The Lovers’ Chronicle 27 December – payin’ – art by Hermann-Paul – verse by Charles Olson

Dear Zazie,  Here is today’s Lovers’ Chronicle from Mac Tag dedicated to his muse. Are you done payin’? Rhett

The Lovers’ Chronicle

Dear Muse,

there is a great R&B song
by Gloria Ann Taylor called
“You’ve Gotta Pay the Price”,
that fits the topic;
“You’ve gotta pay the price
Love don’t come so easy
You’ve gotta make every sacrifice”
“Well we’re proof of that”
right, but now it feels easy
is that why, because
it did not come easily
“Not sure about that
but certain of this”
we are all done with payin’

© copyright 2023 mac tag/cowboy coleridge all rights reserved

some things are cheap, some expensive, some payments are immediate, some lie in wait for years before comin’ due, some mistakes go by with little notice, some bring you to your knees, sometimes you pay and keep payin’, rather an expert at payin’ for the romantic ones, reckon i had to git my account paid in full before you came along

© copyright 2022.2023 mac tag/cowboy coleridge all rights reserved

not a believer in deserves,
but definitely in payin’
Piaf knew as she was dyin’,
every damn thing you do
in life, you pay for

paid dearly for some mistakes
showed up and owned them
another necessary step
to get to you

cannot find where you belong
if you are runnin’ from somethin’

© copyright 2021.2023 mac tag/cowboy coleridge all rights reserved

Pale Love, Pale Rider

layin’ here naked with,
words not necessary
now

lost in touch
hands movin’
across the curve
of your hip
yours movin’
over my arms

the only sound,
aside from passion,
the occasional
street traffic noise
from peachtree

feelin’ right

as we do,
parallel
only to
each other

© copyright 2020 mac tag/cowboy coleridge all rights reserved

for Tamela

hey
packed and ready to come see you
but i have not written you yet
so here goes

fulfillment found
now that what began years ago
has come to this, the continuation

the beginnin’
of what has always been there
the graspin’ of it, together into this

the very thing we are

© copyright 2019 mac tag/cowboy coleridge all rights reserved

necessary, trouble within,
that which was had and lost

serenity, when all else fell
stumble against hope
struck on the way

shelter these delusions,
cover and shade the trails,
now, would you have this smile

under the veil
time to glimpse
and to exclaim

gotta pay for it

© copyright 2018 mac tag/cowboy coleridge all rights reserved

not so much a poet
more like an archaeologist
of moments that never were
of what could have been,
of buried emotions

© copyright 2017 mac tag/cowboy coleridge all rights reserved

feelin’ better now
would not so much
call it
renewed hope
more like
forced resignation

still payin’ dues
to the not so
dearly departed

coulda had it any day
only let it go
outta stubbornness
i suppose

© copyright 2016 mac tag/cowboy Coleridge all rights reserved

Today is the birthday of Hermann-Paul (René Georges Hermann-Paul; Paris December 27, 1864 – June 23, 1940 Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer, France); artist.

He was a well-known illustrator whose work appeared in numerous newspapers and periodicals. Early works were noted for their satiric characterizations of the foibles of French society. His points were made with simple caricature. His illustrations relied on blotches of pure black with minimum outline to define his animated marionettes. His exhibition pieces were carried by large splashes of color and those same fine lines of black. Hermann-Paul worked in Ripolin enamel paint, watercolors, woodcuts, lithographs, drypoint engraving, oils, and ink. In his later years, he produced many works in dry point and ink depicting his beloved Camargue.

Gallery

Charles Olson

And today is the birthday of Charles Olson (Worcester, Massachusetts 27 December 1910 – 10 January 1970 New York City); poet.  He described himself not so much as a poet or writer but as “an archaeologist of morning.”

In 1941, Olson moved to New York City’s Greenwich Village and began living with Constance “Connie” Wilcock in a common-law marriage.

In September 1948, Olson became a visiting professor at Black Mountain College in North Carolina. While there he had a child with one of his students, Betty Kaiser. Kaiser became Olson’s second common-law wife following his separation from Wilcock in 1956.

When Black Mountain College closed in 1956, Olson oversaw the resolution of the institution’s debts over the next five years and settled in Gloucester. He participated in early psilocybin experiments under the aegis of Timothy Leary in 1961 and Henry Murray and served as a distinguished professor at the State University of New York at Buffalo (1963-1965) and visiting professor at the University of Connecticut(1969).

In January 1964, Kaiser was killed by a drunk driver in a head-on automobile accident although a grieving Olson incorrectly theorized her death as a potential suicide because of her dissatisfaction with her life in the Buffalo area. Her death precipitated Olson into an existential mixture of extreme isolation, romantic longing, and frenzied work.  Much of his life was affected by his heavy smoking and drinking, which contributed to his early death from liver cancer. Following his diagnosis, he was transferred to New York Hospital for a liver operation, which never occurred.  He died there two weeks past his fifty-ninth birthday, while in the process of completing his epic, The Maximus Poems.

Verse 

The Kingfishers (1950)

• What does not change 
• is the will to change
  • Part I, 1

• When I saw him, he was at the door, but it did not matter,
  he was already sliding along the wall of the night, losing himself
  in some crack of the ruins. That it should have been he who said, “The kingfishers!
  who cares
  for their feathers
  now?”
• His last words had been, “The pool is slime.”
  • Part I, 2
• The legends are
  legends. Dead, hung up indoors, the kingfisher
  will not indicate a favoring wind,
  or avert the thunderbolt. Nor, by its nesting,
  still the waters, with the new year, for seven days.
  It is true, it does nest with the opening year, but not on the waters.
  • Part I, 2
• And all now is war
  Where so lately there was peace,
  and the sweet brotherhood, the use
  of tilled fields.
  • Part I, 3
• When the attentions change / the jungle
  leaps in     even the stones are split
  they rive
  • Part I, 3
• Not one death but many,
  not accumulation but change, the feed-back proves, the feed-back is
  the law

Into the same river no man steps twice
When fire dies air dies
No one remains, nor is, one

Around an appearance, one common model, we grow up
many. Else how is it,
if we remain the same,
we take pleasure now
in what we did not take pleasure before? love
contrary objects? admire and / or find fault? use
other words, feel other passions, have
nor figure, appearance, disposition, tissue
the same?

To be in different states without a change
is not a possibility

• Part I, 4

• We can be precise. The factors are
  in the animal and / or the machine the factors are
  communication and / or control, both involve
  the message. And what is the message? The message is
  a discrete or continuous sequence of measurable events distributed in time
• is the birth of the air, is
  the birth of water, is
  a state between
  the origin and
  the end, between
  birth and the beginning of
  another fetid nest
• is change, presents
  no more than itself
• And the too strong grasping of it,
  when it is pressed together and condensed,
  loses it
• This very thing you are
  • Part I, 4
• with what violence benevolence is bought
  what cost in gesture justice brings
  what wrongs domestic rights involve
  what stalks
  this silence
  • Part II

thanks for stoppin’ by y’all

Mac Tag