Nearer the end than the beginning in my ‘wordless poem’ book Nevermore Together, the protagonist (who is nameless, well because…) escapes from a prison. The floor cracks – opening to a tunnel. A tunnel that whooshes him a very long and winding distance, sort of a ‘birth canal’ or portal. But he doesn’t reappear as a newborn. Perhaps, though, he engages the world in a ‘newly born’ fashion.
Shapes animated like a bird’s crazy beak in a silly cartoon
remind me of a seagull
blabbering at somebody, somebody who? maybe… Daffy Duck!
He comes to mind for a not complicated reason.
For some reason (in whatever year since 2014 it was) I made this GIF using the book cover.
The gold & ochre jungle leaves remind me of a B&W Humphrey Bogart movie.
In real life Humphrey Bogart was gold & ochre though some say more of a pleasing technicolour.
In real life the book is B&W & printed on cream-coloured paper.
I stand in line at the (big box) grocery store behind a guy with trees printed on his sky blue arm.
Something is in progress in the centre of the store
if the centre of the store is even there anymore.
The numbers on my receipt (dancing a Latin dance)
signify symmetry and imbalance
simultaneously, as if an omen, as if
smoke rising from an oil lamp, as if
in flight through my psyche still there
or following a jagged shoreline
to a river, thrashing in the centre of the store
if the centre of the store is even there anymore
if the river, voluminous as thunder & thrashing
hypnotized is even there anymore.
The proportional yet abstract face made of shapes like cactus or flowers,
perhaps a mask in commedia dell’arte,
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or a book describing the famous wonders of the world,
thin as a snowflake, balanced on one edge,
tipping to one side diagonally & dampened by droplets
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sliding down a stained blurry windowpane
pooling on the ledge, osmosis dampening
cream-coloured paper, flecked & rippled like grief or papyrus –
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inscriptions of blue ink (messages of mysterious flavour)
to devour, to decipher (imagine the Hanging Gardens of Babylon)
& heaving your bag of magical tools to your shoulder
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building a a sentient tunnel
disappeared beneath the waterfall of a viridian hedge foaming upon the lawn,
blotted by twilight & in the jasmine-scented shade shadowy moss
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envelops a stone, upright, sunk into fertile soil &
inscribed with symbols of a fertile flavour –
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I’m not being sentimental.
I opened the frozen container of orange juice with a can opener. Tasted the frozen orange juice crystals and pulled the razor-sharp, metal lid slowly out of my mouth. Blood poured over my lips. I remembered it was sharp. The guy who told me Picts painted blue symbols all over their bodies said the mouth healed faster than any other part of the body. We were listening to Pink Floyd’s Several Species of Small Furry Animals Gathered Together in a Cave and Grooving With a Pict. I said, ‘What is a Pict?’
from my book Meme-Noir (2019)
The thing about working on paper is that one touches-feeling the otherworldly textures of this very world. A reminder of the gift, the circle, one has been given.
One can imagine glimmers of this very world.
As tree roots signal compassion & nurture while snaking out and spiralling into the secret dark soil. As their compassion reverberates like ripples in water.
As a forest of vertical bodies reach skyward. As they etch circular rings in their wooden hearts. As they record circles in orbit around the sun. A living symbol of experience. The experience of this earth.
The thing about working on paper is that one performs mark-making enveloped within sacred heaving breath. As delicate breath-shadows dance beneath sunlight falling like holograms. Like a ballet. The story of archetypal tree as mother. How easy to forget.
As paper absorbs watery emotions, even eyesight – like daylight, starlight or candlelight, received intuitively. Quietly the visceral eclipse. How easy to forget.
One can imagine the tree like an iceberg with secret rooms. Multi-dimensional and unknown. Concealed.
Offering utilitarian circle & body. Of this very world. Like an animal. Like sky. Like an eye. One does not forget. As this very world does not forget. As the animal, sky, and eye do not forget.
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A summer art project: Sculpture, ‘The Cosmos’ created with youth. You are seeing half of the sculpture. Plaster gauze, rope, acrylic paint. Also balloons. I don’t know why exactly I superimposed this image over a photograph of Harrison Street. Perhaps curvilinear shapes address time. Or the shapes are somehow ancestral. Perhaps such ‘continual vegetal designs’ balance the angularity of buildings while adding human dimensions of roundness and multi-dimensionality. I don’t know. It just seemed the thing to do.
Giotto painted the stars bleeding out his fingertips.
Caroline Coon did a painting of Christine Keeler
As did Pauline Boty.
I fell into the world without a shaman
Somewhere the world is not yet what it will become.
I rented a tiny apartment next door to the girl in white shorts
whose brother, or maybe step-father, has a hook for a hand.
I wake to the sound of birds.
My mother worked near a famous intersection during the war –
music in the nightclubs vibrated echoes all night long.
Somebody said he remembered her –
in a flat boat gliding through the reeds.
Oak trees cast shadows across divided pools
designed in the curvilinear shapes of a Celtic eagle’s head –
I remember fish in deep water
I didn’t want to fall in –
going home from Eddie’s house.
Eddie spread catsup on white bread and smoothed it with a butter knife.
The architect said it was a secret.
I finished four deadlines yesterday I began in February when I finished my 33′ X 5′ painting on paper. Now I can do something about promoting this painting.
The amount of work I have done in the last year makes me feel half my age.
I remember when I used to work in schools.
I went for a walk after the rain. Garbage washes over the street in familiar colours.
I see a painting in the tiny art gallery window but when I photograph it clouds appear.
Is this a store security camera monitor? I would splice the discarded ‘evidence’ into an art film.
The Classic Candy Store sponsored a free giveaway of Moirs chocolate at the local (it has been resurrected) theatre in 1927. One day my shadow will vanish forever like a chocolate company.
I used a Sharpie marker in my sketchbook on the subway. The lady in white does not see me. I only see her in the photograph.
I only notice the Celtic manuscript in front of the drugstore parking lot when it begins to fade.
In the elevator at the medical clinic a Taj Mahal-like shape eats away at the cheap paneling.
Now I can do something about promoting this painting.
I remembered night.
How the night air felt sacred
like a string tied to my finger
reminding me
to breathe night
in the fragrance of crushed black flowers,
in the fragrance of sacred flowers.
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