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On Doing Good in America
“If you are born poor it’s not your mistake, but if you die poor it’s your mistake.” —Bill Gates
We admire the philanthropist for "giving...
THE MOST RECENT CONVERSATION
The most recent conversation with ma
took place over the telephone.
Her voice seemed a bit formal and reserved;
mine was a black hole desiring color and...
LATEST ARTICLES
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Glen Banvie Trail on the Blair Castle Estate, Scotland. October, 2024.
I dreamt I was a kelp forest swaying in pitch-
-black waters. Above me moonlight fluttered
like confetti and seagulls roosted on cliff-sides
and buoys. An oil tanker drifted by, the workers
playing cards and smoking cigarettes as though
they hadn’t a thing to...
Hawk skirls overhead,
red berries bloom like blood against
the shadowed wood.
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Crow quill pen and ink on Strathmore illustration board. Illustration from the book, "Did Adam Name the Vinegeroon?", poems by X.J. Kennedy with illustrations by Heidi Johanna Selig, 1982. (Haiku...
In twenty twenty-eight,
light narrows, ink falls silent in the streets.
Words shaved of edges, poetry a lost shape,
a forgotten voice in fog.
But Hosokawa Yusai knew this hunger,
guarded songs like embers,
each syllable a blade kept close, hidden,
awaiting flame.
Now, they crush every...
I like tools.
I like spatulas.
I like good shoes
and Kikkoman soy sauce.
I like the thing
that fixes that
other thing and
the other thing
that fixes that.
I like tape dispensers
and staplers
and paper
and rolls of stamps
and paperweights
and envelopes
and photographs
of old typewriters
I no longer have to use.
I...
For many fine men,
words like bitch,
or pussy—
sit heavy on the tongue,
emitted like a toxin
if ever uttered.
They would rather
default to tired,
or angry for
the perceived irrationality;
and vagina, or "special names"
for intimacy.
But if enemies appear
and the fatherland calls
to either resist,
or occupy—
(for the...
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Charcoal pencil drawing by Pat Perrin from the novel, The Jamais Vu Papers, by Wim Coleman and Pat Perrin. Harmony Books/Crown (1991). After publication, the authors turned Coyote into this poster. (Original charcoal pencil drawing is 9" x 10"....
I was seven when an aneurism grew like a rotten berry inside Mother’s brain and burst. Everyone said, at least her suffering is over, the migraines, so unbearable, and even though she died with her head tilted to one side and...
inside them still
the blue sky, still the dream
of brave, and strong, and free.
All you didn’t say
in these birds with endless softness
with nothing
to uphold, nothing
to defend.
Sadness is me
plus the birds
plus their flight
and grace
in september, in bergamo
tucked in a corner of...
they peeled him back,
those priests,
hands slick with oils,
dropped his heart
in a jar like an olive.
wrapped him tight,
packed him for eternity—
knives, chariot,
songs he’d need
to reach the fields of reeds.
he was a king, see.
they sent him down the river,
a dark slip
past...
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Graphic ink pen, permanent coloured ink, ink brush, watercolours, and some printed elements on Yasutomo Rice Paper .. 77cm x 44cm. Text added via Photoshop.
from the Sermon at the Crossroads
Blessed are those who know there to be no blessings
for they shall hear the music of the abyss.
Sure of foot are those who seek no benediction,
for unto them the path is...
As a child I believed no machine
could hurt you, that even the big
crushing ones would stop, would
have to stop, heads bowed, hats
removed, as the royal procession
of a single hand, divinely unaware,
passed among the common columns
of steel and teeth—that no...
In your absence,
fall came anyway.
Leaves turned ruddy and gold,
began their wuthering dance,
fluttered down like leaflets
as they've always done.
I wore your new jacket
as I gathered them into bags,
finding solace
in a world that carries on,
concerned only with
the next ending,
the next beginning,
the...
leaves are rusting
cars are rusting
I wake up in the mornings
cursing the frost
and missing the warmth of Dixie
I hate the cold
I say
my wife and I have bought
another house to restore
that’s what we do
we buy these old wrecks
and bring them back...
~
i won't write a poem about it
it's cool you do but i can't
in my childhood town
after each new tragedy
kids navigated for position
for how we were to it
this close and closer
Tammy
accidentally shot
in the face
by her little brother
she survived— permanently disfigured
and...
I told this to a waiter taking my drink order.
“I don’t drink when I’m sober.”
He stared at me for a long moment.
“So, when do you drink then?” he asked.
Bare feet dock-dangling down,
memories morning-cleansed
in gentle lakewater.
Loons warble back and forth,
one zooms under me
at supernatural speed.
A boy casts out, reels in
a small sunny.
As it fights against the hook,
a large mouth bass
clamps down on it
but for reasons unknown
lets it go....
Folks said my father was a drunk and a no-good bastard, but we marched behind him with maracas and rhythm sticks shaking our little bums to and fro like elephants, tails linked, trekking together across sub-Saharan Africa in a...
The seawall whispers the voices of the drowned,
their words curling into the fog, sticky with salt and secrets.
From the mist, she emerges—
a girl in a striped bathing suit, 1905 etched into her eyes,
skin bloated like the Gulf beneath her...
bay breeze froth
and the barmaid’s pretty nails
I’ll never feel their caress
it’s another Saturday night
at the sports bar
jukebox playing
the soundtrack to
hell
I shuffle my thoughts
like playing cards
hoping to draw an ace
I can’t figure why Cindy’s gone
and I’d like to bum a...
the leaves are not vain
about falling
sunlight on the edge of each one
Original music video. Written, performed, and produced by the author.
To view, click on the arrow in the center
Lyrics shown below
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P0ucg8Y9Q1Y&t=1s
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Lyrics to the video
Hello two clouds floating by
like watercolor paintings in my mind.
Hello two clouds floating by
like watercolor paintings in...
This will surely be TMI for you, but yesterday I had a very bad day.
