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04.11.07
Paul Klee
How to compose a question: To spell the word blue
in Paul Klee’s painting entitled Paul Klee’s The Color Blue
in the painting the entryway to the little room called blue or
Holocene
a face with orange noise


In Paul Klee’s painting So Many Polar Explorers
So Many Buttons Under Hands
understand intimacy and texture
or substitute texture for 
the intimacy under hands


 




I’m not your aster burnt marshmallow
small honey
gradations of warm honey blue to yellow light
pale suggestion of warmest chartreuse summery 
suggestion of hello plus
Substituting the body for the
palest suggestion of green grass


Replace doubt with live color and the affirmation of color
or substitute affirmation with actual texture
substitute when a human body disappears
with wavelength or fold of blanket
substitute and/or replace wind
with bees


 




“What is the shape of the little rabbit inside you?” 
I was explaining my drawing of a curved line
I said, I didn’t know, I said
in a system of circles and stars


I resemble the heart in that painting
the half face half-turned the red-headed painting
I resemble the pinks and grays I resemble, 
he said, that looks like you and I turned 
in the Museum in the gorgeous room
that’s not me I said that’s you


 




Fatal Bassoon Solo vs. Well-Tended Woodland Path
I knew myself to be on the verge of finding
the living record of an underground tree
I knew an ear was also an animal or
Witness the Man with the Beard of Bees
the cunning enticement of pen on paper


My moving furniture gave me
an uncompromising vision
like “signs intensifying themselves” 
what is the shape of this meaning? 
I’ve just cobbled together
I mean I’ve just jury-rigged
this hell hole
utopian Ball


 




I’m thinking
of two syllables
a subject and predicate I stole
I’m thinking of
as knowledge relates to color, forms, the visible
I’m thinking
a grassy movement a texture
a diagram for the drawing of a line


Your birthday carries a wavelength and a color
your body carries this wavelength with specific reference to
“knowledge … the visible” 


 




I produce a light compatible with my hands 
to keep “the present present” 
I look past seeking into sought and find
the careful hazelnut
of tomorrow, but
the painful exigencies 
of being a swimmer 
demand of me
to return to clouds 
 

Juliana Leslie is the author of Pie in the Sky (Braincase Press) and Questions for Trees (Minus House).