January 2016
Poetry is a way for me to express in words what in direct speech might cause conflict. Some ideas should not be expressed head on. I've been fighting the heavies my whole life, but only since I started putting pen to paper (or cursor to screen) have my "weapons" started working. Please visit my BLOG — more poetry HERE.
"Dazzle" ship USS Leviathan 1918
Dazzle
If we could create another style of war
Balance and harmony might follow
Instead of battle campaigns, let’s try ad campaigns
Or – better yet – art pageants
Those "Dazzle" ships of the World Wars – remember them?
Now there was camouflage with flair
“Are they coming or going?,” the torpedoists would wonder.
Did the naval architects soirée at Gertrude Stein’s?
Were they privy to the heyday of Modernism, the clash of isms?
That’s it…We could have a floating gallery!
Let’s see: Steam out your flotilla on opening day
Have – say – one ship for the judges (cruise ship, first class, please)
And let it all move clockwise like a Sonia Delaunay
Or maybe use a sea lane as a catwalk
Best design wins the war
I can see it now in my mind:
First – the prototypes
A Union ironclad, “Arrangement in Grey and Grey, No. 1,”
Commandeered by Whistler and his mother
Ah, here’s the U.S.S. Narkeeta with “brickwork” blips
Captain Seurat and First Mate Signac steer close to far,
So challenging dots become welcome pictures
(The fog of war now crystal clear)
Welcome RMS Mauretania, Skippered by Picasso
Observe its harlequin coating for the comic pathos of battle
(Clowns are sad deep down)
And there is the captured Vaterland, now U.S. troopship Leviathan
Does its spikey pattern look like Franz Marc Expressionism
Or Feininger Orphism? The judges are stumped.
“Friends, we have a tie-breaker; it’s a Miro seagull out of neutral Spain!
“And now for our fashion show segment,”
Cries El Lissitzky from his “Sky Hook” crows nest.
“Welcome Peggy Guggenheim in her lobster dress (War is but a dream)
And there - Boccioni’s crew sporting ‘Dynamic Forms in Space,’
Bands flapping in the wind like sails,
For those chilly nights on the North Atlantic”
But Marinetti and the Futurists aboard “Manifesto”
Are not impressed; they spell in semaphore:
BREAK
WAVES
SCATTER
SHOT
I say; if it’s destruction you want, have at it!
Leave our hulls shattered with shards
Fracture our decks into prisms of sound
Contort our bridge decks until they writhe in pain
Torture our funnels with the heat of Vulcan
But, please…
Do it in paint.
If we could create another style of war
Balance and harmony might follow
Instead of battle campaigns, let’s try ad campaigns
Or – better yet – art pageants
Those "Dazzle" ships of the World Wars – remember them?
Now there was camouflage with flair
“Are they coming or going?,” the torpedoists would wonder.
Did the naval architects soirée at Gertrude Stein’s?
Were they privy to the heyday of Modernism, the clash of isms?
That’s it…We could have a floating gallery!
Let’s see: Steam out your flotilla on opening day
Have – say – one ship for the judges (cruise ship, first class, please)
And let it all move clockwise like a Sonia Delaunay
Or maybe use a sea lane as a catwalk
Best design wins the war
I can see it now in my mind:
First – the prototypes
A Union ironclad, “Arrangement in Grey and Grey, No. 1,”
Commandeered by Whistler and his mother
Ah, here’s the U.S.S. Narkeeta with “brickwork” blips
Captain Seurat and First Mate Signac steer close to far,
So challenging dots become welcome pictures
(The fog of war now crystal clear)
Welcome RMS Mauretania, Skippered by Picasso
Observe its harlequin coating for the comic pathos of battle
(Clowns are sad deep down)
And there is the captured Vaterland, now U.S. troopship Leviathan
Does its spikey pattern look like Franz Marc Expressionism
Or Feininger Orphism? The judges are stumped.
“Friends, we have a tie-breaker; it’s a Miro seagull out of neutral Spain!
“And now for our fashion show segment,”
Cries El Lissitzky from his “Sky Hook” crows nest.
“Welcome Peggy Guggenheim in her lobster dress (War is but a dream)
And there - Boccioni’s crew sporting ‘Dynamic Forms in Space,’
Bands flapping in the wind like sails,
For those chilly nights on the North Atlantic”
But Marinetti and the Futurists aboard “Manifesto”
Are not impressed; they spell in semaphore:
BREAK
WAVES
SCATTER
SHOT
I say; if it’s destruction you want, have at it!
Leave our hulls shattered with shards
Fracture our decks into prisms of sound
Contort our bridge decks until they writhe in pain
Torture our funnels with the heat of Vulcan
But, please…
Do it in paint.
©2016 Stuart Kurtz