tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-45075113558032004662023-11-16T07:51:56.644-08:00Faceless JournalA Path Through The Mirrorartistbhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09758142676131208627noreply@blogger.comBlogger125125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4507511355803200466.post-38727383283064931132014-09-01T19:01:00.000-07:002014-11-05T12:56:37.133-08:00Sugar in the Black SoilWe're all gardeners, descended from the first Garden. <br />
Everything has been already named.<br />
We might change around the numbers in the equation,<br />
but sooner or later we come to our first English Composition class.<br />
I don't mean to strike horror into you.<br />
You have to get in before you can get out. <br />
You have to analyze your experience, or the Great Books, <br />
or whatever it is while some teacher blesses you before you actually<br />
compose of your own free will. You discover it as you go.<br />
Look out that window as the world grows into finer focus.<br />
You have the pictures to describe every plant and department<br />
in the whole world. You live in a little house with a table <br />
and a window flung open. All the authors that ever were <br />
are streaming through your window. We remember only a little<br />
of the bird as it flies into the Great Speckled Unknown. <br />
<br />
The sensitive poet, at his best, can pull a tractor out of the mud. <br />
He is not offended by the clumps of sugar in the black soil. <br />
He goes out into the unbroken Midwest with a serving spoon. <br />
All directions are feasible. The earth tells him yes, <br />
and the earth tells him no. He accepts both answers. <br />
He scoops manure onto the white grades of untested canvas. <br />
His studio smells like the country. He goes to the feed store, <br />
not the art store, to get his brushes. They are more like brooms <br />
with which he gets his whole body into the action. <br />
Pushing fifty pounds of the dark thoughts across the palette, <br />
he breaks a sweat. He works with his hands, <br />
connecting implement to rig. The furrows he leaves in his wake<br />
are deep enough to disturb the casual reader, expecting a red barn. <br />
The reader's only choice is to give a hand with the wheelbarrow.<br />
By noon, the fat tires start to emerge from the snow. <br />
The white page, next to the sugar bowl, is halfway done. <br />
The sweetness reaches into the bristles of the broom.<br />
The ground is swept with legible handwriting, awaiting the sickle.<br />
<br />
We farm at our tables, uncovering helpings of the sky <br />
in our notebooks. If we choose to leave the world, <br />
we still have our writing. This is a wine that flows in even <br />
the most remote places. Take being out in space, for example. <br />
All the literature still makes sense on Mars even if there is no water.<br />
If you deprive yourself of things in order to write,<br />
you are probably a lover. You are satisfied with the Beloved<br />
because she is the perfect editor. She is beyond words but checks <br />
back every once in a while to make sure you are doing O.K. <br />
That gives you a lot of free time. That is why we writers <br />
must be disciplined.<br />
<br />
Sometimes we have to leave the fifty thousand word set<br />
and stretch out into the flight of migration back home<br />
where a kitchen is set with all the books one individual will write,<br />
and now it is time to taste a home cooked meal prepared<br />
by the Friend. He has not forgotten about you. He has just<br />
been seeing what you're up to, choosing the ingredients<br />
that make you happy, and on your birthday making such <br />
a special meal that you will be at a loss for words. <br />
That is good. The taste of your birthday dinner<br />
is meant to stay with you for all eternity. We have to travel <br />
light onto Mars or wherever the next place is we end up,<br />
and nothing sticks with you more than a taste of that fruit<br />
we are all striving to grow.artistbhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09758142676131208627noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4507511355803200466.post-85183708640977698592014-08-24T18:53:00.000-07:002014-11-02T11:40:39.788-08:00Hungry ProphetsHungry prophets line up, looking for directions<br />
to luminosity. When they are all in a row<br />
the critics start raving, causing God to get with the program.<br />
Old salt turns into honey. The beehive changes into a dance club.<br />
The yet to be prophets fill their mouths with honey, <br />
brimming with the sweetness, wondering<br />
how to serve with too much of a good thing.<br />
It comes in dribs and drabs and then it pounces on you<br />
like a tiger, eternal in his stripes. So salt, honey, tigers -<br />
all these things don't give God a moment's worry.<br />
The people are asking for the good stuff, and they can't stand<br />
a moment's procrastination on His part. He reads the Daily<br />
Telegraph, wonders what to tell them about life on other planets,<br />
and finally gets around to fatherly allowing Himself to be stung<br />
by a beehive gone wild. He farms out the acceptance<br />
of new hive members to one of the angels and gets back<br />
to reminiscing about what he did when He was a billion years<br />
younger than his current overtaxed self. <br />
<br />
Yes, God puts things off, not because He doesn't care about us,<br />
but because He stubbornly refuses to start a boardroom.<br />
He prefers his executive management even though he is usually<br />
too sublime with the galaxies to send back work orders<br />
to planet Earth. But don't get me wrong. It is these details<br />
that give Him great delight. He is just a minimalist painter,<br />
that's all. The canvas stores are going broke because He takes<br />
light years to even pick up a paintbrush, and even the Milky Way<br />
doesn't have that kind of time. So when it comes down to earthly<br />
critics going wild about the hottest post, post-modern artist,<br />
God invokes a bristle in his sable hair paintbrush, and even that<br />
causes earthquakes and hurricanes, so He doesn't do it too often.artistbhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09758142676131208627noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4507511355803200466.post-64534417457317461672014-08-17T15:55:00.000-07:002014-11-03T12:38:41.022-08:00A Carrier PigeonLet adventure telling dominate the schools. <br />
If it is yours or something learned in the classics, let it be said. <br />
Look into it, and you will see the treetops are printed much lower <br />
than the standards a good story should have. <br />
