‘IF YOU FORGET’, ‘FIGURES IN WHITE’, ‘MORNING IN AUGUST’, ‘LANGUAGE IS PRISON’ & ‘WHAT IS NEW IS PASSING AGAIN’
王翰林 Hanlin Wang, https://wanghanlin.art/
IF YOU FORGET
I deceive myself. After a year of silence, pretending
recovery from the death of the imagination or some
such moaning, I face my block as an architect, head-
on. I don’t want to build or spirit people along
carrying lumber to job sites, muddy with concrete,
and toting steel tools, cut hands, lost funds, and
critical rejection. I’d rather sleep than bet my time on
art, though I say to myself it begins here, my best
work is coming, previously repressed by
circumstances. Prepare for me, public, I’m here! It’s
an old line and an older deception: lolling or sleeping,
you die of work, if you forget how to play.
FIGURES IN WHITE
My friends surround me. All figures in white.
I’m a sheath wearing my old jeans. Lunch on
me. I’ll give you some old things. Take yours
with sadness. I may be last to see you.
MORNING IN AUGUST
You enter a warm room. Light. Levers and tools
everywhere. You empty from an over-size shirt
and paint with blue everything not tool.
Impossible. On the balcony is a wind, trees,
never tools and you stand and you do not know
why but you won’t go back inside. Warm wind.
LANGUAGE IS PRISON
Language is prison. So is heartbeat, though silent.
It’s sad when the only true path is obedience to our
own chains. I promised to try something new (your
attention is old.) Try sleep reading. The ball is old.
The cat is new. The birthday party is tomorrow.
Were you paying attention? The keyboard floated
left on top of itself. Nobody stops this. Levitate from
your bed, regard doorways as croquet hoops, hop to
something simple, Work work work. Seek no local
rewards, gain only from the constructions, believe
you’re in the business of magic. This, the playing.
WHAT IS NEW IS PASSING AGAIN
The cycle begins again. And yes, you can leave the program,
clean, hair brushed, and with new luggage, then arrive for
the cruise under another good name. The firings, the
resignations, the downsizing, the self-criticism, all this
behind you – and yet everyone else wants to keep going.
These days are now stress-free. Starting this month, you’ll
rescue gadgets from obsolescence until you look hokey
holding them. You can blame yourself for wanting to stop
by roadside rocks dripping with spring water and bathe, find
someone, anyone, and play ping-pong, find others, and form
cubicles where you have to walk around to pass each other’s
games. The plan was health, not progress, and really, would
you leave now and abjure your demesne? The washer
knocks, the trash truck moans, the dripping arm of an alien
sea creature rises in the bay, watched by cliffs of witnesses,
who flee with their refurbished tools. I’m not that old but it
reminds me of something - what is new is passing again.
Lawrence Bridges' poetry has appeared in The New Yorker, Poetry, and The Tampa Review. He has published three volumes of poetry: Horses on Drums (Red Hen Press, 2006), Flip Days (Red Hen Press, 2009), and Brownwood (Tupelo Press, 2016). You can find him on IG: @larrybridges
