The Coming of the Toads

A Notebook – Since 2007

Tag: beauty

  • On Beauty

    What is Beauty, that Beast in all caps?
    The beauty of beauty is beauty
    (“Rose is a rose is a rose is a rose”)
    wants no thought, bears no meaning.

    We may begin by stating what beauty
    is not: beauty can not be purchased,
    beauty is not style nor fashion,
    beauty is not transitory nor fixed,
    serves no function, is non-cultural.

    Beauty is cosmopolitan, universal.
    Beauty is humble, avoids museums.
    Beauty is not needy, invites no convo.
    Beauty is meaningless, for sense,
    that human construct, usurps beauty
    of its principal pleasure.

    Meaning (definition, interpretation,
    reveal, tell-tale) translates forms,
    the essence of beauty, into human
    terms, where it loses its native essence.

    We can not paint the soul, nor post
    a pic of it.

    Beauty is not the opposite
    of ugly, tho ugly walks hand in hand
    with beauty, speaks with beauty,
    but beauty has no answer,
    no comment.

    And yet, Eco says:
    “…an orgy of tolerance, the total syncretism and the absolute and unstoppable polytheism of Beauty.”
    Which is to say, “Beauty! Get out of Dodge!”

    Beauty is not a value, but a virtue.

    We can of course get more involved:

    But we grow weary of wearing
    that same old tattered dress,
    and find little tenderness
    in your tries and stays.

    We close our talk on beauty
    with a beautiful poem
    by e. e. cummings:

    [O sweet spontaneous]

    BY E. E. CUMMINGS

    O sweet spontaneous
    earth how often have
    the
    doting

                 fingers of
    prurient philosophers pinched
    and
    poked

    thee
    ,has the naughty thumb
    of science prodded
    thy

            beauty      how
    often have religions taken
    thee upon their scraggy knees
    squeezing and

    buffeting thee that thou mightest conceive
    gods
             (but
    true

    to the incomparable
    couch of death thy
    rhythmic
    lover

                 thou answerest

    them only with

                                  spring)

    E. E. Cummings, “O sweet spontaneous” from Tulips & Chimneys. Copyright © 1923 by E. E. Cummings. Reprinted by permission of Public Domain. Copied from Poetry Foundation.

    PS: We have been waiting
    overtime
    for your answer
    this year.

  • The Cat’s Meough

    The cat comes quietly a Sunday morning
    blue eyes lightly freckled cheeks glossy
    smooth silver fur tasselling corn down
    lips oysters on the half shell half open
    legs the dance of life waiting to erupt
    on the private stage of her boudoir.

    She walks in weird beauty this cat
    on two legs with patience galore
    knows full well her lustrous sheen
    when seen in the crackling of old
    magazines etiolates the cold celery
    stalks flowering in the veggie garden.

    For a cymbal cup of truth and trust
    and what good has it ever done
    her to have even one man shun
    while another calls her gorgeous
    rather have the cat in your lap
    purring your fingers thru her pelt.

  • Sunday Morning (VI, VII, VIII)

    VI
    In heaven in silence sit
    vast statues of stone
    on earth there is no quiet
    stone clouds break open
    what does the thunder say?
    Don’t sit under the apple tree
    fall is the mother of beauty
    with anyone else but she.
    She doesn’t like her picture
    taken nor to be in a poem
    does not care she is beauty
    but takes time with her hair
    avoids rules not her own.
    Heaven falls from the sky
    no heaven no earth below.

    VII
    Words are not a product
    of heaven but of earth.
    Sunday morning returns
    with a cup of French Roast
    under a grapevine wreath
    looped herbs and flowers.
    The coffee smells of earth
    the first gentle rain stirs
    petrichor into the air
    the dry grass two crows
    the cat on the dirt path.
    In heaven no senses no
    tenses no need no rain
    no sun no mud no crud.
    All sense is earthbound.

    VIII
    Sunday morning slows
    autumn leaves falling
    where she lives and walks
    in fine form and talks
    of the lovely noisy
    nights and dirty days
    of clean kitchens
    and open stays
    all means understood
    and confused all reason
    clear and absurd
    peaceful and happy
    stones that turn
    to stories and poems.
    How many choices in one
    heaven on one earth?

  • Sunday Morning (IV, V)

    IV
    She is content with the calico cat
    poosha the boy pilot who crashed
    his plane in takeoff suckled home
    the Stones on the transistor mother
    smothered with a cover of beauty.
    For content she talks about crows
    the two in the street eating squish
    squirrel but the murder on leaves
    the warm asphalt melting summer
    sun heat where does heaven hide
    and why at night come monsters
    from paradise looking for a name.
    She will not join a community
    whose purpose is to persecute
    another heaven a different earth.

    V
    Satisfied she collects the stories
    of the stones beauty calcified
    in underground electromagnetic
    waves on a static spirit oldie
    station where sleeping birds
    again awake to the murder
    of the sun or return not
    and even the earth’s rot
    will not endure and old
    trips up the coast memorized
    in slide shows by campfires
    that death may be related
    to beauty the birth of moods
    passion splurge now dead
    urges flown to beauty’s abode.