Spin the thread around the moment, and tie it off in the ocean. <br />
Homecoming awaits those stuck in line at the surf's edge. <br />
I am a lost soul in the world's library, a camper in the proportions <br />
of life to art. My story is halfway realized, but then art takes over <br />
and stretches it into dimensions unseen. <br />
The world is a grain of sand but which grain of sand <br />
we will never know, and in that searching which will <br />
go on forever until Jesus or Buddha comes back, <br />
you are graced with both fine appreciation and cosmic wonder. <br />
When Joseph answered the question to Pharaoh's dream,<br />
he fulfilled his own life by counseling another. <br />
<br />
When you open a book you should look at the cover<br />
and ask yourself did the author carefully print his or her name<br />
on this envelope which contains no bills or any of that nonsense. <br />
Remember you always have a soul mate maybe on your left, <br />
maybe on your right. People say they have not found their soul mate,<br />
but that is not true. The Friend is simply the master of another name, <br />
a little shorter or a little more important sounding than the one <br />
you carry around. A carrier pigeon flies without the river, <br />
over a busy city. So what if all those people are not reading. <br />
They may be being written about. That is the job of the writer who <br />
lives on the outskirts of town, going in for supplies <br />
when the ocean demands. His work may never be read, <br />
but at least it will be thrown into the sea. <br />
There are passions in the ocean that are so true, <br />
they may swallow the world's books like a canyon <br />
that has not been explored. So fear not the unknown. <br />
A book may have gotten there ahead of you.artistbhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09758142676131208627noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4507511355803200466.post-89721372188271099942014-08-11T12:09:00.000-07:002014-11-04T11:52:18.616-08:00Flow CurrencyA thousand grains of gold are scattered in the mind<br />
never meeting one another as a nugget.<br />
A thimble full of this medicine would detain<br />
any computer set on taking over the world.<br />
Normally, I stop at this point and take the band-aid<br />
off the monster. He is so well behaved though that<br />
we'll let him sit at the grown ups' table. His conversation<br />
may make no sense now, but in a couple years<br />
he will smile with the rest of us.<br />
It's all good whether you're anticipating paradise<br />
or are a few quarters short of that final curtain call.<br />
Suddenly, it disappears as fast as the boxcar comes into view.<br />
I slow down and took a look at the train following me.<br />
<br />
A hundred cars would not get ahead of me until I glance<br />
at my wheels so few. You think you're moving forward,<br />
but you're really blocking the whole street <br />
with your flow currency. <br />
What you haven't said is driving the whole city sideways.<br />
It's hard to be a moving city when the shops <br />
are filled with broke religions.<br />
You need water whether you're out in space<br />
or farming oranges in the sunbelt, and now we have<br />
too much of it. The sun has too much fire,<br />
and my mind has too much air. <br />
It is so empty here without the pages fluttering <br />
into the next life that my shaky prayer book <br />
finds its sea legs again. artistbhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09758142676131208627noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4507511355803200466.post-21668979204342450672014-08-04T11:38:00.001-07:002014-11-05T12:54:20.952-08:00Entities Like BoatsAt this point, I was going to say throw the hull and prow<br />
back into the shipyard. Our bodies and the way they cut <br />
through time and space are dear to us, almost as dear <br />
as the conversation in the cabin, or perhaps more dear. <br />
The wake we leave with our boats is experienced in words <br />
once the captain opens his log. Our heart, or cabin, <br />
exists in tandem with the hull, our bodies made for both <br />
motion and rest. We reflect on the language that comes <br />
of moving through the day as entities like boats which <br />
are self contained but amplify each other as conversation trails near.<br />
<br />
When we come to a rest, the wake remains for a time<br />
as we grow back into the ocean. That could occupy us for hours<br />
if we are in no hurry to continue the force that puts bodies in motion.<br />
All this is much more real than an image that projects surface <br />
with no tension, a vision that appears not wet, not interacting<br />
the way liquids do when disturbed by bodies in motion.<br />
So we need both the boat and the cabin, and if we are together, <br />
a captain who understands the moment and its reflection.artistbhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09758142676131208627noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4507511355803200466.post-6661278577406012582014-07-28T10:26:00.000-07:002014-11-05T12:29:05.111-08:00Gross National Product of My BicycleI have a bicycle that uses many spokes. A few of them are lost<br />
every time it turns. I have solved many problems with only<br />
a dozen spokes. The fact that as I was working on the problem,<br />
spokes were used that are not anymore in existence is proof<br />
that progress need not be tied to the manufacture of an increasing<br />
amount of goods. The gross national product of my bicycle <br />
is set except for the hubs which are many. I have many bicycles.<br />
They are not all complete. It is not necessary that they be finished.<br />
The only thing that counts is physics, the demonstration that<br />
riders are meaningless. You think you are steering, but you're<br />
really not. You think you're pedaling, but you're really not. <br />
The evolution happened when you had gone so far that you ceased<br />
being aware of the problem. You ceased working, in your trail<br />
were many spokes doing nothing alone, but nonetheless measuring. <br />
<br />
A ladder is propped up high toward a garret window, <br />
and lost in thought, you find yourself painting a picture with steps <br />
and a nude or some sort of creation. You could not have made <br />
that climb with a bicycle. However, there is a fruit tree at the top <br />
of a mountain. You pedal your bicycle, let the switchbacks <br />
and cliff walls fall into your evolution, all the while carrying a ladder<br />
with your outstretched hands. You reach the tree, climb down<br />
from your bicycle, that is if you're still riding, and set the ladder<br />
