WINTER ' FOURTEEN
AUTUMN RHYTHMS (by Jackson Pollock) by Martin Burke
Tender – of all his many intensities this the most tender
He in his nakedness cast on the ice of a cold tradition yet from such barbarity the new
cave-dweller emerges and of this there must be no betrayal
Thus he makes love to the true entanglement of light where the atoms of his fertile
mind explode like the Buddha’s dream
Thus the flame and thus the fire and thus the new Prometheus articulating the new
Atlantis – and do not say it does not exist for he possessed the unerring scripture you refuse
at your damnation
Is he nature?
Yes, he is nature, casting the self he has become against the self of the moon in his
most amorous anarchy
As native to the earth as anyone can be
Pure America – albeit with an unwritten history wherein his brethren are its outcasts
whose fire-dreams wake the shaman of the mind with de Kooning saying, “it’s time to crack
the ice”
Fathers he has none nor any required to justify the painting which proves itself in the
lived-in world
Atlantis neither finished nor final – ever.
The Linnet's Wings Poetry, Winter 2014