Flowers of Sulfur

Unseen

2011-02-27T14:02:00.000-08:00

Unseen

digital photo

In a Garden

2011-02-21T06:16:00.000-08:00

She stepped among the coloring flowers
and kicked over every ornament in her way:
a bird bath, an old gnome, a boy
whom she'd been chasing. Her dress already
brushed in strokes of green and brown,
she knelt to pick dandelions from the grass;
the yellow weeds staining young fingers,
she held death so loosely in her hands.

Side Effects

2011-02-17T16:37:00.000-08:00

Side Effects

34"x 28"
acrylic/fluted sbs

Is this blog dead? or just suffering from the aftermath of the malicious attacker?

UPDATED PLEASE NOTICE

2011-02-04T00:21:00.000-08:00

Someone has removed most if not all contributors administrator privileges. This blog may be hijacked.

Ande

When She was Young

2011-01-29T12:34:00.000-08:00

When She was Young

28"x34"
acrylic/sbs

Where Our Youth Goes to Die

2011-01-17T11:58:00.001-08:00

I found him, alone, lying in the woods
studying each cloud that passed,
the old snowflakes blowing from sleeping trees.
Shirt and arms tucked beneath his head,
he looked like a man vacationing on a beach,
a bullet hole in the middle of his bare stomach.

I pulled off my sweater and shirt
pressing them on his wound—
Do you remember Halloween, when we were young?
There was a time when costumes felt more real
than the clothes we buried beneath;
plastic masks becoming faces for days,
we paraded around as skeletons and heroes
taking sacred oaths to never break character.
I was always the first to forget my promise.

His blood began to soak through my clothes,
yet he remained calm, still breathing, searching;
a gun sat several feet from his bent elbows.
Do you remember campfires in the snow?
He quietly closed wonderful eyes
and I stared at his fading body,
strands of blood pouring from the hole
that has always burned in his stomach—
a pale white canvas painted in flames.
I saved, what I was supposed to save.

Moon Bath

2011-01-13T04:29:00.000-08:00

But Will Jefferson [Jalopy] Be Playing Tonight?

2011-01-12T17:56:00.001-08:00

"Memory it can't be bought'n,

it can't be won, the carnivals for free.

It took me years, to get those souvenirs

And I don't know how they slipped away from me." -John Prine

Among the things I'd like to do, sometime this year, is a retrospective of my writing on this blog and in my music in the last few years, or at least since Brand of Make Believe was begun a few years ago. It wouldn't be a genuine retrospective... more a capsule form discussion of themes and subject matter. Post by post. It won't take terribly long... maybe five or six pages at the most. I should hope.

What gets me thinking about this is what a wonderful forum for what is on my mind that the blog has turned out to be. Something like a website of my day to day stuff, it is fun to go back in time, and it's easy to do simply by looking at the table of contents, organized by date! For you, this holds little excitement. For me, however, it is a diary and a great deal more. Pictures, poems, essays, recollections... stories and happenings. Only by the seamless tricks of our lying minds do we convince ourselves of a memorable past. The truth, as we all know when asked for details, is that we can't remember, and are mighty surprised when anyone else can.

It wasn't till I was old enough to "know" how lousy I was at many things in life, that I learned from long-term relationships that I sometimes remembered things that other people did not. It isn't fair, given the biological realities, for me to expect my Mom and Dad to remember as vividly my childhood as I do. And conversely it isn't fair for my Mom and Dad to expect that I would have as nuanced a memory of the Iran/ Contra affair as they do. Our memories serve different functions at different times in our lives.

I have always had a peculiar memory. I have always found it extremely difficult to memorize rote facts. This, I know, is a problem for everyone. And no, I do not think that I could not learn. It was just a fact that without a constant study companion, I could not, on my own, force myself to sit as a very young man and learn rote facts. If anything, as an adult I find the discipline easier, but the memorization even worse. I sometimes, even frequently, can't remember my phone number. Out of seven routine bank accounts I only know three account numbers. Sometimes, I am mumbling an account number (I go to the bank multiple times a day: as someone who used to constantly have trouble with money, it always seemed impossible for me to ever imagine myself as one of those guys who takes his kid with him to get US savings accounts, like in the Public Service Announcements I would listen to back in my wasted youth. Well... those PSA's are one of the reasons, I suppose, that I enjoy bank transactions so much. Besides, you are transacting your money in a manner just as consequential when you buy yourself lunch, or a haircut, or your weekly $200 groceries at Wal-Mart or Kroger. At the bank the purity of my intentions, and the bizarre ease of access to "products" of the American banking system to which we citizens of my country have access (especially as opposed to some of my Asian, European, and Middle Eastern friends) definitely is on my mind; despite the incredibly crappy, airplane like aesthetics of what passes for a bank in my world.) I was trying to say above, sometimes I am mumbling an account number correctly, as I pull my wallet out to look it up. This infuriates me, since when I remember not to look at the number I almost never can remember it! Only the chafing of the back of my hand, as it reaches into my wallet and the odd strain on my right rotator cuff allows my mind to say, "yes, it's 12345678910." Oh well... you get the picture; my memory is terrible.

And yet... how often can I remember in exquisite detail, every last breath and supple bend in some landscape and/or emotional arc I've shared with a friend or lover? Trust me, we all dwell on the past. Especially the recent sad and lonesome past. There is nothing so tawdry as the truth off the mouth of a friend who tells you how your suffering is necessary for your future pleasure. In any case, it isn't unusual for a friend to tell me, between bouts of shock at me not knowing my phone number, ect. that they are shocked that I remember that day, a few years ago, when they were doing such and such and I was taking them to Nashville. Trust me... I don't know my phone number, but I know that trip to Nashville in Technicolor. Even if it wasn't a romantic friend. Even if it was a favor for someone I didn't even like much at all. Your stupid beating heart is all my screwed up being needs for its mnemonic needs.

Of course, you might have seen those people on the news, a few months back, who remember everything they've ever done, down to amazing resolutions, back to when they were babies. These people apparently remember everything! Obviously, if I remembered everything, I long ago would have demonstrated this skill to someone who would pay dearly to have a sidekick with such an ability, and retired to my farm, and warehouse full of laboratories and workshops by now. No... my memory is not extraordinary. It's only special when placed against my memory problems.

And yet... certain things seem to interest a writer; in particular where memory and the hilariously inadequate term "living" are on speaking terms. I wrote a poem in 1994, for example, December of 1994... late at night, perhaps one thirty or two in the morning. I was living with my parents at Clarkston Rd in Zionsville, my last childhood home. I was relaxing after work delivering pizza at Papa Johns. At the time I had been working at the pizza place for only a month or two. I worked at least forty hours a week delivering. I found it a bit intimidating due to the fact that the delivery area was at least one half riddled with bad neighborhoods, and incredibly neglected instances of commercial effort. Thirty minutes prior to writing the poem I was sitting in a chair, in the North facing section of my parents living room, beside a large brass chest. The chest had all over it little dimples with round things, like nailheads stuck into them. I always liked that chest. It actually occasionally needed polish. Something to look for in brass. Beware of polyurethane coated metals. Just beware. I was sitting beside my families baby grand piano, the big square chest, in a chair looking across the foyer of our house, through a slot above the front door that sometimes, being sheathed in a thin sleeve of metal, vibrated like a reed during certain winter storms. One of many things in childhood a grown person wouldn't mind hearing. Perhaps one day I will write a letter to the current occupants (whom my parents knew prior to selling the house to them) and ask after that braying front door, secretly hoping no handyman ever managed to silence it.

It was two weeks before Christmas, and I had decided to sit in this somewhat strange quarter of the house, due to the fact that I had many fine memories, sitting in that chair, reading, and sometimes, lying on the ground, reading as well. My childhood, I knew, was over. Hence the gangbangers, and otherwise awful storm clouds of feeling that seemed to surround you ten miles away where I worked everyday. My childhood was gone... I knew... but for that brass chest, the carpet with its anarchic tassels, and the white oak floors, and braying front door. The house seemed to remind me of my promise as a human being. The promise that dropping out of college had marred somewhat. The promise that failing to function as a normal adult outside my parents home had marred a great deal more. So, here I was, late at night and abiding beneath the sheltering arms of a house that could not live my life for me: but seemed eerily lucid in its depiction of a life I no longer had.