I won’t bore you with the details of which, since we have never met, and if we had, I would even less want to bore...
there's a teenage, fentanyl
addicted
cowboy, sprawled out
on the floor
of the #4 to downtown LA
tasseled, rawhide
leather jacket
hatchet
Howard Hawks face
fist clenching the reins
of a crushed, empty Miller Lite
horizontal
flirting with the bus driver,
a dude named Omar
spewing glorious, fresh
Santa Ana wind
desert dust breath
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Pen and Ink. 10" X 12".
the way he still chases you in dreams,
his dead brother,
then stares into blankness
when he wakes.
i want to dive into his dog dreams
run with him in the woods
over the hill with the purple
wash of henbit
to where you live now.
~~
there’s a...
I have a Portuguese granddaughter, Clara,
who insists that only grandad
can read books to her over the phone.
Our favourite and our best books
are Charlie and Lola.
I find it easy to identify with Charlie,
his capacity for reason and tolerance
in the face...
put down
way up north
for the locals
he walks it daily
too old to drive
recalls rolling
his Schwinn across
a black olive top
and now, how aging
has worn the surface
down to its
aggregate bones
When they bought expensive tickets
for a cruise on the Flying Dutchman
they didn’t know they wouldn’t be going home again.
But they were a rugged and resourceful lot
so when the captain announced
they’d be rounding the Cape of Good Hope
and wouldn’t land until...
We walk beneath a fettled roof of leaves,
Where beasts maraud and insects form a line.
The trail of many bones & lost beliefs
Becomes the route that guides your heart & mine,
And as we make our way through ancient paths
We cut,...
When you have run out of outrage;
when every day is a loaded gun
and your hand is not on the trigger;
when you have given all you have
to give and still disaster looms;
when clouds look like rockets
and ants begin to goose-step...
(Scroll to bottom to hear the poet read this poem)
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She hovers behind the bar,
not standing but floating, her feet barely grazing
the sticky floor,
a ghost sewn together with gin and late-night cigarette smoke.
The bottles are alive—
they hum, twitching under dim...
May the words in my head
and the meditations I create
in my over-active brain
and practice with good intentions
as I push my asthmatic breath in and out
and rest a hand on my now
and finally healthy heart
(as per my cardiologist and a...
… Old Baucis is by old Philemon seen
Sprouting with sudden leaves of spritely green:
Old Baucis look’d where old Philemon stood,
And saw his lengthen’d arms a sprouting wood …
—Ovid, Metamorphoses,
John Dryden, trans.
...
a neat balance of the grip that pulls
and the calloused hands that push
around we go — the natural cohesion
holding us in place
our eyes accustomed to the motion
if we thought about it hard enough
perhaps we would turn inside out
our pinkish...
so we move forward differently once again.
.while you remain in mind.
We make no bones,
it was the sea that held its breath
and deferred to you, our mother. You,
who set aside the rancor of tides
and gathered us in like fishes
to carry in your vessel of plenty.
You, who tucked light under your...
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Gliding along the surface of the pond,
two wood ducks land and split the water
into knives of movement, rippling out
in broken lines and interference patterns;
the crickets wheel through the star-pattered
night, blessed by the songs of frogs
and bugs, the light sticks...
Elliot Biggs stood at the door of the bank,
the check, crumpled—his thumb pressed hard to the ink,
ten years gone in a breathless sigh,
dull eyes upon the numbers, mocking figures
of all he'd stacked up brick by brick,
a house of sweat...
Watercolour and acrylic paints on Ampersand Aquabord .. 33.8cm x 33.8cm
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2. Watercolour and acrylic paints on Ampersand Aquabord .. 21cm x 40cm
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3. Watercolour and acrylic paints on Ampersand Aquabord .. 33.8cm x 33.8cm
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4. Watercolour and acrylic paints on...
For frantic boast and foolish word—
Thy mercy on Thy People, Lord!
—Rudyard Kipling
The City on the Hill is turning out its lights
and closing up for a long, long night.
Heroes are cast out of their Valhalla;
the halls ring with a clamor...
I had forgotten how to fly.
There was a small dark owl with me
On the old dirt road by the wind.
It was a very dark grey,
Like an ash.
Its beak moved, it opened & shut
Opened & closed,
But I had also forgotten...
I scrubbed out my asshole today
it’s clean and shiny
hell, I might even get it bleached
it could use it
after 46 years of life
it’s dealt with a lot of shit
I had an impulse to throw my cup of water
at their electrical switching network
but I knew they'd fire me if I did
so I didn't, but I felt like at least
kicking down one of my cubicle walls
and I'd only been...
When you can’t afford
to renew the lease on your grave
and your hollowed-out carcass
has nowhere else to die the rest of its death
do not forget
your soul still hibernates elsewhere,
pinpoint-poised
in a hexagonal sarcophagus filled
with imperishable honey,
damp-proof
against the contagions of history.
So dream...
Let none admire
That riches grow in Hell: that soil may best
Deserve the precious bane.
—John Milton,...
Daddy's home, dog, you can take that dump
in the middle of the floor now. And cat,
please, a hairball would be nice. Kitchen sink
—my life would be incomplete without
a constant drip. There you go. That's nice.
Oven: grow cold. I insist....
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Oil on Wood. 12" x 16".
I'm undercover
listening to owls
a blue heron flies downriver
the rain almost silent
The hollow clatter,
fork to plate, rings—
a sound misplaced.
Empty halls devour voices
that once stood firm,
laughter now foreign
as wind to the walls.
Half the rooms sit cold,
chairs unfilled,
beds stripped,
the life leached from
this structure, bricks
crumbling to silence.
She has gone.
There’s no need to trace...
Clay Logo 1.
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Clay Logo 2.
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Man-Eating Art 1: We Will Eat You
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Man-Eating Art 2: Tastes Funny
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Man-Eating Art 3: ALAS
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Man-Eating Art 4: Not Eaten
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Grapevine
*******
Abstract 24 - 1
Mixed Media, Impact Adhesive, acrylic paint, black ink, ink brush, graphic ink pen, white ink, System 3 Screenprinting acrylic ink, Permaset Aqua Supercover Fabric Printing Ink on Gerstaecker Mixed Media Art Board - 38cm x 22cm
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Abstract...
i can’t find all my friends today
where they live inside my phone
but i pray they find the blankets
i am sending
~
there’s a holy woman in the mountains
contemplating silence in the storm
facing the valley in the distance
eyes closed, sitting on a...
