BY JAN HAAG
THE 2002 ACCUMULATIONS
MOON SHOES
Ninth to Twenty-first Century
An Accumulation
and
THE GOLDEN LEAVES
of
MOON SHOES
Ninth to Twenty-first Century
I HAVE NOTHING TO SAY ABOUT SHOES
02-25-02
Shoes -- nothing to say about
shoes. They habit the feet,
one foot, two foot: feet. They form a duo:
shoes -- keeping one
from the earth, keeping out the wet -- at times,
making the vicious concrete,
less vicious, at times.
I
think of the silk dust of India -- kicking my sandals off,
walking in
the soft, red, volcanic dust -- staining my feet up past
the ankles.
Poof poof, stepping through the night on the trail
with my four
drunken, new-found Indian friends, past the
street lamps in the
forest along the ridge, along
the mountain-side at
Matheren.
Discalced, I didn't think of shoes then.
Returning to
America, I've had to wear them ever since,
except along the lush wet
mile of summer morning lawn
in the Arboretum. The tingling toes would
say farewell
forever to light open shoes, heavy boots,
the fitted
casements needed to tread through
this civilization.
SHOES II
03-02-02
Living among the stars, keep
one shoe
hooked to the earth, one to the sky,
dance with the
howling wind.
Let Seattle's flickering night-time
lights tattoo
your heart.
Stride the moon's progression.
Touch its fullness.
O gibbous moon, shine
on the serpentine links of the two-eyed
freeway cars, shimmering.,
They undulate into the dark of
nearness,
into distance unperceived by the quivering,
coruscating heart. Up next to galaxies,
eye to eye with
Jupiter's Io, flash!
Sparkle! Elude black space, know emptiness,
walk
the moon's orbit -- too high to reflect Lake Union.
Anticipate
dawn. Tiptoe in slippers
welded to moon and stars.
Wear bronzed shoes, metallic stars' light.
SHOES III
03-07-02
My sister thinks my moon shoe looks
like
fallopian tubes and a vagina --
and a uterus right there at the
top.
I think it looks like eggplants and Hale-Bopp,
but, in any
case, adequate to walk
the highways of the conceptual mind.
I do
not mind the lack of opening nor do
I explain the lump at the top.
Like
caveat emptor, let the viewer beware. Dance
the
skyways just below Alpha Centauri, open
inevitable night with joy,
remembering always
empta dolore docet experientia.*
SHOE IV
03-11-02
The passing shoe, the written
word, even
the rain whispers in the night. One dare
not think of
the spinning ball, pale green
and blue, stalking, in a limited
way,
its perpetual orbit, confined to the universe.
Round and
round, past the yet-to-explode
stars, past the future, past the
past, one step
and then another, shoes contain observations,
sand grains, soul food for a lifetime.
SHOE V
03-11-02
The fifth shoe marks the
crossroads,
the axis mundi, the walk up and the walk
down. Bear
with me in paradise
where the bears wear neither shoes, nor
tinkling
bells. There is no one to warn.
No one picks the berries
anymore.
Yet the berries are picked. Blue, black,
straw and
rasp. The fifth shoe overflows,
a cornucopia, a way out of the world.
SHOE VI
03-11-02
Can there be more than this:
the leaf, the wind, the shoe smashing
raindrops? There was hardly
a shoe
left when the Towers fell, but paper floated
in the air,
stench. Six months later: lights
search the heavens for
answer,
memorializing monuments that exist
only in thin air,
very slim air, as the sacrificing
goes on and on and on and on and on
and on
like footsteps, unshod, across the reaches
of time,
desire, fear, hatred, greed. O, greed is
not the least part of calling others "the axis of evil."
SHOE VII
03-12-02
Walking shoed on the earth
hurts,
hurts me, hurts the earth. Let the toes
tickle the grass,
let the grass wet and
tickle the toes. Better yet, walk in the
sand, let the ice-cold water foam,
lick, pull, undertow toes,
fasten one
to the earth, suck one into the sea. Thunder's
predicted
for tonight. Let lightening strike
at the heels, let thunder roll
under the arch,
flex the sole. Adopt sandals if its mandatory
to
walk among the comets, over the galaxies.
Bronze the baby's shoes.
Give a little weight
to the foot, satisfaction to the
shoemaker,
limit to the journey -- for, if bare, one can
walk
forever, hand over hand along the rainbow's
curve, sit at the summit
of the giant cumulus,
peer down. Surveillance won't help, won't stop
the tap-dancing, contradictions-in-the-heart shoes.
SHOE VIII
03-13-02
Shoes. I still have nothing
to say about
that with which, unnaturally, we trod upon
the earth.
Shoes: purple, red, blue, black, boots,
dainty little dancing slippers
-- racks of shoes,
a fetish of shoes, walking, running, tiptoeing
shoes.
I'll write a portrait of shoes. I remember my
O-very-high-heeled red shoes best --
with cut-out leather toes (I
am sure it was still
leather in those days). Now we have blue, pink,
clear, naked shoes -- colors no cow
would confess to, nor
alligator claim.
Other people have no shoes. Is that a
tragedy?
Hindu's thought I was a crazy lady when I
took off my
shoes to walk upon their silk-soft earth
-- walked and walked and
walked. A rural lad said: "Why
give yourself so much pain? A taxi
will come." I walked
into the sea, I walked into the dawn, up the
subcontinent's
coast without shoes, without taxi or pain.
SHOE IX
03-14-02
Shoe, plaque, book.
I've
done my paean for shoes.
Let them make their way in the spring
time,
exhibitionist's single-soled world.
SHOE X
04-06-02
Brassy shoes, bronze
boots balancing
carefully past the moon, a second ending,
a new
beginning, exploring the way
as I step, not swiftly, not surely,
not more
surely than the 21st Century
subsumes the 9th Century
shoe,
while the catkins breed on the twigs
in the sky, aments
dangle. They precede the leaves,
both on the known and the unknown trees.
SHOE XI
04-07-02
Charles thinks my moon shoe
looks like
a Cheshire Cat domiciled in a shoe --
grinning above
the laces, through the winter leaves.
Last night celebrating
Cambodian New Years
with green dancing peacock, how glad
I was of
the wind, how protected in my eyrie
contemplating my accumulated,
composed, fragile, moon-constructed shoes --
preparing them to
last in earth-long song.
MOON SHOES, Ninth to Twenty-first Century, An Accumulation
Mixed Media: wood, glass, paper, poems, jewels, leaves, paint, glue, gold,
thread
Dimensions: 8 1/2 x 6 1/2"
THE GOLDEN LEAVES of MOON SHOES, Ninth to Twenty-first Century
Dimensions: 2 x 2 1/2", Twenty-two Pages, Eleven Poems, Two Images
Copyright © 2002 Jan Haag
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
BY JAN HAAG