Room 201

Jackson Pollock

Into the kaleidoscopic stream
Flash the fishing images
Who in bloods of marks
Flow with darks
In the magic agitate —

These fingers fierce with fire.

Nothing is still

The roaring, raging, angry energy:
Uncontained, bursts, breaks,

And exults in the smashed shapes -

Glass shatters on glass
Where light leaks up
In a gladness of itself
Into waved flames the eyes.

Up! Up! The void wants voice,

And the fires, far gathering,
Crackle with devouring:

And the hand,
Forces gather into the hand -
They are charged with bright nodes
Where paint explodes —

Nothing is still

And I can see
Thru these writhing
Rising burning forms

Who naked dance in lurid light
Who naked dance in lurid light

In blue or green or white
Or red or black,
To a fiery Hell decked out.

There is much death in this.

These many leaping vortices,
These sucking centres:
And the burning nets of nerves

Electrically enflame.

Nothing is still

There is an exploding sun:
And the galactic crack

Bangs in a brain.

Here comes the storm -

Trees houses hills are torn
By maddened hands and tossed away.

The roaring, raging, angry energy.

Now - pick up Van Gogh’s living head -
And roll it down a hill,
And see the universe
Go spin and whip around.

And let the colours come

Until it lies still

R. Taylor (July 1993