A Morning In The Museum

Abstract

1. A GROUP ON THE TOP FLOOR Rauschenberg. Lichtenstein, Stella, vacuum cleaner. Scaffolding General Electric An inflated tire An Olympic swimmer The concept "A vacuum is cleaner" A balloon, a derangement of nature A primary color Don't forget The polished stone The museum makes The clean floors from How about a smear Of menstrual blood Or a sperm puddle On the formica bench Imagine Licking it A dog tongue Hungry. [End Page 24] 2. CLAES OLDENBURG: THREE SOFT SCULPTURES God bless America where we have this funny Sense of the ridiculous and "art That doesn't sit on its ass in a museum" Alphabet/ good humor (Looks like intestines) Upside down city (Stuffed muslin spray- Painted prison uniform Green, dried blood Red, and charcoal Polka dots: looks like Tortured folks hangin Upside down: or parts of em) Falling shoestring potatoes (Yellow canvas sculpture Drops from Kapok sawtooth Edge paper bag). 3. SEGAL'S DINER The shabby poetry is in the pathos The counter falling apart Is sort of sweet Like a distressed woodchuck A woodchuck sort of morning A coffee please a slice of I'm tired you'd be tired Working my kind of hours The pay I get, some life Plaster dripped over cotton And bandage gauze this guy [End Page 25] The woman behind the counter Is doughnut shape and falling Over about to bump The coffee urn. In that era kids Used to say "bunk" not bump "I bunked into it." "If he don't watch out He's gonna bunk Inta the tree." 4. MARK ROTHKO: THREE PAINTINGS Tragedy, ecstasy, doom, what the man said Painting was for, and here is a sorrow dredged From an oceanfloor, the undulant blues And purples resonant against your breastbone Like tribal drum-tones slipping through a jungle On a normal rainy day, savage and peaceful, Between two villages, or like a ship's engine Booming inaudibly while you observe The phosphorescence, the hard slaps The ocean gives to your vibrating hull, Gulls falling away as you leave the shore To enter the house of the sky. Later you'll turn your blanketed body Over and over again as the vessel travels Forward through lustrous water and moonlight. Be at peace now. The drowned tumble Endlessly in their bags, Wind blows ceaselessly Eastward above the surface, Remote from any earth where buildings stand. [End Page 26] 5. JIM DINE A) The Bathrobe Paintings Behind the dozen Or so great canvases Of the bathrobe, The human volume Afloat and aglow It is my alter ego On the museum wall Someone flits Like an insect, keeps The pot cooking, the voluminous Bathrobe washed And pressed, her thoughts to herself: It is some way To spend a life, She thinks – with her insect mind. B) Four Pastel Drawings of Tools axe like the femur shovel of a tall man shears elegant to the point clippers of pain [End Page 27] 6. LOBBY A) Cheerful Lady to Other Lady We could bring the boys I think they'd like it It's pretty weird. B) Next A boy in jeans and new Orange socks strides purposefully Through the lobby, his large And scuffed portfolio Under his arm, What do they know – What does anybody know– Walker Art Center, Minneapolis