She finds her way down the hillside in the late night dark, making no use of a flashlight habitually held in one hand. If she switches that light on the world will be invisible, becoming only what is held...
You may think it inconsequential that an empty
tube of toothpaste is not, if pressed, empty,
but has more to give of itself. You may prefer
odes to lofty ideas, or nature, or love. You may
have studied Shakespeare, Bayesian probability,
Goethe and Shelley,...
Bukowski's Bluebird
and Psalm 139;
Starbucks
and hardhats,
badges
and faux bouquets;
healing gardens
and prayer circles;
a shiny pink balloon
in an atrium's skylight;
a young resident
in blue scrubs,
keys jangling
on her hip;
red aviation lights
on a rooftop.
11:59 AM,
two weeks of stubble.
An unchanging sky,
an oblivious world.
Somewhere,
a bluebird singing.
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Oil and Gold Leaf on Canvas, 105 cm x 105 cm
The Earth calls to me,
gravity tugging like an old chain
I’ve forgotten how to break—
her blue belly swollen, thick with storms.
My ship falls from heaven,
the black silent skin of space peels away,
and now—
Hell yawns wide below.
I ride this vessel like...
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Watercolor. 6" x 8".
Mom packed
all week,
folding and putting
clothes in suitcases,
wrapping keepsakes
in newspaper,
setting boxes
in the hallway,
Dad kicking them
as he went by.
“You’re not going
anywhere,” he said.
“Just put it all back.”
Mom kept packing.
She went to
the kitchen next,
close to where
me and my sister sat
doing homework,
me finishing
some...
When I was nineteen, lost, alone,
depraved and often raving from
the lack of food and meaning,
walking the streets for days
on end after dropping out
of college the better to sink,
an old man stepped up to me
and said, “Don't look so down.
Hold...
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Oil on canvas. 90 cm x 90 cm.
We’re told it’s only been unleashed one time
by a lone fanatical guerrilla sent
by some silent foreign power. People talk
about him all the time, but most don’t dare
say too much about his self-immolation—
how he cold-bloodedly provoked the fury
of priests and prefect to...
"Seat open?" I asked the guy sitting next to an empty stool at this small town's local hangout.
"Yup! You're welcome to it!" he, smiling.
"Thanks!" I, politely.
Placing a napkin and a bowl of peanuts in front of me, the bartender...
And the rain that didn't fall today
would have sounded like other rain,
each note both random and precise.
And the wind that didn't blow today
would have come in like a prophet
whispering its usual secrets.
And the sun that didn't shine today
would have...
I shall live by the ocean and walk a sandy shore.
And there shall I find a long boardwalk
with benches worn rough, and toddlers
dripping ice cream and seagulls divebombing
elephant ears on paper plates.
Sandpipers on spindle-legs dare the waves.
Lost car keys,...
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Take care driving over The Gap.
Emboldened by night, deer emerge
from the grim wood to graze the verge
between the black trees and blacktop.
A mountain tableau, they stand there
cropping at the monochrome grass
while half-past midnight headlights pass
along their grey flanks and...
In the low-lit juke where blues crawl thick—
thick as gospel, thick as grit—
Big Mama sits, hands heavy on the frets of time,
plucking the black strings of her own life.
Pressed down, like cotton in the fields,
or a note pulled long...
A tune plays on the radio, a jazz-funk fusion
with a title that sounds like a dire prediction.
One apocalypse or another is always coming.
Cold water runs from the kitchen faucet
while I play a game of what if, imagining
(for the millionth...
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Oil on canvas. 30cm X 40cm. Winner, People's Choice Award at the "History Presents Future" exhibition, The Open Gallery, Halifax, UK (September, 2024).
The question becomes
one of questions and more questions.
The question becomes
...
When I was a child, the word most often applied to me was shy. Not true. I simply enjoyed watching. Everything. Every night, I would write in my book, a book I had liberated from my father’s store. An order...
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Artist's Note: Linen and cotton yarns, handmade paper, river stones, bone beads, on a wrapped tree branch, 48” wide x 41”high x 16” deep. My fiber pieces often involve fastening rocks to something — in this case hanging them from...
I’ve read the story a dozen times
and seen the movie versions
as many times
or more
and still
when Santiago
pulls the huge fish
alongside
the sharks always come
and eat his beautiful fish
and I always wish
just once
the old man
would get the fish
into the boat
and return
victorious
but that’s...
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Oils on linen. 30cm x 40cm.
My brain scan came back
electronically, without commentary.
I expected an intake of breath
a frame by frame affirmation,
an attached graphic to explain
these pyrotechnic nighttime
symphonic explosions, a soundtrack
for the ages, or at the very least
a casual observation (my God,
it's full of stars!)...
years ago
a mysterious spore
germinated in his basement
under a rug he had swept fine dust
the sibylline flat white fungi
are communion wafers
each the body of the Divine
there to protect him from evil
& no need to ever leave
the house again
but in case...
Click on Arrow in Red Box to Listen. Music composition, Performance, Lyrics, and Production by Matt Dennison.
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BF6fU4EOOpk
There goes Mr Prichard Morris
down to the shed to take his kine
out on the hills, to Garn Ddu
the black rock. He says the grass
up there has iron in it and gives
his milk that something extra.
I don’t doubt he believes...
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Artist's Note: charcoal pencil on paper. 8" x 8". I don't do a lot of freestanding drawing or painting, most of my work is either 3-D (fibers) or book illustration. This drawing started off as a simple sketch of...
O, rest ye, brother mariners, we will not wander more.
—Tennyson
The prosperous dead,
the sedentary dead,
the virtuous dead,
have...