underneath the lowest branches. The fruit tastes like<br />
mountain candy. Suddenly, you realize the ladder is gone,<br />
a few spokes are falling out of the leaves, but more spokes<br />
are radiating from the center of your being. That is spirit arms.<br />
Although, we cannot trace these new spokes to the hub<br />
which is most certainly in your heart, we may say it exists<br />
and does not need to be seen.artistbhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09758142676131208627noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4507511355803200466.post-65592232288539452572014-07-20T17:19:00.000-07:002014-08-11T19:42:40.104-07:00A Thin AreaWhen we describe a larger worldview with an even smaller law,<br />
we are raising the stakes. When we get into matters of the universe,<br />
we assume a secret love, not yet unlocked on earth, will keep things<br />
orderly in places we've never been in person to inspect their <br />
ruthlessness or complacency. If society is satisfied with how it is, <br />
it fits into either acknowledgement of its torn fabric or the will <br />
to bring it to shreds, hoping a tipping point will be reached. <br />
This is good practice for a pair of shorts, wearing them until <br />
they start to fray. Satisfaction with garments in the here and now <br />
puts less stress on the sweatshops and might even increase <br />
the quality we expect of our first love. An old pair of clothes may <br />
become more dear to us, seeing how layer gives way to layer, <br />
and we move more gently so as not to stress any thin area.<br />
This is a fact. Parts of the world are thin. We are called to send <br />
them direct aid or at least spend great amounts of time thinking <br />
about their plight and who are the players. Then we can say <br />
isn't it a shame that so and so has to be in power now. <br />
I have thought it through, and it is his fault. If it was up to me, <br />
I'd do things differently. However, the accused may see things <br />
completely differently, pointing his finger at you for even trying <br />
to understand his internal situation. Yes, places of the world <br />
are thin. When we get to the threads holding together a pocket <br />
or a belt loop, who can say which tug will cause the whole thing <br />
to unravel? So we say it's bubbling up or they've always been <br />
this way since nobody can agree on unilateral tightness <br />
or letting things alone. The world is not a pressure cooker though. <br />
There is great distance between each one of us. <br />
Even brothers at each other's throat, if they stopped<br />
calculating weaknesses, would find unexpected strength. <br />
Our problem is that we're always looking for the next fashion,<br />
not concerned with getting the best wear out of what we <br />
currently have, not being aware of history and the unrest <br />
that brought us to the point of actually buying our own clothes. <br />
If we were concerned with the laws of behavior that went into <br />
either making or trading for one pair of shorts, that would be <br />
a law on a limited scale. It may have no bearing on sector<br />
number three and a half and how to get to four in the agency.<br />
We will have slowed down though. <br />
<br />
Eventually our hyper-awareness of what is going on bureaucracies <br />
away will erode, mirroring the fraying of our own garment. <br />
If each leader came to a show and tell with an object that he/she <br />
had worn until the thin spots could be seen, would these be rifles<br />
or hand grenades? The person with a well-worn rifle might never <br />
have shot anyone. The person with a well-worn hand grenade <br />
might never have thrown it in a city of two million. Yes, he came <br />
to work every day, put in his time, but we never knew he carried <br />
in his vest pocket the tools to destroy his enemies. These are the thin <br />
spots we might acquire. Spots that only come of birth because<br />
of quality and gentle movement. Yes, anyone can go to a football <br />
game and get a savage rip in their garment, hence giving it <br />
the appearance of wear. It takes a careful love to secure the strong <br />
spots so the weak ones may feel the air of day. That is an air <br />
that is not busy tugging on this thread or that, trying to see how <br />
the whole thing can be understood. It is an air that knows nothing <br />
short of complete uniformity will ever be a fair breeze for our <br />
brothers and sisters. Other than that, the thin spots will appear <br />
and will last if they begun with quality like the gentle movement <br />
of a grenade carrying person in a bustling city that bustles <br />
with the distance that is unimaginable to us, unless we have <br />
that responsibility. artistbhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09758142676131208627noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4507511355803200466.post-8969610707527320312014-07-12T12:06:00.000-07:002014-08-10T19:01:12.407-07:00SchematicIt is not necessary to live at the bottom of the sea<br />
in order to discover Atlantis.<br />
Consciousness is a very random thing,<br />
but it has rules at a very deep level.<br />
In order to create an ocean kingdom,<br />
one must work with flow.<br />
The ocean is overwhelming and has very few rules,<br />
but our little piece of paradise is a complicated schematic.<br />
<br />
artistbhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09758142676131208627noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4507511355803200466.post-1069013928954543712014-07-11T11:21:00.000-07:002014-11-05T12:43:17.891-08:00The Control Tower Beeps CloserWe both landed at the same airport.<br />
We talked about things on the flight<br />
that bear great importance to the world<br />
as it was yesterday and today. There was a moment<br />
when all clouds ceased to be distant, and you<br />
opened up your heart to me. I can still hear it ticking<br />
as the control tower beeps closer. Your radiance<br />
caused me to close the shutters left of my window seat.<br />
So here I am with the blinds drawn -<br />
I forgot how I got here - looking at some pretty letters.<br />
My letters flap around for the sake of being alive.<br />
<br />
At a time when God and I decide to drive west,<br />
the blinds will open, and you won't even be in the room.<br />
Your chamber becomes furiously light.<br />
You have made it to the river. You have been paid to<br />
describe the rise and fall of the waves, the currents<br />
that eddy into tide pools where the deepest ideas<br />
become shallow. Where Christ is beckoning, finally<br />
