-- at last and finally suited to the land. It does give him to wonder about shoes. No paradise exists for architects, their best work being made to leave behind, but from the back, these plain and useful buildings look capacious, ecumenical. His shoes wore out along the way, not hope. The Shakers used to build Utopias-- there was the Cloister once at Ephrata, the Harmony Society had prospered, Hutterites secured their common good with goods in common they would store in barns, wide-brimmed Amish farmers, Mennonites, pre-cutlery Oneida; could this be, here, fully come to ripening, one of those? Or could Technology have given birth to better men for better sorts of lives, men who could cast government away for elfin civil institutions, free, my God, at last! small-scale, sustainable, and all industrial culture can not be-- self-enhancement blessing self-containment? Extinct as men, these new-born better angels surely would have given thought to shoes. Too-clever hands of men of skill might make an Isengard, make and dwell therein and call it brave and new and reasoned through with all of human folly in shop windows, if the koan never found an answer, how responsibility is freedom, how power worth the having is restraint. He does not think his feet would fit in jack-boots. Or life's ideal as seen by oppressed women, without the heavy hand of husbanding-- single gender, gender neutral, yet (or what's Utopia for?) somehow, with children ...and all the homes in minor disrepair. He believes in kindness found in women and his age should pass for gender neutral, so he feels a surge of hope for shoes. Themselves alone is not what men imagine when they author their Utopias-- shabby, shaggy, grumpy isolation just behind the folding screens of thought, with the vitamin deficiency and constipation sure to follow on a diet high in red meat and potatoes, lacking any leafy greens at all. This, then, might be paradise of men with sexual equality, but men, would still be in control, the difference being-- in the nicest way that's possible, with thick-soled foot-gear readily on hand. Utopia is a legend of the future. Famous British mispronunciation rouses wonder whether his Utopia was Eutopia or Outopia-- some Good Place or No Place he can find? Is Utopia, then, where hope is born, or else one night No shopping, Nàzare, in Portugal, long past, when we were young? |