Rumi says we can bang on a musical instrument first thing in
the morning to fight
our emptiness
I like to blend a fruity elixir and smack my lips by the tiled counter while
a radio hosts regales me with the weather
I like...
tomorrow
i'm gonna carry a casket
the body of a kid I once raced
in a long ago summer
in San Jose
high school
had closed up
for a hot breath
summertime
and we fucking ran
like goddamn maniacs
fueled by big gulps
Street Fighter
paintball
cigarettes
capture the flag
and Primus
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We cannot go with you this time
All-consuming night
has swallowed the solemn moon
So hightide and wave retire
and the piano charms with regret
in the reed beds
and mealie fields
where the window birds mourn
under an overcast sky
*
Now we must say manana
left behind on the...
Now this is a special kind of nowhere.
Its midpoint even, a place equidistant
from North and South, somewhere
neither desert nor tundra.
The beige walk here, eat Pop-Tarts for breakfast
unless oatmeal is available, in which case
they have oatmeal after missionary sex
scheduled several...
I want to get better at silence,
to entertain it as some do angels,
to rescue it like grains of salt
on paths beneath the soles of men.
I don't mean mere absence of sound,
or the reprieve of holiday ceasefires;
I will yield the...
You moved on before giving notice.
I got lost in the smoke and mirrors
and barely noticed the empty hours,
and you always had such good answers.
Now, you keep saying you still love me,
you’ll always love me. Yes of course you will,
like you love...
Angles about him sensed, the first,
the free web presents, and he waits.
No, of course he does not wait, he
simply is: spider, small beyond time,
so small you might not see him
if you were to enter the room,
would only say Ah! and begin
to sweep...
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Watercolor on 140 lb. watercolor paper, 7.5"' X 9.25"
Once you sell your horses
you’re never the same.
That’s not necessarily true,
just an attempt to say
the unsayable as loud
as the wounded frog
roaring across the valley
from a roadside ditch.
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Collaborative video featuring this poem:
https://vimeo.com/121645397
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Martha was dying. Her doctor knew it, her husband, David, knew it, and me being her caregiver, knew it too. The only one who didn’t know was Martha.
It was the spider bite that started so small, just a little...
You know, selfies aren’t for us.
We’re old, but I grow younger
instantly when I run into you.
We stop and share tea
at The Campus Cafe
as if you and I were still professors
sharing notes on Lady
Chatterley’s Lover.
There are moments
even now when I...
m `zo came to me
with pieces of things she'd done
she said We can put some in the river,
some under the trees
and some on top of the hill.
so I put some in the river
she put some under the trees
and we both...
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A
sweat
bee is
cleaning its
antenna in the
morning sun while a butterfly
is flexing its wings, like lungs (like bellows), waiting for
just the right current of wind to come along and
climb onto. And it appears that the
sky’s particular frequency of blue, today, is
going...
https://soundcloud.com/rc-james/sweet-summer-rain
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A light rain turned the alleyway into a slow blues
dusk settled in but didn't make me sad
I took a few dance steps through the puddles
not that I was overjoyed, happy or real glad.
I wasn't going to be taking orders...
We crossed the Ohio at Wheeling, ducked
past the tourist trappings of the Steel City
like two outlaws, made our Hollywood
escape, determined to get as far as we could
on a tank of gas, the first side of a cassette.
Duritz crowed through...
Spry creatures of the daytime,
actions seek their resting point
at the bottom of the funnel,
a fall,
a drop
a break in the surface below.
I came here to warn you
about the new house.
It reeks of change
and the fear it provokes.
Vacancy in the heart,
no...
My Japanese maples
were revived,
a girl's chalk heart
was dissolved in a courtyard,
a hero was given a chance
to cry in secret,
a harried nurse's coffee
was diluted,
the air around the city
was purged,
storefront neon
was splashed onto a shiny street,
one fire was doused
while another was...
________________________________________________
when you die
tell the bees
they will want
to know
to turn you in
the right direction
toward the flowers
________________________________________________
Guard 1. Ink on Paper. 21 cm X 15 cm.
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Guard 2. Ink on Paper. 21 cm X 15 cm
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After such a strange pile of months
the touch from a kind-eyed girl in a newsagent's
and a lovely smile from a lady walking her boxer
renewed the bounce in my step to the pub
where last night I actually laughed out loud
and...
A statuesque figure, her faux breasts
glinting in the sunlight,
she stood in the front room
for years by the Venetian blinds,
where sunlight warmed
like a cat at her feet.
She was the first person
I greeted coming home,
the last woman I said
good night to...
Cesar Millan frowns, shrugs
throws in the towel, groans:
I have no answer
she's a pit/collie mix
the muscled body
of Mike Tyson
the gentle, infinite brain
of Carl Sagan
-------
she won't cross the kitchen
of this apartment
her pretty paws slip
on lineoleum
so
we chill on the couch, mostly
she talks,...
walking the hallway
of highways
my sign was ignored
but for embarrassments of drivers
children in back seats
slobbering tongues on windows
snooty dogs and women
with high-high hair and low-low pity
windows black as souls within
until someone yelled something
in roadway staccato
and the drenching
of a cold cup...
I stood solemn
for a moment
in high desert
summer grasses
thinking here
the old god danced
to the music
of a million cicadas
centuries ago
before priests
from Spain
severed his manhood
& turned it
into a nose flute.
I stood solemn
as if beside myself
without warning
I began vibrating
& my shadow
sprouted head feathers.
I went on the deck and sang Beach Boys songs
I don’t know why but I was happy
I had no reason to be
it was night but the sun was in my eyes
and I harmonized
I felt like a teenage idol
from an...
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Media: Rotring Isographs and Pigma Microns on mixed media paper. Size: 9" X 12".
Useless to scream, shut the fuck up!
so I've learned to disregard dogs next door
barking from midnight till eleven
but, the ice maker dropping shards into the basket
startles me wide awake. This
is what happens when I’m not in love.
What I feel...
Complete silence in the full, morning subway car
as most, looking down, locked in, scroll, scroll,
stop, scroll, scroll, stop, two-thumb type, scroll,
stop, scroll, scroll, stop, scroll;
not unlike an arctic fox, fixated on a point in the snow,
digging frantically, stopping to...