released from your heart into the world, you sing<br />
sunshine to the one still in the press, worried about luggage.<br />
<br />
artistbhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09758142676131208627noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4507511355803200466.post-74392294376721712242014-07-10T12:59:00.000-07:002014-10-31T13:05:18.649-07:00My Little, Leaping LordsI was sitting in art class, no make that fine art class, <br />
and the other Philistines were making a city street <br />
out of perspective. Instead, I held a dab of glue in one hand <br />
and a crumpled up bit of colored tissue paper in the other hand. <br />
I was making Popeye by a process sort of like latch hook.<br />
If Popeye played baseball, he would be a second baseman like me<br />
and the peace loving man sitting next to me. This second baseman<br />
talked about the game as if it was only to be shared, not won.<br />
I got a glimpse of the losses he suffered on the diamond<br />
that did not harden his heart, only made his hands softer.<br />
It is a fine graphite that can grow from flames,<br />
covering the whole paper parlor until you don't know<br />
where the fireplace is. The treasure, like newspapers<br />
in all their orientations of being read, somehow stands<br />
the heat and curls slightly with age. If you picked up<br />
a pair of scissors in this room, they would be the new poker,<br />
a pencil for circling the help wanted to keep Christmas<br />
in everybody's heart.<br />
<br />
My next project was replicating, in identical<br />
cards, the original twelve days of Christmas.<br />
I became an automaton to do this job. It was only<br />
upon installation of the pear tree on the simple motor<br />
parade that I fell in love with the girl sitting next to me<br />
whom I had not noticed until then. <br />
My second ceramics instructor made a pear out of<br />
two halves of clay that fit together seamlessly.<br />
Meanwhile, Neptune's clay chair was being considered<br />
for senior thesis quality, much more barnacles<br />
than I have ever encountered at an university. <br />
That was once upon a time when the dust bowl,<br />
through meditation, turned into the sky bowl, and my little,<br />
leaping lords took to the sky. artistbhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09758142676131208627noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4507511355803200466.post-66024839231035396342014-07-09T12:28:00.000-07:002014-10-31T13:21:57.800-07:00A Decade ReportYou asked me to do a decade report.<br />
I handed it in a century too late.<br />
The homeroom teacher let us meditate on grammar <br />
or the more pressing need to copy math homework. <br />
I listened to the Colonel who was our coach.<br />
My homerun sent me around the world, <br />
camping out at third base, walking it home the next morning. <br />
I have become enlightened but for some reason<br />
still know how to read. That skill got caught <br />
in a food processor the day I didn't care about walking<br />
in two minutes late. <br />
<br />
It is easier to break dance than to strike out <br />
so we break down the cardboard box that the microwave <br />
arrives in, and we spin like whirling dervishes. <br />
That video you will find in my video store<br />
a walk up the street from the pool where we are playing<br />
water polo at a graduation ceremony.<br />
I wrestle in the tenth grade but only pin one opponent<br />
whom I meet much later at a garage sale. <br />
The band is setting up while my friend builds a go-cart <br />
that takes us to his confirmation.<br />
Most of the time you will find me tethered to the Maypole<br />
because the one time I get off the hook,<br />
the volleyball rolls to the corner of the snack area<br />
while everybody else goes back to swim.artistbhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09758142676131208627noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4507511355803200466.post-1255575101174482672014-04-14T15:15:00.000-07:002014-08-09T18:33:14.620-07:00Guardian AngelHalf of my life is determined.<br />
My guardian angel holds the other half in her gloved hands.<br />
She wears white gloves. She holds the hand of the marvel child.<br />
He makes the city shine like a baptism.<br />
Our mission is to march into the undetermined half of my life.<br />
The weeds of the city poke their head above the lullaby<br />
of my existence.<br />
They are like me asking my guardian angel for some truth.<br />
The city is so clean that angels speak in the classrooms<br />
when I walk the streets.<br />
A plastic bag caught in the wind is a moving film.<br />
I want only enough necessities to leave room for my spirit.<br />
<br />
This clean city of driftwood is asking for some beach junk.<br />
I know it's not the nicest name to call the soul,<br />
but I am a man who needs to wash up on a strange <br />
and unfamiliar shore. <br />
The tidal pull of the moon finds me in love<br />
with the little that has been given me.<br />
I walk away from the throne with a fingerprint. Only you,<br />
guardian spirit, reach down your gloved hand and identify me.<br />
You hold my fate in your pure hands.<br />
<br />
You are closer to the center when you enter the labyrinth<br />
than at any other point inside the maze.<br />
Plato said we choose our parents. Providence is adjusted.<br />
We arrest our parents in the wake of their lives.<br />
We greet each other with many teachers and few reservations.<br />
A broken heart is our only proof that quality exists.<br />
<br />
Our guardian angel has been with us since the beginning.<br />
She lines up our destiny in times of doubt.<br />
She sounds out our names so we can wear them more easily.<br />
Character pastures down into our service <br />
so we may experience all seasons of humanity.<br />
<br />
I need to feel the grit of existence on a country road.<br />
I still need to be handled gently, but I need some music <br />
with a grungy beat. <br />
I am checking onto a flight with grubby clothes <br />
and unwashed cheeks.<br />
I am landing in an over stimulated city unwashed in its character.<br />
I am kneeling before a cow in the public space.<br />
artistbhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09758142676131208627noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4507511355803200466.post-72374030967937369252014-04-09T17:24:00.000-07:002014-08-04T18:42:26.563-07:00The Inner FrontierThe treasure is stored up in what the world sees.<br />
Now, doesn't that forecast something not so rosy<br />
going on in the inside.<br />
Let us look at the outward appearance as a handsome picture.<br />
