Why I’m Not a Painter Either
The other weekend I finish writing
a poem, ‘An Addiction to Bidding Mourning’,
which ends with the vision of a person leaping
into the air above a river
and freezing there before fading
into a ball of pink mist that slowly drifts over
the whole scene. Ah, finally, sweet rosy
peace. I want so much to hold onto
that feeling of being gorgeously all over
the place, so this weekend I decide to paint it
with some gouache I found in the attic.
What is gouache exactly, and how do you use it
to paint grass when you know some wood pigeons
were hiding in it? I make a go of it. After an hour
of tending to the grass, working it out, it looks
shit. Another hour passes and my river also looks
shit, but at least I’m getting the hang of the sky –
so long as there are no clouds in it.
I keep going. The grass is looking better
for adding more water to it, but the river
still looks shit. I start cooking a goulash
so I can distract myself with a meal that rhymes
with gouache. Finally, the river comes together
when I stop adding so much water – the paper
can’t take much more of it. I keep going,
and you know what, everything actually looks
pretty sound, so I let it all dry to be ready
to receive the wonder of my ball of pink mist.
Even the goulash is simmering with anticipation.
I load my brush with pink and water and start
flicking it onto the scene with so much tender desire
to be mist, to be without a face,
to be delicately pink, to be gently in your face,
to be held by the scene, all over the place…
I keep going. After five minutes of flicking,
it’s a complete disaster. The pink mist
is actually a kind of mince, a meaty mince
that’s been sprayed out by some machine over
the whole scene to make it all look truly … totalled.
It might seem like I’m painting ‘pink mist’
but I’m really painting myself a small black hole
like a dead mouth barely surrounded by its head
on a pillow – you just can’t see it.
Days go by and I feel like shit.
I drop some lentil soup on the kitchen floor
and it looks better than my pink mist.
I make lists, lots of lists, with things like
‘parents / mortgage / exercise’ in them – really
just so I can cross them off.
I’m a ball of something, that’s for sure.
Which is why I’m telling you this, as a kind
of pastoral elegy, I guess, and which is why
I’ve also bought a book entitled The Art of Gouache:
An Inspiring and Practical Guide to Painting
with this Exciting Medium.
Company
A parting with Curzio Malaparte’s ‘Satira Triste II’
Let’s just say I must have spent my lone ‘horse’
and never really knew I had a horse,
or how much I loved it. Each time
it was knackered I’m told it wore ‘us’
accessorized as a joke, as froth about its neck –
this foam a form of intimacy with any party
raging to get us out of it. But too many
hard days are raising hard walls
of former blood internally. Even dreaming
means a kind of ferro-cement.
Ferro-cement building to revenge?
Well, who hasn’t been a Coward of the Day
these days. Who hasn’t hoped bending over
backwards would bring some breathing space
like a cheap gift, like ‘returning home’ or
leaving your ‘youth’s dignity’ until later.
An eye should be a soft flickering border
bringing blood and air back together.
When every dog rose looks morose
of course you crave a helmet or a thick fur
pelt. Or freeze-dried milk of mannequins.
And of course you call for a Welt.
When an eye arrests its blood and air
it truly is a human eye. And melancholy.
This horse looks like it’s not all there –
let’s call it ‘Curzio Malaparte’.
We’re in some form of concrete cell or bunker.
And are you so afraid of happiness?
I grab my response from the wall:
your twisted leather whip with silver handle.
I test its zip in the air –
some blood must surely be waiting there.
Now thin fire is hiding racing beneath
his hide and I’m all dressed in this evening:
a long black velvet gown all trimmed
with ferret. Raising your whip I’m hit again
by that moving image you’ve borne in your eyes
from the war: horses in a burning winter forest
escaping into its lake which froze over
in the night leaving only their heads above ice
for children to ride on. I’ve framed it
in my memory, even though I wasn’t there.
So much unbreathing here now in the air.
Spending time with you is great.
It’s the times we haven’t spent together;
they keep whipping up this strong desire
for vengeance inside me.
But your image stays my hand, makes me see
I’ll never get it. Never get over it.
Even without revenge I can tell
you are a Welt to me.
Just look at us all covered in company.
One day I’ll dream of us,
our hands all spotless as a brow
washed by a wind of exile. And yes, okay,
I can see that is nowadays how
we also relate to the State.
Alex Houen’s first full collection of poems, Ring Cycle, was published in 2018. He’s also author of two poetry chapbooks, Rouge States (2014) and (with Geoff Gilbert) Hold! West (2016), and has published poems in various journals, including Hythe, Glasgow Review of Books, Cambridge Literary Review, PN Review, Poetry London, Stand, and Shearsman. He’s co-editor with Adam Piette of the poetry journal Blackbox Manifold.
