Wigged Ghosts

When tabled candle lights flicker like the

Misty moths that flit with and glass and dish

Fall to ground in a clarion crash, a

Cymbal-ic clash of echoic sound

Travailing thick night air, a ringing call as

A sign of no recourse but to blame for

It all the portly ghost of Benjamin

Franklin, is when one has no choice but to take

Another drink.

And the drink sits on the table, a wooded

Piece of scarred flesh as thick as centuries.

And the flickering light dances in and out

Of carved grooves in the wood, etched laments of

Lover’s compelled to scratch a pocket-knifed

Remark of the heart’s commitment for the

Alcoholic haze of ages. Among it all, the

Table, light, and the din of Franklin’s toppling

Of a dish the beer sits, black as nights, heady white,

In a summer sweated chill; in a puddle

Of his own piss.

And the lady wench, resigned, game, forced to

Dress in the times for a tip, tells you it’s

One of the General’s own concoctions.

News like this will force the mind to travail

Through time and steal away to another hour

And place; to a house upon a mount where, in

Some corner desk, the elixired recipe

Written in quilled ink the colour of the

Quaff sits among

The scribbled thoughts on men and freedom and

The occasional slave bill of sale; piled

Below sweetly aged, archaic, yellowed

Parchment, a recipe for beer. But the

Heat of the moment hazes the vision and

Causes the words to seep, to melt off the

Page in an infinite black river and meet

In the moment to what is the mouth of your

Specialty brew.

Outside, cobbled streets echo the footsteps

Of modern souls. A misty fog silently

Rises and congregates, as dense as

A swarm of lethargic angels, to envelop

An antiquated street lamp whose light shivers

With the power of electric currents keeping

The fog at bay. Above it all, tiny

Lights in the sky blindly blink on a

City of brothers; infinite mothers

Of kite and key.

Oh! George, might you laugh! Might you whistle through

Wood! Would you crease the corners of your mouth,

Slap a knickered knee and throw your head back

with a snort to know we tip the girl with

Pictures of you?

Self-Crowned King

I sat and shat and read my John Stuart 
Mill and read that he said that Monsieur 
Aurelius was a nice man in myriad ways 
Despite his attempt to keep Christians from 

Permeating his neighbourhoods. What may 
Seem now a crudeness was only a good man 
In the vital ways that transcend those 
Ethos usually ushered in by a new calendar. 

It makes sense to me while I sit and shit. 
Cold porcelain is never friendly to 
The back of warm thighs. But it may 
Aid in the ushering in of new thoughts. 

It has its utility in thoughts not to mention 
Those indispensable non-thoughts from the 
Other end. What is my utility now beyond 
The mere excretion which I only vaguely control? 

Would it be a mistake in category 
To say I have shit in my brains? The crudeness 
May be in the leaving it there. The usefulness 
Of it all may now be twofold; double 

Relief can work as one. I will lay the book at 
Bath's edge, thankful for it’s use, and proceed 
To relieve myself of wasteful thoughts. I will 
Be the throned philosopher-king as I sit and shit. 

Ascend to Descend

Step each step, lightly on toes, lift yourself, my love.

If needs must, clip your wings within the narrow stairway.

Do not feign the winding flight but climb above

To meet me at the threshold with a kiss and say,

“I’ve come to your dream house, in from the uncalm,

To couch you again within a deep bosomed soul

Like some ghosts of old that wrap in ethereal arms."

Whisper this, come in, and I will do as I am told.

Wingless, it is easier to pass. Come through withal.

Let hands brush the dust on all my trinkets and pretty things,

Catch quick sight of oriental prints that cover the walls.

Let’s sit side by side and gaze and talk. Love clings,

For in your eyes I see you want to kiss again.

I can tell by the shine through the dusty glint,

We will do this and much more. This must be when

Each eyelid pulls passion down like a swimmer that sinks

And takes another with them. But, first!  Lift your view

One moment more. See the painted picture hanging there?

The one upon the wall suspended askew?