The night before I had written in a journal, sitting in the same chair, before I went to my Mom's computer to type the poem I'd written. The poem I wrote that December night, more afraid, nervous and anxious than, self reflective, was called "No Peace." I have the poem, somewhere. So do most of my family members, if they kept a sheaf of poems I gave them for Christmas one year. It wasn't a terrible poem. But it isn't one I feel anything for. The poems I like from that collection I sometimes still look upon and wonder "what were you thinking?" But really, I already know. I'm not a thinker, really. I'm a phenomena oriented guy. A dude who is more or less a average thinker, but a decent feeler and processor of experience. Especially what most folks regard as the spiritual and mystical sides of life. That's why I have for years preferred all these journeys. None of them amount to anything concrete, of course... their value to me, is that they are the only ways I have ever, in life, been able to attach meaning to my life. Long hours in the snow drifts unplowed, beneath the mustard lights of the ghetto delivering pizza. Sometimes ten and twelve hours a day between Thanksgiving and Christmas, taking a lousy meal to some very excited poor folks. The kids would be jumping around, and the parents smiling (not for the pizza, but because they love their kids. It was unmistakable.) The snow would be deep and relentless in its defacing of easy divisions between the suburbs and the 'hood. A lazy stream would reach beneath the snow, and lose even this fiery sodium plasma lights embrace, and be, for the evening, the only instance of rebuttal to all the flakes of water..... save the trees. I'd have a cigarette in my mouth and be driving those snowdrifts, unplowed, at midnight, more miles and miles until the last of the pizza's were gone. I'd listen to some unabridged book on tape... dreaming of the day when I could have an endless supply of non fiction to listen to. Dreaming of today, actually. But it wasn't so, back then. Listening to James Mitchner, and if I was lucky T.C Boyle, or something. Listening to everything, like an inmate within the jail library. This book, or that bunk. Those books or that car... with the endless madness of the commercial radio between sweet sessions of NPR. I couldn't listen to classical music all night. Though eventually, I'd turn everything off. And skate in my Olds across the silent clouds of snow, back to my parents, where the end of a night, often meant a poem or two before bed. After a minute or two in a chair to stare at the door.

The poem I wrote when I stood up after looking at the bleating reeds of the door, ended, with a last line, "and a future so like nostalgia." I suppose I liked that line, and still like it, for all wrong reasons. It sounds cliched, which, if you are insecure enough, means you belong to a canon of some description, yes? If it must not be good, can you at least say it's cliched? I hope so.

"a future so like nostalgia" I definitely still like it. I've never disliked the line. The poem itself was never meant to mean something particularly romantic, or deep. It was a poem for the sake of being poetic. A pretty irritating thing... like the fragrance of handsoap, or something. Something demonstrably useful, but constructed with no thought to its place on a scale of meaning or time. So, it was perhaps me fooling myself that I might take myself less seriously than I in fact did. Something to that effect. But, looking back, I was miserable, and scared, and I think I knew that as well. There must have been something to the fact that I was working in this soul killing world of the ghetto, sometimes risking my life to take people food they could not afford that demonstrably kills them: and then writing about "a future so like nostalgia." Maybe it was my way of saying that when things are much better one day (as they became, eventually) I didn't want to remember myself as some calloused fool. Somebody pretending things were too terrible... or too good. I'm not sure... but I do definitely remember liking myself, and my take on the world. In many ways I loved those crappy neighborhoods where I worked. The way they punctuated the end of the gifts and innocence of my childhood, and preyed on the very substance of my highest ideals. The sheer certitude of poverty and disability. The accelerated lifespan of a people who I shared everything with, but fate [mostly.] The conversation, the siren like cooing that that fate had with me. "Just listen to the softness of my voice, Andy," it would say. "You, son, are here, 'cus you pissed your luck away." I knew that wasn't true. I was there for a job, and a chance to be tested in some way I couldn't explain. Eventually I would leave some of the people I came to love in those neighborhoods behind... many of them have died. One man in particular, Sheldon, is a character whom I have been trying to write about for fifteen years. More than once he proved himself a more pure soul than me. But it only took one night to bring him down.

"and a future so like nostalgia"

Last night, as I was falling asleep I laughed to myself, reading an article in a New Yorker sent to me by my father (the subscription, that is.) I had to get out of bed and come and write down a passage from an article about the perceptions we have of the toppling of Saddam Hussein's statue early in the Second Gulf War. Big surprise, great article. I think it more or less explains itself.

In "The Future of Nostalgia," Boym's book on history and memory, she described Soviet era monuments serving as "messengers of power... onto which anxieties and anger were projected." The Princeton architectural historian Lucia Allais, who has examined the destruction of monuments during the Second World War, mentioned to me one of the most famous topplings ever-- of the statue of King Louis XV in Paris, in 1792, during the French Revolution. The action was portrayed by its authors as a liberation from the power of the monarchy, but they put in its spot a symbol of a new sort of power: the guillotine. These monuments destruction "are usually acts of monumental replacement, which hide continuities of power... behind the image of rupture," Allais wrote to me in an e-mail.

("The Toppling" by Peter Maass, The New Yorker; pg. 53, paragraph 2)

'cus she'll offer her charms to the darkness and danger of something that she's never known/ And open her arms at the smile of a stranger who'll love her and leave her alone-- K. Kristofferson The Silver Tongued Devil

What a strange sort of magic trick being argued here, by this social rearrangement.

It's strange the sobriety that black words on a white page can claim. And yet guilt, in such realms as the rhetorical is hardly unimaginable:

Wouldn't you know...

We poets have the motive.

And we poets have the weapon, too.

Weird, Wonderful Water

2011-01-08T22:59:00.000-08:00

There is no pleasure in winter, without water. Its weirdness and wonder takes my breath away. When I took this picture I was in a hurry to get done with a hike... for I had hardly eaten that day. Exploring a "short cut" along an old disused rail line (America loves to get rid of public transportation, while talking about another goal entirely....) not four blocks from my house, I pushed through some over grown Shagbark Hickories and Beech trees, and looked down at this little frozen still life. Suddenly, I had all the time in the world.

The stream bed had risen during December's unusual level of precipitation. The cold froze the top of the stream, and then the water table, when the snow stopped falling so much, fell. This left small freezing, intermittent flows, which froze in the January evenings. Melting and thawing, melting and thawing... weird, wonderful H20... in the Periodic Table of the Compounds, dear water, you are so very, very out of bounds. And I too, am mostly, you.

How very much I miss this kind of thing in July.

2011-01-06T19:48:00.001-08:00

inside out

2011-01-06T16:44:00.000-08:00

in the land of inside out
I felt awash in gentle rhythms
like a rinse cycle

danced a thousand tangos with toucans
I so wanted to understand their laws
of gravity and traffic

I kidnapped a cop
made him drive in circles
while I tossed apples at taxi cabs

the drivers cursed me in Dutch
gave me money 'til I was rich as a cat
and ate spider plants for water

I'll never own a fur coat
so fine as my cat coat
in the land of inside out

Fragment III

2010-12-31T00:07:00.000-08:00

The rose faint with fragrance

has slowly begun to wilt

in the chaotic quietude

of deep, starless nights.

Zaina Anwar 2010

2010-12-28T18:05:00.000-08:00

Godless Room
acrylic/canvas
38"x 26"

2010-12-19T05:36:00.001-08:00

Disintegrate

digital photo

Ashes To Ashes

2010-12-17T20:42:00.001-08:00

"Maybe when a kids screaming, they're just the only one allowed to speak their mind."

Born of a mind
To take down the world
As long as my dogs in the fight
I wiped every tear
And patched every hole in sight

I didn't need........ a flag or a name
Pieces of pleasure
Or beautiful things
All those shadows
Just abstracts and
Art in my eyes

The long nights of living
In places where knowledge
Could kill time
Put me straight in the arms of
Souls just as hungry for dreams

And wouldn't you know
That the love and the wine
Brought fertile flowers
That knew how to climb
To, honey
this future of
Your mama and me

Baby you're born
And daddy's too late
To dwell on things that might never change
So what
Maybe that worlds out of sight

I'm just a fool
Born in a small town
Shakin' off dust
For the future I'm bound
I 'spose
Rubbin my neck and my eyes

Still up in the sky
The future glows
From the pastures
Of of plenty
That everyone knows
Yeah, we're dust
But don't we look pretty tonight?

Witness to Some Wishes Unearned

2010-12-17T07:28:00.000-08:00

She had long taken heed of the shallower implications of her aging. So much so, that these new circumstances... her widowhood, her isolation, her dependence on the few she wished, frankly, she didn't have to talk to at all... struck her, mostly, in their scale, more so than their substance. "Here I am, " she thought, as she always knew she would. The ugly formica paneling of a waiting room. The caustic uncertainty with no one to soothe its burning. The plain, unforgivable fact that she not only could have predicted this all, but long ago looked upon these prosaic objects that were all that remained, and said to herself, "this is what it will look like." She had never looked away. And now things looked just as she had thought.

"Mrs. Auburn, your sisters nearly done," said the very nice nurse. And it was certainly good to be forewarned. She used to flush with anger at the unexpected phone call, back when weeks would pass without incident. Back when life, her life, was what anyone would recognize as normal. Today though, Dilly was never surprising in any way at all. Never surprisingly thoughtful. Never surprisingly lucid. Never surprisingly resilient. Well... she had never been resilient at all. So, no surprise.

Dilly did come through the door, looking pretty and composed. She was telling the nurse something about somewhere she'd never been. It all sounded perfectly plausible. The nurse clearly recognized which was the life of the party. Anne hated parties. The nurse wouldn't hate parties she realized. And surely, like so many people, the nurse could not imagine disliking Dilly.

As Dilly looked into her eyes, with a subtle triumph that reflected her pretensions had fooled them all again, Anne knew she would say nothing to contradict her sister. "Are you hungry?" were the only words she could even think of. And, of course, they had the benefit of having something to do with her own circumstance.

"I don't know," said Dilly. "We should go to a movie... what do you think?"

