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Archive for the ‘musings’ Category

Oh the possible punches packed by the brain from an empty tin-can when it comes to tumbling too loudly, pushed along by wind, tricking on ears at metallic kick-along footsteps causing neck double back and double back and triple back.
Just me and that wind.
Just me and some trees. For all I know.
Just me and my dog- too busy darting untethered in the dark, bush to bush bedeviled by his snout- to sense my woeful paranoia.
This fear of sunless-sky time rapidly twists into sadness, as I’m well aware that I’m likely my own worst enemy- worrying myself so- amongst the blocks surrounding my domain, and even more-so that a place free of those lurking in the shadows is easy to imagine. This is the thought that I must hold between my throat and belly in a sustained inhale. Also, I have to remind myself to continue with breathing.
These notions dance erratically against the dread of the cumulative grouping of every horror movie I’ve watched, trailing me, or the fear of furthering my connection to the Me Too movement as I unintentionally create a target of my sole self in the street. Forced comfort causing friction against collected phobia. Like Rachmaninoff dropping from a dream to somehow share a stage of opposing sets, simultaneously with Siouxsie and the Banshees. Or trying to shimmy to Parliament Funkadelic, in synch with slow dancing to James Taylor.
It can be an easy endeavor to entertain this vision of harmless walks, as experience introduced myself to itself in tales sunk in from traveling fashion.
In the city of Florence. In the country of Italy.
There was an occasion that lasted a night, that lasted a lifetime in a seed inside my heart or soul or mind or maybe all at once or sometimes it may float around, where I became enlightened in an evening to a coupling sense of rawness and security; who’s mathematics equaled a unique sum of awe unknown to my own certainty before.  Walking along the drunkard’s-dream of cobblestone streets, gliding through Moorish marble piazzas and the basilica’s double colonnades, exploring  the banks of the Arno river, over uneven bridges, beyond Donatello’s conquering breast of Judith, past dizzying, extending stone structures, in the middle of the world, protected by an angelic omnipresence, cradled by an exotic energy in that the threat of an attacker was nil. News to me- it was- that this was even a conscious idea before this moment.
How natural keys fit between fingers. How deep the wagon wheel grooves can be driven before even questioning beliefs.
And all of this experience to have a tin-can maddeningly rattle me out of a purifying parade through the commonwealth. The uneasiness of the unseeable nipping my heels and herding me by invisible hand towards the absolute calm of home.

alloynight

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Take my ass to the lake and let me shed my heavier thread counts.
Let me tip in, at a rock-free area below, where I can act like I’m making an accident on purpose.
I’d like to free-fall long enough to lose the contents of my pockets and watch my burdensome responsibilities flutter to the sandy ground, but not too long where I cause concern to any would-be-witnesses.
I need a moment of purity, where there is an opportunity for the natural world to reclaim me from the topical static that’s grown a halo around my skin, and redirect me then, after said cool dip- to my original purpose. Can this water be arranged to flood my head with a vision of my next painting? And can this water be managed where it is ensured that once I arrive home, or perhaps even along the way home- I can have waves of motivation surging through me, like before- where I am deposited back on the path to my creativity? This is not the standard nature of water, I know…
…but is it possible to nurture a modern day lifestyle of technological over-reliance and maintain a healthy relationship with imagination and cleverness, and if the answer is yes- can this truth please fall right on my very own head, like a bucket of green slime on the old Nickelodeon show, or the oversized strawberry dropping from the ceiling in the 80’s Bonker’s commercial for gum that packed a larger than life size punch? Something mega?
Must I submerge my devices and get free, or is there a simpler, less expensive way to come back to self, or is this the question of our times- that no one is quite sure of either?
Take my ass to the lake and call my bluff. Take me there and force a sketch pad at me.
Take me to the lake and hallelujah let there be no signal, so everything else can come through.

lakee

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We spent days in mist. Ocean dust.
My hair looked like a $90 job. A 10 rating.
I was training myself to walk backwards, parallel to the shore without looking behind or falling in. All core, hope, imagination, determination.
Seagulls crested in unison; scattering sporadically like the response to a secret boom or big bear sneeze; returning to formation like an answer to lots of questions unasked.
You’d rolled up your pants and still got soaked, just like every time we’d come before
Submitting our tarnished souls
To our repetitive salt water baptism.