Catch it now. The lady descending a bamboo stair

As her lover stays, kimono robed, with a rose lapel.

Her geta slippers click with each sad step as she goes,

The man, holding back, knows these passions well,

As she ticks off time with each touch of her toes.

The rose with each petaled form will wither and die.

No mark will be left but the trace of a memory.

We then fight to trust through the eye of the mind

And are left to question if what we feel we see

Is felt. So a kiss, my love, once more. A stamp of

Remembrance before you descend. Go below

But, before you do, also leave a vestige of love.

Collect all the feathers of your wings as you go.

Wines and Whines

Here is my paradox: I get drunk often,

            And at times opportune, on the wine

 Of life.  Any and all finds my bloodstream soften

      And bulge at the banks: shadows that line

The window like puppetering silhouettes.

         Thoughts in the shower that shower me in

Thoughts that maybe, just maybe, I get

   Some jots of Spinoza.  And this is when I begin

 To give over to playful puzzle.  I want it prolonged. 

        Like unearthly sounds of sirens soft

 That subdue with inebriated song,

   I am lured by my thoughts aloft

Where they are as sensitively held

         Up like the wings of the flighted bird.

   And the very spirit of the mind alights and melts

        Into those things and thoughts that are observed.

I want it prolonged.  So enhancement takes

         The simple liquid form of

   The deepest darkest red, an ambrosial sate,

       A transfusional turn toward Bacchus’s blood,

  His for mine, so the sirens might sing on.

And shadowed shapes might shimmer anew.

      And the showered thoughts might fall upon

            A brain like a blade of grass with dew.

But beware. This need for dilation does not

        Make inspirative progress swell.

It can transform a man to a bloody sot

And serves to drown those original thoughts that welled

   With an all too natural flow,

     Then go to drought then seem as dead.   

          The alluring elixir in a slow

And poisonous meandering thread

 Drowns that natural high and more

    Than this, cause those thoughts to seep

Outside the realm of the original core

       And find them reach for forgetful sleep.

           So let those lofty thoughts both wax

     And wane in a natural swing and sway.

This is where the wine of life will not tax

        The need to force them, nor force them all away.

An Insect

With the airy grace and utter aplomb

Of a sunset alighting,

An insect came to descend upon my arm.

I was not as startled as I might have been 

Just mildly dismayed the way a lovers soft lies,

Whispered to you while asleep,

Are faintly remembered when you arise.

I did not start nor did I say a peep.

I then worked to fight off the notion

Often said by silly sods

That spy the sight of some tiny lifes motion

And wonder if we to them are like a god.

Instead I thought how he could not know my mind

But I could not know his.

We two are strangers of a similar kind.

His welcome entrance made me think that this

Is the same as god; how he might look down

On heads he cannot penetrate

And comprehension is neither breached nor found.

This is closer to what may seem like the case;

That though we are more than mere insects, 

We are in beguiling bliss

With maneuvering minds beckoned and led 

By a belief such connections do exist.

So we walked our common path alone together

With nothing above so fit

To understand my mind (or each other)

Nor nothing on high as inclined to reading it.

Here the fight became not to swat him from my skin

But to leave him sitting there,

A companion as unaware of where we begin,

Unaware (I think) he resides in my arm hair.

So the same small thing continued to sit

On my arm, we two so dear

To be a product of a cosmic burst, bits

Of flint that sparked two minds that find us here.

Is the Sun Conscious

Is the sun conscious? And could we ever know?

And even if conscious it would seem only to go

Without saying there would be still the same tedium,

The same circular fusion of hydrogen and helium,

From that great ball of fire that churns in hot yellow glow.

Just what do we think we would expect to hear

From this self-knowing glowing ball of a sphere

Other than, “I, a star, am this long chain of energy,

My process unchanging despite my subjectivity.”

Our own conscious thought is nothing more than mere

Desire to believe the sun simply does while wholly aware

And to think his deep furnace works with great care.

Light and heat as deliberate destiny meant for us,

A methodical burning of passion, a fused fiery fuss.