A colorful mural climbed the wall of a building perched at the corner and I crossed toward its sunbathed warmth then stopped. Stretched across the pavement on his back, a young man wearing torn denim, a beaded necklace and...
I can feel my molecules.
My fingers clench and press on the opposite hand’s knuckles, wrenching, small strands of sinew click back and forth, my hands are aged and their skin loose, too soft, plentiful, my molecules feel as if they are...
Maggie takes me to the airport
in a tiny Uber
an EV so small I could embrace
Scott the driver
from the backseat
He stutters but tells
stories
unabashedly
for the duration of the trip
about his mom’s recent death
His former girlfriend and her akita wolf illegal cross...
i have been used
up, nothing more to say
i am too small
to be useful
i am below the
statistical likelihood
of ever making
a difference
i am tired
too, too tired
too insignificant
to speak any truth
that might be
heard over political
discourse, disrespect
dishonor, disillusionment
i am alone
i am unable
to save...
For the raw throats of souls in Hell,
I swallow waterfalls from the faucet
till I’m satisfied.
Daddy tells bedtime stories to warn me
of the silver fire writhing around the unfaithful,
about what’s awaiting me in death,
how the Rich Man, his mouth dry...
He lived in the top story of a very tall house on an even higher hill far above a little
village which appeared as dry and dusty as his own world was lush and green. He would
spend long hours looking out...
Don’t ask me why I thought this would work.
It seemed as plausible as any of the other “cures” I’ve tried since the diagnosis.
The Northern Lights. Aurora Borealis. Electrically charged solar storm particles dancing to the rhythm of Earth’s magnetic...
A dirty little demon is crawling up my pants leg
determined to gnaw off my genitals with its
sharp little demon teeth but I grab it by its hag
hair and slam its head against the corner of my
desk, then I fling...
the AI stream
so doppelgänger me
restructured my presence
in machine-like action
to exist in close
approximation
of aesthetic invisibility
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1. Furtive
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2. D.A.D. (Delusional and Demonic)
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3. Cyber-Poet With A Mind-Trigger: Proposes that Cyber-Poets (like himself) will present conditions and mechanisms that transform the practice of art...
Luke can’t wait any longer
for enlightenment
so he’s going
on a spiritual journey.
He doubts
it’s appropriate
to bring a flashlight
& extra batteries.
He found an orange robe
at Goodwill
with cigarette burns
in the sleeves
& he bought
sandalwood incense
at the last
head shop in town.
He ordered a wooden
begging bowl
from...
This apartment is noisy. Have there always been so many sirens, so many cars, so many bubbling lights? Where on earth is everybody going? I can’t sleep in the bedroom, my sister Mary and me we used to call...
My gladlings, you spinning blades to be, close brood
of a hot front porch: There is no you, no I, only Nest
and Queen; for it is Nest-making by Nest for Nest,
Queen-making by Queen for Queen. We are but wasps,
sleek machines...
I wait in a queue at the store to pay for my basket of groceries
and I wait for swallowed painkillers to ease my headache
I pour all my feelings into quietly waiting
my toes touching a stone-cold threshold
I am committed to...
Pencil, ink, watercolour, graphic ink pen on 3-ply 500 Series Bristol 100% cotton paper .. 77cm x 44cm
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So,
I’m not dead yet.
80th birthday came and went
with me listening to a lot of people
telling me I don’t look my age
and certainly don’t act it.
Someone even got me a T-shirt that says
Shenanigator. It’s an XL so I can keep
eating what’s...
If my mind truly is broke, at least I’m the only one
holding the pieces. That’s a rare claim around here,
owning something outright. My own people never
seen it for real, so all they can do now is walk around
the fact of me...
The Banana tree we planted
on Emma’s third birthday is slowly
shooting upwards.
I plan to shift to Pune
where people are a lot warmer.
The car requires less maintenance.
I leave a wet towel on the bed.
1-liter milk suffices.
I eat eggs.
There is peace,
I think...
There is a sound a wheat field makes
when a strong breeze blows through
and it's called rustling; but the one
I recall was more than a sound;
it was a world under that late
afternoon sun of that late
summer day of my early...
When I return home from a long weekend away
I find in the bathroom sink
my old nail clippings
forgotten in a rush to leave on a
backpack trip
the kind where you lose your toenail
if it’s not properly trimmed
I know from experience
hammering against...
Hoodie,
a white sky, I was looking for substance, got recognition.
if it's in the past - - then it's I was
if it's in the future - - then it's I will be
if it's now - - then it's I am
earlier I watched a...
When you live across from a cemetery,
you’re bound to see animals that aren’t there.
Last evening I saw a brown hare
that was actually an old tombstone.
And just now, I thought a lanky deer
was posing among the deceased,
but when I followed...
Back outside, the wind is starting
to pick up. I have that feeling
of acceleration, that quickening
that comes, and I might say is
required, when you have lifted
the lid off the cookie jar of life
by the simple action of doing
just one thing...
Abstract Acrylic 1
Acrylic on paper, 18" X 24"
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Abstract Acrylic 2
Acrylic on paper, 4" X 6"
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Abstract Acrylic 3
Acrylic on paper, 18" X 24"
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Acrylic Abstract 4
Acrylic on paper, 18" X 24"
**********
Women Warriors on the Battlefield. In pre-modern Japan, the Onna-musha were female warriors who were just as powerful and deadly as their male samurai counterparts. This warrior class came into existence around 200 CE.
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Onna-musha - 1
Screenprint, block transfer print,...
I'm pretty sure it is
I been around my impending death for awhile
it's very interesting
everyone has a blur around them
I figure it's their soul
it's a nice fuzz
each one emanates sun
cradles the moon
my blur is way high up in the air
with...
1.
A forgotten key
cannot mourn the loss of its lock
or openly lament its lack of purpose
any more than I can remember
the number on the old house
where I was murdered in a dream.
2.
A poem stashed in a file box
is unable to...