As always, "I think I'm hungry," said Anne, while they moved into the bright and ceaseless sunlight of the parking lot, to the car.

"We could eat popcorn, you know," said Dilly. "You love popcorn."

Anne loved popcorn, yes. But hadn't been able to stomach it in some years. And, yes, she knew that old hunger for a movie and popcorn. For a good time, just the two of them.

"We should go to the pharmacist. And I have things I need to get done. Though, one of them is off the list," Anne said.

"You need a worry board," said Dilly. "You should ask Bill to make you one. He'd love to give you a gift." Dilly smiled at this in the old way. And, as always, Anne nearly blushed.

Closing the vehicles door she couldn't deny her sister, "I could probably use something to calm me, true. And yes, he has never hidden his feelings. I'm the one with that problem."

"If wishes were horses, you still couldn't accept him, Anne. And he won't go begging forever. Just say yes! Isn't that the magic of a man?" Dilly looked over the Hospital building, as if canvassing a crowd of beach bronzed body builders, nearly shivering at the thought.

"The fact that you are right, does not change my feelings, Dill," she said to her sister, pulling out into the street, toward no theater, no popcorn, and remaining, therefore, upon the the path she had seen already, long ago. At the signal she stopped, it's color being red. And she noticed, with the peculiar senses she had always been burdened by, that her sister had nothing else to say, and it satisfied her, this confluence of conversation and the obedient traffic.

Things certainly had grown complicated since Dilly's husband, Joseph, had died. Joseph had never been someone Anne looked forward to seeing or spending time with when they were young. His tastes extended to all manner of exotica, and Dilly was only one of the pleasures he'd taken as his birthright, being a man, and being indifferent to refinement of any sort. It might have bothered Dilly to some extent, Anne surmised, very early on, with Dad and Mom and the Hoidays, in all the expected ways. But Anne knew that once Dilly had recognized her fears of retribution from the family were never going to be realized, now that she was married, she completely quit thinking about it at all. It was a friend that suggested to her that Dilly's lack of concern might actually be the rational response to her marriages tension with her family. Like a half resolved, cloud covered spot of light on the horizon, Anne could imagine there being something virtuous, and heartfelt about that perspective, but there was never going to be a question as to whether their had been a betrayal or not. Dilly walked away, from the family, and whatever her rationale, could not subsist simultaneously as a completely accepted member of their tribe, and a wife to Joseph. They drank excessively. They cared nothing for principles, either generally recognized, or potentially held by strangers. They offended, loudly. They brought children into not only a dangerous world, but the heavily consequential orbit of their own worldview. Were they train wrecks, these resulting memories, Anne would ask herself? No, a train wreck would not be seen, predicted, and so much the fruit of causality. A train wreck was a tragedy. Jo and Dill's family were precisely what you'd expect them to be. The phone calls were distressing, but there were never any questions to ask. Only, "What can I do?" Dill had certainly been interested. Dill could not have comprehended that it wasn't a question, either.

As the years had passed, though, the callouses did thicken. And there were times, Anne had marveled, where Jo seemed like nothing so much as a brother in law, and a predictable one in the end. His pleasures, even he'd confide, had their costs. Their marriage, they seemed to enjoy, like a foam mat upon deep, dark waters. One side, in the sun. The other, what? Out of mind? After decades, and funerals, and troubles faded by time, the whole imposition of thier union in the face of that old fiction of a once so hopeful youth, had replaced the implacable old boundaries. It was surprising certainly, to witness. Though so oddly comforting.

There was Josephs treatment of Dad, for example. Dad who sought to offend no one; Dad who had accepted this son in law, somehow. Joseph delighted in the composure of her father, realized Anne. Joseph certainly knew he had no desire to compromise his freedoms with his family, for the father of his wife. But Dad had, in the ripeness of time seen something in his son in law. Perhaps it was simply that way with men. A lacking maliciousness proving some irrational bonhomie? She'd been grateful in the end to Jo. He shrugged off Dad's illness the way he shrugged off all mysteries, apparently. He had strange riches of time to spend with Dad. It seemed, often, they talked more to one another, near the end of Dad's life, than anyone else. It helped Dad.

to be continued.....

Another Poem to read along

2010-12-13T10:56:00.000-08:00

i woke up this morning and had this poem in my head, so i wrote it and finished it; i haven't had a day write in a long time..it felt nice.

Religious Doctrine

I know, you’re still here
helping people see what is hard for us to grasp,
like babies reaching for a mobile
swaying above fragile, confused heads,
you give us hope in unattainable pieces—
it has always been easy to believe in faith,
but to have faith in understanding requires work.

I read a book once that created Heaven
in a world above my head, and Hell
in a land burning below my feet;
for awhile I closed my eyes and believed,
until another book defined the term “blind faith.”
The burning ideas beneath my feet left me cold,
the magic disappeared from the sky,
and I was forced to look around my life;
religion was being fed to children and adults alike,
starving them of reason, stealing their faith in one-another,
dividing families because subjectivity somehow became objective—
religion may not be the root of all evils,
but evil is certainly the root of all religions.

I read a book once that created a magic world
set behind a platform in a train station,
and my God, did I want to believe.

Encounter Down From Morton And Lime

2010-12-12T22:20:00.001-08:00

I leave my door every single day
With my small cloth satchel underarm
Sometimes to the Church, to confess or pray
Sometimes to the dance hall to be charmed

Wither my memory of sadness and pain
Banish my concern for my own harm.
Passing by the church, I beg today
Can you see me to a young man's arms?

As the light in the sky, still so early fades
You'd not be too surprised if you could see
The figure of a woman, walking just your way
In the dim light passing by it would be me

"In the Sweet By and By" above me play the bells
My mind is nearly taken by the tune
Though just before they're done the music swells
Through yellow light that I am walking through

But not in celebration of enduring pain
It comes from where I walk across the street
For the fiddle and guitars make a different claim
And I'm smiling for the friends I'm there to greet

Wither my memory of sadness and pain
Banish my concern for my own harm.
Passing by the church, I beg today
Can you see me to a young man's arms?

The crowd grows restless that they've yet to dance
In pairs they walk to the center of the room
When twinning fiddles have their way with darkness chance
What hearts of those assembled will refuse?

I took the hand of one named Johnny Bland
A sheepish sort of look on my face lies
As a witness from the window can see us dance
Out of four there is no blinking of our eyes

Wither my memory of sadness and pain
Banish my concern for my own harm.
Passing by the church, I beg today
Can you see me to a young man's arms?

Some of the songs call to twist and spin
I hold and trust from him I'll never fly
Some of the songs switch me to other men
And they're clearly not unhappy in my eyes

Then the waltz comes at last and some people sit
While I look for someone that I've never seen
And who should approach but the perfect fit
For a girl who doesn't mind the touch of dreams

He'd seen me coming with his kind and gentle look
Sadness drained from his dark and tender eyes
He offered his hand which I gladly took
And I shivered at the other on my side

Wither my memory of sadness and pain
Banish my concern for my own harm.
Passing by the church, I beg today
Can you see me to a young man's arms?

From a people that had searched over seas and hope
The fiddles found my footsteps in their sighs
I simply fell where led by the dark eyed bloke
With the light of every pilgrim in my eyes

It is difficult I knew, even then, to awaken
And meet, alone, the troubles of my day
The journey in the arms with him I'd taken
I feared would end when the fiddles ceased to play

Wither my memory of sadness and pain
Banish my concern for my own harm.
Passing by the church, I beg today
Can you see me to a young man's arms?

The fears of every mortal being far from wrong
The dancing ended as the sun will take a dream
The players of the instruments meant me no harm
When tradition broke the heart of Harmonie

I pulled my new beau to the side of the floor
A place I'd never had a reason yet to be
And as entwined the hands of other boys and girls
I asked the dark eyed stranger who was he?

He said, "Since there we danced, I can hardly dismiss
The sad and watchful man I came here as.
My name is Billy Faren, and it's a pleasure, Miss,
To meet and dance, but might we make it more than that?"

"Harmonie Jennings," is my name dear man,
The answers, yes I'll walk with you tonight"
So we passed through the sound of the fiddles and the band
To a starlit street before the town folks eyes

Wither my memory of sadness and pain
Banish my concern for my own harm.
Passing by the church, I beg today
Can you see me to a young man's arms?

We walked for a time that neither could discern
Amidst the woodsmoke, and other scents of life
So many dreams and yet what could we hope to learn
Whilst holding, there, each other in the night

We stopped beneath the lamp at Benders lane
And from his pocket he took his other hand
"Need I even tell you for what I pray?"
When with a touch and kiss he hoped I'd understand

"This is the house within which I was born"
Said Billy, sadly, to the shadows in the night,
"There's something I have yet to inform...."
But I kissed him then again beneath the light.

Wither my memory of sadness and pain
Banish my concern for my own harm.
Passing by the church, I beg today
Can you see me to a young man's arms?

Billy walked me gently in the darkness of the night
Past an ending dance, where a last waltz sadly played
Past the steeple where the bells hid out of sight
Arm and arm to where it was my fate to stay

To part would be as silent as it was hard
So I simply turned from Billy to my home
There would be tears eventually even were we not to part
For till the morning... I must now be alone

Wither my memory of sadness and pain
Banish my concern for my own harm
Passing by the church, I beg today
Can you see me to a young man's arms?

