“Matisse at SFMOMA,” a poem by Steve Surryhne

Poetry

Matisse at SFMOMA
by Steve Surryhne

1.

The Blue Window

Bathed in the blue which takes his name,
at the MOMA I stand before Matisse's Blue Window.
The artist is the world's lover, so says Stevens.
Lovers and workers of the world unite
in the Red Room in the red light!

Are we to look through the painting
as through a window--
where just a hint, a slight
suggestion is sufficient
for a world which may
or may not exist

Or at the painting as a painting?
Matisse's great collector
Mme. Stein:
a painting is a painting
not an of of an of!

To see with the Innocent Eye
(that was H. Rousseau), each
moment met and made new.
Your work is your world
and the world is you.

2.

The Dance

Houris--
Persian sex angels--gather around
the orientalist in his opium dream,
the scent of their heavy breasts
intoxicates with promises of
eternal lust, the crazy wallpaper
crawls with arabesques.

The complementary oranges
on the table float off into the blue
around the elongated figure
in her harem pantaloons
lounging on her couch.

Glimpses of white eternities
through the grilled window,
the bright yellow suns beam
down on the dancers linked
in a circle of liberated flesh,
delineated in sinuous lines
under the hot red
bougainvillea vines.

This speaks to me--
my poor naked words!

3.

The Red Room

Large paper cutouts
pinned onto the walls
for a color-mad old man
losing his sight but not
losing sight of the forms
of the world, the life
shaped by his hands.
Even in his blindness
his passion expands,
branches, flowers,
in sheerest colors
breaking against
the gray obduracy of death.

It has his touch, to be sure.
It's from his hand without doubt.

In the red room the blue
window is for looking in
as well as out.

He says: I begin again
to lay the foundation
of a new world.

About Steve Surryhne
click to read BIO

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Steve Surryhne was an Associate Lecturer in English Literature at San Francisco State University from 1993-2012. He is currently semi-retired and has recently returned to writing poetry. A native of San Francisco, he was a baby-beat in the sixties, knew some of the beat poets and is now a neo-beat. In his alternate career, he worked in Community Mental Health in San Francisco from 1979-2012. He took first place in the Jack Kerouac Poetry contest in 2015 and has published in The Blue Moon Review and Interpretations. He is currently working on a project with a photographer friend on poem-texts and photos.

Other works by Steve in this issue:
The Floating World (Poetry)