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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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
________________________________________________
when you die
tell the bees
they will want
to know
to turn you in
the right direction
toward the flowers
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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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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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...
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,...
A colorful mural climbed the wall of a building perched at the corner and I crossed toward its sunbathed warmth then stopped. Stretched across...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
the AI stream
so doppelgänger me
restructured my presence
in machine-like action
to exist in close
approximation
of aesthetic invisibility
________________________________________________________________________
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...
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...
This apartment is noisy. Have there always been so many sirens, so many cars, so many bubbling lights? Where on earth is everybody going?...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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 -...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
"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...
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...
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...
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 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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
I was only 5 but my life was over, and my world was about to end. We were moving house, and I knew that...
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...
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...
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...
.
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...
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...
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....
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...
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...
La Mort
Ink, ink brush, dip ink pen, watercolour, graphic ink pen, pencil on 500 Series Imperial Hot Press Watercolor 100% cotton paper .. 77cm...
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...
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...
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,...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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....
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...
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...
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...
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...
Screenprint and Ink - 1 - Self Portrait - 1
Acetone photographic transfer screenprint, black ink, brush, graphic ink pen, white ink, System 3 Screenprinting...
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...
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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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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....
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...
At 15 I would stare
at the spaces between stars
--much as I did when I was younger,
gazing at a Magic 8...
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...
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...
*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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
..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...
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...
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...
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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...
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...
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...
She is slowing now, I observe
from my corner. She glides through
the morning room tending her plants
with the long-spouted watering can.
A whisper,
'Een beetje droog, hmmm -...
Pricked
by the image of winking killers with
guns held aloft, I open
to a fiercer version of myself:
I am storm winds, I am plague, war,
and famine,...
of what first day
of what first hour
a frigid dawn
with northern winds
ice blue sky
how one day slips
into the next
I have no knowledge
time
escaped me long ago
I...
Where is peace on earth? you ask
and I say it is present
the way silence is present
beneath the din of everything;
it arrives without fanfare
like snow that...
There’s a pencil scratch across the sky,
a jagged mark from a passing plane,
and a placid river where I like to think
of the flecks that...
Broken Sky
This is the old torpedo testing station just outside Arrochar on Loch Long, Scotland. Subject to rapid dereliction after the fire and too...
“ a groundless sadness called forth in a person’s heart by a pastoral landscape.”
- Haruki Murakami, Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage
December holidays...
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...
in the midst of the steel and mortar of downtown Cleveland
is a small park-like section, an old cemetery actually
sitting right in the middle of...
I was seventeen when I read Alan Watts’ The Way of Zen
a couple pages at a time, putting down the book to observe
sunset drape itself...
Exterior of Boathouse
Photographer's note: I visited years ago. His writing hut is just above on a cliff overhanging the boathouse. There is a narrow track...
While stretching my neck,
I notice water dripping from the ceiling
And a puddle on the floor
Beside the rowing machine.
It trembles with each added droplet
As if...
Mixed media: oil, oil stick, paper, collage. On masonite panel. 15.4" X 26.6".
What theatre-mask to wear
for the pigeon Dying,
guttered in tarnished aluminum,
a crumpled pile of fly-ash and clean smoke
half-hidden by wrought-iron guardrails;
What frenzied mummery performed
to steady...
Artist's Note: I decided to show some of the progression in the work and ideas I create, starting with some ink and paint sketch...
Photographer's Note: I visited the Ottawa Museum of Civilization in Canada (now Museum of History) a couple of times. I was able to capture...
our words have never
meant less
scraped together,
they barely mark this page
in the shadow of
her death.
we watched your penultimate breath
and thought you were
gone
weakly,
you filled your lungs
for...
I folded you into a blue paper
crane and flew your herald
from my turret of stars.
I gathered you in tangled
yarn, wove an indictment
that snared us...
used to carry a tote, filled with dead
butterflies in each hand
his fingers, pinned against the handles
and his arms, numb
branches of cedar, glued to his...
Someone taps lightly
on my door every week
or so, waits while I wait
then finally goes away.
Is it the old neighbor
the crazy neighbor
the kind neighbor
a stranger?! I've
become adept...
Because I, like Dedalus, cannot pray to my mother’s liking
and North Sea fog is this poet’s filter. Since my mind seems
predisposed to the efficient...
Oil on canvas. 30X40 cm.
I flung out of the loose cottage and stood on the ragged path the door beating shut behind me. There was a birch forest...
I fell asleep in church
with sweet butterscotch
under my tongue,
head resting
on Jesus.
The preacher, a hyperopic
guy wearing spectacles
to read, speaks
toward the future.
My wife never fails
to remind...
Author's note: Lochbuie on the Isle of Mull is off the main road and a good way down a narrow single track of the...
My opponent will win unless
you send money.
