The Lovers’ Chronicle 4 January – wishin’ you – art by Marsden Hartley, Augustus John & Guy Pène du Bois

Dear Zazie,  Here is today’s Lovers’ Chronicle from Mac Tag dedicated to his muse. Are you wishin’ for somethin’ or someone?  Rhett

The Lovers’ Chronicle 

Dear Muse,

a dream scene:
come upon a wishin’ well high on a mesa
surrounded by white wooden crosses
the sun is settin’, castin’ soft orange glow
this is a place you know, but the well
was not here, you walk to it and stop
what you should do is pullin’, you
reach for a coin in your pocket
then you turn and walk away
rememberin’ what you need to tell her

© copyright 2024 mac tag/cowboy coleridge all rights reserved

have to go with Dusty and the great
Bacharach and David song;
“Wishin’ and hopin’ and thinkin’ and prayin’”
“Any song by Dusty please”
absolutely, the obvious message
has pull for me because i spent
so much time with nothin’
but wishin’ to hold on to
“Now we can save wishing
for the important things”
yes, like i wish we had more wine

© copyright 2023.2024 mac tag/cowboy coleridge all rights reserved

that had nothin’ to do with it, it was all try and try and survive, findin’ and comin’ to terms with the past was the key, said another way, whatever has happened we better find a way to accept it and find a way to tell it, found mine and you, now the only wishin’ has to do with the weather

© copyright 2022.2024 mac tag/cowboy coleridge all rights reserved

a vow
to tell you
what i want

at this point
all i can ever
imagine wantin’
is this…
for you to miss me
and to look forward
to seein’ me again

this is all about you
and how you feel
and what you want
and what you need

wow
this is a very
different kind
of wishin’ now

© copyright 2021 mac tag/cowboy coleridge all rights reserved

Pale Love, Pale Rider

well not quite an oath,
she who moves, shiverin’ body,
voice, and the soft sound, sighin’
into transgression repeat this verse,
as stanzas fade words attach, become,
a link to hope
embrace
this
do not stop, do not allow
fear to get a look at us

exclaim all is now you

© copyright 2020 mac tag/cowboy coleridge all rights reserved

ah no wishin’ goin’ on here
i wish i may i wish i might
nope, not happenin’

balmy winter day here on the High Plains
low was only 26 and winds were moderate
Friday night routine in full swing, groceries
bought, made Chinese for one with wine
stirred up a vesper martini, now sittin’ here
with you, i cannot imagine what to wish for

© copyright 2019.2024 mac tag/cowboy coleridge all rights reserved

warnin’
will brake
for first light
and last light
for verse that insists
on bein’ written now
and for thoughts of you
that threaten to overwhelm

sorry, no sunset photos on this leg
last light came with too many
telephone poles and pump jacks
in the way
i like my landscape photos
to look timeless
as if it could be
150 years ago

whizzed right through
the town of birth and death
without bein’ accosted
by any spirits
one of these days
must muster the courage
to stop and spend the night
and see if the haunts
want to dance

at 2036
stopped for a star check
found Orion and
stared in wide wonder
braced against the cold

with thoughts of you

© copyright 2018 mac tag/cowboy coleridge all rights reserved

an oath, immortal
she who moves, shiverin’ body,
voice, and the soft sound, sighin’
into transgression

repeat these words,
as radiant stanzas fade
words attach and become,
a link to hope

embrace
this
do not stop, do not allow
fear to get a look at us

serenity, when all else fell
hope, our joy and support
stumbled against an end
struck on the way

shelter these delusions,
cover and shade the trails,
now, would you have this smile
if we could become whole

under the veil
time to glimpse
and to exclaim
all is now you

© copyright 2017 mac tag/cowboy Coleridge all rights reserved

What has become
Of the horseman
The last romantic

The horseman’s
Ungoverned hours
Do not unman him

So like it was then,
When revisited,
That you wait
For the horseman
To appear again

