First Published: 25 Septmeber 2025
Lasterday I went to the New York Museum of Modern Art. As I had known, but never articulated, I have a favorite kind of art: non-representational art with phyiscally meaningful texture. That is, I want to be able tosee the paint as paint, even if it is also acting as something else.1 While looking at a Rothko, I was inspired to write a poem.2 That seemed like as good of a way to consider the best arts I liked.
So, below are the poems I wrote, in the order I wrote them.
1:3
In the soft and subtle shading, as blue fades to deeper blue
A source of light unseen, unmentioned, seems to frame the vicious shape
These blues unseen in nature seem primed to bleed off the deep red sea
consume and so be consumed, the painting draws me in.
2:4
Grasping hands and wailing mouths
eyes as from a fog
Some heaven-seen corrupted
by mortal misery
That blood-pure blue cuts through the clouds,
Where Adam should be reaching out
But Adam is gone, Creator too
what’s left but bloody blue?
3:
If Rothko screams in single shades
What is this apple’s song?
One stroke of green, on deepest red
A mirror symmetry
4:5
An oil slick of global south
Metallic and contrived
yet strokes of brush still visible
As textures slowly wind
Or is it more auroral?
The Dancing night-time light?
Which reminds us of the dance we’re on.
When borders fin’ly cease
5:6
What weight can any color hold
When gravity exists?
What bloody martyrs’ final cris
Would echo on this painted shroud?
There’s something in the sunrise scheme (scene? screen?)
Which brings me to my sobbing, weakened knees.
3 necks are bound like shirts or murdered men.
3 times I must review this
3 times, 3 views, 3 forms
6:7
Soemthing in the martyr’s red on black
The highlight it implies
Or in the white of careless folds
Which frame on further pause
I could not but stop and stare
7:8
the concrete does not speak to me
too fixed in vapid form.
To swim, to dance, a gambling lifetime chance
A body broken, bent
8:9
What suffering countless centuries have seen
caused rudely (hah) by the sacrifice, which suffering was meant to cease
9:10
Fifteen by seven, pinned neatly in a grid
Fifteen by seven sketches of man, bread,11
Fifteen by seven, so Fifty some left out
Fifteen by seven shades of life and living
Fifteen by seven by one
Fifteen by seven, once alive, now butterflies, hung.
10:12
The tears creation wept
The tans of toxic waste
the figure of a little boy
pulled to the cage of the sky
11:13
The threnody of misery
THe sextet of dispair
The chains of dying broken men
The gears of war spin ever and forever on without cease
A plane may crash
And more will die
12:14
This tryptich soon will haunt my dreams
Forms caged in static line
Yet closer inspection quickly uncovers
The forms are broken fragments
held, preserved in gem and love
13:15
It’s rudely crude, a relic from a long-held past
An animation of a woman forced
Art from numbers, tabbed and punched in cards into machine
14:16
I want to come another time
To see the mark I’ve left
in uncured light consuming
In magnetic holding up
15:17
Monuments to a fallen king
Made by his own two hands
The shape, though fixed, is rough and mixed
No two of six the same
Is man unable to imagine
Some great work not made of iron?
Or like the blood that others shed
Or like the callused worker’s hands
Or Or like the song of hammerblow?
16:18
I wish my life was just this perfect
Clean lines to be defined with popped out text
Well, fun to see that I did very much get caught on metaphor, and fun to see the way that they shifted as I kept writing. Even though this is the order I wrote the poems, it’s not the order that I approached the works. I ceased returning to the initial works after 12, because I was very lost, so 13–1619 are from the memory and terrible photo of the pieces I have. 12 was the first of the paintings written about that I saw.
Anyways, love modern art, I should go more.
Did you journal by hand today?
No, but I think that the poetry yesterday counts.
Did you do a folly?
Shoot.
Did you in some way, shape, or form advance the web novel?
...
Did you work on music, whether education or creation?
I think I read some small.
Did you work on another hobby?
Poetry!
Did you stretch? Really?
Eh, some.
Prayer?
Meditation?
Reading?
Reread a web serial and started a dumb rr-ku book.
Minimizing screen time?
Honestly, kind of. Art museum good for that.
Current Pen List20
Hongdian Black with Fude Nib: Diplomat Caribbean (8/30ish)
Jinhao Shark: Diplomat Caribbean (8/30ish)
Pilot Preppy: Private Reserve Electric DC Blue I think (I think since late june. I think)
Sheaffer: Private Reserve Spearmint (since 7/15) (I Think)
yeah, of course I like rothko↩
not a good one, to be fair.↩
On Rothko’s 37 and 19↩
On Dorothea Tanning’s “Dogs of Cythera”↩
On Frank Bowing’s “Raining Down South”↩
On Sam Gilliam’s “10/27/69” (bonus fact, this one is the only one I cried at)↩
On Kay WalkingStick’s “Teepee Form Drawing”↩
On Giacomo Balla’s “Swifts: Paths of Movement + Dynamic Sequence”↩
On Judith Lauland’s “Concrete 61”↩
On Christopher Cozier’s “Tropical Night”↩
new line break added here bc feels appropriate↩
On Joan Miro’s “The Birth of the World”↩
On Jose Clemente Orozco’s “Dive Bomber and Tank”↩
On Morris Grave’s “English Nightfall Piece”, “French Nightfall Piece”, “Roman Nightfall Piece”↩
On Rebecca Allen’s “Girl Lifts Skirt”↩
On Lotus L. Kang’s “Molt (Toronto-Chicago-Woodridge-New York-Los Angeles-)”↩
On Richard Serra’s “Equal”↩
On Mel Bochner’s “Measurement Room”↩
happy, those who care about dashes?↩
for my own posterity, mostly. I should really start noting which pen is which.....↩