2010-12-11T04:55:00.000-08:00

Division
28"x 35"
acrylic/fluted sbs

My First Video Post

2010-12-08T14:53:00.000-08:00

Fishing for Fire

Lying in bed, I stared through your sleeping eyes,
wondering if soft blankets and words were enough to live,
whether shivering together would bring heat or just friction;
my cool fingers drew slow circles around your mouth,
but I could not feel or imitate the warmth escaping your lips—
freezing alone is not the same as freezing alone together.
I left that night as dreams of sailing beautiful oceans
turned into a painting of two children slipping over ice,
and like an ambitious autumn breeze catching the spring,
the unnatural season began to pour through my veins.
Soon, dead leaves fell like snow beneath my skin,
and covered the water I had saved for the ensuing sun,
lucid water that had promised to grow green futures.
I ate fire, drank fire, and smoked fire,
but nothing seemed to heat the frigid lake of leaves
as it grew slower and sharper beneath my skin,
pushing to break and speak out against the season.
Fragile and barefooted I wandered carelessly that night
searching for a reflection of my inverted world,
a mirror to talk to or simply a tongue to place down my throat,
anything to forget the potential burden of breaking alone.
...I found it, eventually, before the sun had begun to rise
at the edge of a night littered in matches and clothes;
it was in a pond, nearly placid, reflecting in the moon,
shivering alone with no one to see or break the surface.
I knelt down to touch and gaze beneath sleepy ripples,
and I saw beautiful flames sailing within the waves,
hiding their light beneath dead floating leaves.
That night, I decided to go fishing for my fire.
I dove head first into life's cool essence of darkness,
chasing scattered flames like old summer dreams,
and I watched the sun rise as we thawed alone and together.

Shama

2010-12-05T01:11:00.000-08:00

Sitting on the banks,
nay the frame of a river,
waiting for the dust to settle
on such a grievous and ill-mannered
alliterative appendix,
I once promised myself
I’d not give in
to the sorry belief in ghosts

But here they arise
wraiths out of the mist
with bowed buckled knees;
buried in the resting place
for remembered ribbons
Wearing wreaths to match
the twigs and leaves
caught in their long black robes

And gargle it goes
the sound of my voice as it tries
to make its way across the sands
to meet her

Gargle-gargle-gulp;
the strains of a
boy drowning in the river
cast there by those
who refused to acknowledge
the creases in his brow
Or the breadcrumbs
he had left in his wake
to lead him back to the very same spot
where his torment first began

And the queue refuses to move
Great mounds of dirt
collect on the toes,
wings and deck of the ship
Oh, how far the moon seems now.

2010-12-03T16:33:00.000-08:00

Near West Side
digital photo

Hat Stand

2010-11-25T01:11:00.000-08:00

The endless line
of wingless eagles
continue their
Dodo march

Arched backs falling,
little slack lemmings,
tumbling with disdain
before my eyes

And back sodden,
soaked, pressed firm
beside rock
Toes dug in
Heels soggy with algae

From here I can see
your flower-proof brolly
painting flames
abroad the horizon

2010-11-22T14:48:00.000-08:00

Blue Room
5ft x 4ft
acrylic/canvas

Barrel

2010-11-17T02:22:00.000-08:00

Accompanying the return
of magpie breath and feathers
I surround myself
with sallow squares
and careful circles of chalk

Ears pricked
Fingers reaching,
long and black,
across an eyeless stitch
flanked by candles

And the turning cogs,
twisting wheels and roots
Hoping for that cheerful clink
caused by paper against palm

2010-11-15T18:01:00.000-08:00

Spirit
35"x28"
acrylic/fluted sbs

Lorca's Lament

2010-11-08T22:28:00.000-08:00

My love has flown away

on the black wing of an eagle

to pierce the blue mantle

of a Spanish sky.

Words have deserted me,

they have marched away

to the beat of a thousand drums

and the clash of swords.

The gleam of his naked pistol

and the sun's scorching rays

blinded me as I knelt

that sweltering summer's day

on flowering earth-

mother of all mothers

that gave birth to me.

They dragged me to the cemetery

to breathe my last broken sigh.

I am still searching for the mound

where my shattered bones lie.

Zaina Anwar 2010

Prayer of the unsaintly

2010-11-05T10:31:00.001-07:00

Would you banish me if I confessed
a secret thrill the instant
shrill sirens intrude,
rudely breaking in
to shove aside my trailed-off whispers
with a wail from which no earwax,
no matter how doughy thick,
could keep a modern Ulysses safe.

Maybe it’s this time
they’ll stop for me.

Maybe it’s this time
and there won’t come a knock.

Maybe it’s this time
the stale crust of hardening past
explodes to scorch a put-upon earth
or crack her open so we can,
you and I, slip through,
up among the slewfoot roamers.
Their heavy heads are down,
always down, down,
pointed down and they’re unaware
there are germs here.
There are puffs of dainty fluff floating
close above them here and hoping
to ride our slipstream,
to skip over those dreams
too drained of ambition for ever
to germinate.

Ignore, am I
the kind to ignore? I am
ignoring them right now,
and the dimpled facts
they’d dare be
if beggary wasn’t better served
than derring-do. Don’t
tell me you don’t see them too.

I’ve witnessed the self-interest
and I’m still abiding, dude,
but when, dear God, when
will enlightenment finally arrive?

Autumn Morning.....

2010-11-03T05:23:00.000-07:00

The first scents of the day

Fill me up and radiate to my finger tips

Invigorating and refreshing

The early morning coolness breathing against my face

And the ever welcome warmth that cloaks my back

My fading friend of summer

Chinks of light peep through the loaded branches

Leaves, clinging for life

The life within them withering away

The autumnal colours of ochre’s and browns

Curling with their rusty spots abound

That moment of life extinct as they freefall

Dressing the ground with a crisp crunchy carpet

© Eileen O’Neill 24/09/2010

Thursday Prompt for Poets United: Autumn

(Poem originally written 17/10/2009)

Ants with Sticks

2010-11-01T12:55:00.000-07:00

I watched them dismantle a cat's game in my backyard,
their X's and O's imprinted in the rust-filled sand,
symbols left behind like fossils who refused to change.
I watched them transplant the sticks piece-by-piece
over new blades of grass, new colors of flowers,
hoping they might be filled with sweet, simple time:
free land, free energy, free love in arms of freedom.
Sedentary, I sat watching and drinking beer
while a tired sun set behind the distant hills;
political ads poured out my windows, ignorance
screamed back-and-forth like wavering curtains
torn by the hands of an evening draft—I sat,
I watched them play games with broken branches,
and the history of our world continued to suffer.

Hang

2010-11-01T02:22:00.000-07:00

Too long spent treading water,
head bobbing up and down
between passing ships
and an array of distorted
messages in bottles

It was here that I realised the time to let go
and sink down into the depths of you
had arrived

But fear,
night terrors,
a gang of them,
their voices calling out like whale song
beneath the surface

Try as I might I cannot shake the feeling
that this shade is not a ghost at all
Rather a permanent stain,
the spreading of ink
across an otherwise pale blue
canvas

And it always arrives with the taste of decay
that dull screw
of a fragile hobgoblin
so pensive and grave

2010-10-30T10:45:00.000-07:00

October 30th
digital photo

Treasure the Moment....

2010-10-27T16:12:00.000-07:00

Too much, or never enough.

Time,

To pause and reflect.

Snatched and watched.

The hands move on.

My time, shared time,

Lost time.

Capture and treasure it,

Seize it and savour it.

Perhaps, at another time,

Dreading or fearing it.

With time,

Soothed and reassured.

Make time and take time,

To look back, reminiscing.

Moving on,

Pleasantly dreaming.

Conserve the commodity.

Per chance a rare find,

This spare moment in time

2010-10-23T13:11:00.003-07:00

Reckoning
35"x 28"
acrylic/fluted sbs

Lullaby

2010-10-22T06:22:00.001-07:00

What leaves may fall,
what tunnels window fare
The sheet we use
for propping mirrors
paired

One knot to tie
the sweeping sky
and tall
With wings to carry
circles, feathers, all

Askance aside
Now nestled
pillow blush

And oh,
you look a picture
lying there

Painting

2010-10-13T00:53:00.001-07:00

'The Chief'

pen and acrylic on paper

(click on image to enlarge)

Well Wishing

2010-10-08T21:08:00.000-07:00

Sixteenth Street, an asbestos shack
Always has enough for this all night game
By the eyes of my customers, they're coming back
Nothing else can help them to ease their pain

And I, walk that plank of shame
As I, say, "Please, come again."
I walk that plank of shame

Always had a thing for the easy load
Trimmed all my possesions to this jet black frame
And tonight while I rumble on the open road
My daughter ships out to the fiery gates

And I, walk that plank of shame
As I, pray for her again.
I walk that plank of shame.