In the small beach-town little matted dogs’d do erratic dances behind worn, corroded fences of tetanus-threatening rust. Do not touch. Beware of dog.
They’d bark their heads off ruthless, and untrustworthy.
4 legged Napoleons. Land piranhas.
My mutt wasn’t having it.

Beneath the bridge connecting coastal access to sleepy commerce center, congregated the bums, whoopin’ and slipping around, catching alarmed crawdads, drinking Old Grand Dad, having a helluvatime.

It’s important to share booze with strangers. The spirits encircle. Your lips are the same lips. Kiss purified by alcohol, don’t fret and the more road-wary the better. They give you pause and ease your mind with uncharted thoughts, though I’d nonetheless really liked to have spared the crawdad.

A furtive pocket-full of notes I fumbled to extract a poet’s name  to match our moment to their word-song. Income the spirit of Mary Oliver as the breeze picked up, whispering wild and precious, wild and precious, wild and precious life, what do you plan to do with your one wild and precious life… knocking cattail’s hollow sound and grass-scratch blades joining in.

Everything is coated in a filmy dew of sea and the world there feels small and briny; the longshore men sure look longingly back from a decent woman and forth to the empty possible space aboard their barnacle-scraped boats. What man you walkin’ with? Don’t see none.
One can fantasize right quick about sending off to another land with warmer breezes and new poets to ponder. Making love in the hull with inescapable sand inbetween the buns, hun. Clams for currency. Hundreds of nautical miles.

But the breeze- a melody of crashing waves and the maritime’s half-full loneliness all surf-stretched, and you’re simply incapable of good decision making in wet dungarees, so on we shuffled through the sand and kept watch of the birds.

beach food (1)

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When I start to think
In haiku form and fashion~
Man, is stopping hard.

I want to keep on
Packaging my words to fit
Five seven five forms

But then the sillies
Start kicking in and I can’t
Not be a pervet

So I must give up
The illusion of respect
And drag you down with me
…………

Next time’s sexy time
Shout “Holy! It’s colossal!”
Make the man feel good.

As the dusk decends
I walk streets hoping to see
Sex through lit windows

It’s crazy how much
My fantasies constantly
Beg my attention

Sex is like pizza?
Even if it’s bad it’s good?
Not down with frozen.

He grabbed my tit like
Trying to pop the brain out
A baby bunny ):

Capable I am
As well at reigning it in
And writing soft-core
…………..

Is there a better
Smell than dried eucalyptus?
Daphne in the spring?

When the petals fall
On my head and in my hair
That’s where I want them.

The common cricket
Rivals refrigerator’s
High, resonant sound.

When I hear sitars
I am just like Pavlov’s dogs.
Hungry! For curry.

Sometimes I wonder.
And it gets the best of me.
Presence. It’s a gift.

True art never sleeps
Continuum unperturbed.
There is no shelf life.

One day I’ll travel
The world in the name of sweet
Poetry. Just wait.

Getting off the plane
Walking down the hall to you
Standing with flowers

I can hear the guy
On the wall’s other side of
My condo farting.

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Pea soup on the stove
stinking up the place.

If someone were to pop in right now
I’d say “I’m making pea-soup” to explain the smell
Save from embarrassment.

I’d invite them to stay and eat
I always make too much soup.
Who makes just enough?
Is there such a thing?

If they came over they’d notice the piles of papers.
I’d apologize.
I’d say “I’m normally cleaner”. And mean it. Because that’s how I see myself.

How do people maintain their paper piles?
Does anyone? Are there small files that the rest of people hide in another room?

The papers sit next to the boxes to be considered for recycling.
They get walked out incrementally. There’s no rush aside from the guilt
So much tree-waste.
I bought reusable cloths dipped in beeswax to use in lieu of foil.
My tupperware collection is nothing to sneeze at.
This throw-away culture is shame.

If a tree came over right now
I’d extend my sincerest condolences and I’d blush and admonish my own self
I’d say “I try”, though I’ve heard there is no trying.

There’s doing
and there’s not doing.