A friend flaming as a favour for all down here.

Is a starfish conscious? Can he know any pain?

Do many directional choices make him insane?

His splayed arms regenerate back to a point

Where oblivious blood spreads to each joint.

Yet movement can stem from sensation of rain.

We wonder if all this mechanism is choice

Whispered in a whim by some strange inner voice

That says, “I go here, I, the mental thinker, this

Mover and shaker, me, this sovereign starfish.”

Like the sun, actions remain in spite of this noise.

Whether with knowledge or no they do as they could

Without benefit of knowing if they do as they should.

This no matter if no other thinker inside

Who works as assistant to help mirror the mind.

Some, in natural beauty, simply do as they would.

To be a thinking thing with no thought of a self.

To place an ever reflecting ego away on a shelf,

With just enough of that spark, the one that can see

Despite the sun-strong blinding sense of a me,

So unaware, yet aware, of nothing, and everything else.

Abe is His Dad

The walk, so I’ve been told,

Was a long

And gloomy one much like

Our age, though

I have no citation

For this. I only have

To look at

The vast space of rock and

Dust to tell

Me where we get our need

To transcend

The tedious ties that

Bind tired lives.

I can imagine the walk.

I was told

He was expected to

Carry the

Wood. With few words shared,

He must have

Inquired as to what

Would be the

Final destination.

But with few

Words shared, imagine he

Could only

Gaze at the ass’s ass,

A clockwork

Trot of stagnant motion,

Sidling round,

Sure to make one seasick

On dry land.

It is mainly to this

That we dream

Of horses hooves meeting

Rigid rock

Journeying upward on

Skyward wing;

It is to this that we

Dream of land,

With succulent soils and

honeydew.

To understand this is

To know our

Need to shake off old dust

And bathe in

A clear pool of the minds

Oases

Of imagination.

The father

Of my dear friend took to

Talking to

Himself, a puppeteer

Guiding self-

Concealed strings. White bearded

And lined, he

Became a man for whom

Ravaged time

Demanded pacts of new

Agreements

And new contractual

Terms of life,

As creeping penury

Becomes the menacing

Despoiler of old men

Heartlessly

Taking man’s manhood. And

With nothing

Resembling a warning,

Threatens to

Add to obstinate dust.

But he had

His son. And so this

Walk was my

Friends chattering journey.

Imagine

Then his staggered surprise

When at once

Animal substitutes

Animal

And cattle’s blood becomes

Old chattel

As if sacrificial means

Craved anew,

Demanding more as the

Sate outgrew.

But more than this, try to

Feel the same

Breath-filled relief when the

Pointed thing

Was put away and no blood

spilt upon

The cratered rocky slab.

It must have

Felt as if everything

In the wide

World was contained in the

Pebble in

His shoe and with a bang

Burst forth

Towards what we all now know.

But what then?

When relief is loosed, what

lessons learned? It all seemed

like lavished

Waste. What silly sojourn

Compares to

What might have cost his wife

Two days milk?

A Pear GabFest

I should call this picture ‘Facebook.’ I shall let you decipher that one. You can expect pears as a recurring motif in my artwork. I like fitting them in somewhere in a visual narrative, I will admit. Allow me a kind of psychological stab why this may be the case:

Sometimes we say we like things but when we peer into ourselves and ask honestly if we chose to like these things, we find that other forces, both within and without, are playing upon our psyche and if we're honest about what we find, we might just come to realize that circumstances, not objects and ideas, in a sense, chose us. It may be like two good friends who come to realize they did not set up the circumstances of their meeting and further realize it’s not something they ‘willed.’ But, if they are wise, they’ll know this is no matter, as the fact is they were brought together and, whether intentional forces or luck had something to do with it, is beside the point and live their lives happily together anyway. I’m inclined to say I like pears but, I find I’m inclined to admit I don’t recall deciding it. I might even be inclined to say, it was decided for me.