© copyright 2016 mac tag/cowboy Coleridge all rights reserved

I hear you, but
What I really want to know:
Does it bring you
To your damn knees
In the middle
Of the night cuz
You cain’t
choke it back

Tell me your story
However you want
To tell it
Just tell me

© copyright 2016 mac tag/cowboy Coleridge all rights reserved

If I can just git off
Of this goddamn freeway
Without gittin’ killed or caught
Guy Clark, sorta

Too many SOB’s
Drivin’ SUV’s

© copyright 2016 mac tag/cowboy Coleridge all rights reserved

I regret most
The kiss that was
Not. It would have
Changed everything
I just knew a
Better moment
There would be. But
There never was

© copyright 2015 mac tag/cowboy Coleridge all rights reserved

Marsden Hartley

Today is the birthday of Marsden Hartley (Lewiston, Maine; January 4, 1877 – September 2, 1943 Ellsworth, Maine); Modernist painter, poet, and writer.

Hartley traveled to Europe for the first time in April 1912, and he became acquainted with Gertrude Stein‘s circle of avant-garde writers and artists in Paris. Stein, along with Hart Crane and Sherwood Anderson, encouraged Hartley to write as well as paint.

In a letter to Alfred Stieglitz, Hartley explains his disenchantment of living abroad in Paris. A single year has passed since he began living overseas. “Like every other human being I have longings which through tricks of circumstances have been left unsatisfied… and the pain grows stronger instead of less and it leaves one nothing but the role of spectator in life watching life go by-having no part of it but that of spectator.” Hartley wanted to live within the noiseless countryside and an invigorating city.

Gallery

Mountain lake autumn

Young American Artists of the Modern School, L. to R. Jo Davidson, Edward Steichen, Arthur B. Carles, John Marin; back: Marsden Hartley, Laurence Fellows, c. 1911, Bates College Museum of Art

• The Ice Hole, 1908, New Orleans Museum of Art
• Painting No. 48, 1913, Brooklyn Museum
• Portrait of a German Officer, 1914, Metropolitan Museum of Art
• Handsome Drinks, 1916, Brooklyn Museum
• Village, 1940, San Antonio Museum of Art
• Landscape, New Mexico, 1916–1920, Brooklyn Museum

Today is the birthday of Augustus John (Augustus Edwin John; Tenby, Pembrokeshire, Wales 4 January 1878 – 31 October 1961 Fordingbridge, Hampshire, England); painter, draughtsman, and etcher.  He was an important exponent of Post-Impressionism in the United Kingdom.  He was the brother of the painter Gwen John.

Early in 1900, he married his first wife, Ida Nettleship (1877–1907).  After her death in 1907, his mistress Dorothy “Dorelia” McNeill, a Bohemian style icon, became his partner and later became his second wife.

John had an affair with Ian Fleming‘s widowed mother, Evelyn Ste Croix Fleming née Rose.

Gallery

W. B. Yeats (1907)

Chalk drawing of Grace Westry 1897

John with Tallulah Bankhead and her portrait (1929)

John poses for the American press on board a ship

John by Reginald Gray, at Royal Academy London in 1960. (collection Mr. Derry O’Sullivan. Paris)

And today is the birthday of Guy Pène du Bois (Brooklyn; January 4, 1884 – July 18, 1958 Boston); painter, art critic, and educator. Born to a French family, his work depicted the culture and society around him: cafes, theatres, and in the twenties, flappers.

Pène du Bois began his artistic training in 1899, when he enrolled in the New York School of Art to study under the painter William Merritt Chase. In 1902 he enrolled in a painting class with Robert Henri, whose teachings lead Pène du Bois to focus more on everyday life in his own artwork. Pène du Bois traveled to Europe in 1905 to study under Théophile Steinlen, but returned to the U.S. upon his father’s death the following year.

He was a close friend to Edward Hopper and was his best man for his wedding to Josephine Hopper. They remained lifelong friends.

Gallery

thanks for stoppin’ by y’all

Mac Tag