Posts for June 1, 2024 (page 9)

where did it come from?
seeing stuff listening maybe reading 

why believe what you do?
parents preachers friends teachers this screen 

nope don’t blame it on them
it’s you

oh no
it’s me?

(A collage poem constructed from excerpts of the writings of Frederick Douglass and the KJV of the Christian Bible.) 

“Wives, submit yourselves unto your own husbands, as unto the Lord. 
        He would at times seem to take great pleasure in whipping a slave. 

For the husband is the head of the wife, 
      
        Aunt Hester had not only disobeyed his orders in going out, 

even as Christ is the head of the church: 
        
        but had been found in company with Lloyd’s Ned; 

and he is the saviour of the body.” 

from what he said while whipping her, was the chief offence. 
He then told her to cross her hands, calling her at the same time a d–d b–h. 
        
        “Likewise, ye husbands, dwell with them according to knowledge, giving honour unto the wife, 

He then said to her, “Now, you d–d b–h, I’ll learn you how to disobey my orders!
        
        ” –as unto the weaker vessel.” 

after rolling up his sleeves, he commenced to lay on the heavy cowskin, 
        
        “Submitting yourselves one to another in the fear of God.”  

and soon the warm, red blood (amid heart-rending shrieks from her, and horrid oaths from him) came dripping to the floor. 

        “For after this manner in the old time the holy women also, who trusted in God, adorned themselves, being in subjection unto their own husbands:”

 –a miserable drunkard, a profane swearer, and a savage monster.            
        “For Adam was first formed, then Eve.”

at Kona Airport,
when they said I couldn’t board the plane,
I thought I would never see you again,
but I finally arrived, my summer filled
with lasts, and memories of our past,
barefoot on sand and hot pavement,
childhood town, ocean crashing on breakers,
red dirt, climbing trees, and biking
Lahaina, now burnt down, we wondered
if anyone we knew was left, and then you,
too, surrounded by love, to ashes
my sister/cousin/friend “extraordinaire”
gone, your last message at 4:44 a.m.

Still, before light, I wander in shadows
and wet grass, and the rain that never ends,
wondering about the state of the world,
and what pearl you would say,
what artwork, what music, which play,
or scientific article you would share
to make everything seem alright,
to make sense of beauty in a world of pain.

When the warmth crawls into my skin

I feel the loss of my passion

My energy fades to a dull hum

I long to pour myself into sleep

And escape the inevitable misery

My head clogs so that my words cannot escape

The sun shining so bright outside

And yet my soul feels the desolate winter

Rest

Time will come for me               

But until then I cry and wait for it to pass

i met a man last
night with coyote
eyes and sharp
hairs above his lip

i will see him again
tonight my mother
says he plays his guitar
behind his back

i will red my lips he does
not know my last name
or sensation of my chest
pressed against me secret

hand of cards all
one black incompatible
suit but we can
play wedding all i want

never mind the razor
i took to my lip
yesterday or the cut
of my deltoids under silk

pop a breathmint
invent new cryptids
look just past him
not too cruel

I was asked a question today that I’ve been asked many times-
With a gesture towards a recent painting;
Two old trees stretching toward each other, their branches intermingling in a riot of life force and communication, the sky a brilliant neon pink, the landscape melting out of the sky and then melting again onto the canvas.
“What were you thinking with this one?”

It’s usually asked in a setting of white walls, affixed with price tags. I sometimes hear the REAL question even louder than the spoken one, “what does it mean to you to make a painting, to be an artist?” “Why this price?” Or it could even be, “What is it about this picture that is dragging me across the room?” Or, “What do I need to do as an artist to make work like this?”
(Or even, let’s face it, the far more insidious insinuation that true art somehow arises out of cool and rational intellect, that somehow what anyone could say about the work would be far more important than the work itself.)
So I’m never sure what to say, do I answer the spoken or unspoken question? Do I explain the whole history of art- ALL art, not just paintings?
I always want to answer a question as honestly as I can.
Sometimes I want to say what I gleaned from it later, what secrets about myself it whispered to me in the turning shadows on the wall.
But at this moment my head was hurting and I hadn’t yet had my coffee, so with fingers pressed to my face I said out loud to myself,
“Oh yeah…people always want a story.”

Realizing immediately I had possibly insulted her with my droll attitude, I quickly tried to appease her with a true story, chosen at random.

“When I look at this one now, I think of the importance of having good friends, how they inspire you to enjoy life, how your thoughts and beliefs grow together with theirs” which certainly was one of the things I was appreciating that day…
(I had noticed later how that thought had seeped in to the work, as I went to give it a title).
But even had I chosen to answer the direct question, it could have still been two different answers. On the one hand I am in the moment of appreciation with the subject and the paint on the canvas, present with them, appreciating them, but I’m thinking very little other than “I love that, and I love that and I love that” (with moments of electric elation where my body seems to fly off the earth, interspersed”)
Once a painting is done it as much a mystery to me as to anyone how it appeared. Who thought to use those colors next to each other? Who made these decisions? How on earth were they executed? (“What were you thinking, Miles, when you wrote “Kind of Blue”?)
It’s as if I’m a stranger to them, meeting them for the first time. I get the impression that my mind must have been very far away, and if someone was intending something it couldn’t have been me, I just carefully did my job as I would do any job. I plucked notes from the singing air, I smiled at someone.
Another and perhaps better way to put it is this:

“It was a fine moment. I put together a picnic, gathered my gloves and hat, my snippers and baskets and ladder and I walked down to the orchard. I had a marvelous time picking apples until the baskets were full. Would you like an apple? They’re in season.”

faith fermented to mossy vinegar

leaving me no course but to

foment a deity into the barren firmament.

give him weight, give him weightlessness, give him

enough fingers to plug the byways of my heart

give him me, give him my shape, give him something

i don’t hate

listful and lustless i count his innumerable angels

Our Lady Naproxen

the Wheel: Dissociation

Stuffed Animal Amulet who smells of self more than a mirror

Heating Pad/Lizard’s Grave

the Sky that calls you small but keeps you

from closing your eyes

the Holey Ghost of Loneliness, the worm-eaten tunnels in my brain

my coworker gave me a pair of shoes and said

that they will help my back

is this where god starts?

it’s the contact of the eyes.

a hand on the shoulder,

a palm on the back.

surely, by now you know

the marks you make

are indelible.

The crashing waves of grief
Come less often,
But an undercurrent of sadness
Is ever there.

Like the cold water
Beneath the warm surface
Of the gulf
On a spring day.

Chilling,
But not dangerous
In itself.
But there is always

The threat that an undercurrent
Becomes an undertow
Becomes a riptide
That sweeps you away

To some dark place
From which
You will never
Return.