Rules Of Art (Poem by Clara B. Jones)

Rules Of Art

for Dalton Anthony Jones


Sol Lewitt: "If words are used, and they proceed from ideas about art, then they are art and not literature."

Morgan Parker: “What does it mean to be at once upheld and at the same time continually made to feel less than?”

Louise Nevelson: “Different people have different memories.... Some have memories for words, some for action—mine happens to be for form.”

Frank Stella: “It's art, or it wants to be art, or it asked to be considered as art, and therefore the terms we have for discussing art are probably good enough.”

Doris Rita Alphonso: “[Christine Delphy] criticizes feminists and others who challenge sex as a natural category and yet maintain the distinctions between masculine and feminine as a necessary cultural construct.”

Claudia Rankine: “Perhaps the most insidious and least understood form of segregation is that of the word.”

Helen Vendler: “I think that a lot of things are hard to read if you're not in the vocabulary flow of that particular discourse.”

Jennifer Hansen: “Each subject ought to be free, argues [Luce] Irigaray, to pursue the unique possibilities of his or her subjective identity in ways that do not subordinate their differences to a hierarchical, patriarchal economy.”

Sol LeWitt: "Perception is subjective."

Mel Bochner: "What has been generally neglected is a concern with the object of art in

terms of its own material individuality--the thing itself."

Gertrude Stein: “Afrobots make better pets than cats but hiss like snakes.”

Alice (Poem by Clara B. Jones)

Alice

for Robin (Asheville, 2015-2016)

You are a radical poet in love with a

transgender rap star who speaks Russian and

sings patriotic songs about Putin's good

looks--decompensating like silt sliding down

McKinley or bones decaying in the Sahel.

If you don't do something now you'll never

be the same again unless your pets run away

or Paul Beatty wins another prize though you

ate lobster on the beach where your cousin

brought a kilo that she shared with Richard's

wife whose puppy ran in Lagrangian move-

ments around the fire. You're as troubled as my

nephew Alice whose husband studied ants in

Sudan before the revolution changed every-

thing, and his thesis was a referendum on

animal rights when another case of hack-

ing proved his theory about the American way.

summa cum laude (Poem by Clara B. Jones)

summa cum laude

Your therapist said she wanted you dead, but mother rarely treated you badly. She made a lot of mistakes like neurons misfiring or father getting lost in the forest. Lobelia grew out of oak trees, and howler monkeys walked across a land bridge while jaguars bred in dry season watching toucans feeding insects to their young. You are a woman with army ants crawling in your hair. You are a woman who rode to Cañas on a bus with 5 campesinos and a lizard salesman traveling to Santa Rosa before father baked paca and rice for mother who bought tortillas at the cantina, circuits alive and hot as tarmac in Summer—black and viscous as lake silt. Father hid in mother's closet—her silks touching his cheeks, her scent seductive like Inga flowers—xanthous as her skin at dawn when gray sunlight reminded him of the last time he felt joy.

You build fembots.

Life is unfair and unstable.

Coloreds speak Danish.

Psychopathology Sonnet (by Clara B. Jones)

Psychopathology Sonnet

for Judy Blume

1. I was confined for three years after he left.

2. I am mentally ill and allergic to cheese.

3a. My diagnosis is grim, but your marriage is strong.

3b. I left Munich with men who wanted a tryst.

3c. Self-actualization is my goal though I don't have a job.

4. The economy lost 8% this month, but traders are bullish.

5. Dick committed Betsy for life when she started to rebel.

6. The more choices I have the sicker I am.

7. Hitler admired Kandinsky's art but labeled it grotesque.

8. I woke from my coma after three days of treatment.

9. I am homeless now but plan to take an online course.

10. I was diagnosed bi-polar, but my son calls me schizoid.

11. Before Freud fled Vienna, he said Hitler would save him.

12. I wanted to falsify it, but Science is not my strength.

13a. I traded a bottle of Pinot Noir for a bag of chips.

13b. Replicants govern Brooktondale.

14. Anxiety is contagious but curable.

Paris (1985) (Poem by Clara B. Jones)

Paris (1985)

"My greatest regret in life is that I was not born someone else." Woody Allen

Oksana Boyko's cost analysis showed AI

is efficient since growth depends on

psychic shifts (and global stability) though

a wave of terrorism has raised alarm. Inflation

is part of the game, but progress can't

be made with martial zeal alone. The

web of proxy power depends on fembots,

and you are determined to expose 

false claims, but there is a chance of system

failure and loss of ice on Earth. You know

there is no free lunch, and French corporations

reap rewards of Europe's markets while Barbara

makes boredom sculptures and text art displayed

in Sean's gallery ruling symbolically and

materially, showing you that fear controls both the

marginalized and elite. You have always been

drawn to men who are sensible and fearless,

using their frontal lobes to negotiate deals, so

you know that morality is an overlay

preventing exposure to the toxic effects of dendrobatids.

East Hill (Poem by Clara B. Jones)

East Hill

George Stubbs designs elite architecture,

drawing analytically in a moral mode while

Stonehenge memorializes Druid rituals like

landscape simplification and “top-down”

control...education and the digital field...

Refugees flee conflict zones and

hackers stream live on TV though bots

spread online when pixel images are

sold for profit. 3-D computer feeds

and lab studies fail to measure synth

awareness but William Irons proved that

matriarchy is unstable...personality traits...

Diversity-dependent scale is complex

if fundamental social units follow

Hamilton's Rule since network theory

leads to chaos through high-tolerance

inbreeding caused by drift. Searching

for general laws is a matter of modeling

humans as insects if you have typical

responses to animals in soil-disturbance regimes.

Hacienda La Pacifica (Poem by Clara B. Jones)

Hacienda La Pacifica

for Vreni Hagnauer

You gender ecosystems and race exotic pets to

save wilderness in Canas where poachers wild

monkeys or that is how it seems to me...stay

away from replicants...Troy Day is your role

model since math is your strongest subject and

landscapes are rugged when life is not what you

thought it would be...whose fault is it when

aggressive advertising is permitted by law if you

order Chinese take-out in San Jose before boarding

the bus to Alajuela...you become more attractive

as you age but are not confused by the contradictions

of men or celebrations of wealth along class lines...

internet-deployed networks...you have a GATA4

mutation allowing you to hear in the ultrasonic range

and to share codes with bats roosting in strangler

figs while tapirs roam dry forest in rainy season

and clines promote species scaling...stress gradient...

trophic cascades alter group-level thinking and you

are now a matrón with 2,000 campesinos under 

your watch...repression of selfishness in human transactions.