It is our only means to get at the heart. I travel a footstep<br />
into the inner frontier by making a copy of the pleasant exterior.<br />
This demands some painstaking observation.<br />
I complete a fairly accurate rendition of the rosy exterior,<br />
but I am still far from the heart. So I set myself up again to make<br />
a copy of a copy.<br />
I have heard of Walter Benjamin, but I'm striking out on <br />
a new theory. A copy of a copy is movement from the exterior<br />
going inward. In the latter half of this poem (or prose piece)<br />
I talk about a movement in the opposite direction, from the essence<br />
to the outer hallways of character. <br />
I hope to eventually lay the image you see me for onto the wall<br />
of my inner chamber.<br />
The copies deteriorate as I get closer to the heart.<br />
They fade away from observation before even reaching the sanctuary.<br />
This is what comes of painting the best work on the exterior.<br />
We are busy grooming the appearance. I would otherwise<br />
be a low-functioning self, much less adept than the character<br />
who deals with reality. Now what if I begin at the other extreme?<br />
Take no pride in appearance.<br />
Reach out into the frontier without the necessity<br />
of making one fake after another.<br />
My bravery is rewarded. I do not need the copied pictures on the wall<br />
to guide me into the center of the house.<br />
I walk empty handed into the inner chamber. Much to my surprise,<br />
a beautiful original hangs above the fireplace. It is the essence<br />
I have so long tried to put into words. The fire crackles,<br />
and finally I feel at home. I feel at peace in a huge building<br />
as an imageless function. My image, which I know to be true,<br />
is ever so slowly emitting light. It bathes the immediate exterior<br />
with a soft illumination. Now that glow takes on a life of its own.<br />
It advances through the characterless hallways, giving them color.<br />
It is a hue with origins from a picture that was complete,<br />
even while I was in search of it. Now that I have verified its existence,<br />
it exerts its life on the museum that unfolds as I sit<br />
before the crackling fireplace. artistbhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09758142676131208627noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4507511355803200466.post-18259363721562812922014-03-31T14:51:00.000-07:002014-08-09T18:07:52.107-07:00Unfinished BridgeI decide to relentlessly examine the voices which hold me back.<br />
A powerful thaw is released in the clueless winter.<br />
My depression is a simple ditty that has been played many times.<br />
My consciousness is a groove that sticks to Nothingness.<br />
My voice recalls the anger but this time with authority.<br />
The unbearable afternoon sparkles between a raindrop and a candle.<br />
Belongings, from fingernail to bicycle pedal, are given up.<br />
<br />
I'm trying to sell this gingerbread house<br />
to the man locked inside the gingerbread man's head.<br />
He runs so far only to cross a river that is not on the map.<br />
He is shaped by a cutter that is not in the alphabet.<br />
He has sworn an oath that this will be the last time,<br />
but he cannot get used to something old and something new.<br />
<br />
I calm my mind, broken and shattered, somewhere on the desolate,<br />
new freeway road where I stretch out and forgive myself.<br />
Far off in the distance, I see the unfinished bridge.<br />
My drink is balanced on a train descending into Nothingness.<br />
Soon I will be free of these voices with little left save my dining car<br />
and a conductor.<br />
He punches the tickets as the train climbs out again into Being.<br />
The canyon is flashing by outside my dining car.<br />
Soon I will walk back to my old seat if time permits,<br />
if time is even a passenger in this new drink.<br />
artistbhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09758142676131208627noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4507511355803200466.post-38416850337405821322014-03-27T15:12:00.000-07:002014-08-09T18:25:08.668-07:00Outside BellsThe truth is still simmering so let's not speak about it.<br />
We will get a taste of it when we lose our posture<br />
and are formed by outside bells. They ring even now <br />
as we blunder our way through the Scriptures.<br />
The preacher is weaving in and out some story<br />
about a car and its mechanic. Cars were created <br />
on the fifth day just before the weekend.<br />
We are meant to use cars lightly in the exploration <br />
of the great desert.<br />
<br />
There is a silence in the desert strengthening <br />
the resolve to break stones in half.<br />
A little water is hidden in the rock.<br />
I am carving out hollow places in my soul <br />
for the exhaust of the two great teachings.<br />
I let the car steer where it wills to go.<br />
I find a historian to sit in the passenger seat.<br />
The two of us drive all over the galaxy,<br />
riding the highways presented to us.<br />
<br />
As a game, we both write down the mileage and the dates. <br />
Our notes differ, and in the difference the historian <br />
finds the missing link between prayer and vibration. <br />
His model of the universe is one centering on a great debate.<br />
How much is asked for and how much is given?<br />
The car is actually a stone broken in half.<br />
The drivers are honesty and passion.<br />
The broth is the exhaust of their travels. artistbhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09758142676131208627noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4507511355803200466.post-6254439223612448282014-03-21T15:06:00.000-07:002014-08-09T18:17:11.252-07:00Between the WordsA nubile nothingness laps at my shores.<br />
The writer exposes himself past the limits of logic<br />
onto the slippery footing and experiences of perception.<br />
Perhaps something between the words is responsible.<br />
Happiness is not in words but their echo.<br />
Voice is a wise and pervasive calling.<br />
Voices is the treatment once you have lost your footing<br />
on the edge of the cliff.<br />
A wizened tree clings to the rock's edge.<br />
All good things, health, momentum, and busyness,<br />
lead to illusion. Another word, subjective,<br />
I push off the edge of my stopping place making a loud splash<br />
in the lake that may be at the bottom of my soul.<br />
<br />
artistbhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09758142676131208627noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4507511355803200466.post-77147787359884156662014-03-17T14:41:00.000-07:002014-08-13T18:36:01.382-07:00Darting MindEach darting mind, falcon or bald eagle, <br />
