Three Poems for Jay De Feo

Deathrose

I’m the howling Madonna

Sitting by the window with my embroidery

I thread the lines in and out

Sometimes they show

Sometimes I hide them

But they always go out

From the center

When I was a kid I sat quiet

After dad left mom and us

And the pain flowed in

Now I’m at the center

And I push the pain out

First with my brushes

And then, oh man,

Lay it on with a trowel

Making this relief

Of my heart

Hail Mary full of grace

My you have an ugly face

Joan would say

But Joan’s hot now

She’s shucked off

The Catholic San Francisco thing

I’m no Mary I’m no Mary Joan

I’m the howling Madonna

With a whirlwind on

And Wally’s out doing his thing

He’s got his causes and

We’re always there in some group

Where he’s the main speaker

That’s his way

Of being at the center

And mine is paint on canvas

Built up by time

And soft application

One loaded brush after the other

Those colorless colors favored by me

Built up by time

With a little help from the artist

This is like clay

I can go on making

My own

Earth

Out of the howling hearth

I’m the flaming Madonna

And for hours and years

I sit by the window pulling threads

Look into the heart

Of my deathrose, my child,

Baby, I will call you Deathrose

I’ll build you up

With paint for food

With paint for blood

Keep building

And when the lines get too straight

Like rays in some kid’s

Yellow crayola sun

I’ll bury them all over again

Black and gray in the white

I made fissures for runnels, built

Channels where the rivers of my heart

Could flow

I show you the channels

So you will know

Water

A memory trace

I made mountains and valleys

This could be the moon

My moonheart

And I always loved the woods

Trees were there

Wherever we moved,

However often

Up in Northern California

Country places

Where dad did his healing

Before he did his wounding

Here on this relief

On my heartswept terrain

Where I’m cutting and hacking

And sealing the breaks

No trees

Imagine them if you want

But don’t bother me I’m busy

Building out the lines

I’m the howling Madonna

With a hungry ache

Inhaling paint smells

And liking my lips

Hard around the papery

Tobacco tit

I’m the howling Madonna

Sucking mother smoke

Scraping my paint cans

And messing my room

If I can’t get more paint

If daddy won’t come back

I’ll rip out their insides

I’ll scrape down

The sides of every can

To make the colorless color

Favored by me

My child, my Deathrose

Daddy come see

The White Rose

I’m the messing Madonna

Mixing mica with paint

So my Deathrose will shine

With diamonds and stars

Here in the Mirror Perilous

You can see everything

Here in the walled garden

My studio

It’s not a Deathrose any more

It’s the White Rose

A rose is a rose they say

But you can look into this one

And in the sparkling stones

On the floor of my pond

You can fall in love with anything

The crystals in paint

My mica

Eye everything in this room

My magic is big now

The Deathrose was too small

Death is at the center still

Where I fixed the first canvas to the large one

That smaller canvas, that Deathrose

Was always a bit off center

Now it’s the center itself

And it fills the bay window

Of the sun you can see

Just two ribbons:

Light coming in at the sides

My mica

Is in the white paint and the black

Paint held together

By crystal bits

My mica shows

Anything you want to love

Deep in the white pool

Look in and see my painter’s stool

All spattered

Where I sat and embroidered

With my heart’s blood

I swear

And the Christmas trees

I kept every year,

Skeletons propped around the studio

A rose for Emily

Kind of thing

Mom threw our Christmas trees out

You had to do it

Before Epiphany

Or it’s bad luck

But we’d already had ours

So I keep my dead trees,

All the stripped Christmases

I have Wally now

But I could be some spinster

In this shuttered room

Spinning this out

Him, anyway, I share

He’s kind of community property

So I just sit here doing my thing

This White Rose

I built her nave

I built her transepts

Out from one still point

No man shall look upon her, no mortal

She’s perfect

A white sun

Always radiating from the center

An aerial photo of the High Sierra

Pure, defended

With cornices

Ready to crash down on the unsuspecting

And if I keep building

This snowshow

Day after day

The people down below

Can walk on by

Just let me cry

But they might get hit

By an avalanche

I’m buying this stuff

By the carload now

At Bay City Paint

No more shoplifting

(I promised Wally)

There goes

A fortune in paint,

In white lead and black

When I raised the White Rose in the bay window

Blocking out Fillmore Street

I saw this girl on the sidewalk

Short black skirt and a beehive

Pushing a baby carriage

And probably that’s all she can talk about

The darling little one

So let her

I’m going to go on

Sitting up here

Behind my white sun

My little one

But my how she’s grown

The Rose

I’m getting jammed

By the air and the crystals

Up here

Not a mirror

It’s got to be growing

And breathing

Let it bulge and roll

All the wet paint

Let it live

Like some shimmering skin

Scaling dreams

And if the center cannot hold

If the paint’s going to slide

Let it slide

As long as it slides away

From the center

There was the place with Wally

Just us that time

How the sod and the flowers held the soil

Down to land’s end

We stepped right off into warm water

Up to our knees

For miles it was shallow and warm

By the crescent of the shore

So I might put some of my jewelry in

To keep the paint from sliding

Off center

I may have to

Give something up here

I promised Wally I would stop

Sending messages to the neighbors

On the clothesline

They didn’t think it was funny

They don’t like artists I guess

And the landlord that old crapper

Said I broke the law

Just because I painted the phone green

So now after seven years

It’s out on our ears

Give me a canvas for seven years

And I’ll show you the Rose

I’ll show you the Rose

In Pasadena

And I’ll call you The Rose

You’ve kind of graduated I guess

A full-fledged seven year-old

Painting

I spent a lot on you kid,

A lot of years,

And the paint cost thousands

But who cares

It wasn’t too much

Just an atom in the sea

Of my ever flowing love

That ever flowing love

Just ran out

The way rain and rivers

Shape the land

I shaped you that way

With changes

That happen deep in time

And my heart

Was full of time for you

Bruce is coming to make his film

He wants to turn this removal

Into a liturgy

He wants to establish

The Church of the White Rose

A place to worship

Weeping Madonnas

And dying suns

So let him do his thing

I didn’t tell him

I’m through with the White Rose

It’s the Rose now

Pure and simple

It’s my Rose again

Huge, ungainly

Bulging with paint

Like a pregnancy

Let them take it and wrap it up

A package for the future

Let the light come in through the window

Where my Rose

Hung like a shutter

Let me see the room the stool the trees

All in sunlight

And when my Rose is wrapped

And lying on the floor

I’ll lie down on it

My box spring,

My mattress

This is my real bed

My resting place

I’ll curl up on it like a baby

And lodged in the open window

With no glass to keep me

From break of day

I’ll watch them lower it into the truck

I’ll watch them drive away

Let Bruce make his film

His liturgy

His Art

Let him found his church

And pray

For all the mothers

I’m not

Because when she’s been born

Out of this room

She’ll be dead to me

This is no graduation

This is art being untimely ripped

From its mother’s womb

Farewell to the Rose

The starry sky

My map, High Sierra,

Whatever you were

The blazing Sun

The Flower Fair

The rockface, the tide

The moonrise, the slide

Janus at the gate

My staggering breath

The One

And only

Early death

I won’t jump as long as I can feel

The papery teat between my lips

I’m the howling Madonna

Soothing burns with smoke

There goes my world

In the back of a truck