Note: The Ochre World is a 45 page poem, formed at the junction of a dream, a news event, and some photographs of the Lascaux cave paintings. Some of the poem\u27s sections can stand alone, others cannot, but all are enriched by a scheme of recurring imagery and an evolving  argument.  Although unnumbered in the full manuscript, I have given these sections—which occur late in the poem—numbers, so the reader can feel the duration, at least, of the absent sections.  -- J.D.   [from original publication, 1994.

Davis, Jon

English

DigitalCommons@Providence College

© Providence College  The author(s) permits users to copy, distribute, display, and perform this work under the following conditions: (1) the original author(s) must be given proper attribution; (2) this work may not be used for commercial purposes; (3) the users may not alter, transform, or build upon this work; (4) users must make the license terms of this work clearly known for any reuse or distribution of this work. Upon request, as holder of this work’s copyright, the author(s) may waive any or all of these conditions.  The Prose Poem: An International Journal is produced by The Berkeley Electronic Press (bepress) for the Providence College Digital Commons. http://digitalcommons.providence.edu/prosepoems/ THE PROSE POEM: AN INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL  Volume 3 | 1994 From THE OCHRE WORLD #24  Jon Davis Jon Davis 24 Meanwhile, in Juarez. In South L.A. Harlem. The Bronx. Meanwhile, in the alleys of D.C. Beirut. Nepal. Meanwhile: The terror of that word. When the soldier sodomized the twelve year old girl, she thought he'd shoved a bayonet up inside her and that she was dying. It's spring, and the girls are decorating the neighbor's dog with rib-bons. On the streets of L.A., two black men dragged a white truck driver onto the pavement and kicked and beat him, cracking his skull. The irises in bloom—so delicate, almost erotic. Because he was albino and because the legends held he was bewitched, the young warriors took him into the mountains, beheaded him and cut off his fingertips. When the beginning poet wrote "blue sky caresses the mesa," the pro-fessor "bristled." The tattooed dwarf, wearing a cutoff denim jacket, wandered among the five year old girls at the mall. In the morning, my daughter, waking from the land of dreams where everything is in ques-tion, insists that we call her "Grayce." No pet names, no endear-ments—just Grayce. In Monet's version La Grenouillere, suffering is off the canvas, not to be found among the bathers, the islanded forms. Even the man walking the narrow plank is poised, steady; he has all the time in the world. Even the dark boats that deliver our gaze to the man on the plank do not contain the blindfolded, mutilated bodies. Do not contain Picasso's Vollard, a man so invaded by geometry, so riddled by the angular vicissitudes of 1910, that his contemplative pose has become demonic. He no longer thinks Great and Noble Thoughts; he presides dispassionately over the fire in his lap. In one theory of dreaming, the brain generates images randomly and a "story-making" region tries to "make sense" of them, "using" its innate or culturally-devel-oped sense of causality and story to protect "us" from meaninglessness. In this theory two men arrive in an ochre world, two anonymous men arrive unbidden, and the dreamer, a kind of author, invents their lives, ani-mates them, "informs" them. What this means—clubs raised, in black and white, the time blinking in the cor- ner—what this means, then, and this is the source of our error, is that there are countless stories being gen-erated, countless versions. Such terror and beauty, such a struggle for language and power. The lilies shimmer in a slight breeze, their silvery leaves form a visual glissando. And Rodney King, a "black man," an "Afro-American," a "Gorilla in the Mist," who was struck 56 times by police billy clubs in Los Angeles, stands before the cameras, nearly sobbing, and asks for an end to the violence. The girls, only five years old, thought the dwarfed man was cute; therein lay the source of the fear, therein lay the fathers' terror. "Blue sky. The mesa." Caress, the professor insisted, when deployed in this sentence, creates a hackneyed, sentimental image. The sky cares nothing for the mesa. The sky and the mesa care nothing for you. Okay, then, said the student: "The blue sky tore at the mesa's throat." Much better, said the professor. Much, much better. 

From THE OCHRE WORLD - #24

Note: The Ochre World is a 45 page poem, formed at the junction of a dream, a news event, and some photographs of the Lascaux cave paintings. Some of the poem\u27s sections can stand alone, others cannot, but all are enriched by a scheme of recurring imagery and an evolving  argument.  Although unnumbered in the full manuscript, I have given these sections—which occur late in the poem—numbers, so the reader can feel the duration, at least, of the absent sections.  -- J.D.  [from original publication, 1994.