"Elwoody": 7" x 5.5" on light sketch paper. Media: Extra Black Pencil, with orange, red, brown, and blue watercolor wash.
swindlers run the world
morals are a farce
torture, rape, love nests
are politicians’ gamble
born truthful
they die liars
may the devil sing
Elwoody has come...
The first line, tapped out days ago
T-h-e(SPACEBAR)w-o-m-a-n(SPACEBAR)i-s(SPACEBAR)p-e-r-f-e-c-t-e-s
(BACKSPACE)-d
The woman is perfected
My purpose feels dire, not as slick and clack
and mint-green as she first described
through the near-perfect teeth and happy breath of her 27th birthday
Beside me, the finished poem
her fingers trace...
Sixty years and more since
I held the clover in my hand
in the field fronting our house,
looked close, saw the blue
piercing white, whispered:
“blue-blooded-bleeder”
and felt the charge
of equality to mystery,
loved the blubbering
rush of words repeated
like Helen at the pump
discovering ‘w-a-t-e-r’
then tossed the...
no one is doing anything
more than
petting shadows
the day will come
when everyone of us
will miss everyone of us
when the song ends
it's just dark out there
The backyard is humming with honey bees.
The photinia hedge is a mass of clustered,
tiny, white flowers. If you were here, I’d tease
you & say, “The word’s out about your knees
being the bee’s knees” & you’d have hiked
up your skirt...
The daylily stranded in dirt,
its morning flame doused by sunset;
the arctic tern, decades in midair
in search of love and accommodation;
a river, always ancient, always new,
moving and immovable at once;
this improbable earth,
twirling without a partner,
doing laps around a wandering star.
And...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hc7gCOYGTmQ
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Prendere Lucciole Per Lanterne (To Take Fireflies For Lanterns)
As midnight tolled its long count
our host Stefano tumbled down
into the oleander plants
around the border of the lawn.
Distant valley dogs were barking
as we pulled him from the fiori,
laughing and unspectacled.
We offered...
Abraham Lincoln, perhaps the country's greatest president, could be termed a martyr, and yet there's an old one liner bit of humor about his assassination:
"In spite of everything else, Mrs. Lincoln, how did you enjoy the play?"
It's easier to...
9:00 am flight arrives at an ungodly time 2 hours behind. jet lag. earth lag. got to my hotel room but the card doesn’t open the door. it’s not that I hate technology I just don’t have time to...
I’ll see a lifetime of us.
How you watch me
take so long to put my shoe on,
and don’t get bored,
and prefer me,
like you prefer all of yours.
And when I still chattered like a fizzy creek,
you listened,
and you want to know
about...
The breeze I ignored
up in the attic is a dust devil
dancing down the stairs
a swirl of intent heading
havoc to the kitchen.
I tell you, nothing is safe
not the cannisters of coffee
and rice, not the painting
you gave me of blue lobelia,
or...
Artist's Note: The mediums used in this series are pencil, ink and charcoal.
The technique of the first 12 is ink base, with some printed parts and then I added charcoal and pencil to finish, to add shades, textures, and...
jawin’ with the wind
I just said I love you to her
but was talkin’ to someone else
the wind knows that
blowin’ me apart with my own secrets
jawin’ with the wind
was there a wind outta Jesus’ tomb?
cause I sure could use a...
Dear Imaginary Daughter,
You will be a horrible mother. I will inform you when you’re thirteen, the ripe age for making babies, because you’re an impatient, impulsive, ego-centric drama queen that has yet to learn to hold your tongue like...
There’s peace in
a midnight walk
alone, on a remote beach
wave watching
the twinkling fractals
trying to put the moon
back together
until thinking interrupts
with a desire
to share the moment
with someone
who isn’t here.
I’m still trying
to make peace
with that.
I was only 5 but my life was over, and my world was about to end. We were moving house, and I knew that we would never be coming back to this house. On the morning of the move,...
Oil on Canvas, 44" X 32". Based on the artist's visit to Samurai Museum, Hiroshima, Japan.
It takes a while for me to notice the new prison bars on the windows and the locked external doors. Somewhere in the house the radio is playing a protest song. And from the couch a voice arises, full...
Newspaper picture of me and daughter a million years ago...
we bond over dead sisters
& other things we collect
from losses in our lives—
her bicycle,
my mother’s house,
some fishing lures someone said
were my grandfather’s.
there’s a ripeness that took
its sweet-ass time getting here,
some fucked up fruit salad
with bananas you have to add...
This is where the old road died,
on its knees and far from home,
under Massachusetts pines,
beneath a grief of teardrop cones.
It’s as if the road had travelled here
to just give up among the trees.
Disappointed in its career,
demoted to the sticks...
.
i imagined sails
high
fleshing through flowers
petals slicing the sky
like plucked fish scales
hair bows
and bobby pins
are all that remain
i don't know why you've been hiding
it's a bargain
being toted away
in small batches
used to caulk
scrapes in the earth
the bowl is dry again
but another...
You'd think I would walk all night
and never sleep, but I do. My
dreams are missed connections,
a race to catch up to the swing
of your teal blue coat two blocks
ahead. You'd think I would make
the most of these days when
questions...
My son Silas’s grief came as sleepwalking. It also came as nosebleeds. Fine one minute and the next screaming under a faucet of blood. He thought it meant he was dying like Daddy. Am I okay? Am I okay? He chanted,...
that arrives
somewhere
between breakfast
and death
sacred crocus
exploding through
the last snow of March
that one fabulous kiss
on a train
from Canada
she tasted like
red wine
romance
hair
scented
with rosemary
I cast my eyes
seaward
again
a longing
I can’t express
words
poor metaphors
for life
or death
the persistence
of tides
when my friend stayed on the high board until dark
(after which, for him, this story never ends)
afraid to dive, unable to jump. I climbed up
twice to check on him before going home
for the day, finding him increasingly
cold and weepy...
La Mort
Ink, ink brush, dip ink pen, watercolour, graphic ink pen, pencil on 500 Series Imperial Hot Press Watercolor 100% cotton paper .. 77cm x 44cm
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We, the children, left our long shadows of childhood behind like rain-faded chalk on the sidewalk. The cement became root-buckled and uneven as we aged into what we hoped would be our middle years.
