Things That Can Be Seen

Are Not Always Known.

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I took some photos a few weeks back of this old key I found in my apartment and a magnifying glass. Mostly playing with macro settings, various exposure adjustments to work with shadows and natural light, and post-processing graininess, I came out with the image above which I didn't dislike, so here I am posting it. Title = "Meditation." The more I look, the more I see that what interests me photographically approaches (or sometimes is the mirror image of) what interests me with literature, or with writing, with theorizing, with thoughts on cinema, on history, on culture. I suppose until I can figure it out, or approximate some sort of "figuring it out", I'll keep taking photographs, watching films (my latest obsession), writing.

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And, because it has also been an obsession as of late, Mongo will read poetry again. This one from the lovely and captivating Gerard Malanga.

New Art

for Andy Warhol

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Of the sidewalk covered with blood

A light puts up signs--a road

A disc the music begins.

The night it began.

So is this car

Out into the roads of the city

Eastern shore

What we the speed

Energy that tribute was dazzling

That follow my eyes

I cannot move away from these paintings

Itself a decision that instinct makes

Choosing more that the machines

Can do. The day over the table

Disturbed in his lunch

He reaches for repetition

With which he'll be passive and safe.

Walls reflecting

Observe the crushing of fenders

Into concrete eyesight can't keep.

***

Though I had always come here

This factory

We make it several times of the year

The floors lined with sheen

The traffic still goes

We don't kill

And I am possessed

Of these terms in our lives we don't want.

The electric chair in a room made silent by signs

Over the door,

The flames coming toward us--

Accidents of some future date.

We sit on couches, but the sleep

And ideas persist

Knowing we gain from it,

To fall apart again.

Some simplicities first

Then nothing--night

The secret, visible late next day. Or next week.

On the telephone. The film.

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(Originally published 1971. Taken here from No Respect: New & Selected Poems 1964-2000)

Images are thoughts already spoken. Seen and unseen.