it was before I had met Egon Schiele

my sketches were ignorant of his hand

and how he framed himself in an image

perched above and looking down

his subject spread before him

the treacherous angst of sexual need

a flayed and twisted skin

 

he was more than half a century dead

but his line was still live and electric 

ten thousand volts passing through my head

frustration and the ache of anticipation

Mary, feline, stretched and wanton

the comedy of do I draw her first

or take her to make sure I had

 

but a line that becomes too familiar

becomes too slack and mannered

a lover who no longer makes the effort

a hand too idle to dance but simply drags

you’ve seen it all before and before was better

the line of her breast sags and belly droops

her garden of spring grass, now weeds

 

 

you can admonish yourself for neglect

but the line insists your hand should wander

what better than Boucher’s plump ripe nudes

to get over serious love gone stale

and bury your face into fleshy pillows

thighs like warm soft waters draw about you

rekindles the loutish youth with a rakish energy

 

Sète in the summer of seventy five

with more shape than Sophia Loren

globes, curves and clefts of burnt sienna suntan

held in place by strategic triangles of orange cotton

she salsaed more than sauntered along the quay

‘do you speak English?’ I inquired

‘certainly not!’ she puffed, in perfect English

 

I have a collection of memories like this

like I have collection of Manara’s comic books 

all surface and anyway, who wants depth

when the line wriggles its perfect pert behind

contrives her clumsiness to bare her inner thigh

it is after all, what you follow her for

ligne claire all the way up, at least you hope

 

but perfection is far too predictable 

an appetite for chaos quickly grows

of tangles and knots and clusters of webs

of form and abstractions and confusions

ambiguities to be puzzled over and deciphered

to be read like a fortune teller reads entrails

or a like a man interprets a woman’s mind

 

there is no answer or destination

just experience and the moment of doing

the excitement of drawing a line with your finger

between her breasts and down across her belly

its interest for all its intention, is temporary 

a brief visit to her oasis, her welcoming hostelry

before restlessness has your finger on its way

 

a scuffed charcoal line by a hasty hand

the carelessness of a smudged ink blot

while giving her form and movement 

illustrates a fleeting visit and a hurried departure

for all her gorgeousness, she is abandoned

yesterday’s fashion victim, tomorrow’s retro

some other man’s prized possession

 

these are idle thought clouds drift

memories like the sun’s rays project

the shape of the window across the back wall 

expanding the size of the studio to such a point

the entire universe can be contained within its walls

this I notice, during the model’s ghostly absence

when the line meanders listlessly across the page

 

still life and landscape are worthy subjects

my doodles could be any of these things

the unsettled soul of van Gogh’s turbulent landscapes

lessons in harmony of Morandi’s still lifes

together they reveal the versatile nature of line

the harmonious rhythms and flexing actions

confident strokes and reticent decisions

 

the line loops back on itself, she arrives

having left sometime ago, as though something

brilliant had took root in my garden, created her anew

forever walking through my life, through my life, naked

and the morning streaming through my window

bathes her in a warm glow, to my astonishment

a woman, I have yet to meet but met sometime ago