My little boy you're bundled to your daddy's hopes
Waiting to be watered by the future's rain
Though the doctors words were a terrible blow
They were nothing like the look upon our neighbors face

And I, walk that plank of shame
As they, walk their kids away,
I walk that plank of shame

Sixteenth Street, an asbestos shack
Always has enough for this all night game
By the eyes of my customers, they're coming back
Nothing else can help them to ease their pain

And I, walk that plank of shame
As I, say, "Please, come again,"
I walk that plank of shame

Ring

2010-10-07T10:48:00.001-07:00

Confidence in
candle wax
and salt

Face to the sky
declaring it
in threes

A pair of spirals
twirling
at my feet

My uttered plea,
when facing the above

To light
and guard
and keep
the nameless sure.

Poem- Echoes of An Evening

2010-10-03T02:43:00.000-07:00

Pink sequins and an emerald wrist

in a mirror marred by violence.

Look behind you, there is a spider clinging

to a flimsy web that cannot be held

together by mere words alone.

In a green silk blouse shimmering

like sunshine on a crystal tear,

you look for distraction in a mirror;

you stroke old wounds with fingers

yellowed by cheap cigarettes and years

of bitter acceptance.

Through evenings smelling of stale smoke

and plants dying in Moroccan terracotta,

you comb your hair in a window lit

by moonbeams frail and tarnished with time.

You sleep to the lonely sound of chimes,

and engulf yourself in the folds

of a long and scathing solitude.

Zaina Anwar 2010

i've been gone too long

2010-09-28T10:11:00.000-07:00

took a little break from writing but my notebook has started following me around again

The Crazy Lady Next Door: christmas 1995

I stared as she trudged through the yard,
a tree planted over her far shoulder,
the wind fighting for tinsel and scarf.
She dropped the ornament by an old elm
and knelt to cover everything green
beneath the fallen snow. It was all there:
the colored glass balls, ceramic angels
forever posed in youth and wisdom,
a tarnished star still clinging to the top.
After finishing, she recited several words,
pulled a dry lilly from beneath her coat,
and tossed it over the new winter grave.
That spring, the tree remained untouched,
and the branches had begun to bear rust.

2010-09-25T15:58:00.000-07:00

Magic Fish
39"x 32"
acrylic/canvas

Cold seeps

2010-09-22T11:36:00.001-07:00

I would have posited longings ago
this short-shrift to-do over such a curt list undone
was inconceivable
outside
the pages of deceptively practiced perceptions
published in a pop-up book smirk,
or beyond
the canary-yellow frames of a cartoonish
distortion relishing its mired but spongy giggles

A
Been-here-all-along,
you’ve-never-bothered-to-look
lake sleeps implacably
at the bottom of an irascible ocean

Be
Whatever it may,
you can’t deny the wantonly
watted life teeming pretty as it pleases,
untroubled by a hollow-core belief
or the extremest demands of our foul temper

See
How I could have,
if I’d only swallowed
those bubbled-up blurts
ring-wronging the tip of my wriggling tongue,
never been audibly
landed by one alluringly barbed certainty

There are supine bodies—
stagnant, quicksilver pure—
no material ship navigates
and no intentional intruder can swim
without
emerging atypically
unsettled by the caustic exposure

Tread lithely
when you go;
this shoreline bites.
Its clustered rocks will snap shut around you
after digging in below you with a protruding toe,
and its carmine stalks will sting you
as they writhe past you
to mime a part-less goodbye

Here be where
the monstrous cold seeps
and a hellish hot vents
in compliance with this centuries-old complaint:
too-short was the time we wept
for those wiggly wonders
we could have kept
if we’d only octopus-arm embraced
the inevitability of their bandy-legged escape

2010-09-21T16:43:00.000-07:00

Spun

digital photo

Ephemeron

2010-09-10T22:46:00.000-07:00

It happened so quickly,

the way her love shattered

into a thousand fragments,

each a tiny mirror reflecting

a magnificent sunburst,

blinding her soured vision forever.

And all she had done

was ask him,

ask him in a quiver,

'Did you fuck her?'

to which he lied,

the bastard slipped,

so that the truth hit her.

She knew it was over.

Zaina Anwar 2010

Manifesto

2010-08-29T07:51:00.001-07:00

Manifesto

Acrylic on Canvas. 2009

pavor nocturnus

2010-08-27T10:06:00.000-07:00

And
there is darkness here
Thick,
not even stars

Siege to the castle!
Siege!

The parapet has already been taken
and I can hear them bringing down the doors

Tumble
walls
tumble

But I will guard
the cornerstone
with my heart

Rose Scented Illusion

2010-08-22T10:39:00.000-07:00

The moon tugs angry at my heart,
drawing black blood in an ebb and flow
of the sea that crashes and roars
against the rocks beneath this monstrous cliff.

The mist hangs in patches dissolving shadows:
no wonder I cannot see who I am,
give me a candle so I can satiate myself-
are these really my raw, soap-frothing hands?

Love was a wonder, a cherished hope,
but now I am down on blistering knees,
chasing a potato for the next singeing meal
over a kitchen fire that has burnt my years.

He shall not patch me up with occasional nods
and bland phrases reeking boredom;
he brings me roses on a Sunday forgetting
that there are thorns on the bloodied stems.

celebrating the superficiality of all things being made equal

2010-08-19T09:17:00.001-07:00

let us join hands
you and i
and tramp down this falling away
road new paved by over-baked schemes
and the shattered
windshield glass from a dream car
we left for dead many miles back
every tire including the spare had blown
and they still hiss their casual tunes
while popped-out
flesh-tone hoses
dangle and sprinkle
a rainbow gloss on black-rimmed puddles
it’s a cause for deepening joy
these shallows won’t
dry up in either of our weened lifetimes
moisten your lips dear
and make that pineapple-sweet whistle
i love to taste
when i dare to plant my tongue there
the food’s long gone
and pots are now for banging
we’ve lost our way
and maps are made for shredding
into playfully themed streamers
we’ll tie in our hair
as we dance off the waning
silky heat of a too-late summer
the sun’s dial is flipping
and bound by those zeros
we’ve gotta go but it’s best
we’re brought low together

we live in the subway...

2010-08-18T10:07:00.000-07:00

by human being

illustrations by rhoda penmarq

we live in the subway
at different stations
no one ever leaves here
we just live our life!

sisyphus rolls his boulder
from one station to the other
nobody gives him a hand
no one has got a hand in this land

we do not shake hands here
we just shake our heads as we walk
thoughts can't climb the stairs
dialogs are run over by trains

we all run
to take a trip
to take a sit
to take a nap

to dream of the land above
that we are not allowed to visit
they are busy there
they are busy cleaning the land from bodies and trees

they want the land bodiless
they want the land treeless
they say bodies and trees make it priceless
and they laugh

no one cares about the meaning of words in this land
we just hear the words
we hear them laughing
we hear them cleaning the land

we hear the bodies and the trees that are cleaned
the subway is full of voices and sounds
but nobody listens
joshua bell's violin is begging for hearing ears

nobody lends him even a pierced ear
no one has got an ear in this land
fear has got the upper hand
courage is lost in the maze of knowledge

minds do not find each other
they masturbate in their interior monologs
poetry is raped by busy nets
stories are stillborn

we live in the subway
at different stations
no one ever leaves here
we just live our life

............................................ like a dry leaf in the wind

a gift of green mussels gone

2010-08-17T10:18:00.001-07:00

A flash of blown snow in August

aural blizzard driven wavy

as memory mirrors one lined

lost lane to hard cracked two:

drifts mounded to sandy dunes

of seaside grass that trembles

near curtain slats partly open

five hooked fingers pull shell

to split full lips from beardless

sands tracked on nacre floors,

cooled by paneled ocean breezes

doors swollen down to aqua sea

and a sticky lizard laughs beige

at the gravity of stucco walls

gladly not to sweat the beady

orange tricks of salty summer,

the pink necklaces of blush

that fritter in the mangrove

provide cover for the titter

of bashful larks as the scrub's

unexpected scent of raspberry

envelopes an unplucked flower.

The scene not too unseasonal

to offer wry spreading frost

webbed silver in spun summer

causing flashed peaks to stiffen

with the surprise of early chill:

to trace back crash to Wednesday

in the boney script come please,

penned in aqua ink the day before,

imagined blue flats a foundation

for the invite shy of bas-relief

the wet release at lost belief,

a delight to the slippery slip

a worn cloth belt champion grey

on the frayed white damask sofa

and sliding on pearly puffy drips.

One last peak at tawny tight skin

a museum quality veneer covering

fictions and histories and exits,

one lasts as the mirror glazes

ice forward glacier white

a straight-jacket yardstick

from an under blaze heard

the swoop of three egrets four

is white down in eastern sky

and just back from the stars:

a gift of green mussels gone.

On turning 30

2010-08-15T06:26:00.000-07:00

She is fragmented in the mirror,
a possibility failing over and over
to come to fruition.
How does one put the myriad petals
back into a rose?

(I think I've had an overdose of Sylvia Plath)

Bolide

2010-08-13T05:31:00.001-07:00

Standing on the brink
of a thousand and one
tiny explosions
I witness,
beyond the mist,
the shade of a shadow
performing its most wonderfully
piercing act

And darkness descend!
But for a pair of
chilled silhouettes;
synchronous steps,
arms flapping,
beating about like wings

Oh, to the moonlight
I return!