Once I had a teacher who pulled a tissue from the box.
He told us to try to pick it up, as he let it fall from his hand.
We scrambled for it.
I don’t remember who picked it up, but it was safe and upon the return to his hand
he said “See? There is no trying. You do or you don’t do”.

The tissue was used only for a lesson.
If that tissue walked through my door right now
I would refrain from rubbing my nose on him.
I’d fear him absorbing too much pea soup, so I don’t think I’d extend the offer.
Plus I need to slumber peacefully
without perplexing dreams about animate tissues eating my home cooking.
Though I’d say something like “I’m sorry for your purposeless life and that you must go
hungry
dry
and used in nothing but a questionable metaphoric lesson”.

If someone came over at the same time as the tissue and tree came
I’d have a lot of explaining to do.
And I’d have to do it, according to law, as there is no try.

Maybe I could blame it on the pea soup.
Distract them with health food.
Apologize to it later.

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Is anyone out there known to have learned skills of building just so that they could destroy, to start anew? If these walls could talk. If they could absorb.
Would they swell, well, wail?
With grief of past renters? Laden with uncomfortable memories of someone’s poor sitcom taste? Or  spooked by the inability to comprehend an old tenants’ idolatry? Or find humor in and joy of private dancing with the likes of us they contain?
Are they pleased with the blush-colored tiles that coat their kitchen parts?
Do they revel in the bed banging against them ferocious, and ache for more as well?
Because if everything has energy, then there stands a chance at a secret life that we know as much of as to think that birds just migrate without communication, but magnetism and instinct? Greedy, narrow, humankind.
So then, am I their favorite thus far?
Should I lean up against them and divine their favorite music? It must be Nina- the album with her in front of a pond in Central Park…
The walls. Inert and unable to grow, only wither in time. Unable to self-fortify. But- able to hear? God ears? You are probably not alone.
Turn off your halogens. Be true be true! If someone or something is always the witness, could you really be you?
You can find a hammer and smash till you’re blue. Or bang out a window to let the air through.
If these walls could listen. If they’ve been listening all along- how would you do? IMG_8144 (2).jpg

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Eves-dropping on neighboring cloud watchers across the isle:

–Young girl- maybe age 7- speaking in absolutes: “I see a hand.”
–Man beside her- maybe mother’s boyfriend: “I see it.”
Pause. Watch. Stillness. “I see some mashed potatoes.”
–Girl -calm: “Oh yeah. Yeah.”
“I see a coyote without legs. Do you see it?
Planes are huge. Almost bigger than the world. We’re almost to space. Did you know that?”
–Man attempts an explanation about atmosphere, stratosphere… starts out strong. Flounders. Reverts to talking about library books on the subject.

Girl turns her head from the window of Largest Views. She finds a heated shaft of sunlight taken to sitting on the top of her hand from the other side of the plane. My side.
Reflection projection.
Steady she holds it; her sun-hand. Her free hand whirling small fingers atop its partner’s radiance. Spinning a small dance above orphic golden. She wants to show her mother who sleeps;
Looking back and forth from mother to glow, mother to glow, mother to glow.
She is a kind child. I can tell. Her mother rests on, while dutifully with providence, she hosts the light.
Girl sees me looking and offers a soft-kid smile my way. It’s too late to look away. I’ve been indulgent in my dreamy observing.
Down she puts the sun.

Back to cloud-watch; the line between boredom and the ease of nothing else to do, giving call to the deciphering of true existences.
High game, low stakes.
Infinite interpretive possibility.
A pooh-bah baby; she tells what’s what. The crown in passing light.
In a flash I’m brought back too.
Times no linear thing when you’re suspended in the air and have exhausted your ink pad and reading resources and suddenly… I’m young again, head-scratching, squinting wonder, looking for what’s really out there.
By and by eking out that dolphin pattern of automatic coordination involving focus, locus and vergence.
If I’d stare hard enough… If she’d stare hard enough…

Now the mother’s eyes are opened and the three talk of sun. I hang on their words like heavy warm suds sky bath; well intentioned interloper that I am.
They share curiosities over cardinal directions; the great Atlantic acting to anchor the origin. Wondering just what they’re flying over. Wondering where the man’s house might be very right now.

In an instant the plane tilts- revealing a ground covered in snow. A secret held from us by the simple act of sheltering our eyes. Covered in snow, dotted in trees. All small far down. Snow inside of snow.

