from the outside

he watches himself from outside of his skin. he stares intently, thinking there is a light in there somewhere. it just must be hidden.

he sidesteps away from the shadow of the trees looming behind him. the trees of life he almost expects to abandon – the way he feels. this feeling inside of his chest. it's what happens when you constrict time and space by the force of emotions. reality is distorted in the same way that large bodies in this universe distorts space. how does he deal with this? how does he deal when he himself is the cause of the distortion? did einstein think of this? what if he called stephen hawking now? what would he say?

it's happening again; the thoughts. he remembers that he is supposed to breathe. three slow deep breaths and he remembers he is sitting on a cushion on the floor of this small room. with three breaths as if each were a brushstroke, he lets the cascade of thoughts splash over him and realizes they are just thoughts.

Spleen

The beautiful morning and its pale blue sky
feels to him, like a ruptured spleen.
His mood far from the sky and its crisp air.

It's the color of blood escaping the liver;
a crimson turned dark and burnt like umber
awash in some demonic purplish gel.

There is a space around his corpuscles
that shimmers like Antartic borealis.
It's a kind of dangerous beauty that lures

the inattentives to a downward fountain;
his own personal Scylla and Charybdis.
In the kingdom of animals, bright hues

are oft warnings of malacious company
but inattentives are like moths to a flame.
Hot or cold, real or fake, moths don't care.

(June 12, 2007)

Americus Rain

Moments of the South come to me
like soft rain falling on leaves.

Curtains of rhapsodies and
a choir of moaning droplets

Hiding sharpened points beneath;
an veritable arboreal punji array.

(June 7, 2007)

being productive

it feels like the first day i've been productive in over a week.

it's been longer since i've painted.

it was due time...

glaze and reflection

it is like a glaze; the way the fog comes in at speed unlike the breath from your lungs. air moves faster than your tissues know how to handle. temperatures seem hot and cold in interstial flashes; like dawn and dusk happening in sequential cycles but at the speed of an antique strobe. it is not the flash that gets you. it is the burnt piece of plastic and strands that look so beautiful after the light that leaves you wanting to say that it should not be over like that...not like a cheap flash.

it's never over like that. it's just you find it hard to believe that it is that way. it is hard for you to believe in a string of events, a string of anything larger than your senses can tell you. it is the source of our passion. it is the source of our love and hatred. it is the source of the entire spectrum of our emotions. we are lords to entities within ourselves that are and have always been larger than we can control. and that is the allure.

Limbs or crooked lines

Collision

Thinness or is it shallowness?
Limbs or crooked lines
against a thick flat grey;
a ceiling that reflects
as much as it shelters.

Branch or forearm?
Appendages
that have purpose –
how do such organs compare
with the spongy grey

that thinks or the red
pulsing lump that feels?
There are so many
extremities like a thousand
souls reaching out, each looking

for a new flavored Nirvana.
And they are all related to
two particles crashing
into one another in the vast
traffic jam of this universe.

(May 12, 2007)

To see further

a found poem (on blackbird.vcu.edu)

by PAULA CISEWSKI

Telescope Psalm

Am I afraid to be forgiven?
I’d have to wear nicer suits.

By the time everything is fair I will
have devised a system to send word

via the birds on my roof. But I am
of two minds about most subjects

and, in turns, one mind must elbow the other
who is snoring. That’s why I thought I enjoyed

talking too much tonight at the brewpub
until the silence of the long walk home

made a better argument, better
company. The sky’s library of stars and dust,

whatever is possible remaining possible
even as it’s gazed at through the private

telescopes of an entire hemisphere.
It’s now. It’s not forever. And this

forever shall be true. To see further,
those without telescopes sometimes

cup their hands around their eyes.

believe it or not

"Believe it or not, I can actually draw."
– Jean Michel Basquiat

bonjour à jeudi

thursday morning in vista, looking northwest. the fog comes like liquid, knowing that the warming sun on the other side of the ridge will soon melt it into vapors ascending into the distant blue of earth's ceiling.

twin tailed gazers

lola and bo bo at the window this afternoon.

wish i had a video cam to capture the synchronized flicking of their tails...

if only

lola on the window sill in the afternoon.

all our moments could be this serene...

endless seeds

drifting yet stationary
flimsy stalks dream of movement
as endless seeds are sown
on the flight of sister wind

april 2007

23

yay!!!

she tucks me in and wakes me up

Because she is the last to stay up and wait for me to go to sleep, Lola is also the first to see me awake. Well, she is the first one to wake me with a purr and a headbutt at before 5 in the morning...long before the sun hints at grey or violet on the horizon. I don't fight it or try to go back to sleep. Sleep will return or not when it does, or not. Meanwhile, these quiet predawn moments are precious to me. They are as precious as sleep or perhaps even more so because it is not often that I don't mind being up so early. It is not often that I'm fightin to go back to sleep.

So I watch the #9 cool grey horizon seep through the early morning mist and filter past the venetian blinds accompanied by a thousand waking songbirds chattering this Spring morning's gossip...

