Poem#109

A stray black dog,  cast out into the west Texas night,

approached me sidelong, feigning a sniff of the ground as I stood with a scotch and topo chico on an agate sidewalk, full of thanksgiving and wondering why we carry on when logic says we should lay down and let the world till us under.

I pet her or his (gender a blur of fur wrapped in shadow),  back, stroked briefly the head, feeling a mat of thorny grass entrenched in my ronin freind’s unwashed coat, in place of a collar and tag.

We exchanged this moment, passed something between us if not just this poem, then perhaps a brief moment of solidarity in a world trying to run us over. 

Poem #108

I found a cat in your parachute,
a bridge ruin Jehovah standing electric
Against a concrete wall,
Street journaling the American cancer.

Inch thick skin is the best.

Jedi master bedroom with a Sociopath landlord, better than me in your square foot garden,
dead in a Westside Story switchblade rumble,
travesty deed signed by a cruel notary public.

Crocheted by hand, a shroud of my own,
forged over a long day at the Artist mill,
a shill to will never made real, buried in the
Utility bills and the gunslinger cigarette,
Gunning for half formed thoughts.

I recall that there were few tickets left for
The train ride back to the American dream,
Most of us having awakened, midstream,
Gleaned the most recent version is a scheme
Falling apart at the seams, reeking of fear,
Barkeep two more motherfucking beers.

Inch thick skin should be just fine,
But Kevlar gets cheaper by the hour.
Jehovah Kenobi, you’re my only hope.

Quarterly Projections

I added a new section for various photo projects. The first series added is Quarterly Projections, a project made in collaboration with Chris Adams. We held an exhibition of these photos in 2016.

Recently found poems 

When I was writing poetry all the time it was a constant viewfinder on the world. I often couldn’t walk through the landscape without some bit of reality catching my attention by beauty or irony or brutality or humanness. Camera phones helped me by allocating some of those interactions to visual poems. Many of my video works are these moving poems, and many photos tend to be one stanza works about an encounter out here in reality. Here are three I found recently.

Poem #86

We haven’t spoken in a while,
i was away, or you were away, or we
had stopped talking over a disagreement…?

i’ve seen things since last we spoke.
remember how we used to tell each other everything?

my father died. since last we met.
pancreatic cancer, like patrick swayze.
but dad was no patrick swayze.
he was more like bogart, had he lived too long.

it was not heroic. his death i mean.
it was bed ridden death, long death, medical.
had you been there we could have talked about
the small rebel flag that had blown loose
from his porch, sitting in the grass, in a windy rain.

we would have talked about how he still hated
that i was an atheist, unable to relent
to his jesusgodcreator who would have him suffer
to enter a disneyland of the mind.
a jesusgocreator whom i find empty,
replaced by quantum mechanics and poetry and art,
on my own terms. a reality in place of daydream.

i tell you now that i have written to him
on his facebook account these past 3 months.
i told him things i will not share here with you,
i regret this omission, truly, but we have been estranged.
i think of his account being cancelled any moment,
and that idiot connection i have being broken, a final death.
the internet cares nothing about humanity or life.
its about immediacy. fame. connections but no substance.

it was all very medical. like an injury. a final injury.
i hope we can speak of better things soon,
don’t give up on me. i still see some beauty.
i’ll bring you some, next time we talk.

Studies or perhaps end products….?

I recently remembered an old technique for generating compositions that involves making collages and combing them for scenes using a 2 inch or so viewfinder. I loved doing this many years ago and it still seems valid. Here are a couple examples that I may turn into some woodcuts or etchings or…..something.

Aluminum Etchings

The thing I have loved about aluminum as a matrix for etching is the ease of attaining a beautiful aquatint without extra steps. The metal erodes in interesting ways that can become chaotic if not monitored, but when the salt and copper sulfate mix is carefully regulated, the results can be amazing. These are some prints I created a while ago using sugar lift, chine-collé, and oil based marker resist.