waits, watches, working with time. <br />
We are patient and more patient protectors<br />
waiting for our sight to heal.<br />
The injured wildlife perches on a new kind of psychoanalysis.<br />
Our places, our enclosures, are not cages.<br />
They are homes where our backs have stopped being turned.<br />
Even the couch has knotholes.<br />
Recovery becomes mutual in the heat of association.<br />
The partners face each other.<br />
It is a hot day. <br />
Carl Jung wipes the sweat from his brow with a cloth.<br />
He is farming potatoes dirty with the grubs of freedom. <br />
"Stop," he hollers to you.<br />
"I found these five potatoes in your unconscious."<br />
He hands the cloth to you. <br />
You wipe memories into the wings of your need.<br />
You turn back toward the garden.<br />
He hands you a burlap bag.<br />
<br />
The sun slanting through the dormers <br />
multiplies the stairs as I climb and carry the potatoes<br />
back to the attic.<br />
The root of sleep is in these five potatoes.<br />
Fifty eyes flash below in the basement of my reserve.<br />
Our talk, like the falcon, dives two hundred feet at a time. <br />
I fight the feeling of living on an island.<br />
The house, left open, exposes a mind.<br />
The dirt on the floor is interpreted in different ways. <br />
The redundancy of spring cleaning <br />
grows powerful in the land of make believe. <br />
It is humorous downstream from the shock of recognition. <br />
<br />
Memory is best arranged in a house, <br />
maybe a city, always a diamond.<br />
I am obedient to the pressure of punctuation.<br />
History begins to give me only a slight headache.<br />
I wonder when you too <br />
will notice the gravel in the margins. <br />
I rake the gravel into families of roads.<br />
Their reunion is the sweetest thing in Zen. artistbhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09758142676131208627noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4507511355803200466.post-66750162751298823442014-03-16T14:52:00.000-07:002014-08-14T18:49:55.387-07:00Darkness of NoonThere is an unfortunate room by the seaside<br />
where I read Crime and Punishment.<br />
This is my analysis.<br />
The room has barely space for a couch, yet it has dignity.<br />
It is a college where I meet the best men and women<br />
of my generation.<br />
The atmosphere is thick with the heat of discussion.<br />
The disease, unchecked, hurries to expose a wound<br />
that needs time.<br />
The robins are policing the neighborhood again.<br />
The purposeful spontaneity of my crime is thrilling.<br />
The love of my sister stops them<br />
from taking my theories seriously.<br />
The water of this new novel will be in my weeping.<br />
I meet my bride in the break between heaven and hell.<br />
She is never far from my solitude.<br />
Angels appear in my leg chains.<br />
A speech in a prisoner's mouth is perfect.<br />
A letter in a lover's hand is good.<br />
A drop of water in my cup is best.<br />
<br />
This is my vision of the Brothers Karamazov at Calvary.<br />
Christ is silent while Mitya <br />
takes the thorns from his crown.<br />
Alyosha invites the soldiers to a tax collector's house.<br />
Pilate stands on the deck of a frontier.<br />
The darkness of noon drives Peter to the sea.<br />
In the distance the abstract expressionists are motioning<br />
the sheep into congregations. <br />
The two ships are countries in Sarah's mind.<br />
Rachel has taught her how to navigate <br />
the stormy waters of Israel's soul.<br />
Wonder Woman sits on the Statue of Liberty.<br />
Her wrists are slit in a thousand places,<br />
but she has never killed herself. <br />
She is the saint of the American dream.<br />
<br />
I walk through the narrow gate <br />
and unfold in the shepherd's pasture.<br />
I make an appointment with Him, <br />
but He is always available. <br />
He bubbles up in my thoughts <br />
and surfaces in my speech.<br />
We hang a child's drawing that reminds us <br />
more of our answers than the stroke of a master.<br />
Your characters are grazing <br />
beyond your kitchen window.<br />
Guide them through the harness of their invention.<br />
Let them seduce you with the flexibility of their hearts.<br />
I am finally ankle deep in prosperity.<br />
The bread breaks on the beach <br />
in waves of concentration. artistbhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09758142676131208627noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4507511355803200466.post-76543409302487153632014-02-28T13:54:00.000-08:002014-02-28T13:54:42.419-08:00A Measured RoomThe waters of the epic well up in my imagination.<br />
Last year's lake is higher than this year's tears.<br />
Now I address some modern art canvases.<br />
Sanity depends upon an iota in Jackson Pollack's painting.<br />
I am a formulated self who still has the need<br />
to see something exceptional in print.<br />
Stopped from drifting through the day, <br />
I am made stranger to the ambitious one <br />
of a few minutes ago. I will have to learn all over again<br />
his coordination and his defenses.<br />
Layer upon layer has been added to the original flesh<br />
I was born with. I move between bodies <br />
like a measured room in a Henry Matisse painting.<br />
My fitness has been earned like a bundle of firewood.<br />
Younger modernism strengthens our newly acquired bodies.<br />
<br />
What hasn't been done, all the yesterdays, <br />
all the tomorrows,<br />
I share this hammer with the world.<br />
Hand me the visor that shades us from fate. <br />
I pry loose the nails to expose the decade of our trust.<br />
The Transcendentalists are walking Emerson's intuitive dog.<br />
The creature is on the leash of a great eyeball.<br />
The faithful hound is busy perceiving all sorts<br />
of unconditioned smells. My memory is great enough <br />
to sense the bear on the mountain.<br />
<br />
Organization, you win again.<br />
I'd like to read your Hemmingway.<br />
Jack Kerouac sits fifty paces from the porch in a birdhouse.<br />
All the combinations of getting lost are calculated<br />
in your beatnik eyes.<br />
Take that little walk with me that quiets the mind.<br />
The Moderns are finally finding their way into my life.<br />
I believe they have finished little of what they had to say.<br />
The canvases stretch out between here <br />
and the unseen cheek. <br />
I will not be reticent this time.<br />
My mask has slipped.<br />
The shroud has been found. <br />
<br />
Encounter this place beyond attitude, before eye contact.<br />
