inspired by the painting The Night Café, his letters, and the piano composition “Red Café” by Kayleen Asbo It can’t all be sunflowers and haystacks and fishing boats. It can’t all be seascapes and still lifes with quince. Sometimes the rooms I paint are blood red, ugly rooms filled with violence and loneliness. And the people who come here are drunkards and derelicts. They huddle in blue despair. They’re down and outs and prostitutes, they’re “sleeping hooligans in dreary rooms.” They slouch and they steal. They drink some more. And the gas lights stare like sour yellow eyes. The floor seems to ripple and the tables seem to weave. And I enter in headlong though I try to leave. And I try to leave, but the chairs are empty and they call me in saying, Here is a place where you can ruin yourself. Come, give in to ruin. Go mad. Come go mad. Come sin. Won’t you sin? Won’t you come in? Come in. Come in. And when it crashes, oh, it crashes, and it all falls down. But I tasted it, sweet chaos, ardent decay, and now that I know it, it never goes away. * My dear friend composer/pianist/historian Kayleen Asbo and I want to offer you the video recording of our hour-long conversation about Vincent Van Gogh, loss and The Art of Creative Collaboration– click here.This project has been such an important part for each of us in holding on to hope and beauty during a dark and challenging time. If it speaks to a part of your own aching soul and you want to share it, you have our blessing to forward it to whomever you wish. If you want to offer a donation in support of our work so that we can professionally record our project in both audio and video format, click here for our Go Fund Me account. If you want to engage in the full collaboration–Vincent’s paintings, Kayleen’s music, and my poems–I hope you will join us in “Love Letters to Vincent” on July 29, the day Vincent died, at 11 a.m. mountain time. We will present the entire collaboration, sending love letters back in time to honor this man who changed the way we see beauty. There will also be a chance to participate in a group creative activity, responding to his work, creating a giant love letter for Vincent. Sliding scale. It will be recorded and sent to all who register. |
“But I tasted it,
sweet chaos,
ardent decay,
and now that I know it,
it never goes away.”
I love this turn. Is it the result of continuing past “where the poem ends”? Of, “letting the poem know more than you”?
I like that the poem is in the first person. Isn’t this the first of your Vincent series where he’s speaking?
Love this poem.
Your use of internal and end rhyme amplifies the less apparent tilt and whirl in this scene–the internal chaos no doubt reeling inside Vincent’s mind. Sour yellow eyes, loss of balance, ripple and weave–it all speaks to the sometimes wayward, off-the-rails dervish that will inevitably careen toward decay and crash… Only the man in white seems to offer a dispassionate attention to the artist viewing the room. Friend or foe–it’s hard to tell, but he seems to be watching and waiting for the habitué to succumb to the irresistible… this poem captures so much in this scene, and with uncommon compassion — thanks.
you’re so right about that man in the white … he owns this night cafe … and Vincent owed him money, and so made him this painting. and yes, I was hoping it would come through as both compassionate and inevitable even?
oh, how interesting… this background really makes sense–amazing how Vincent captured that figure in white–neither malevolent nor benign, just present… and, yes, for me, compassion and inevitability are both present in your piece, as well as the struggle with temptation and resistance, attraction and repulsion, “sweet chaos / ardent decay”