art – subtext

Dad at Work Repairing Antique Furniture

There was always a way; a way he knew

to map an idea out of the landscape

lying before him like an unfinished

puzzle; some way to reshape creation

with a simple jig. His mind danced about

the problem, as he rose and sat, sat and

rose to walk across the yard cursing his

thoughts for not seeing it: so simple, so

obvious. He’d lumber back to the bench,

pick up the pieces of wood and begin

to cast the abstract into the concrete.

Beneath his broken hands, he would divine

a new pattern from the pattern inscribed

in the broken palimpsest of the wood.

(September 26, 2021)

mirror mirror

the well offers no echo

for the truth to rise upon

to allow her to step screaming

from the water’s cold depths

to shatter the infinite mirrors

where we live out our lives

(November 1. 2020)

Pushing Upward

from “Renditions of Change,” a work in progress

I write as I have

for years—I have,

through time, come

to understand:

I write to write,

doubting praise, I write

in silence to silence.

(May 14, 2019)

sculpture

Stone-carving-gwlalior-960x598

“chiseller of inaccuracies”

–Fernando Pessoa

I would not speak

if I knew what to say.

There would be no need

to form words around

an unrealized dream.

It is the unsaid

which must be given

shape; which calls us

from its shapeless dark

to speak into existence

what we cannot know.

Yet, I know so little

about so much, I must

speak about it all.

I start where I am

which is always here.

First, I must listen,

discern the shapes

before I can speak.

My words carve out

what is there

from what is not

as the silence unfolds

a new kind of truth.

(August 23, 2018)

I Sit Beneath a Calder

default

–Chicago Art Institute, July 13

slow shapes turn about

each other as they turn

together through larger

fluidic constraints

the whole turns slower

partly to the left until

a pause then moves

in a manner to the right

others speaking Japanese

move through the space pause

take a picture and move on

changing the room’s rhythm

which changes the slow shapes’

turn about each other and me

Rothko Chapel: a meditation

BD1_9731

like stepping into a still pool

deep in a primal cave—

you slip into this silence:

the light breathes, a liquid

luminescence, in slow

arrhythmic breaths,

and you are changed—

you see what you want

to see; desire, fear, hope

flicker across the surface

like faces of the dead,

hesitant and fleeting

until you see only your self

stripped of all significance

(July 2, 2018)

the words were why I wrote when young

the words were a way out

between the rigid definitions,

the expectations carved in cant

the words slipped along fault

line’s edges; the incongruous fissured

like water through the undefined

the words wore meaning there,

bare and taut, shrugging off

all social niceties for love

the words were love for the world:

the laughter of the sun rippling

the horizon further each day

words were a way to a salvation

from what I was not to become

(June 25, 2018)

It’s Being

“It embroiders us with error.”

–Christian Bok

as error

becomes change

warhol’s prints

print awry

a chance shifts

with each pass

its being’s

okay then

as so you

each morning

wake anew

yet again

to sleep deep

into you

until all’s

written out

and what was

said is said

as always

an old tale

only heard

in passing

(November 9, 2017)

frame works

“All such talismanic uses of photographs express a feeling both sentimental and implicitly magical: they are attempts to contact or lay claim to another reality.”

–Susan Sontag

1.1 motherwell

ravens and spiders perch watching

upon hidden shapes of words blurred

redactions black bouldered mute

the least possible answer erased

crushed beneath it all a swimmer

struggles to emerge or submerge

1.2

to the left in a blue hazy field

a woman’s ghost screams thinly

before a partial door frame

or perhaps a window where

vague light draws shadows

like a slow breath’s inhalation

1.3

hints of black flames

char a cauldron

as distant fires burn

banks during riots

random with meaning

a man’s shape’s absorbed

until no difference

beyond an evanescence

like fumes boiling hot

into the desolate air

fat swathes of lightning

vague and tangled

gash a path in the dark

while molten slag flows cold

a velvet tapestry of blood

2.1 surreptitious keyholes

down long vacant hallways

past thinly veiled windows

through suggestions of doors

into stark grey rooms

unexplained visions lie

framed and then framed

for you and then for you

again and then again

like mirrors in mirrors

open unsuspecting exposed

a sudden focus like an iris’s

opened dark desire for light

all else falls away blurred

like someone’s vague childhood

fragmented without context

2.2 projection room

on another wall

as if through a window

as if across an alleyway

as if to another window

as if a framed outtake

of a movie still

sliced from the film

then left on the floor

a young man lies

uncomfortable

his back towards you

as a faceless adult

possibly a parent

holds an open book

or some blurred picture

almost an admonishment

for which you feel guilt

for someone other than you

delineated without context

3 self-portraits and candids

even as themselves

they are not themselves

they become us as we

turn to shadows

the object as subject

as subject to object

tight prisms reflect

origami’s neat folds

you view our center

as if a distance

enclosed within

yourself as another

we dress the part

a film still frozen

yet still no film

but mundane dramas

like other family’s photos

strange yet comfortable

in the discomfort

we feel about each other

4 japanese sex hotels

staged rooms

await set players

we provide scripts

within given frames

as well as players

to perform parts

out of character

for our set lines

lines we know

but never would

trip off our tongues

as if our very own

without this space

opened here

5 every atom of me

manifest

between worry and joy

transitions of time

without time

we change into ourselves

in each moment

then again

unfold

6 sorrow

through it all we walk

as if through an amoeba

music haunts the walls

a herniated chant

calling and calling and calling

each day into being

like the slow onset of tears

(August 14, 2015)

Suburban Life

I miss living in central Austin, except for the people

and the traffic, (fourth worst in the country according

to The New York Times, right behind Los Angeles

for Christ’s sake), and of course, all the noise from all

the people, who would have thought death had undone

so many, as Eliot cribbed from Dante, and the traffic

makes me want to scream like a Siamese in heat

desperate for a mate. But what can I do? I just want

to see the Monet to Turner exhibit downtown

at the Blanton before it leaves to some other artsy-fartsy

city much farther away than Austin, the only town in Texas

I can stomach, liberal oasis that it is. So I jump into

the Honda, hybrid of course, and head down the interstate

to take in a little culture, as the owner of Shakespeare

and Co. accused me of doing in Paris thirty years ago

when I didn’t respond fast enough to his overly interested

queries as to why a skinny Texas boy was wandering

around Europe for months looking at pictures

hanging in the Louvre and other fancy-pants

museums which seemed to be in every city

all across Europe no matter how small. But that

is neither here nor there now, the Blanton is

the Blanton and right here, and Paris is so

far away, that I gird my loins, so to speak,

and brave the lethargic interstate’s quandaries

in search of somewhere beautiful to be.

(July 31, 2014)