Hear the noise that precedes meaning.<br />
In time one of us will remember <br />
the two things that are important.<br />
The lamb abounds in the present.<br />
The objects behind the mist are known only to me.<br />
Their presence within stone walls is the beginning <br />
of all sanctuary.<br />
The tent in the desert is portable.<br />
<br />
I am here in this human wingspan.<br />
The drapery of the sky is soft against the difference.<br />
There is a material that wants to wind our perception<br />
as if it was a watch. <br />
Formerly, I was a dude who believed in nearly <br />
everything,<br />
presently a babe who calms you with nerves of steel. <br />
The flame of Pentecost divides the languages into one.<br />
Let's fathom one another for a while, yeah, for a while.<br />
I stay restless in the hours of my flowering tragedy.<br />
<br />
The Moderns evoke a substance that absorbs <br />
the qualities close to it.<br />
The catch of their canvas floats <br />
around an upstart religion.<br />
I am a stone's throw away in the renaissance.<br />
The addition of myself to my aesthetics <br />
is perhaps an accomplishment.<br />
Roads cross on a map like laces on a shoe.<br />
Contemplation is currency in a strange land.<br />
I am a shy soldier who reads the rules.<br />
I exchange rose petals for a uniform.<br />
The uniform of rebirth is buttoned like a frock coat.<br />
artistbhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09758142676131208627noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4507511355803200466.post-63338936996308767462014-02-14T17:17:00.000-08:002014-08-17T18:58:54.208-07:00Two Steps Behind the Covenant The primitive moves unseen in the wake of too much culture.<br />
The Ancients would understand a Mark Rothko.<br />
The Ancients have the mental and physical coordination<br />
of human beings, yet they have no history, only evolution.<br />
They can laugh, tell stories, and find shelter.<br />
<br />
I am sorely devout although the day is longer than my praise.<br />
I paint a little, and then the layering begins again.<br />
My child is two steps behind the covenant <br />
with evening measuring the field.<br />
Her heartbeat is transcendental in the first few rows.<br />
Her drawings are done in the service before the kiss of peace. <br />
<br />
I can picture him in my studio, scraping the last extra <br />
into the unknown.<br />
I like the idea of sitting in a director's chair,<br />
looking at the layers of paint inch forward.<br />
I was right in letting you enter the room first <br />
but wrong in letting go of the chapel.<br />
I have tracked this bird through the rains that patter <br />
on St. Peter's dome.<br />
The king is caught in the paint, and I have to somehow <br />
get him out of this room.<br />
He gets as far as the collar of my favorite, red flannel.<br />
I contemplate a god who paces in the edges. <br />
The collective crush of compass points is also red.<br />
<br />
The camels who carry our load have the best view.<br />
The highway once belonged to us too, <br />
but then the writers took over. <br />
The story of John the Baptist changes on the evening news.<br />
The wild men crouch in the desert of my escaping thought.<br />
They fall short of my heart by a yard or so. <br />
The scarecrows are now anchored.<br />
The script hovers over the waters for the cameras to see.<br />
The readers are struggling on the staircase.<br />
<br />
The copy editors are advancing in the age of newspaper museums.<br />
The Trinity has been mixed into the columns.<br />
The saying you are about to hear has been in the news<br />
since design left culture standing in the dust. <br />
Originally, there was one material and a matchmaker.<br />
Corinthian guards plead with the merchants for more cloth.<br />
Each object belongs either to thought <br />
or a piece of the revolution.<br />
They had forgotten his face so they did not know him.<br />
The wheel of tribes progresses through the nations. artistbhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09758142676131208627noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4507511355803200466.post-59454031526670146162014-02-07T10:59:00.000-08:002014-08-17T19:07:41.613-07:00Unified ExistenceModern art is the body of an increasing awareness of who we are.<br />
We are fields of energy. When we gather near these canvases<br />
we begin to feel the polarity of a unified existence. <br />
The Ancients knew it, but it was still in their laughter<br />
and a landscape that was not wild, <br />
only throbbing to speak through their stories.<br />
<br />
It takes a movement to the essence of things<br />
to see what they are composed of is not what they are. <br />
There is an emergence of gifts that the Ancients knew <br />
would together define their Odyssey.<br />
They are still sailing in the ever changing ways<br />
we construct the entrance to our homes.<br />
We embrace a forest or a radio wave and long to cover <br />
the ground that brings them into a single room.<br />
A leaf is swept across the floor.<br />
<br />
All other objects become dependent on its captivity.<br />
We stand in the evidence and become like Moderns <br />
in touch with the objects flowing through our homes.<br />
Others greet us, and eventually a painting is hung on the wall.<br />
The non-objectified paint on canvas makes the Ancients smile <br />
at the accidental collectivity of ourselves and our surroundings. <br />
<br />
The ether of the church lets us feel comfortable <br />
as a random collection of atoms. <br />
Matchsticks are struck together in unison,<br />
flickering for the same brief instant,<br />
measured until it dwindles to a pinch,<br />
and then held in permanent. <br />
There are other ways we could be put together,<br />
but we already have these gifts so why not use them?<br />
There have to be museums, places where the fine mist <br />
of silence can take on ages gone by.<br />
The Ancients are speaking at the top of their lungs,<br />
but we can barely hear them.<br />
They are saying that's what I would have painted naturally.artistbhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09758142676131208627noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4507511355803200466.post-68231153075258247492014-01-28T14:50:00.000-08:002014-08-19T15:18:31.277-07:00Hollow of the KneesFor all my slowness, you will find a lake.<br />
For all my mood, you will find an anchor.<br />
Coming down from the cross,<br />
I journey into the next quadrant of the day.<br />
The pieces of stained glass tell the story<br />
of my work in the garden.<br />
I'm leaving the stones in the sand.<br />