As I've hinted at in the past more than once, when I was young I was paralyzed out of productivity by a certain amount of obsessiveness that truly bordered on the clinical. It’s one of the great regrets in my life that my productivity in the arts---and most things---was hampered by this and it’s why today I’ve gone the other route and just decided to say shit is finished. I now compensate by going the polar opposite way. I’m not the first artist to point out that the real skill in creating anything worthwhile is not only simply knowing when something is finished, but also having the foresight to know that if one goes on with it, it’s in danger of being so overworked as to die. I’ve seen it. I’ve caused many deaths.

The pears.

When I was in my mid-twenties I went to work on a canvas that had a pretty simple concept and design. I was working from ‘life.’ I had two kinds of pears (I’ll only slightly spare you ‘a pair of pears’ by placing it inside these parenthesis where it’s masquerades as an afterthought. Who am I kidding?). I had a lovely d’anjou, the green ones, short and pudgy, as wide as its height. The other was your typical brown bosc pear, those earthy ones standing tall and skinny resembling a kind of attractive clay color. I found I had an odd ‘pairing’ (Ok! Last one! I’m annoying myself!). I thought this contrast would somehow make a great concept for painting. I placed them in front of a brown paper bag. This was the layout: Two pears, one short and green, the other tall and brown, standing in front of the wrinkled paper bag that originally housed them. The background would be dark so as to make these three objects simply “pop!”

That was it. Poetry in its sheer simplicity.

The first thing I did was get these pears down on the canvas. May I just indulge and say they were fabulous! It was one of those intuitive things where that certain special invisible something takes over and, before you know it, you’ve got some pretty spectacular stuff down and it all happened so quick that you’re left asking yourself, “Was this me? Who did this?” I swear I still see them in front of me on that canvas. I captured them in a way that I never captured an object before. They seemed to be simultaneously ‘painterly’ whilst also seeming real. Actually, they transcended even realism. I was extremely happy with them. I created the ultimate illusion. I was actually taking what would appear to be—almost literally--- earthbound objects and I was truly giving them spirit. You know how I believe this can be potentially dangerous talk so, please just take it as a measure of how strongly the sensation was felt with me.

I was so inspired by this success that I next went on to the paper bag. I went straight to work on the paper bag. Let me say now that, in hindsight, like the pears, I can also see this paper bag in my mind’s eye. I mention this because today, on ‘seeing’ it, even right now, I realize I was too harsh. It actually wasn’t as bad I as I thought. However, this is hindsight and I don’t know if objectively, it was painted pretty well, or subjectively, I may have eased my demands. No matter. Yet more layers of regret. Not only was I too harsh on the work as it was being produced, I may have also been also pretty wrong about my own skills after it was laid down. These things appear to be one and the same so I’ll still just roll it in to one big ball of regret. Andrew Marvell would put down his quill in a frustrating huff never to write another poem had he met me.

The paper bag proved difficult. It was just too complicated in all its creases and angles and the complicated light and dark they produced as well as all those mid tones in between. I worked on it for ages. Mind you, this still life was always set up right in front of me. The pears and the bag existed. They sat in the same spot day in and day out. I started living uncomfortably in between all those beige creases and I felt smothered. As a matter of quelling my frustration, and coming up for much needed air, I left the stifling aspect of that paper bag and routinely went back to the pears to do some touching up. There was plenty to do! In fact, it became a kind of “Dorian Gray” of the fruit set as the pears started withering daily. I found I was always adding new features to these poor organic creatures brought on —in a slightly ironic fashion—by times ceaseless but slow decay. This was actually fun, too! For example, on the d’anjou pear there started to appear a kind of natural ‘bruise’ that took the form of a deep red color right in the middle of it. Vermillion crimson, here we come! It was a great addition and added even more character to it. Here was this little red spot like Jupiter’s storm that contrasted so beautifully with that (now fading) vibrant green that was that small planet of a pear! I found myself having to add little dark brown spots that were a clear sign of decay and I had to add new dynamics of light and shade where some areas of the fruit were changing shape by slowly collapsing in on themselves. It sounds a little sad but I was sort of like one of those people who find a new, almost exciting, "raison d'etre' in having to take care of a sick loved one. Your sad for them but, you’ve got stuff to do!It was fun! I loved the transformation! I was still happy with my pair of pears (I said I would stop this!). But, Christ! That fucking paper bag! I wanted to place it over my head and deep breath myself out of existence! It was a nice thought.

