This is another poem written as a response to a painting from an Art History class I took back in ’92. This time, the subject is Albrecht Altdorfer’s The Battle of Alexander at Issus, which is kind of an amazing painting. If you have follow the link, be sure to look at the higher resolution version. It’s gorgeous and stunningly detailed.

Which informed the poem, really. And the kind of drive that has an artist go way beyond what anyone might expect of him.

Which, you know, can be said of writers too now and again.

Another Late Night

I touch the tip
Covered with a light brown
To the steel grey pigment
And add another lance
And another
And another
And get more paint
It’s sludge — I need it thinner
I need it precise
I need it right
The sun’s gone down and I can’t
Get any of these lamps bright enough
I can’t see
I can’t sleep
I have to get this down
Some black and grey — on
Either side of the brush
Get the strokes down
Get the basic color
And add the detail
The impossible detail
There are thousands and they
Aren’t enough — I need more
I fill the night sky with dark clouds
And a halo `round the crescent moon
While on the other side the sun burns
Setting, but still above the horizon.
Night and Day
The world must fit
On a wooden sheet
Four feet wide
Four and a half tall
The whole world
Mountains — too small for life
Too big for fantasy
Dark and forbidding, yet proud
The sea is in the distance
The bright towers of civilization
Closer, civilization has been rotted
Shattered
By the pennants of war
I’m out of grey — I need it
I need all the armor to be right
I cannot look at a model and see
It has to be in my eye
Without it being in my sight

Don’t they see
I need to get it done
Right now
I need to get it perfect
Perfect
I have to make them fight
I have to make them struggle
I have to make them live
Fire burns
On the left hand side.
Does it fit? Should I have
Put it in the center instead?
Will anybody notice it?
Why can’t I get it right?
My life is on this canvas
My life is with those soldiers
My life….

The outside world
Turns grey
Soon it will be blue
I will need to scrape and
Tuck and rework everything
Until every last tiny figure
Is perfect
Not perfect in form –
But perfect in imperfection
The lances — they all face the same way
(To a side)
But they can’t all be at the same angle
That’s a fake
Life is imperfect
Perfection must follow
Or it’s all a lie

Inspired by The Battle of Alexander at Issus, 1529 by Albrecht Altdorfer

This is actually the first poem I ever published, in an issue of the Black Fly Review. It was written for an art history class where we had to select a specific painting and give a response. The example was a poem, and I misunderstood and thought we were supposed to write a poem, which pissed me off.

As it works out, this is one of the high points of my academic career — one of those moments that changes your outlook forever.

The painting is Pippo Spano, by Andrea del Castagno, written for his “Cycle of Famous Men and Women.”

Sorry I’m a bit nonlucid tonight.

The Pose

Steel plate weighs down
On my shoulders — it hurts.
I have been here for hours
And will return for days
I feel the links of the hauberk
Bruising my flesh. On a horse,
In a battle, fighting a war
You can move, and the blood pumps
Through you. Here, my sabre gets
Heavy in my hands.
A fine blood silken coat slips
Above the plate — it makes me
Look grand, and the painter likes it
More than he likes my face. I
Have seen what he has done, and
I look amused, or cocksure.
War is not amusing (no one wears
Tilting armor into battle!).
War is not strutting and preening
It is the cry of a thousand dead men
Before realizing their wounds.
(What fool hangs fringe from mail?
It will only get caught).
Yet they say my face and deeds will
Live forever — just listen to the
Man who will not let me look him
In the eye.

All my battles.

All my wars.

They must be for something? Someone?
And so I stand, unready for battle
Unable to defend myself.
My thigh itches, but it will take too
Long to free the greave just for that.
And I wait for immortality.

(upon reflection of Pippo Spano, by Andrea del Castagno, c. 1448)
Eric Alfred Burns

Despite their being poetry, one of them still manages to involve people sitting at a table and drinking coffee. God help me, I need a new scene.

*** *** ***

Gypsy Bell
(April, 1992)

On a satin string
I tinkle the bell
Of silver and laugh.
Its high pitched ring
Is a message left for me.
No one else can hear the words.
She meant it for my ears.
So far away
I ring a bell.

*** *** ***

Calliope and I
(October, 1994)

Calliope and I
had coffee at the Still Life.
I paid with half-dollars–
heavy bright Kennedys
that get you a look
almost every time.
We talked John Fowles,
she and I
and sat outdoors beneath the streetlight.

I glanced inside
during a rather long pause
while I recovered from Seattle French Roast.
I saw a brown haired girl
dressed like a beatnik
sitting with a lawyer
looking outside
at me.

We looked a little too long.
“She’s my daughter,”
Calliope said
with a little silver laugh.
“Eurydice?” I asked
turning away from the girl
and blushing ever so slightly.
“Eurydice’s dead.”
The words were flat,
so I looked into my cup
and she and I just sat there,
quiet for a while,
before I brought up my new short story
and hoped for Inspiration.