It's a cloud, it's a broken boat

it was a rather dramatic sky in the late afternoon and at sunset today so i thought of this tune:

Drastic Measures

by Sarah Slean

I should go to drastic measures
Steal enormous works of art
Write a piece for eighteen violins
It's no march
But it's a start

Rub their eyes and wake, distracted
Frantically they fill their days
Please say I will never be like that
Safe
Politely dazed
Politely cra-azy

Don't you want my love?
It's a cloud, it's a broken boat
But it might make you laugh a bit
Easier
I'm like trees in the midnight parks
Oozing danger, igniting sparks
We've been left by the viaducts
With the last flame of the universe

I never held a truer notion
Then when my dear I held your hand
May your shadow always follow you
Through
Our get-away plan
Out master pla-an

Don't you want my love?
It's a cloud, it's a broken boat
But it might make you laugh a bit
Easier
I'm like the trees and the midnight parks
Oozing danger, igniting sparks
We've been left by the viaducts
With the last flame of the universe

Oh-oh-oh-oh-oh
Oh-oh-oh-oh-oh
Oh-oh-oh-oh-oh
Oh-oh-oh

Cra-azy
Don't you want my love?
It's a cloud, it's a broken boat
But it might make you laugh a bit
Easier
I'm like the trees in the midnight parks
Oozing danger, igniting sparks
We've been left by the viaducts
With the last flame of the universe

Oh, don't you want my love?
It's a cloud, it's a broken boat
But it might make you laugh a bit
Easier
I'm like the trees in the midnight parks
Throwing tantrums, igniting sparks
We've been left by the viaducts
With the last flame of the universe

is this clear?

out shopping with brian for ingredients to make chili. we'd been at this mercado several times but i had not noticed this sign before so of course i blocked the doorway and snapped a photo. i was hoping to at least get a dirty look from the proprietor but nothing, not even a glance. maybe i'll read a magazine next time though it's not like i am in the market for a car... :p

technorati tags:photo, random, funny

morning light

something that explains the morning sun to me the way this morning arrived...


Distance as the Story of Plenty
by Erin Lambert


If the landscape has a pattern then it begins with your wrist,

between the radius and the ulna where it finds the will

to consider the oak and the wheel before inhabiting your pulse,

the heavy signature of a river, or hollow stubs of cornstalks

left to winter. If the mountain wanted to write you

of the many cries concealed within its famed anatomy,

or the bold and plentiful vision inherent to trees, perhaps

how even light finds its valleys come morning, it would have to

begin by conceding that it still cannot comprehend

how the crow is in everything, the caw so essential to the air,

though it would know the decisive knife strokes imbedded

in the flight, and how it was first conceived from the violet

of the evening, then cradled by the cold’s incalculable distance.

Saturday morning mess

I woke up to this mess on my desk. It looked good in the filtered rainy light though. I stared at the objects a bit and each one of them were telling me their stories. They reminded me of where and when they had come into my possession and by whom and why. They associated me with what was going on with me at the time of their acquisition. Even if I were not to keep a journal, little and large things around me always remind me of my own history in real time. They constantly give me points of references to where I am mentally and emotionally. Sometimes I come across something I've not seen for a while and either a smile will come to my face or the tears will flow...

on my desk. each item has a story. together, they could probably tell a novella's worth if i elaborated...

left to right, top to bottom: bottle of advil (essential); old but reliable iPod given to me as a gift from a very good friend; ink bottle (private reserve tangerine dream); edge of another ink bottle (lamy red); grandfather's old watch; dozier custom knife i bought right before a fly fishing/outdoor trip with mom back in 2000; aluminum fountain pen from japan given to me by an old friend after he went there on business; pelican feather quill pen i picked up on the beach on a camping trip with friends to the sonoma coast, ca in summer of 2006; insert from my most recently acquired moleskine; razor used to cut quills; red recife crystal fountain pen i bought as a present to myself in 2001; usb cable to scanner; top of orange juice can with screws from my old ibook that i just dismantled to take out the hard drive–the logic board died; buffalo horn money clip bought in vietnam during work trip in summer of 2005 with ican (ican2.org); xikar cigar cutter i bought on chestnut street in san francisco in 2002; cell phone headset; keys; burts bee lip gloss; button from a pair of khakis that need to be sewn back on.

This photo reminded me of a poem I'd written four years ago.

song birds

morning came to me in the chirpings of little feathery things.

in california, the birds are kind enough to wait til 6am or so. in south georgia there were birds that started at 4am, i love birds but then, i would have liked a Bellini shotgun then. but no point. i only kill what i would eat. no point in songbirds.

they say it's spring but there is for the most part nothing else

lit horizon

this evening near the time of sunset, i looked out at the view beyond the windows and saw an expanse of ocean lit up by a sunburst. though i knew the distance was at least 15 or more miles away, the horizon seemed momentarily close to me. it felt as if everything seemed tangible for a slice of time. it was fleeting but it was a good feeling.