Another interesting thing about people is how we sometimes romanticize our own death. We tend to imagine it while we’re still here.

“What do you have for us, Jenkins?”

“Detective, what we seem to have found here are three organisms decaying in a kind of triumvirate tragedy. Two pears and a man. I can safely say…

"Jenkins, godammit! You and your night school literature classes! Give it to me straight! No fancy talk!”

“We think the pears got a head start, so we’re assuming—just surmising, mind you!---that the fella couldn’t handle seeing the pears like that. He must have decided to join them, if you know what I mean, sir.”

“Damn it, Jenkins. Sign me up for that Literature class! I’ve seen many things in my day, Jenkins, lots of gruesome stuff, but I’ll be goddamned if this isn’t the saddest. Tragedy, Jenkins. You’re right. Do you guys do Shakespeare? Jenkins, what’s this?”

“He seemed to have been working on a painting, sir. We think he was a painter.”

“Take it for evidence. Hmmm. Pretty good paper bag.”

“I agree, sir.”

I went back to the paper bag but I could not seem to get it right! At one point I even painted it out of the picture. I even recall coming up with a new concept where I had my precious pears hanging from a string that was nailed to the wall. However, this seemed to my young sensibilities, even then, to be a bit too ‘clever clever.’ No matter the ideas and how to solve it, I went back to the original.

I was hell-bent on that paper bag. I never got it to my liking. I hated that paper bag because it could not live up to the quality of those pears. I was even blaming the paper bag on their deaths. IT was the reason the pears were disappearing! Things got just too weird. Eventually, my pears became unrecognizable, both the models, and the ones on the canvas, though the ones on the canvas I still remember having some kind of painterly charm. The ones on the canvas never abandoned me. I also became so attached to the ones I was painting, the actual fruit, that I felt this strange desire in me not to replace them. I never did. When they went, I was forlorn. When they went, so did the painting. They went to the same place: The rubbish bin. Alas...

I know things die. No one thinks of death more than me. The fruit had to die but, I realize now, the painting was supposed to be an extension of me. It was supposed to be my kind of 'immortality.' It was how I was supposed to 'live on.' I only vaguely realized it then and even now, like a good detective, I'm surmising. All I have now is memories and vintage wine. I wish I hadn’t been so harsh. I wish I had that damned painting.

What was the point of all of this, anyway? Why did I bore you? Oh! Yeah! Just a reminder that to get things done before we completely decay. Also, enjoy it all while we are decaying. Also, also, when I eat a pear it's a heightened experience.

Fame

Whence comes one then many and on her back

A perpetual groundling, butted to the bed

For any and all who pay for the sack

While the mindless spenders need never be led.

For they seek the cheap sheets with just the flirt

Of procurement caring not a tiny wit

When she and they go dancing in the dirt,

They too get muddied but are ignorant of it.

O! Poet! Your “wayward girl” is all grown up now!

Heeled high and netted with the stink of fish,

She whispers from a wily wax red mouth how

For just a cheapened sensation, all that is wished

Of her can be granted but granted that all must

Be got cheap. What once was casual coyness

Is now the deliberate target of excessive lust

By those who have dressed her for nothing less.

As a young girl she led old, blind poets by

The hand. She led them through every single

Arch of time as she whispered to the sky

While from the poet’s coat her eyes had mingled

With the light from the poets unseeing, seeing sight.

She knew the child-like need to rise above

And to believe, to know, that such ascension might

Always be the subaltern to laborious love.

But now the heights are conceived from below!

And now her labour is naught but a travail

Of bastards who fall from her in pedestrian rows;

An assembly of banal and useless wails!

