Untitled Poems, by Alan Catlin

Untitled #1

New meaning given
to the blind
leading the blind

in this case the barely
functional leading
the less functional

Part of a motley parade 
on asylum grounds

all the patients tricked out
for Halloween

Down’s adults in
loose formation
following a determined
leader, who know where?

The leader, a woman,
holding the slowest
of slow learners

one of the terminally
confused with false
moustache

ragged rude costume
permanently unfocused eyes

Is this the Great Escape?

Even if they made it
off the grounds

Where would they go?

What would they do?

Who would save them?


Untitled #2

If hell has a take a number
system where you will wait
in a common room
for an interview

That waiting area would
look like this:

An asylum morning room
with scuffed industrial
strength tile floor

molded plastic chairs
for the young men endlessly
rocking

for those gone-eyed humans
hugging themselves
as they compulsively sway,
moaning as they go

back and forth
back and forth

And chairs for the men
who balance them on
their feet as they lie
on the floor

maniacally laughing
even as the inevitable 
chair fall
that splits swollen lips

And a chair for the woman
of no discernible age
wearing a pressed dress 

standing guard over the little
red wagon

the kind of wagon kids use
to gather toys and dirt
and the refuse of life

So much depends on that
little red wagon
that signifies no more
than it actually is

Chances are 
where  you wait

that your number
will never be called


Untitled #3

They could be the wicker women,
elderly crones dressed in
mismatched clothes:

too small winter-weight jackets,
scarves and hats that cover their
thinning, unwashed hair,

plastic dime store masks
to hide who they really are.

They need no dress up outfits,
no makeup to effect their look,
they are witch-like normally,

would have been burned or
drowned in an earlier age
instead of warehoused as they
are now.

Are five crones on the way
to an Autumn Rite where
the Wicker Man is waiting,

the one that has been built 
on a common ground field between 
asylum dorms, 

built far enough away from human 
habitation to prevent residual flames 
from unintended ignitions once the offering 
of the man has begun

As they watch the flames,
their eyes contain memories
of rituals past:

of the festering heat,
cleansed flesh,
victuals flensed to
the bone.

None of them are allowed
the gift of fire.


Untitled #4

“This is not a dream.
This is really happening.”
    Rosemary’s Baby

Which movie was it?
Where Death was a man
with white grease painted face
able to be two places at once.

Was the voice on the phone,
across town, a man is speaking to
and Death is the man with the glassine eyes
and sinister smile standing next
to him as he listens to the voice
from elsewhere.

This is one cocktail party
he will never forget

like the club date he played
where the white faced man
sits front row in smoky venue
and in the back row as well.

No matter where you go
he is there before you 
and after,

smiling as if he knows 
something you will never
know,

something you will 
never understand

like how you came to be 
in this field with this
white faced person

this person in a clean
white sheet wearing
a death  mask and posing
for a portrait holding a small
shopping bag for candy treats
instead of a scythe

This is a picture that you
you can never unsee 
once you have viewed it

every night
from now on

in the dark room
of your dreams


Untitled #5

“We’re not dreaming now.”
    Eyes Wide Shut

So many of the costumed men
and women look as if they’d been 
to the same costume rental Tom Cruise
used in Eyes Wide Shut

Where they rented a sheath dress or
a cape and cheap eye covering, 
Lone Ranger masks

and went somewhere after the rental
they were never meant to be

Stood waiting on nearly frozen
asylum grounds or under suburban
Jersey sidewalk trees or on lawns
for a Satanic ritual to begin

All of them standing inert,
expectant, in the fading,
overcast daylight
for shadows to become night

They may be waiting still. 


Untitled #6

They are the handmaidens of a witch’s
coven, cast out of the fold and onto
the streets in their chiffon aprons and
street clothes, their made-in Arts & Crafts
wands, colored paper stars affixed to the end 
of sticks, their party hats and out-for-the-day
shoes, two bit plastic masks concealing
who they are from themselves.
They are wayfaring street creatures now,
standing on someone’s front lawn for a
group portrait as human defects dressed to
do Halloween.  All of them are smiling or
trying to, in-dusk-coming cooling down 
afternoon in somewhere New Jersey.
They are arrested development super stars,
sentenced to childhood for life. Someone is
watching over them.  There are so many worse
fates in life than this, as the portrait clearly shows.


Untitled # 7

Edward Curtis photographed
masks like these

ceremonial ones
worn by native American chiefs

warriors all
mythmaking

photo shooting

There was mojo
in those masks

magic
generational lore attached
to each one

worn with pride,
earned pride

magic that gave the wearer
significant powers

Diane saw the power
the magic

the person inside
the mask

the brown paper bag
with eye and nose
and mouth spaces cut out

saw the dime store string
hair the finger-painted
designs

captured the power
the magic on a negative

held it for awhile,
then let it go


Untitled #8

One of Weegee’s special shots was
crowd reactions: facial expressions at
car crashes, murder scenes, the unloading
of paddy wagons.  Those looks of horror,
the turning away and the glancing back, 
revulsion and awe, fear and excitement;
a kind of madness in crowds, this random
together brings before the Caucasian white
circle is drawn, the blood puddles sand
covered and swept away...

Arbus would have known his work
on the back pages of large circ. dailies, 
a new horror for every working day and 
weekends too.

Would have known how he was on call
24/7, had touts in bars, police stations,
taxi stands, ambulance driver staff rooms...

When you see the shot of the crowd of
women staring at an unseen, out –of-frame- 
event, you can’t help but be reminded of Weegee,
of fresh blood and open wounds, a horror show in
progress. But, the viewer must wonder:
what horrific thing are they seeing?  Is horror
relative? Given that these are a gaggle of adult,
Down’s afflicted, gaping women, of all ages.

“What the hell are they looking at?”

What could be more unknowable that that?


Untitled #9

In the foreground of the picture,
a masked, dowdy older woman
of indeterminate age wears a 
double breasted overcoat, clutches
a small bag, unaware of her
rolling down white socks bunching
over terminally scuffed shoes.
She looks at the portrait taker
through cut outs in a brown paper 
shopping bag, holes too small for
seeing.

In the blurred background, an assembly
of fellow inmates at the asylum, are 
gathering on a wide open field that
could be one used for football if these
inmates could understand the rules
of a game more complicated than
Simon Says.

What are they doing back there?
So close together, running here
and there, while others stand as still 
as the old woman in overcoat.
Maybe  they are playing some kind
of supervised freeze tag game with 
Death one outlier escaped from.
Or, maybe, she was simply, left behind
to stand as she stands now, for all time.

Alan Catlin

Learn more about the Diane Arbus photographs from her book Untitled, here.

Alan Catlin has published dozens of books on a wide variety f subjects. In recent years focusing on ekphrastic subjects primarily as he explores the nature of "seeing." The third book in his series on what we see and how we see it, Asylum Garden: after Van Gogh, was published by Dos Madres in 2020.  Earlier volumes in the trilogy, American Odyssey, and Wild Beauty, were published by Future Cycle Press.  His book on he Impressionists, Effects of Sunlight on Fog, is available from Bright Hill.




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