REBEL
REBEL ARTIST’S TRAGIC ENDING
Time magazine August 11, 1956 Jackson Pollock+
young mistress +friend Edith in back seat Elvis on
the radio Wraps car around tree He was drinking
heavily Is artist-life all it’s cracked up to be? His drip
paintings no longer scintillating Critics claimed he’d:
lost his stuff
Jackson was 44 had 17 yrs. more than Jimmy Janis +
Kurt ditto Amy Now I direct you to the faces of Ella
+Louis in late middle age standing before a mic trumpet
in hand voice of African goddess about to be loosed Flowered
cotton dress striped polo shirt Could heal the world one ear
at a time Sublime Goddamn! To paraphrase Miss Simone
Music the balm of Gilead Raise you up Set you free At the
Opera on Saturday a woman with hands hacked off as a child
up on stage Left un-dead atop a pile of bodies Sierra Leone
She told of an angelic voice +plaintive honk snaking through the
carnage-heap Her hands a distant memory
__
If I were a psychiatrist I would recommend a poem by Baudelaire
(or the music of Ella+Louis) to treat anguish.
(Gaston Bachelard 1884-1962 Philosopher)
Summer 2015
songanddancegirl 