My opponent has more money.
Please send money.
We can’t win without your money.
Please send money.
It costs money to save...
The cemetery was the place
to read on weekend mornings
by the reedy little lake,
and afterwards clean off some graves
in back corners, you know those—
stones knocked...
Call me Worm Eye; Paschal Eye, Lenten eye, Crow eye, Crust eye, Sugar eye, Sap eye. All
these names I am, full in a daylight...
The old oak tree was felled
because, she said,
it didn’t fit the yard
anymore.
It blocked the view from the window
and from the street.
Too much shade killed...
Honey bee on a manuka flower, and unidentified wasp, possibly Family Chalcididae. Photograph taken in New Zealand with a Nikon D500 camera and a...
I discovered a dark cloud
in my closet. I tried it on.
It was soft & moist on my skin.
I wore it to church. It’s a...
Parents, hear, whatever may come, you,
you made life. If that
is not your reason to drop down
on your kitchen floor; to rubble turned or
marble made,...
Procession
Pencil, ink, ink brush and dip pen, graphic ink pen, watercolour on Strathmore Bristol 500 Series semi-smooth 100% cotton paper - 52cm x 30cm
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Harbour and Creels, Abandoned, South Harris
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Callanish Standing Stones 1, Lewis
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Callanish Standing Stones 2, Lewis
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Fisherman's Bothy 1, Lewis
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Fisherman's Bothy 2, Lewis
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there is a nice long beach and lovely views out to sea
the sea that is rising
a neon green frog
grows on my keyboard
imagine if he asks me
do I need a lift to the fair?
shall I go exposed
or displayed?
or put a...
16" X 30". Collage of oil paint, stencil, grease pencil, old newsprint, and photo copies of old photos applied to a masonite panel over...
Smaller infinities hide in larger ones;
they lurk between whole numbers,
taunt us with infinite half distances
and prospects of non-arrival.
Words have only so many positions,
but poets,...
Got a little blue
when the band
started playing
easy tunes
remember Ciarán
when we were
young, wasting
away energies
happy days
come, gone
tonight
there's a meeting in the conference room
and the ferry trawls...
I am Baba Yaga, a hag, a toothless blend of wrong and right.
I fear only the knights known as Morning Evening and Night.
I live...
I'm torn
between two poets:
one yearns for the scent of bread
and the other longs for soup;
the bomb crater
is a fireless hearth
and the clay bowl
is broken...
I never knew
what to say
until the next spring
when my child
couldn’t wait to tell me
the spot we buried
his favorite fish
was full of flowers.
I was here on the cliff at glan-y-mor, his reverie.
Below, the boathouse, washed a pastel shade
of lemon doused by sea mists of the Afan...
Silence
My heartbeat outpaces the wall clock,
the coffee maker exhales,
old rain drips in the downspout,
the dog wags her tail in her sleep,
my right ear rings...
out the cafeteria window of this skyscraper
on the edge of lower Manhattan,
I can see the waters below, waves
and foams serpentine behind ships and boats.
The...
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sometimes you know
i have no clue as to what
is occurring
here
or over there
find it challenging
and disappear
1.
Afterwards, we asked the mystery
and were told nothing but starlight.
It spoke to the hinge of small bones
where memory reverses, the place
we must find you...
Clouds so low they move
against themselves in parallax,
putty gray on an icy blue.
The boat moves too
on top of inky waves
bouncing in the sprays
that should...
The Tannhäuser Gate - 1
Pencil, black and coloured ink, watercolour, graphic ink pen on cartridge drawing paper - 48cm x 27cm
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The Tannhäuser Gate -...
Editor’s Note: Photographs of bronze sculptures by world-renowned Colombian artist, Fernando Botero (1923-2023), in a park where twenty-three of his sculptures are displayed in...
Summer itself got into the fire last night we all felt the gasp.
Shell looked at me and made a sort of explosion face before...
1.
The bullets of your absence
left holes in the flesh of the sky.
2.
I cannot enjoy the status of grief -
it is too remarkable, open-ended,
growing in...
Call 911 she said
her chest felt like a siren
blare, I’m scared, we’re there
atop the landing.
She’s climbed the stairs
she couldn’t wait for me to come
to...
O wild cat,
flat on your back with
your head on my
arm, old-man
belly exposed and
legs occasionally
twitching in their
natural dreams,
your serious claws
knead the breast of
instinctive sky
past my...
My dog & I set out
for a mountain lake
ringed by pine trees.
There were ducks
preening in the water.
Some of them quacked.
They sounded happy.
My dog lapped...
Acrylic on canvas; 24" X 36"
One day my body will collapse without reminiscence,
all solicitations at an end
& my tourist credentials confirmed
in this life, I have existed as coal
in the...
