the de Kooning fragments
Untitled
a prologue to an unwritable play
1: Franz Kline
2: Barkeep
3: Elaine de Kooning
4: Arshille Gorky
5: Moerder
1
the de Kooning fragments
I
1: No point in looking at a de Kooning painting unless
3: you think of Kafka, or
2 (singing) : What shall we do with...
5: that little bastard
4: jizz, jism, fizz, fission.
2: early in the morning
5: Williʼs silly wiley viley willy.
2
the de Kooning fragments
II
1: Unless you go after it, into it, take the plunge deciphering, discovering
3: the metamorphosis, with Siggy and JJ and Ovid
4: ovid & ovoid, trapped & trapezoid, ovaries, loaveries and fisheries
Here Comes Everyone
2 (singing): a drunken sailor early in morning
4:.a stowaway and stayaway, he comes again another day
5: Oh the dream girl, the cream girl, oh the rod and ream girl
crying in your beer, dear, have a mommy suckle
3
the de Kooning fragments
III
1: Unless you pore and peer and veer and bore, skim and skip
2 (singing): Put him in the scuppers with a hosepipe on him
4: hosepipe, houspaint, Louse Point, no it ainʼt: in the beginning vas de void.
3: say what was that out of the corner of my eye? a man turning into a bug,
4: A Mingus, A Dizzy, a Satch, a Boid,
1: unless you see the negative turns positive just around a bend
4: a bender of shapes, a sender of japes, a wender and a mender, a never ender,
5: Me, dusa, me musa, me damma, me damna
4
the de Kooning fragments
IV
1: unless you enter the hot gates, the cauldron of the eye which never sleeps
3: Or Heraclitus, back to the when nothing was one thing one
thing was another when forms-trans-forms-trance-forms
2 (singing): Hooray and up she rises
4: in the city, moreʼs the pity, in the Springs his heart sings: the puddles and the clams,
those were pearls that were his eyes
5: that rise to love, that love to rise, iris risible, seen and then invisible,
this way
that way
ma-ma-ma- madness lies.
5
the de Kooning fragments
V:
1: unless you read the gloss and grain, the sweep, the stroke, the wiped worlds
like holocaust Rotterdam,
there in the upper right canvass corner,
a tatter of yesterday
4: sing ho to the loaded brush, the bruising load,
the load ejaculate, the studio immaculate,
the burning butt, the smut, the strut, the soul-scotch searing to the gut
2 (singing): Shave his belly with a rusty razor
5: ever my boy he was, a gazer,
ever my hubby, ever my lubby,
ever the lost Dutch Boy
laden from Leiden with his galleons of gallons
3: What is the opposite of still life? The antipode of nature morte.
5: Ever my king, my droll, my drooling, my craven, my crooning Willem de Kooning
6