The clouds have begun to thread, actively uniting, they soon mimic the land below as a blanket and a few levels higher measured by hundreds of feet, or thousands if you’re good at guessing jelly-bean-jar-quantities; filtering sun, laying across us fly-ers, dressing us in riches of watermelon and orange juice two hues.

Girl, Man, Mother are quiet. My mind quite quiet. And the clouds- speak silence full into the figures we see of them. Wipe away to white. Begin again if you please.

stard

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Trees; an affront to imposed rigidity and structural predictability,
contrasting the angles raised of long blocks that contain them,
(parks- a slight, conceding effort;)
defying street boundaries;
interrupting, inconvenienced by countless collections of 90 degrees;
spreading roots with great effort, nonetheless.

oa
To be well and free against the opposing absolute and certainty of man-made resolve, in an immediate world of molds and intended order.
In a time where plans are steadfast; where chance is made scant;
lessened; unappreciated, threatened by homogeneity.
I will sing the songs that rise up from beneath my feet, that the pavement has not permeated. I will sing the songs that are not mine to keep.
I will sing what comes forth, be I know not from where.
Songs to soften, with hopes of bringing broader breath to asphyxiated systems surrounded in soil.
Songs to ease the rattle of drilling for more more more when all is what we’ve already, collectively got.
Songs to hug at the earth burdened by those who appreciate her not, yet tug tug and tug relentless at her spine, yes.
Everyday. Back breaking acts in detached formation. Embroiled in entitled ideals.

When did people learn that nature was to be conquered and what happened to their songs?
With trees so tall to walk beside, how can they not feel a hum?

oaaoaaa

 

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There is a well of surface-scraped-depth within me.

I know.

And maybe you too.

I need to know what gems lay deep, bound by body basalt; encased in black rock; kidney crystal. Clinging to crags. Affixed & sturdy.

Formations of luster; robust & ripe; uncomprehended in fullness.

And it worries me.

How to mine myself for precious bounty?

Am I made of softer stone? Might I chip?

What earthly instrument would act as chisel?

How much wonder, precision & intent is required for self-extraction.

To mother words.

Arrange them & categorize.

The placement in a great pantry of order, positioning strategic visions; moving over pink salt, second hand plates, glass jars, almond flour, the old orange juice press, wayward spices- to arrange enigmatic & even alien feelings that can use the generosity of air-time to dry upon the lacquered, shaded kitchen shelves still shieldable from light with manageable doors.

That can benefit from this. To breathe & to steady.

The place my private mind has kept sacred & mysterious, precisely where X marks the spot, though barely tended to- not having intended to gloss over them or feed the deterring, fleeting, faux shiny distracting forces; shielding fears of my own discoveries & the responsibility that comes from choking- one day- upon an throat full of undigested diamonds.

How do you do bounty?

We are each equipped with inherent, ancient farming techniques.

How to learn treasure.

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The heat pushing through the piping of the long house in one steady breath, promising falsely to fog up the windows and appease the chill down to the bones that we all felt; coaxing blood back up to the surface; releasing the tight shoulders in the room, squeezing in desperation to retain the remnant warmth.

Me and you. We are cold together in spite of talk of Tahiti. In spite of flirting with ideas of occupying the shower. In spite of number 70 on the thermostat.

Cold with worn hearts. Wimpy, floppy, sore- from news that came in pin-cushion packages with the pricking points turned outwards.
Packages delivering information that both whispered and yelled at once, as for no one to mistake anything on any auditory level, that the beast had returned; and in it’s believed absence- gained volume and momentum and peculiar support.
An inconceivable menace that was as real as the boogie man, and just as easy to doubt.
And now, in shocking, lurching fashion, a manifestation has come forth onto the eyes of the public- thin with disbelief- banging chest, fragmenting citizens, hissing for allegiance, disregarding all in it’s path of unparalleled ethos.

Ice. A stairway in December with no salt.
Sub zero in some cut off jeans.
Windchill with newspaper blankets.
We begin our struggle to blind ourselves in counter action, to stare in solace at the sun.
To rid the big freeze from our bodies, and find a way to raise a renaissance life of egalitarian existence where chatter won’t break our collective teeth.

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