Gone Up in Smoke

2010-08-09T22:00:00.000-07:00

What I saw then was different-
it could not have been you.
Blindfolded then maybe,
now I breathe indifferently
but sometimes
as in autumn when the trees
begin to shed tangerine leaves
and the clouds veil the sun
for weeks at a time,
a sharp pang of regret
over a lie concocted
or a devious riddle I failed
to solve pierces through me
with a black intensity,
an affliction I simply
cannot sustain.

August 2010

one day your jellyroll will

2010-08-09T08:53:00.001-07:00

One way to be in the world

is to live jerk furtive

in the quick store carpark

squat behind buick wheel

scraped and all banged in,

hungover unshaved erect,

with no pony tips to play.

Mocha big gulp balanced

on vinyl dash cracks with

your beige savior upright,

one gloss ring per bored day

making a coaster extra luxe

while spitting your dribble

onto seedy shifting carpet,

rubbed off brake and clutch.

Sneaker tongue shot eyelet

worn through daily rhythm,

enjoying only in your mind

white sweats stretched elastic

from damp plastic into trash

when the lap becomes the thighs.

Ritual light and sweet

a morning queue wait,

flapping brown packets

of sugar bulging pre-tear

next to spills of coffee

and ashes from the suck of now:

an ask never even noticed

glimmers into wasted guilt

from the gimlet of your eye.

Death wish goose limping,

invisible to chrome hoods,

tries to reach the wood

wondering how much glass

is really in this world.

Lone Star

2010-08-07T12:17:00.000-07:00

Another favorite subject: Arthropods

2010-08-07T03:47:00.000-07:00

Insects
Acrylic on canvas
(One of my favorite paintings)
click to enlarge

2010-08-05T13:18:00.000-07:00

Take Off
acrylic/fluted sbs
35"x28"

meaning...

2010-08-04T17:36:00.001-07:00

by human being

illustrations by rhoda penmarq

once upon a time, there lived a creature called meaning... meaning didn't know who it was and life seemed so meaningless to it... so it started a journey to find out...

wherever it saw someone on the road, it stopped and asked... but no one knew who it was... it saw lots of people and places... it had lots of sad and happy moments but still that meaninglessness bothered it...

one day when it was sitting by a pond looking at the play of light on the surface of water, it noticed a face on the water... no! it was not its reflection... and this is not the story of Narcissus...

the face on the water was smiling... while meaning knew exactly how it (itself) felt: sad and tired...
the face on the water was trying to say something... while meaning knew it (itself) had been silent for a long time...

meaning loved that smile... those lips that were trying to say something... meaning tried to listen but.... splash!

a coconut dropped in the pond... monkeys were hungry... and were trying to eat something...

the face was gone...

meaning became a frequent visitor to the pond... day after day it came there to see the face again... that smile ... those moving lips... but the moment the face appeared and wanted to say something, something happened and the face disappeared...

but meaning never gave up... it built a house there... planted lots of plants and trees... made friends with all people and creatures there...

.

and each day came to the pond to see the face... the moment the face appeared, meaning would tremble with joy... and thought it was the happiest being in the world... now meaning felt its life was meaningful...

and
they lived happily ever after?
no... this story is a bit different...

on a very beautiful morning something strange happened after years of visit to the pond...

when the face appeared... nothing happened to make the face disappear...

they looked at each other for a long time...

smiling...

at last, meaning asked the face:

- who are you?

the face smiled more broadly than ever and answered:
- i'm... nothing...

meaning paused for a long time... then it entered the water very slowly...

careful not to disturb its motionless surface...

and
they became one...

no one has seen meaning since then...

It Makes No Sense

2010-08-03T23:32:00.000-07:00

Don't tell me it's not a crazy world
When women stringed in heavy pearls
And priceless furs to which the dead smell
Of flayed animal heat still clings,

Slide out of hotels huge and foreign spiced
With glittering floors and cucumbers sliced
In odd shapes, labor of sweat and blood,
To sell through hot, steaming kitchens and lure

Exquisite taste buds nurtured by leafing
Through the right magazines, cameras flashing
To capture a beautiful morsel entering
A costly mouth, red-lipped in layers hiding

Tiny winter cracks and expelling
Fumes from breath freshener bottles displaying
The heraldic arms of a corporation labeled
In loud golden letters.

Don't tell me it's not a crazy world
When across the street from one such hotel,
A wrinkled man lies by the side of the road
Missing a leg in a land mine carrying a load

Of cooking oil and flour for the family's bread.
His clothes are filthy with the peculiar smell
Of need and endlessly streaming sweat
With boots rugged and barely hanging together

And hammered in places with rusty nails.
By the road he lies come heaven or hail,
Begging for food his body daily craves
While frenzied lice crawling through his matted hair,

Enact a circus to keep the people away,
Who recoil on instinct as they pass him by,
Wishing that the council would have him displaced-
He is spoiling their perfect landscape.

August 2010

it ain't why

2010-08-03T04:19:00.000-07:00

with no keen counter to humid flats

rose of sharon mauves in mid-august

burst in the eye's betrayal legion and

under gables feral a longing drenches

poured down panes flapped lead peels

mixt and ridden by unguttered rain

curved up on wetness sweet at splash

to poke in furtive quiet an arbor hid

of unripe grapes climbing scaling blues

unfixed to picket and pecking lark

from rolling front behind her back

chopped bug tagged his rust creep box

red caboose with curled black arrow

lined blue and green and it was good

the sprayed art of him spiked in flats

black white moonlit that snapped away

skirt stuck paisley intact from quickly

licking came pale the same curved thigh

clanged iron recoil from a pearly quiver

balled up panties by the engine track

a nacre nib in fiction so perfect fades

recorded to a wrinkly black book

in pocket shady ink on onion skin

culled smile over donuts plated plain

and peaceful rings of cooling coffee

on gray speckled veneer chipped thin

to plywood dusted sweet and low

scratching the dawn he went up swiss

got on the china horse near needle park

and not returned through alpine drifts

less days ahead than behind the bark

what happens after fade to black

is just what happens now

It's Always Snowing in Philidelphia

2010-08-03T00:25:00.000-07:00

I’m sentimental against my will. I save text messages. I have to force myself to delete them because I have an old lady phone that doesn’t hold many of them.

I like my old lady phone. I like busting it out when guys at bars ask for my number and I feel ambivalent enough to say yes. They look shocked. They think you have to be crazy to have an old lady phone or otherwise illegally unhip. I hesitate to inform them that I’m crazy and illegally unhip. They usually call anyway and I don’t pick up my old lady phone.

The last text message I sent to Philadelphia said “We forgot to use the handcuffs.”

I wonder how cold it is in London. It should snow. It has to snow. It’s cold enough.

2010-08-01T17:30:00.000-07:00

Baptism
acrylic/canvas
aprox. 38"x28"

innuendos...

2010-08-01T13:42:00.000-07:00

.

an american night
a canadian flight
at a hong kong airport
through the gate of silence
anonymous identities
clothed in quoted cloaks
vampiring the auspicious vehicle of art running through your veins
disheartening the troubadour steps of travelers
divorcing the dubious hands of doves
throwing a monkey wrench into the wheel of communication
coloring the world in their putrid paranoia
dissolving love in a lamenting loneliness

.

june2009-july2010
*american night is a cinematographic technic...
.

From my sketchbook..

2010-07-31T21:36:00.001-07:00

'Untitled'
Pen on paper

Deluge

2010-07-30T06:03:00.000-07:00

Curving up the tree trunks,
peppered with letters and vines,
are pebbles cast across the skin
where blushing ripples side

And sleep will not descend here,
not as I know it should
The wrinkled sheets, they writhe and burn
Oh siren in the woods

Her shriek will pierce the silence
beyond the shallow glow,
of windows borne by shadows,
where dimming lights are low

So overflow, banks overflow!
Overwhelm and overflow!
Build and burst from coast and shore,
these blushing seeds we sow

just one

2010-07-30T05:04:00.000-07:00

billy, is that you
how are you

it's been a while
yeah

think you can
give me some

sure
like the old days

when you
were my number one

remember
how you used
to give me

ten, twelve
fourteen at a time

wow
just thinking about it

sixteen, seventeen
those were good times

right
i hear you

how about
four or five

i could really use
about four right now

no
how about one or two

one billy
one

for old times
come on

i remember
you gave me twenty

one time
remember that

yeah

you're right
things aren't what

they used to be
that's true

time goes by
but some things

don't change
what, like desperation

i'm desperate
i'm begging you

just one
can't you give me just one

i see
yeah

all right
all right

i understand

so long, billy
it was great

talking to you
again

later

The Itch

2010-07-30T02:47:00.000-07:00

At last, the wind,
winding its way,
through the restless leaves
of sap-encrusted trees
has reached me now,
at this hour,
so I can breathe
something other than the stench
of obscenely clinging malarial heat.

The sky is gray dark deep invaded,
by an army of gestating clouds.
They shall now,
have the last word-
the sun's autocracy
would be shifted:
he shall be imprisoned for a few restful days.
Such is the way of monsoon summer.

And so I sit becalmed
by the cool, shimmering breeze
but for an itch,
beneath the plane
where we employ, our finer sensibilities.
So as I reach out,
towards a pale blue packet,
I wonder whether I should have
another cigarette or
delay my death
by a few more gasping breaths.

