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)
Pushing Upward
Category: art
sculpture
“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
–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
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)