But lets remember great Milton and the

Girl who listened in astonishing bliss

As a reminder that idolatry does not have to be

Stale heiresses whose names rhyme with his.

Graveyard of the Gods

The bars of the cemetery gates were

Majestic, thin, archaic and crooked

Like the half outstretched fingers of

Death himself.  Though they pointed upwards

Towards the glassy orb in the sky,

I went in.  Like rotten teeth, the gravestones

Protruded from their place at unequal

Distances each to each; some were long,

Some short, askew or straight, and all chipped at

The edges showing age. Only the worship-less

Moon gave them a white that was not there. 

And though the whole decrepit mouth stank

As the vapours of the earth enwrapped the

Chalky slabs, I, like one whose intuitive

Manners precedes action, didn’t flinch. 

I was in the graveyard of all the gods

And my plan was clear. With spade in hand

I pierced some soil to resurrect those

Oft forgotten bones that lay resting

Under some weighty years of progressive

Dirt, grave layers set in loose lumps of

Man’s knowledge tramped down at a time.

But some days they are surely worthy of

Resurrection.  The first I dug was new.

He still held flesh to bone that laboured time

Had not undone and a white beard still shone

Like wispy clouds or ripped cotton clinging

To fossiled flesh (the archetypal beard,

I thought!).  I propped him upon a slab and,

With makeshift lines, drew upon the dirt some

Crude square forms for chess.  The rocks and

Stones we placed as kings and queens, castles and

Horses.  “The pawns are essential,” I said

With a nervous laugh but the sockets where

Once was housed omniscient eyes were now just

The collapsed space of infinite black; holes

Where, If looked intently, shown an image of

Myself in a pall of deathly moonlight white.

We played our game and sometimes stopped to laugh

At the wily ways of men (and women)

And all the myriad ways that chance can

Hope upon a move. And when I came to

Realize I made his moves and mine did

I feel the heavy haze of the moon’s stare

In a heatless glare that seared shame.

The second was of a different kind.  The

Hips were in a convex curve shone wide

That spoke to the feminine feature in

Her skeletal remains; crescent hips like

The moons childhood before the steady

Motion of times waves made it full.  But they

Arched like the bended bow that launches all

The arrows that can be blamed on love.  I took

Her in embrace and wrapped an arm around

A wide waist as we danced among the stars.

Her ecru arm I crossed over my own

Boned shoulder where, from a lifeless wrist,

Waved a jostling hand full of mock life that did

Sway to and fro with each merry step like

The puppet sans the strings.  Under the night

Sky I swept her round and round through swirls

Of dirt as we sometimes threw a head above

To glimpse the swirls of the moons aspect in

Unearthly spirals like ghosts on the wing.

We danced and danced until her celestial

Bones collapsed upon my own, a crumple

Of life not really there.   The love I held

 I realized then was contained in my own

Bones that emanated spirit and the movement

Of us both.  Then did I see I was the

One who caused that hand to swing and sway with

The dance while the heavy haze of the moon’s

Stare in a heatless glare seared shame. The third

And last I rose from the ground.  I propped his

Starved skull skyward so we might in concert

Contemplate the stars.  We peered at the spray

Of sprinkled lights that blinked in reverence

Around the mother moon that shined like a

Progenitor never out of sight.  I

Grasped a pensive moment to explain how some

Lights in the sky had nearly died when he

Was but an infant when he had an infant’s mind

And an infant’s eye to tell what he might see.

I said, as if a student who dared show

What he knew, such light has leapt across the

Bounds of time to spy upon us now, you

And I, as if to come back from the dead

And see us wonder why.  He only stared.

The slithering snake, like sins surprise, came

Round the cavernous reach of his eye, peered

A hastate head, and hissed.  I left those bones

To be found.  Let another decide if

They are fit to hide again.  Toward the

Gate I made my way and in a flourished

Flight.  If old bones have their use then I will

Shave mine own down to a point to write

A name.  The bars of the cemetery

Gates pointed up to infinite abyss.

There the hallowed moon patiently sits

Where she does not blink nor does she see.