Figures

2010-07-29T11:14:00.001-07:00

What we were once, two words,
we are no more, taken in

When ten layers absorb
the shadows of our predecessor shapes.
Purple bruises bleed through
the buried concrete

Where one-hundred shouted
stories slid down into
a waiting mouth of obtuse angles.
Vague numbers now,
we follow and ask,

Why one-thousand labors
couldn’t gird us against not-
birthing gusts, their reverse alchemy,
aching to prove

How countless precious lines
can turn testily from true
geometry’s parallel paths, and seek
an improbable calculus of chaotic drips,
those splats that trace a figure

Who in the flash of flame
sees his distinctions
have lavishly become
obliterated.

Our tomorrow will know
what our today’s forgotten.

Content and Form

2010-07-27T20:21:00.000-07:00

[this post best viewed with Firefox or in google reader]


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For the flip side of this post, hit this link

A Tryst At The Cimmerian Hour

2010-07-26T15:09:00.000-07:00

At night when silence slowly creeps

Into the very crevices of rocks and tree-roots,

When the wolves and crickets join the cacophony,

Of night creatures howling grievances to the moon,

As he leaves his darkly silent womb-

I die a sweet, aching death.

At night when mottled fungi awake

To the empyreal dome arching above,

When dewy-eyed flowers luxuriate

By the swiftly streaming brook,

As he picks up the lurking scent and prowls-

I wait for him with bated breath.

At night when an errant moon coerces the sea waves

And they wax and wane in a fury of confusion;

When sea men pray in vain for deliverance

From the vengeful wrath of mighty Neptune,

As I open the door to his urgent embrace-

I drape my desire, over my yearning breast.

(In memory of D.H Lawrence)

Squinting

2010-07-26T08:43:00.001-07:00

Gentle inspiration
it has been so long
since I last greeted you
at my door

I am still alone up here
none the wiser,
unable to explain
exactly what it is
I want to sprinkle
on this window ledge

And,
though I have been sent
twinkling tingles
through distant
moonlit burrows,
beyond the daybreak's
curving stars

I still lie here
awake at night
pondering collapsible
sunrises
and endless mornings
bereft of tears

And spells
a pride of them
dozens
a swarm
But never enough to express
how much I love you

seven beats while the metronome joked

2010-07-25T13:16:00.000-07:00

You know the clock's not real

but still you ache its ticking

tricked to notice movement

when it is only painted still.

While a skull grins in icy clouds

leaves flip silver to wait for rain

if that's when low you look to see

the pink globe at sunset swollen,

ersatz precursor to a steady diet

of dry brown acorns easily plinked

and eventually served as charcoal

despite the awkward faux pas style

of clasping with fingerless gloves.

Concrete angels bow to the azure half-shell,

her dry lips foaming a pink V for wanting

on a granite stand trimmed green for sorrow,

after a limousine chase for the widow in black silk

and a rural hearse with no juice run down fresh

to a moist entrance dug from angled mounds.

A bebop version of circumstantial pomp

causes greedy tears to mark this turf

with clinging spray cleaved to flesh,

requiem high-notes by a monkey sung

hirsute y muy simpatico y mas,

the girl in plaid is walking beside

deep set eyes and squeaky wheels

under the rising limbs of linden:

it is not gold but cork that floats

safely lined for carriages of loss.

A monologue of normality

from a desiccated carcass

that simply loves the disco,

the soutane above the fray

if the legs had feet instead of glide

by the sacred sign disguised.

Under this sad hymn of high summer

(crickets strumming rhythm

led by cicadas syncopate)

only plain birds sit the sizzling wire,

the dotage that never blinked downhill

rolls from neon crying time's suspense,

the frozen bauble to never flash again.

For something to believe in pink

the pearly globe grows up in size

we only die each time we notice.

Wordsmith

2010-07-25T08:39:00.000-07:00

Over the hill it comes
accompanied by
the familiar antagonist
Looming large
in thick
shadowed molasses

Jealousy.

And so I sit
Face in knees
arms wrapped
solidly around
the splintered shins
of little me

Insecure
and torn apart
Beneath great protector’s
fiery sack
of fortitude and strings

Who looking out,
with murmurs deep,
draws his arrow
feathered bow
and flies

Abroad horizons
and carefully loosened
cloudy skies
To strike it down

To. Strike. Him. Down.

Bringer of indelible dirt
Knock
him
over

Until the sky
is torn asunder
Until the ghoul
will not return

2010-07-23T15:07:00.001-07:00

Horse
digital photo

Dedicated to Her...

2010-07-23T00:15:00.000-07:00

Her words slice through me like a sword,

impaling my brittle heart on its poisoned tip,

draining it brutally to the last vital dreg

of anemic blood- my wavering lifeline.

The fire from her caustic tongue has burnt

the solitary kernel of my cloistered being,

give me a brush so I can sweep the ashes,

give me a rag so I can wipe the slate clean.

(One of my favorite Native American proverbs says: It is better to have less thunder in the mouth and more lightning in the hand)

they...

2010-07-22T14:23:00.000-07:00

.

they love you
when you are
as tall as
the wall of their
expectations or
when you are
as solid as
the mirror of
their reflections

while
-------------you
----------------------- love
------------------------------------to be
------------------------------------------------as thin as
------------------------------------------------------------------the air

so that
---------------they
----------------------------can
-----------------------------------------see
-------------------------------------------------------through
--------------------------------------------------------------------------you

.

Three minds

2010-07-20T12:20:00.000-07:00

I am of three minds—
an un-whole trinity
built by ghostly id,
god-sick conscience,
and the son of never-
virginal egos—
interlocked inside
a mortal’s spirited

head-in-head conflict.
To the fabulous free
goes my prized heart’s
spoiled meat. Cooked rare,
its fetid, red juices
run in all directions.

Detached

2010-07-19T13:54:00.001-07:00

Tubular heart
Cast-iron brackets
Beside my redbrick wall of ascension

I have never seen you before

Don’t recognise the colours you draw
From the tunnels inside
The semi-circular cracks across my veins

2010-07-18T12:14:00.000-07:00

Fishman
Urban Myth

35"x28"
acrylic/fluted sbs

Poem- A Tribute to Sylvia Plath

2010-07-16T08:06:00.000-07:00

The Truth has Spoken to Me

Beware, for there

is fire beneath my nails

and I can scratch

your slippery surface

to swiftly reveal

your masked secrets.

In a box I have lived

full of moist

blackness

and tiny holes punctured

to watch you floating unperturbed

in your fabricated microcosm.

You have always come to me

enshrouded in a thick swelling screen

of smoke and the smell

of burning charcoal as we ignite,

already exhausted,

our embittered passion.

But the heart that has fed,

since time immemorial,

joyous interludes

to our silent ordeal,

has now come to rest

and left us to willingly die

or to pick up the ashes-

it is for us to decide.

on my way...

2010-07-15T00:47:00.001-07:00

by human being

illustrations by rhoda penmarq

on my way
i saw a woman
buried deep in the earth
up to her shoulders
with her face torn off
by the stones thrown at her
she was still alive
and her long hair
rippled in the breeze
was it love?, i asked
no, she moaned, it was a fight between my owners

what can i do for you?, i enquired
nothing, she responded in a fading voice, just take one of these stones and throw it in the running water
i sat there
combing her long hair
with my sad fingers
until she died
then i took one of the stones
- the bloodiest -
and continued on my way

on my way
i saw a man
fastened to a tree
with his hands cut off
blood was dripping down on the stones
he was still alive
and his long hair
rippled in the breeze
was it a fight between your owners?, i asked
no, he moaned, it was a war between hunger and me

what can i do for you?, i enquired
nothing, he responded in a fading voice, just take one of these stones and throw it in the running water
i stood there
combing his long hair
with my sad fingers
until he died
then i took one of the stones
- the bloodiest -
and continued on my way

on my way
i saw a couple
a boy and a girl
the boy was shot in the heart
lying on the ground
with blood gushing from his chest
the girl was hanged on the gallows
with blood streaming gently down her nailless fingers
joining the boy's blood on the stones
they were still alive
they both had very short hair

there was no breeze
a distant storm loomed in the horizon
was it a fight between your owners or a war between you and hunger?, i asked
no, they moaned, it was for truth and freedom
what can i do for you?, i enquired
nothing, they responded in a fading voice, just take one of these stones and throw it in the running water
i stayed there
caressing their faces
with my sad fingers
until they died
then i took one of the stones
- the bloodiest -
and continued on my way

i walked for days
and for years
but i couldn't find any running water

one day i took out the stones and held them in my hands
i was tired
and the stones were so heavy
i cried
i cried because i still remembered i should have done something
tears were running from my eyes

dripping on the stones
washing away the blood dried on them
the stones and my fingers were all wet and bloody
i threw them up in the air
they joined each other and turned into a crow
and the crow sat in a tree and started cawing:

it is all for love
it is all for love
it is all for love

you can still see the tree
you can still hear the crow
you can still touch a stone
what will you do with it?

monday, july 12, 2010

Lying on a floating mat, gazing at the sun through my hat.

