BY JAN HAAG
INTRODUCTION + POETRY + MUSIC + TEXTILE ART + TRAVEL + ESSAYS + FICTION + HAAG'S BIO
THE 2002 ACCUMULATIONS
THE MASK
An Accumulation Created for FACES FOR LIFE
and
THE SYNONYM POEMS
EIGHT FACES FOR LIFE
6-13/7-26-03
THE MASK
Mostly, I like thinking about The Mask, this face,
this
too-pretty plaster, full, lip-parted
counterpart of a visage. I
think
about it in red, red lips
parted, I think about
it
in orange, orange
lips swollen, blank
eyes staring
and
illuminated
by the sun,
moistened from
drinking of
the galling
nectar of life, so sweet, so
vile, that God
tried it just once
with scant success, then rose into the clouds
THE FACE
of a blank-eyed white-girl-- or boy -- modern lads
and lasses so
identical no one can guess their
gender. A breed of flat-colored,
flat-chested,
tattooed tribals seeking to do right --
at
least some of the time --
some of the time,
consternating
their parents
who thought
themselves
quite wild in their own youth,
seated on the
edge, on a precipice
above a world of peace and prosperity,
a
world not yet turned to death and ashes --
where more and more
blood is needed to offset
the silence of the unresponsive newly terror-driven world.
THE VISAGE
"Stop!" you want to cry. "Stop! turning this peaceful
planet of
birds, plant-life, soft footed animals into
your vision of wealth
and war. Leave us alone!
Leave us alone!" cry the people, cry
the kites
and the crows, cry the robins of spring.
"Leave us
alone," sob the stones
forming
in mountains.
"Don't
dynamite us,
rob us, re-stack us into
dams, chop us into
no-where
going roads, roads going up the side
of my sister's
pain and down the length
of my brother's broken arm, blasted and
removed,
dragged down into the gravel excavated from pits of despair."
THE MIEN
Give blood, give blood, give your heart's blood. Let
your
compassionate nature shine through your
characteristic
need to uplift humans from the humiliation,
the pain of subjection to a nature given by
God -- without
the leash to restrain
it.
Busy
all day
long
trying,
inevitably failing,
falling beneath estimates
of
moral strength, guts, fortitude,
wile, projected to outwit one's
nemesis,
without the power to spread wide one's wings
and flutter off to an eternity of knowledge well spent.
THE COUNTENANCE
Here existence is a shallow cup for drinking away the blood
of
the countenance lost to minds blithered by a world,
shallow and
soothing, made of other minds. Drink,
drink deep, there is
enough to wet your lip.
Let
it be
enough.
Let it
satiate
your blood lust,
so you needn't
bother your
fellow
man
who
never meant you harm.
THE PHYSIOGNOMY
is hard to read, even when pure white and drained
of life's
blood. We think the Greeks were pure white
and made of marble,
but imbibe they did and, if
scratched,
will
turn
purple.
Mark my
word,
mighty
tall and upright,
dipped in the scarlet,
crimson,
cerise light of
an early dawn and a
difficult
night.
Rejoice with me in the blood of the grape,
the sunset soul lost in the cup of over-flowing wine.
THE FACADE
Don't peek around to the back of the exterior, The Mask
will
remain so long as you honor its impudence, its
audacity
its
claim
that
it
represents
your
thought,
your
will,
your
vision.
your
hard won, not necessarily noble, truth.
THE FRONT
Be up front. Front the cause, Stay out front. Front them
off.
Let
the
red
blood
find
its
own
way
down from
the wound or
the sacrifice or
the
pyramid on which
you tore out my heart -- root,
aorta, blood still pumping -- for treasuring.
"Farewell"
THE MASK and The Synonym Poems, An Accumulation
Mixed Media: fired clay mask, paper, poems,
Father's eye, Mother's
crystal, leaves, glue, metallic thread
Dimensions: 9 x 12 3/4"
THE SYNONYM POEMS
Dimensions: 2 x 2 1/2", Seventeen Pages, Eight Poems, Two Images
INDEX TO POEMS
The Countenance, 06-13/7-26-03
The Facade, 06-13/7-26-03
The Face, 06-13/7-26-03
The Front, 06-13/7-26-03
The Mask, 06-13/7-26-03
The Mien, 06-13/7-26-03
The Physiognomy, 06-13/7-26-03
The Visage, 06-13/7-26-03
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
THE ALDONA SERIES
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