it was the Cubist who created the space and color that
everywhere today assails our eyes
in    uniform architecture and monotonous
design; the various branches of modern art
through tedious & exhaustive experiment
       & research creating a massive cultural sinkhole
whose banal discoveries unveil for all the sameness
of form, line and color;
Quote from Gorky's 'Camouflage', 1942: I like the heat;
the tenderness; the edible; the lusciousness;
the song of a single person
in a bathtub full of water.                
           I like Ucello, Grunewald, Ingres,
the drawings and sketches for paintings
   of Seurat and that man Pablo Picasso;
               I measure all things by weight.
               In text for MoMA, describing the 'Garden in Sochi' - series,
               26 June 1942
I love Mougouch, Gorky's wife.                What about papa Cézanne;
I like the wheat fields, the plow, the apricots,
those flirts of the sun.    And bread above all.
My lever is the purple; About 194 feet away
from our house in Armenia on the road to the
spring my father had a little garden with
a few apple trees which had retired
                             from giving fruit;
this garden was identified as the 'Garden of Wish Fulfillment'
often I had seen my mother and the other village women
exposing their naked bosoms, taking the soft,
dependable ******* in their hands &
rubbing them on the rocks; above all this
standing an enormous tree all bleached
under the sun, rain & cold,  deprived of leaves.
This was the Holy Tree [quoted in 1942]
In text for MoMA, describing the 'Garden in Sochi' - series,
26 June 1942
I don't like that word 'finished'.
    When something is finished,
that means it's dead, doesn't it?
I believe in everlastingness;
I never finish a painting –   I just stop
working on it for a while.
I like painting because it's something
I can never come to the end of;
sometimes I paint a picture,
then I paint it all out.    Sometimes
I'm working on fifteen or twenty
pictures at the same time; I do that
      b/c I want to – b/c I change my
   mind so often; The thing to do is
     always to keep starting to paint;
     never finishing the painting [quoted in 1948]

Removing the little lace dress with its white hem I place it back on its chair.

The white hem radiates slightly enticing my naked boyhood once more

With its lusciousness, a savannah of continuous beautiful evocation

I sit naked and watch the little lace dress with its white hem

See it become languorous and dreamlike

I smell the exotic flora of its continued subtle seduction

It ripples softly in a slight waft of air

Like a breath blowing on a still pond

I cannot resist it, I am the trance of its hypnosis

Nothing intervenes, nor tries to prevent me

As my fingers fall for its flirtations

Once more I acquiesce to the most wanted desire

Of the little lace dress with the white hem

To caress the body of a fifteen year old boy

To become a second skin

I allow it to slide over me seducing my senses

Realizing the counters of my thin syrup coloured form

The words whisper again about my girls’ complexion

About my long black hair, about the body I inhabit, the likeness of a girl

I look once more in the mirror, they could be correct

At Vernal equinox, the Sun crosses
over the plane of the Earth’s equator
and equalises the night and the day.
Then will the Emerald Dragon awaken
from his hibernation beneath the earth.
Rising in the jade forests of Ghizhou,
this yin creature transforms the cold, dead land.
Primal and powerful, he gathers the Qi;
melts the mountain snows to ribbons of fire
igniting the frosty hillsides to growth,
fuses each thing with verdant energy,
revives again the seed, renews the bulb,
sprouting tender shoots juice-rich and sap-full
Shy blossoms set to bloom and burst with fruit
Fresh scented breezes ruffle foliage
maiden ferns shiver with their thrill and ******
Grasses and reeds bedewed and beryline,
murmuring and humming low and dulcet,
dancing and swaying at the river’s edge.
Roots of every tree draw deep from the earth
Magnolia and Frangipani breathe
and pant out fragrant honeyed lusciousness
Spring sparks and quickens, kicks and is alive.

© M.L.Emmett

At Vernal equinox, the Sun crosses
over the plane of the Earth’s equator
and equalises the night and the day.
Then will the Emerald Dragon awaken
from his hibernation beneath the earth.
Rising in the jade forests of Ghizhou,
this yin creature transforms the cold, dead land.
Primal and powerful, he gathers the Qi;
melts the mountain snows to ribbons of fire
igniting the frosty hillsides to growth,
fuses each thing with verdant energy,
revives again the seed, renews the bulb,
sprouting tender shoots juice-rich and sap-full
Shy blossoms set to bloom and burst with fruit
Fresh scented breezes ruffle foliage
maiden ferns shiver with their thrill and ******
Grasses and reeds bedewed and beryline,
murmuring and humming low and dulcet,
dancing and swaying at the river’s edge.
Roots of every tree draw deep from the earth
Magnolia and Frangipani breathe
and pant out fragrant honeyed lusciousness
Spring sparks and quickens, kicks and is alive.

© M.L.Emmett

kurukshetra grey
but iridescent with the glory of all dreams combined
some omphalos of lusciousness still pumps
an umbilicus of sates
to broadening skies,
parhelion whims

I love how your clothing
enfolds you, holds you
disguises yet reveals you
swaying curves, seductive
the tempting promise of yes
knowing what sweetness waits
my body responds eager
to the call of your lusciousness
the sultry turn of your lips
the rolling sway of your hips
how you use your finger tips
and when our bodies meet
the explosiveness and heat
for moments so complete
pleasurable pain, so very sweet

Prometheus, the joker, he
offered Zeus a choice of tributes:
An egg, a chocolate covered
With foil, the delicious covered
With the inedible or
Chicken wings; perhaps they were ribs,
The unpalatable concealed
Within the gratifying and
Delectable.

And, when given the same choice, I
Choose the charming, the beguiling,
The delightful exterior,
With unappealing core, rather
Than attempt to find that nugget,
Hidden within its thin veneer
And certainly worth the effort.
I find lusciousness is much more
Pleasurable.