© Providence College  The author(s) permits users to copy, distribute, display, and perform this work under the following conditions: (1) the original author(s) must be given proper attribution; (2) this work may not be used for commercial purposes; (3) the users may not alter, transform, or build upon this work; (4) users must make the license terms of this work clearly known for any reuse or distribution of this work. Upon request, as holder of this work’s copyright, the author(s) may waive any or all of these conditions.  The Prose Poem: An International Journal is produced by The Berkeley Electronic Press (bepress) for the Providence College Digital Commons. http://digitalcommons.providence.edu/prosepoems/ THE PROSE POEM: AN INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL  Volume 3 | 1994 From THE OCHRE WORLD #36  Jon Davis Jon Davis 36 "An American," Maximus wrote, "is a complex of occasions." And occasion—he would have known this—means to fall toward. To fall, as my wife and I fell, yesterday, toward coffee and a pleasant book-store. As we fell, this morning, toward—in the local newspaper—a photograph of that bookstore. A photograph that must have been taken shortly before we arrived, that commemorates absence, that attends to everything not photographed—racks of magazines and books, crum-bling adobe neighborhoods, telephone wires swaying with intense, ca-sual conversations, memories swelling in the lilacs, flowing in the acequias, blood-spattered priests, jailed Pueblo leaders, cache of long-ing under the plaza grass, longing shaped into earrings and pottery, longing inscribed in racks of blankets, vested in theaters and galleries, scribbled in margins, entwined among arbors and portals. These Ameri-cans strolling the tax-sheltered streets of Santa Fe—what is the real name of this place?—are a complex of occasions. Are falling, and the photograph says, Lovely. And the photograph says, Here is the gener-ous life upwelling. And the photograph says, It is time to write the diary of your days. Among the gathered blossoms, in the morning court-yard, in the casual isolation you want to call privacy. 

From THE OCHRE WORLD - #36

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From THE OCHRE WORLD - #25

© Providence College  The author(s) permits users to copy, distribute, display, and perform this work under the following conditions: (1) the original author(s) must be given proper attribution; (2) this work may not be used for commercial purposes; (3) the users may not alter, transform, or build upon this work; (4) users must make the license terms of this work clearly known for any reuse or distribution of this work. Upon request, as holder of this work’s copyright, the author(s) may waive any or all of these conditions.  The Prose Poem: An International Journal is produced by The Berkeley Electronic Press (bepress) for the Providence College Digital Commons. http://digitalcommons.providence.edu/prosepoems/ THE PROSE POEM: AN INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL  Volume 3 | 1994 From THE OCHRE WORLD #25  Jon Davis Jon Davis 25 (In petto) He was writing for the common man, but the common man was sleep-ing in his favorite chair, was dragging his bread through the yolk. He was writing for the common man, but Michael Jordan was peripateticating spectacularly through the crepuscular den. He was writing for the common man, but the six-pack, the film starring the former bodybuilder, the ha ha of pure evil having its face thrust into the gaping machinery, the unalloyed pleasure of the home team (good) versus the visitors (evil). He was writing for the common man, se-cretly nursing his contempt for the common man. Wanting to improve him. Wanting to make him see, to acknowledge, to embrace the murki-ness of human motives. To make him squirm in his favorite chair. To make him awaken in the claws of a dream. To make him walk out into the morning of fog-webbed pastures, creaking milk trucks, children called into the open with their readers and lunch boxes, the horses wickering in their undersized corrals. He was writing for the common man, but the common man was balancing his coffee between his legs, was sitting between two masons in a red dump truck. Had his feet up on the tool bag, his knees leaned far right, anticipating the long throw into third. He was writing for the common man, secretly thinking all is lost. But the sun in the east, the moon still floating, the larval moon still floating in the western sky. The common man already out, walk-ing his property line. Already out, waxing the Camaro with the com-mon woman. Already out, stopping the BMW to pull prayer plumes from the road-killed bluebird—so delicate, wings half extended, toes locked on (perched on) nothingness, the eyes shut tight against the promise of light and time. Already out, leaping from the scaffold— like a spider rappelling from ceiling to floor—vines wrapped tight around his ankles, then the sudden jolt, cloud of dust, the upside-down writhing, the whoops and shouts, the welcome into manhood. Already out, being struck by the poetries of transformation—sunlight fluttering on the truck hood, shadows puddled under junipers and piñons, crows arcing in the cymophanous dawn. 

https://digitalcommons.providence.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1177&amp;context=prosepoem

From THE OCHRE WORLD - #25

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