2010-07-12T11:11:00.001-07:00

The waves cause a gentle sway
Of an inflated mat
And my body lying flat
As I stare up into my hat

Blue sky and waves are bright
But just an inch from my face
Is a dark and rainbowed space
And I am glad to be in this place

Gamelan

2010-07-12T10:17:00.001-07:00

Particularly
presents a grave
the classic image
Snake

...

such as pyramid-mail
variation in the cube
consists of all three
pieces for access

...

THE ENCHANTED LAKE!
(=- Pencil stone)

a bit 'curved
protruded above
Graves' low

A set of lies;
here is what I am!

Spillage

2010-07-12T05:57:00.001-07:00

Two cracks beside
destructive fear
of mine

A hope
reverberating drone
of gentle hums

We savour
each and every
tattled tale

And risk
the bitter moments
by degrees

Invest our
broken bones
on borrowed time

And expect it all
to happen
out at sea

But what we found
was selfishness
and greed

Mystery School

2010-07-10T07:06:00.000-07:00

"Mystery School" - 2010

Acrylic on Tan Paper

2010-07-09T12:52:00.000-07:00

Parting Shot

40"x27"
acrylic/fluted sbs

1972

2010-07-09T10:46:00.000-07:00

August reeks railway flats, slops its steaming tongue
into mothy thickness behind the kitchen sink
16 floors above Union Square, Sherry dangles

her foot from the window ledge, her head bent
back over wicker chair, frayed and pocked
with growing holes she has assisted with
wet fingers. The lanky limbs of a Rolling Stones
tune drifts from the floor below... Saw you stretched out,
in-a-room ten oh nine; A smile on your face,

"and tear in your eye," she sings.
Ashes gather in her lap, then fly as the fan's neck
makes its rickety journey from the far corner of the room.
From the street the smell of thin meat roasting
girls in pink shorts rollerskate toward 14th

15th, 16th, 17th, 18th now, the years she's
sucked it in, all the endless air that comes
from where? She can't even begin to wonder
but it does come, always, and this thought inspires
brief movement, a reach for the beaded bottle,
a slow pour down the throat. A smile. An arrival.

Exile never sounded so sweet
as when she listened from between floors,
her head bent back, a mercy of river air through the window.

seven little stories to be read after bedtime...

2010-07-09T03:40:00.000-07:00

by human being

illustrations by rhoda penmarq

.

(one)
a bird in a bare blue sky
a kiteless child is watching the bird...

(two)
a bird in a bare green tree
a wingless cat is watching the bird...

(three)
a bird on bare brown soil
a careless scarecrow is watching the bird...

(four)
a bird over a bare grey wall
a windowless tower is watching the bird...

(five)
a bird in a bare golden cage
a brideless groom is watching the bird...

(six)
a bird on a bare black wire
a wordless poet is watching the bird...

(seven)
a bird on a bare beautiful shoulder
a sightless soul is watching the bird...

the catch...

2010-07-05T09:44:00.000-07:00

by human being

illustrations by rhoda penmarq

fox was passing under cypress tree when something dropped down in front of him...

it was a large piece of cheese!

he looked up:

crow was sitting on the tip of the tree... looking down...

fox was suspicious: eh? what does this mean? what about that old fable? this should be me luring her to drop the cheese... why is she offering this large piece to me? i even didn't see her and her cheese... is this a trap? perhaps this cheese is poisonous... or maybe she wants to get something bigger from me in return?

crow was still looking down... fox looked at the cheese and crow several times... at last he ignored both of them and continued on his way...

when he was far enough, crow swooped down and snatched the cheese off the ground...

- phew! thought i have lost my precious catch... it's so heavy i cannot hold it in my beak properly... thank heavens this one didn't like cheese!

and ye shall lie in the bosom of Abraham

2010-07-05T07:52:00.000-07:00

The wheel tuned out dry clay carved

and red splattered at the weedy edge

of a rump drive came to a tuning end

when the dream stop of potting screeched.

I saw that with my own two eyes.

I did not see the giant that soaring dream

crushed in the oily distance that saw these

phone pole legs kicked and pine pitched

and still all possible sawn is listening still,

tarred to the dawn birds at the bare apron

of stubby grass gnarled at the car park edge,

an abandoned bottle label obscurely turned

into sinister maps that are deciphered black-

now all pain and all joy eternally gold in me.

An eight cylinder dose of splatter

just over heaven's yellow lines

heaves salvation when it matters

becoming then just memory of want

then just a memory of memory of want

that happens at the end of memory

when the neutral bits that mattered then

then are rinsed in pink and swiped away.

The sphincter of a smoke ring collapses itself

into a candle of Rome that whispers the night

in a rainbow gouache behind gray lids,

a lone maple barking its perhaps lesson

brazen unaccosted by chimes of leaves.

The surfaces of a Toynbee tile

wear away to reveal its cut scroll

left handed jeweled facets coal black

finger crude cuts of dancing hands

that cymbal between the tropics only,

places in the chiming rhyme of solar night

with the ritual pomp of a secular madman

at the year's worst time and all that matters

just implied by the glare of dust on goggles.

Collecting offerings discarded or often lost

by others to deliver to a streamside chorus,

a chorus barely worshiped enough to weep

yet feared enough to arrive obsessed

in the fiction of a continuous cycling mind,

the most common of these being things

that have fallen in transit and things

that have been washed through the gutter

by a twilight rain that rose up skulking

and auburn strands caught in mirrors

and storm drains clogged with leaves-

twelve cents worth of grimy temptation,

two pennies and a dime trumpet

a halt to running washed to source

by the iron grid of unlucky rushes.

Though it often seems that way at first

the miss of silver that plinked the rubbish

bounced off from there is your pleasure

in the gathering of fetish for water idols-

plastic bus stops are barren of breath,

but with candy wrapped and flat air blues

ragged pine tree shapes easily pass

through the extra ripe of lemon bitter.

The girl with the mandibular grill has gone

to ground leaving an endless roll of box cars

to rattle frame a dry and dusty boredom-

the convenience store is hardly eponymous

though it might seem quickly enough at first-

when you have to come right out and say it,

it probably isn't true.

Denial

2010-07-04T08:31:00.001-07:00

"Denial" - 2010
Acrylic on Tan Paper

reality...

2010-07-02T11:55:00.000-07:00

by human being

illustrations by rhoda penmarq

i'm washing the dishes... this is a reality... the window and its drawn lace curtain in front of me is another reality...

through the curtain i see two doves perch on the windowsill... i watch this reality... i decide to draw the curtain aside very gently to watch them more closely... but the doves fly off...

the window is again in front of me... without the curtain... without the doves... this is another reality... now i notice the tree in the backyard... dancing slumberingly in the breeze... the glass is between me and the tree... this is another reality...

i open the window... the glass is gone... but the tree is still there... and breeze rushes in... this is another reality..

i'm not washing the dishes anymore but water is running from the tap... this is another reality...

i shut the tap... the water is gone... the sound is gone... this is another reality...

i leave the kitchen... leaving the window open... and the curtain undrawn... i'm gone... the tree is peeking through the window into the kitchen...

this is another reality...

june 2009

2010-07-01T17:52:00.001-07:00

Dilated

acrylic/fluted sbs
40"x27"

smokescreen's chess

2010-06-30T14:08:00.000-07:00

someone told Olov he would not live to see the behind of
smokescreens no stars
the smoldering salmon's squirming
on elements

woman match game
his brain cells stiffened like hell
she says this is
the coming of age
the coming
of control mechanisms

Olov plays chess with
Lena countess
of bitter
british pub tables are
blackened in the window light

Finish Line

2010-06-30T07:46:00.000-07:00

after the fall...

2010-06-28T11:55:00.000-07:00

by human being

illustrations by rhoda penmarq

the window had fallen in love with the imprisoned bird... all day long he watched her hopping around the bare room...

she crowed every now and then... and stared into his eyes for hours... at these times their eyes shone in a very strange way...

each day the window felt the bird is sitting closer to him... now he could see his own reflection in her black eyes...
and at last... one day... something happened...

the window opened his arms wide... waiting for the bird... she paused for a moment... opened her wings as wide as she could... and soared into his embrace...

Mindful abstraction

2010-06-27T14:51:00.000-07:00

'Odyssey'

Pen on paper

Editorial Slant

2010-06-27T08:10:00.000-07:00

"Editorial Slant (Your Propaganda or Mine?)"
Collage/Digital - 2010

2010-06-25T16:31:00.001-07:00

Gray Dog
digital photo

late winter

Slippery words spew, and I can't stop their flow

2010-06-25T09:04:00.001-07:00

I want to paint it
this plaint
I've worded
one thousand
unrecorded instants
only to see both
the deep and tinny
syllables I thought
vibrantly tinted
dissolve into
pale, gooey-bottomed wails

I should pitch it
this paste
to patch an unfrocked
eye searching
puffy tears for atoms
escaped within
abandoned margins
as narrow as
the difference between
my white canvas
and an emptying hand

I have to plug it
this post hole
bored by my frantic
inattentions
and stencil a sign:
bold letters below
a starched cuff,
its pulseless finger
pointing out
there's one way
round sniveling sounds