We search heartache with a comb<br />
and purchase the hollow of the knees.<br />
The reaches of the day cross us like a mantel <br />
for the fire slowly dying.<br />
I am shaped by rain now or the love of a summer day.<br />
I have thought as coral and thus in a small way <br />
felt happiness.<br />
<br />
Riches, come to me, I am done with this room.<br />
Are there any lost poets out there?<br />
Trudging the street with gospels.<br />
<br />
Your metaphors are filling the hotels with guests.<br />
The banks are building interest in your name.<br />
You are pleasing the majority with your tone.<br />
Your sincerity turns the wheel of our mind.<br />
The poets stand on the corner melting <br />
into lost automobiles.<br />
<br />
Divine desperation fills the scorecard of the gods.<br />
I strike the weak sister into the dance fought <br />
with religious lilies.<br />
She points out colors hours away from the center.<br />
I am an index fighting to take shape.<br />
<br />
The bricks of the schoolhouse pass through me <br />
on the way to the library.<br />
The real world is hidden in the point of a horse race.<br />
One eyelid is like the slide of a microscope.<br />
Reality is struck in the being serene to slowness. <br />
The complete word is always the ladle. <br />
<br />
The unquiet measures of my soul give helplessness a form.<br />
I am struck on the shoulder by a force acting<br />
with the shadows that turn off ordinary objects.<br />
I am powerless with my powerful ideas<br />
about unheralded rescue before great works of art.<br />
Painters, unfurl our eyelids <br />
only because they are treasures.<br />
Restless timepiece, I am what you are.<br />
We are outlets in a restless world.<br />
We are opponents of central imagination.<br />
The art world overtakes the real world.<br />
<br />
The wick of the moderns is postulated with paint.<br />
I ignite the genesis of our thought. <br />
The anchor of the ancients drops like a falling star.<br />
I'm melting photographs like they are gothic silver.<br />
The years I try to take photographs slip <br />
through my hands like early Rene Magritte.<br />
<br />
The black, Guardian painting seizes me by the temples.<br />
I travel to a museum in a town that doesn't exist.<br />
The Ancients had no name for park.<br />
The glow of the stars was the applause of the first stage. <br />
The first, gentle playwrights, close to the particulars <br />
of creation, provoked happiness in the crowd.<br />
Sadness is a recent development.<br />
Look over yonder the deck of the ageless.<br />
Lost sailors in a gardener's mind look for better waves <br />
in waters uncharted, fiery resistance in the stars. artistbhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09758142676131208627noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4507511355803200466.post-18965675434319029992014-01-22T10:31:00.000-08:002014-08-18T18:51:10.272-07:00An Incoherent ResponseI accompany your robust models<br />
down streets into a past when they wait<br />
ugly by doorways. <br />
I stumble upon them, asking their help, <br />
listening to their incoherent response <br />
in the light of a street lamp.<br />
<br />
Look at your models weeping,<br />
and you call it radiance.<br />
If your hurried throng presses any closer,<br />
I might gain literacy in its chaos.<br />
Industrious masses, compare my company<br />
to the approach of sleep.<br />
<br />
I cry out to meet the architect of this forest.<br />
I will wear his headdress and his footwear.<br />
I respond with a ferocity of finite adaptations.<br />
My ears return as birds of prey.artistbhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09758142676131208627noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4507511355803200466.post-45663234627778724112014-01-16T12:11:00.000-08:002014-08-18T18:48:51.985-07:00Doctrine of Our TimesThe entrance way to the city is through the harbor,<br />
never upward toward the skyscrapers.<br />
The windows dance with the doctrine of our times.<br />
The post-modern animal is closing in on infinity.<br />
He feints translation in a spacious room.<br />
He is stealing time from its cradle.<br />
Dance with the post-modern animal.<br />
Name his decorative objects.<br />
Go to a feverish meeting. Bake bread.<br />
Drink his brand of fruit juice.<br />
I see you trip on the dismount.<br />
You need not omit emotion.<br />
I am only a parking meter attendant. Ask the oracle.<br />
I sift through the ambiguous shapes I have become<br />
to travel here.<br />
This is the center. The tail has been in place for centuries.<br />
The skyscraper also has a tail.<br />
Someone has to interpret their multiple sides,<br />
their connected towers that catch the sun. <br />
New gods flash in the pan.<br />
A superhero is born at the side of the road.<br />
My alter ego leans against a puff of smoke which is this age.<br />
There are no solutions to melancholy, only permutations.<br />
A comic mask that chuckles less than twice is discarded<br />
as a thing out of fashion.<br />
<br />
The relentless copy cat only begins <br />
to scratch the surface of things.<br />
He eyes the letters on the chart <br />
and glances at the water in the glass.<br />
The departure board blinks <br />
with the awful availability of destinations.<br />
My hometown is a somatic stop <br />
on the superhighway of information.<br />
My elbows are out by the car.<br />
Listen to its faint beating in the next heartland.<br />
Have a guiding light that fades forever each time you close your eyes.<br />
Keep your dreams running in the sunshine. artistbhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09758142676131208627noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4507511355803200466.post-50158595260549079772013-11-23T11:02:00.000-08:002014-08-20T17:52:02.256-07:00Loose ChangeJesus is like loose change in your pocket.<br />
You never know the exact amount.<br />
Coins are tossed together like salt and pepper.<br />
<br />
My words have dates on a farmer's calendar.<br />
Harvest is a line between harness and moon.<br />
Silver linings are planted in the unsung life.<br />
<br />
The dimples of your smile are caught in the dime<br />
cornering the rain.<br />
The heartbeat of a coin is like two ears of corn<br />
given to the boy who counts the money in a round word. <br />
The value of a nickel is almost more <br />
than the overlooked penny.<br />
Those who find the two kernels in their mind<br />
are closer to dust on a rainy day.<br />
The cords are pulled like a match across the night sky. artistbhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09758142676131208627noreply@blogger.com0