Alex Cornell, An Iceberg Flipped Over, and Its Underside Is Breathtaking

Global Warming by Jane Hirshfield

When his ship first came to Australia,
Cook wrote, the natives
continued fishing, without looking up.
Unable, it seems, to fear what was too large to be comprehended

RIP

Minutes by Denis Johnson

You and I- we agitate
to say things,to dress every gash
with a street address or a relative.
We are found in the places of transport at an hour
when only the criminals are expected to depart.

We are blind and we don't know that our mouths
are moving as we place a hand to stay
the janitor's mop- I'll tell you the story
of my life, you'll make a million-
blind and we don't know that our parents are dead

as we enter the photo-booths.
In there is the quiet like the kernel of a word:
in there everything we were going to say
is taken from us and we are given
four images of ourselves. What are we going

to do with these pictures? They hold
no fascination for the abandoned,
but only for us, who have 
relinquished them to the undertow
that held us, too, but let us go,

so that the hospitals opened like great vaults
for us and we stepped from bed to bed
on the faces of the diseased, the beloved,
moving like light over a necklace
of excruciations- I'll tell you

the story of my life,
you'll make a million...
this is what it means to be human,
to witness the heart of a moment like a photograph,
the present standing up through itself relentlessly like a fountain,

the clock showering the intersection with minutes
even as it gathers them to its face
in the so often alluded
to Kingdom of Heaven-
to watch one of those minutes open

like a locker and brandish a picture
of everyone we ever loved who drowned,
while the unendurable generosity of everything
sells everything out. Would you like
to dance? Then here, dance with the terror

that now is forever,
my feet are stumps. The band is just
outbreaking now with one that goes
all the evidence / the naughty evidence / persuades
the lovers endearing by the ponds /

the truants growing older in the sleazy arcades / 
there's no banishing / of anything / 
only con- / quering within / 
make it enough / make it enough / or eat
suffering without end

the mockingbird by Bukowski

the mockingbird had been following the cat
all summer
mocking mocking mocking
teasing and cocksure;
the cat crawled under rockers on porches
tail flashing
and said something angry to the mockingbird
which I didn’t understand.

yesterday the cat walked calmly up the driveway
with the mockingbird alive in its mouth,
wings fanned, beautiful wings fanned and flopping,
feathers parted like a woman’s legs,
and the bird was no longer mocking,
it was asking, it was praying
but the cat
striding down through centuries
would not listen.

I saw it crawl under a yellow car
with the bird
to bargain it to another place.

summer was over.

National Museum of Natural History

Click below image to see large version

Hal Morey, Grand Central Terminal, 1930

Marvin E. Newman, Broadway, Believe It, 1958

Tom Waits, Clap Hands

Sane, sane, they're all insane
Fireman's blind, the conductor is lame
A Cincinnati jacket and a sad-luck dame
Hanging out the window with a bottle full of rain
Clap hands, clap hands
Clap hands, clap hands

Said roar, roar, the thunder and the roar
Son of a bitch is never coming back here no more
The moon in the window and a bird on the pole
We can always find a millionaire to shovel all the coal
Clap hands, clap hands
Clap hands, clap hands

Said steam, steam, a hundred bad dreams
Going up to Harlem with a pistol in his jeans
A fifty-dollar bill inside a palladin's hat
And nobody's sure where Mr. Knickerbocker's at

Roar, roar, the thunder and the roar
Son of a bitch is never coming back here no more
Moon in the window and a bird on the pole
Always find a millionaire to shovel all the coal
Clap hands, clap hands
Clap hands, clap hands

I said steam, steam, a hundred bad dreams
Going up to Harlem with a pistol in his jeans
A fifty-dollar bill inside a palladin's hat
And nobody's sure where Mr. Knickerbocker's at

Shine, shine, a Roosevelt dime
All the way to Baltimore and running out of time
Salvation Army seemed to wind up in the hole
They all went to heaven in a little row boat
Clap hands, clap hands
Clap hands, clap hands
Clap hands, clap hands
Clap hands, clap hands
Well, clap hands, well, clap hands
Oh, clap hands, clap hands

František Kupka, Synthesis , 1927-29

A Thousand Mornings by Mary Oliver

All night my heart makes its way
however it can over the rough ground
of uncertainties, but only until night
meets and then is overwhelmed by
morning, the light deepening, the
wind easing and just waiting, as I
too wait (and when have I ever been
disappointed?) for redbird to sing.

Nicola Perscheid, Ernst Haeckel, German biologist and naturalist, 1942

Andreas Feininger, 42nd Street View, 1942

Le sporting-club de Monte Carlo (for Lena Horne) by James Baldwin

The lady is a tramp
a camp
a lamp

The lady is a sight
a might
a light
the lady devastated
an alley or two
reverberated through the valley
which leads to me, and you

the lady is the apple
of God's eye:
He's cool enough about it
but He tends to strut a little
when she passes by

the lady is a wonder
daughter of the thunder
smashing cages
legistlating rages
with the voice of ages
singing us through.

Lee Hazlewood, My Autumn's Done Come

RIP

Soundgarden, Jesus Christ Pose

Anne-James Chaton + Andy Moor + Thurston Moore, Clair obscur

The Cure, The Same Deep Waters As You

Pieter Bruegel the Elder, The Fall of the Rebel Angels, 1562

Sonny Criss, Blue Sunset

Antonio Corradini, Modesty, 1752