For the first time in a...
little blue flowers
that remind me to be myself
Aunt Becky in the grass
in the dirt
the years of not seeing her
death before death
I remember her voice like singing
she could get a ladybug to fly
she could get a dog to zoom happily
and...
Abstract Expressionism | 21 × 29 Cm | On Paper | 2024
Material: Acrylic, Gouache
Hands at ten & two,
late Miles on Bluetooth,
I’m driving north, stopping
again & again
to bury roadkill,
a coyote, jackrabbits
three diamondbacks, even a
young red-tailed hawk.
I’m driving north, where
I once rode my old gelding
around the reservation,
visiting the hogans
of my friends. We’d
drink coffee &...
I saw Gloria Swanson drinking alone in the bar
of the Royal Hawaiian, 1927.
I saw white-gloved men bowing low
outside black limousine doors.
I was there when they dumped sand at Waikiki, a fake beach.
I am here today with the vain and...
When my thirty-year-old nephew told me he had, after a heart rending break up, begun to see some of the women he was meeting on a dating app, I experienced a mix of concern and relief. Also, I was...
I would like to discuss with you my identification with the cow leaning over a fence in this milk carton photo that Darigiold
doubtless wants you to think depicts a realistic dairy farm.
I carry a miniature Bessie and Bambi, two Guernsey...
Prayer
Courage dear heart.
Please have courage even when it hurts.
Please keep choosing to be soft
to be strong
to be still
surrender.
Trust in the beauty
that exists within each lesson.
Keep reaching to the deepest parts
love yourself more.
________________________________________________________________________
and God's teeth aren't so sharp
today
there's a fledgling mockingbird
jumping round, fumbling innocent
on the concrete porch
a big, fat
speaking spider
is trundling up the spokes
of Melissa's old bicycle
observing
intoning
warm wisdom
the soft cuhhhhh of a 737
ascending from Burbank airport
winks its wings
once
at me and the bird and...
There’s a girl—and I say girl—not a woman, but a girl—
who is at the gym. And she is a girl because she’s around
my age. If she was the one writing this, I would be a boy,
but I’m not even...
Look up, now and then
look up, long
like the miner
emerging
from a shift
underground.
The moon, the stars, the dark
the sky, the clouds, the sun
jet trails cross stitching
a blue fabric quilt.
Far, is a charming spell
a soothing embrace
by the expansive arms
of an unfathomable face.
Look...
Maybe
Thich Nhat Hanh
because his eyes are kind
and I think he’s been through shit
or
Krishnamurti—
he’s funny,
and a gentle man
even when he’s annoyed,
and he thinks
before he speaks and once
you get used to it
that kind of silence
is cool.
But not Osho;
the s’es
in his eyes...
hidden
treasure
wants
to be found
eureka
here i am
wanting
to be
found
eureka
now
the work
begins
digging
myself
out
from
under
this dream.
As kids we saw
hundreds of brown pelicans
on pilings
asleep like students
at a lecture.
Wading through Crystal Springs,
we found fossils:
shark’s teeth,
the stapes of prehistoric horses,
leg bones of birds.
We would often row out
to the middle of a lake,
slip over the boat
--and swim,...
a minor goal
can be accomplished
in the throes
of molasses depression.
the flour & the lard
can throw themselves
into a mixing bowl.
buttermilk can blend itself
into the soft pillow
on the counter
awaiting the pressure of
diamond-creased hands.
the last splinters of hickory
can toss themselves into
the wood stove...
Screenprint and Ink - 1 - Self Portrait - 1
Acetone photographic transfer screenprint, black ink, brush, graphic ink pen, white ink, System 3 Screenprinting acrylic ink, Permaset Aqua Supercover Fabric Printing Ink, Acetone wash on Cream colour Somerset Textured...
I don't know if syllables of rain
are stressed or unstressed,
if the winds communicate
in regional dialects,
if there are prophecies
in the sign language of oaks.
But I'd rather wonder
than disavow miracles.
I need mysteries to live for,
faith to make me afraid,
a few masquerading...
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*******
Artist's Note: I've been working on using luminosity for depth as opposed to shading (i.e., darker-lighter). Now I'm finding that a mix between the two (as in the 3rd and 6th piece from the top) provides some interesting interplay.
Journal, today was a long day. I woke up before four in the morning, which, even by spiritual-practice standards, is not normal. My neck was again getting stiffer, a sign of Parkinson's Disease, the brain going on strike. Anyway,...
I went nuts in 2017. Had some kinda bullshit insurance with bold lettering on the card that read Includes Dental! It had a picture of a goofy toothy glistening smiley face below the lettering. Whoopdee do! I had no plans...
She catches him up and tells him how much
they all miss that laconic delivery,
enthusing about the open mic
at the Abbey Café of a Thursday.
He remembers clambering up on stage
too early, too late, the high coming from
how loud the crowd...
Yeah, "needless" is better.
He will be a man. His name will be Needless Farmer.
Needless Farmer survived rot he sanctified every desire he exclaimed price, migration, and glow
he talked to other passengers about this shiny attractive salt prison we all wear
he got to...
Kellogg’s CEO proudly proclaims
his product is trending up
as daylong sustenance for core
demographic—The Poors.
Magnanimous from Boca Raton
mansion, he explains the win-win.
Shareholders can maintain luxury
yachts, and a poor family of four
can ration a 5-dollar, 311-gram box
of glucose-rich grain to survive
an entire...
In a graveyard, facing a river
a break in the trees separates ryegrass from rail yard
where you can wait beside wild-grown strawberries
for the train to pass.
Fifty years ago you wouldn't wait--boxcars served steel mill
coal and raw iron, extracted putrid slag,
buried...
always arrived without warning
dark lunking things
that prowl the edges
of my world
my father always
told me about his bear
a chubby brown beast
that rambled through
trash cans
berry patches
it was summer
in Yellowstone
he was only 17
working as a
look out
at a remote tower
on a moonlit night
he...
