The Toilet of Venus (After Velazquez)
Ducats?
Escudos?
Reales?
How
about dollars for you, Diego?
I trust
Phillip 4 paid you well
for bestowing upon me
the enduring
Toilet
of Venus with
a back line
like mine
mirrored soft loveliness
her private sweet
angelic moment -
thank
you, Velazquez.
Do I care
if you served
collared fools?
not
at all
or seem to be
a royal Spanish dealer
Italian collectors
feared?
Why
not!
Painter of
Moorish expulsions?
Si,
pero
your work perished
in history’s fires
making
amends.
A slave owner,
yes but
you
liberated Pareja
who flew to freedom
brush in hand
paint on his lips
studio
on his mind.
For craving noble lineage?
Gracias a Dios
there was
no
DNA swab
for you
to source yet
what a painting you would make:
there in tender-hued landscape
yourself
discernible with
plain Porto precursors
proudly ascending
from
scorned sad graves
in one resounding
L'chaim!
knowing you, Diego
unaware
outsmarted
courts
painted popes
into a corner
outwitted inquisitors
at
their game.
Manet/Picasso
Dali/Bacon -
you
saw them coming
spread canvas across centuries
ahead of your time
painter of painters
embodying
Venus
in
a
theology
of
painting.
Siobhán
Ó Mócháin Breathnach
January
10, 2012
Colors of the Day
I see
a lonely
African
pushing
himself
ahead of his
dreams
singing
words
from a time
he never
knew
below my window
in Koreatown
once
Irishtown
once nativetown
once
only
ground
I hear
Sister Sophi
plaster
a spiritual
message
to the
corner light pole
Come
to me she chants
dissolve
your
problems
of love
Will she
shed light
for
the African too
or
a Mayan balloon
man
only
visible in his gait
weighed down
by the colors
of
his exile
Is Sister’s
poster
a sign
of hope or doom
as
this year lets go
of itself
never to
reassert
its
time and space
into what
awaits me
Shall I run
after
the Mayan
ask
him
is it true
what
his forebears intimate
winter’s end
at hand
or
lessen his
burden
with a
purchase
Soon
the African
is gone
the
way of his
ancestors
the sun
tired
of giving up so much
retreats unabashedly
I can still
make out
in the
distance
between
here and there
now and then
multiple
balloon shapes
boisterously
hovering
over
tiny feet
like storm
clouds
I remain
in
the moment
ready
Siobhán Ó Mócháin Breathnach
December 29, 2011
Calculation
Life is
about change
change of
underwear
if economy
is kind
change in
your pocket
on the dime
All life is
change
social
change
in the
streets banners flying
words buying
entrance to
the next
ism
All isms
claim
CHANGE
But might it
be
the same old
rearrange
if I give in
to commotion-notions
of the absolute
answer
maxed-out proof
of how I
came to bio-be
who’s in
charge of me
what to
believe
when to
surrender
It is about
change
how time
does its
work
on me
on you
how the
space
I own
belongs
to you too
how long an
idea
takes to
find me
at this age
looking
different
for a
dead reckoning
Siobhán Ó Mócháin Breathnach
March
27 , 2012