We move slow and there are grapes
drying in the sun, sweet
on the front of everything.
We fumble keychains of where we are,
in the shop and
there's...
Today, as I walked from the kitchen,
a wave of sadness blindsided me;
I asked if it would kindly wait
and steal my composure a bit later
when...
1.
Here is the novelty of cooler air,
at once fostered and ruined by rain.
2.
I am the inside of a garment
being tested for colorfastness;
my hands are...
there’s a presence in the wind-blown sand
hovering in the rippling cool of winter
stacked stones of an old graveyard
unrecognizable but for the crosses
i remember sisters...
tell us things, take us without consent. there are no records
(Editor's note: Composite photography using Adobe software and Nikon camera)
the sun was out
looking
like the butter
on my French toast
autumn
reminds me
creation
comes home
that death
is not a separation
life is
Remember when
I tucked you into
an old sock up to
your chin and then
washed you in the
kitchen sink after
I had found you in
the street infested
with fleas,...
My wristwatch checks me for the time,
my verse expects a metered rhyme;
my wallet hits me up for loans,
my secrets beg to be unknown;
my Chevy...
If a tree falls
the question goes
and no one is around to hear it
does it make a sound
but no one is never not around
the true...
The musty shed with the slanted roof collects rot like the Blair Witch collects teeth. Inside it there are two freezers, one that buzzes,...
(I)
Ten minutes into the shower, I fail to recall
if I have applied a body wash & rinsed—
I just check the armpit
of my non-dominant hand.
(II)
After...
He was at the breakfast table,
Sunlight angled through the window,
And I said, “I haven’t seen you
In so long. Where have you been?”
He said sunlight...
Every so often – such a vague beginning I know but stick with me – every so often Marty calls me on the telephone,...
Jack was tired of endless approximations; he couldn’t quite pin down the things that seemed important —god, explanations, love, even life itself. Nothing was...
I saw a rusty white truck go by
he had branches in the bed
and I wished I was riding with him
I’ll call him Eric
and he...
I entered your bedroom that Sunday morning
when no one was looking, saw my mother
in the middle of the floor with you on her,
winking at...
All day we laboured under the threat of rain: faced hedges
with a slasher, cut weeds with a scythe, mended gaps in fences,
shovelled out of...
In the sleeper class from Pune to Aurangabad I sat across from a man. Next to him, on his bag, a book with ducks...
Simple lines create ruses that what is complex
can be understood. An artist’s detail of heads and legs
are but the medium for admiring curved lines...
she’s too exhausted for
a poet
had gotten paid
good
by a muscleman
in a blues band
to be
his hanger on
at the strip club
and now that he’s gone
she’s depleted
in 8...
August 31, 2023
To:
Ms. Theresa Cotter
Eldercare at Mayfield Village, Inc.
290 North Commons Blvd
Mayfield Village OH 44143
Dear Ms. Cotter:
I hope you don’t mind me writing to...
I take books from shelves, and set out
my store of usually useful things:
pens and brushes, knives, and keys
that I put to work, to continue
the...
I woke before sunrise, or birds
woke me, or perhaps the dog—
I walked her while still mildly
asleep, brain fog-shrouded—
then I returned to bed, and dreamt
of...
born sick
raised to get well
repenting a sin
never committed
admission
to hobnob
with the holy wrathful
in eternal happiness
First, the old-fashioned dial tone,
zenith of nothingness.
Who invented that?
The almost-silent radio
after Country Carl’s
sign-off prayer,
Blues singer fading to needle hiss
as a Victrola winds down
in an...
By mid-day,
I’d taken too many calls,
typed too many letters,
and dropped too many memos
on the desks of VPs
who called me 'hon.'
I told my boss Gary
I...
One of my favourite sights in early autumn is to see the fields of goldenrods against the green foliage and the blue of the...
I feel like reading somebody else’s book today maybe even on their couch or if they have a boat my presence on the water I...
i had an emotion today
but don’t know its name
there was a blackbird on the lawn
10 feet away head cocked
eyeing or listening
i watched
then she bent...
Uncle John was a bullshitter through and through. People always came up to me and said, astonished, things like I didn’t know your uncle was...
The holy man looks to the stars,
tells time by the weight of the sky
on his shoulders.
He says that the end is new seed,
each day...
It’s ridiculous to think
we don’t disappoint
someone every moment
of every day.
If father admits
never having son’s back,
it’s his revelation to ponder.
No thing for a son to...
We will always have
pariahs and darlings,
wars and rumors of wars,
plenty of old hatchets to exhume
and soft centers to exploit.
I'd rather contemplate
the spaces between raindrops,
marvel...
Expressionism | 13 × 20 Cm | On Paper | 2023
Material: Acrylic, White Gesso, Gouache
EXPLORE
Love That Summer Rain
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...
