BY JAN HAAG

INTRODUCTION + POETRY + MUSIC + TEXTILE ART + TRAVEL + ESSAYS + FICTION + HAAG'S BIO

ART & POETRY - ACCUMULATIONS



THE 2002 ACCUMULATIONS






KUSTOM KROWN

THE PERUVIAN MUSE'S BONNET



An Accumulation







and



THE POETIC VISION OF REFLECTING WORLDS

I through VIII




AM I MAD


09-01-02


Am I mad enough to be
more than crazy? Mad enough to
say something this society will understand?
What do I want? To go
to sleep and never wake up.

To fall into perpetual dreams, peacefully.




THE POETIC VISION

1


09-01-02


I walk the streets hidden from
the sun, raptured with a mirror's
double vision, longing for the dry,
austere, cliffed housing of the Anasazi
-- not as it was then, but
as it is now. Why don't

I go? I did not enjoy
summer this year, the hot days,
one after the other, wearied me,
excited testiness, sloth. I was surprised,
for, always, I have loved heat,
dryness, sun drumming down, dust, desiccation,

the desert -- beaten white, thirsting, dehydration,
death. Where will I walk now?
Under the sun, in the dagger-shadowed
world? Why would I choose to
reflect on light, mirror the landscape,
choose visions, not earth's sharp sorrows.




THE POETIC VISION

2


09-06-02


Am I entering into enlightenment, God?
My head is dense as a
walnut's configured like a naked brain,
helmeted, impenetrable. Nonetheless it can be
cracked, smashed, chewed, swallowed
assigned to thought through intricate intestines

and slowly digested to become Jan.
The head feels crowded up against
the skull at the forehead, aching
to burst through into nothingness's freedom --
as peaceful as sunshine on closed
eyelids, molecularized by masticating endless stress.

The cobwebby nerves, tingling with disease,
recover at the sight of an
Umbrian angel dressed, bejeweled in black,
on a bus. She bumps her
wings on the poles, yo-yo-ing north,
south, east, west as humans do.




THE POETIC VISION

3


9-06-02


If my mirrors were directed outward
I would be more brilliant than
the sun. Pity others. Bask in
my own light. I put on
the bonnet and the dissected vision,
I step into the reflecting light.

I match humor with my glimmering,
shimmering, shimmying, shaken and silvered world,
unable to still my face against
the brim of the Peruvian Andes.
Think high mountains, think wild Camelidae:
the llama, vicuna and the alpaca

grazing on the altiplano -- where I.
too, graze -- down the intermontane -- excavating
the dark soil of my heart,
composted, decomposing, drosophila by the millions
breeding, becoming words for the mountains,
fortified, fitted, unmoving not unlike Sacsahuaman.




THE POETIC VISION

4


09-07-02


Again, the day, starting with fog,
turns into sunshine; depression turns to
rage and glee. The wild god
lets loose a free standing, flaming
pillar in me. In flooding grief,
in my white whine of despair

he stares down my urge to
retreat behind the veil. There are
great blanks between the poems, gaps
between breaths, wisdom between the nonsense
of living. The tissue-like rustling of
the cottonwoods is as fog to

my brain, damp and cleansing, obscuring,
then lifting the veil into other
worlds. I wear my Peruvian bonnet
in sunshine and in rain, on
the hearth, on the mountain with
the puma, jaguar and the hummingbird.





THE POETIC VISION

5


09-07-02


The Beatles: "Speaking words of wisdom:
Let it be, let it be."
Once upon a time the Beatles
absolved our souls, dissolved our sorrows.
Music does. It is sufficient unto
the day there to, but, leaden-heartedly,

only unto the day there to.
Tomorrow and the day after and
the day after that the sorrow
boomerangs -- the grace, glory and damnation
of the human race, never ending:
"Let it be, let it be."

Each day the day before is
done over, the sorrow relived, until,
unable to endure in time's attenuation:
"Let it be, let it be"
sustains one, alone, in narcolepsy's oblivion.
Nothing helps until death's sweet kiss.




THE POETIC VISION

6


09-07/09-02


The Poetic Vision helps -- and solves
nothing. "Let it be." There is
nothing but the moment. Wandering feelings,
creeping into sourceless caves of despair,
crevices of enlightenment, chinks of joy.
The inspired Emily with drawn hair

and "left-over-sherry eyes" stood silent, still,
so engulfed in her words, expressing --
like the juice from the jellying
currant -- in a code, interpretable by
heaven and a few others, who,
scandalized, snipped away at her prose

-- and her poetic vision? We'll never
know. Like Gauguin's artful lovers burnt
at the bonfires of fame and
decency to expurgate his life into
respectability, mortality, a French icon cleansed
and untainted by nature's unfortunate sensuality.




THE POETIC VISION

7


9-10-02


At some secret juncture, given enough
time and despair, the poet contemplates
murder, secret and swift of her
own soul. But, needing to be
around to write up the fruits
of her knowledge of murder and

despair, the poet contemplates bold murder
of the other. And why not?
The world is within me, the
world is me. When I close
my eyes, the world ceases. I
erase the world, rub-out the other.

It depends on one's angle of
perspective, one's vision of death, one's
equation for figuring out the never-ending-ness
of the world which one day,
inevitably disappears dissipating a never-ending despair
one's claim to consciousness forgone utterly.




THE POETIC VISION

8


09-18-02


Eggplant, with peppers and sauce, cheese
and specks of proud love, embracing
life, I get more than I
deserve or dream of. My life
is hard, like good Emily's, bound
about with restrictions. Terrifying restrictions binding

me to nothingness. There is only
cooking, food gathering, eating -- the
single imperative! Eat! Shelter exerts a
very secondary pull. Eat! And Clothing?
Ah, we all know where that
came from. Eat! And ye shall

grow fat and multiply into poems.
Eat and write -- only two imperatives
in The Poetic Vision. Life is
simple, hallow, without beginning and without
end, hollow, a tube down which
to see the long way out.









THE PERUVIAN MUSE'S BONNET, An Accumulation
Mixed Media: Straw, paper, poems, metallic paper, colored paper, metals, jewel
Dimensions: CHECK

THE POETIC VISION OF THE REFLECTING WORLDS
Dimensions: 2 x 2 1/2", Twelve Pages (CHECK), Nine Poems, Two Images (CHECK)

Copyright © 2003 Jan Haag
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
Jan Haag may be reached via e-mail: jhaag@u.washington.edu
or for purchase of art works
jhaag@janhaag.com




PET

THE PET PUPAE

COMING SOON


BY JAN HAAG


ART & POETRY - ACCUMULATIONS


POETRY + MUSIC + ESSAYS + TRAVEL + FICTION + TEXTILE ART + INTRODUCTION + HAAG'S BIO


21st CENTURY ART, C.E. - B.C., A Context