In Guangdon Province a young father rises early
for work at Doubleeagle Industry Limited, where
he operates the plastic-injection molding machine.
It is rote, if loud and dangerous work, and he passes
the time thinking of his wife and daughter in Wukan,
how the...
These old streets drive through me;
pieces of sky look like raindrops,
so no one panics when they land.
I think of sackcloth and ashes,
remember all the spent people
who dropped away as rocket stages
or spilled into galaxies like cinnamon,
and I realize too...
Dead man came softly to knock on her door.
He said Don't forget how you knew me before.
Dead man sat down to rest in the hall,
He looked at her paintings hung up on the wall.
He said that the best was the...
The winter folds, sagging like old skin. It dissolves
beneath the rain
tooth-gray sky pulled past tearing,
hole-pocked,
spilling ashy light into the veins
of back alleys. Drenched monochrome,
my boots patterned black-white in static
gathered from salt-flat roads,
pressured by dotted lines and
cold-swelled streetlights.
If there was...
What pointless advice came your way today, Bret and Li?
I hope you did not fail to grasp that:
“What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. “
( Yo, chemo! )
“Remember to breathe. “
( Because lungs need to be told.)
Here’s something no one will...
Every five years,
the Spirit Animal Society
mandates its members
rigorously interrogate
their own personal growth,
selecting a new spirit animal
if appropriate. My new one
is the Koala, not because it’s
cute & cuddly, which it is
& I’m not, but because it
sleeps 23 hours a day,...
At 15 I would stare
at the spaces between stars
--much as I did when I was younger,
gazing at a Magic 8 ball
waiting for a message,
an answer to an urgent question,
to flutter up out of its darkness.
Will...
This isn’t going to work you know
You’re short and that dog
But I go to your house
Don’t sit so close
You’re pale and this furniture
But I go up to your room
Don’t touch me
You're annoying, the bed is small
But I spend the...
when she came home crying
I knew you were deadafterwards at the market
I would pick
up pot roasts
chickens
a bag of onionstry to judge
what 4 pounds 9 ounces
felt like
I closed my eyes
constructing your fingers
from cabbage
leaves opening slowly
first one leaf
then another
I stared for...
*you wanna eat
*you like sunsets a lot
*your mom said she’d buy your book
* you like to read
* you know you can write a good poem you just haven’t done it
*you slept with your creative writing teacher because you went to...
Yellow-Songs, is a series of 4x4 inch paintings dressed in black wooden frames, using watercolor on paper. The painted circle is employed throughout, acting as a bright container for ideas and symbols.
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metalhead IV
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goddess bone
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Space XI
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Heart IX
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Insectual III
*****
Stick your hands in the memory lake,
feel around until you touch something
gliding past, feel for it again, wait until
you have some kind of a grip then start
pulling—some pieces pull straight out,
close to arriving fully formed, others
need a huge amount...
The day I learned of my student’s suicide, I walked five
miles, the first three to remember him, the last two to feel
his pain coursing from ankles to knees then escaping the
body like a soul finally settled in the crook...
The rain came down all day, great bathtubs full for hours, and that whole bleak
day, I did not get dressed until the sky turned dark and I heard the faint whistle
of the Coastal Starlight Express to California;
it sent a...
Both of us had taken our parent’s cars for joyrides a handful of times before we were old enough to drive. We helped each other to roll our “rides” down the driveways into the street late at night while...
Custom's a deep pond
flat
reflective surface
but deep
in dark, wet infinity
purpose sits a silty bed.
To wash a loved one's limbs
bereft of life's glow
as January's cold ashes
settle into bones
leaves those respecting ritual
no doubts:
lungs will never more inflate
eyes open to this world
nor gentled...
The Opening
Up here, just above the peak,
time percolates, bursting forth
the seconds and minutes fresh
as beads of dew on velvet moss.
The Middle
Notwithstanding all clichés of love,
we persevered till we came through
on the other side; the one
most lovers fear, where hush...
1. A Good Hiding
Long curved drive from main gate like a rich house.
Six Security guards sit in an old
building, play cards, warm up, ogle Penthouse.
Its door reached as slurrytides mudslosh cold
into wellies. Coal packed trucks push their vast
tyres twice...
..for the holding of doors,
for the genial face
on the other side of a window,
for the waitress
with a smoker's voice
who calls everyone
doll and sweetie.
Thank you
for iambic verses
and minor seventh chords
and flecks of robin egg blue.
Thank you
for the rescuing of days,
for perfect landings
and...
Three avocados rooting in the window
and a Meyer lemon cake on the sideboard
are yesterday's lessons of contrition.
I tell whoever will listen, I'm done with
these habits of temperance, my gold silk
robe and Medusa hair mocking its own
tidy garden of snakes....
I wonder sometimes
what became
of my writing friends
from college life,
like the guy who
retyped Nick Adam stories
and kept a folded picture
of Hemingway
in his wallet,
saying it inspired him
to write about
hunting and fishing
and an old girlfriend
who had an abortion.
I wonder, too,
what became
of the...
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Triptych original size: 40"X32". Media: newsprint from 1925 Chicago Tribune of WWI photos, oil on panel, photos, pastel, ink. Photo of boy is of the artist at about age 10.
I turned twenty
in the attic
of a Buddhist
temple
Enraged
by my inability
to move
the hands
Of a cold
watch face
by faith
alone.
*
While meditating
I hope I do not
have a visulation
that demands
I get up to get
my notebook
and write it down.
I get up to get
my notebook
and write this down.
*
Working...
I locked the back door
then opened a window,
the air thick with
dry cleaning solvent
and steam.
Rod had just left,
the pebbles spitting
beneath his tires
as he spun away
in his corvette.
I switched the radio
to Top 40,
then took my seat
at the counter,
staring out the window,
waiting...
EXPLORE
The curve of tenderness
In the curve of her neck, there’s longing for the man.
In her closed throat, fear.
Through sheer will
she freezes the waiter’s sleeve mid-air
as he presents...
