wondering why

you stand there wondering why you're
staring at a canvas...

time out

mindlessness
joblessness
wanderlust
all add up to the disappearing act.
the one you long to pull,
to become, to succumb to.

i beg your pardon

we're not talking about belching here, we're talking
about the new president elect. can't obama wait until he's
sanctioned before he has to solve the world's crises ?
no. we're scared. we've had it. we're f--ked. we need to know.
so forget about all those scumbags Bush has pardoned.
let's move on. and up. there's hope in the world.

can the can can?

not sure how to explain what's going on here. it's moving around,
down and out. seeing with blurred vision. the crown, it weighs heavily,
the crown of love, of responsibility, of duty, of vision. the fucking thing
weighs a ton. want to set myself free, ya' know? take off.

we fail to succeed, succeed to fail

gross national product?
measure not a value that is immeasurable.
a point
that is infinite.
a cause
that is just.

no ratio
can adequately explain
human behavior.

we try
we fail
we try again.
we fail
we succeed
to fail
again.

can we possibly understand what this is about?

ask all you want
the answer is an illusion
because there is none.

how can we tolerate the ignorance?
how? or more accurately, why?

SAFE HOUSE

A masquerade
a charade
a ball.
You have to have two
Who do you trust?
Not.
To whom do you owe your livelihood?
Paltry, so miniscule, you don’t even count
in the census.
And without a consensus
there is chaos.
I move a few dollars around to iambic pentameter,
in rhythm, to the change, in search of the logic when there is none.
Panic in disguise.
0-0=0, my lover says. Her computations are always right.
And for the first time in our lives, we’re happy to be artists.
If only we could make art during this tumultuous time
when fear Is no longer of death but of the mighty dollar.
Profit, interest, prinicipal, cash, chump change.
Hey baby...happens to the best of us.


Happy New Year!


9/29/08

The End?

In his eighty years Martin Mercier had never experienced anything like this. In his eighty years he had never acquiesced. No matter what came his way he always expected it. “Le jeu, c’est fini,” he muttered to himself but when he looked at his failing wife Narcisse, he thought, les jeux…her life and his. With their fiftieth anniversary imminent he envisioned the waltz, the pirouette dizzying, her body so close it was indistinguishable from his. Unable to imagine life without her he felt the futile quest of the human spirit an absurd necessity he could now relinquish. As he peered into those chestnut eyes through the dark, endless tunnels that turned back on themselves, his fear returned, one he could not subdue through any amount of logic or discourse. The brain, he decided, was a painful organ, thoughts slicing through it like the jagged edge of a knife. Better to get past all this, better to move beyond it. He sipped from the fluted glass, the effervescence a deceptive reminder of what he would leave behind. The tightness in his chest made his breathing labored and the sweat of his palms made the pills soggy. His wife, on the other hand, was feeling no pain. On the morphine drip she’d been hallucinating a hot, white light surrounding her, evaporating like fog, through which swallows arced and banked off cliffs while the sea below crashed against the rocks with a virulence.
Martin twisted the empty packet of Gaulois, threw it on the floor and opened another. Chain smoking was a luxury he could now afford. “Just think, Narcisse…” He was grinning when he said this. “They will have to clean up this mess.” The ashes, the butts, the spilled champagne, the broken glass from the vial he emptied… By they he wasn’t sure who he meant. Who would be the first to find them? He didn’t want to think about it but he hoped it wouldn’t be the kids. He couldn’t imagine; it was too perverse.

Yes, his children would have to forgive but in time they would come to understand what happened. Especially Dylan, the costume designer. He envisioned the folds of Edwardian dress gathered and stitched for the adaptation of Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Oval Portrait”--a painter so obsessed with the portrait of his wife he literally steals the life from her. Remembering the nature of the work made him shy away from gazing upon his dying wife’s face for fear he would hasten the end. At this point he simply couldn’t bear it.

time honored

i look around and my life is a strange place. not something i didn't inhabit but something i did. when all around me is death and destruction and reconstructionist attitudes and i think, how did we get here? and realize the collective "we" is a construct. that the "we" i thought existed never did. so let me go back to the beginning and wonder how we can connect in a meaningful way. this is a formidable aspect of writing, the collective "we." not about attitudes or adjustments or positions or possessions but about consciousness of a generation or two.

BlackPrintsSeriesNo.28

Conceal Me

Electro Shock

"There’s all this electromagnetic current," Gracie explains. "The kind you can test with devices that make skin contact. You know, like EEGs and EKGs and that sort of thing, but what I want to know is where does all that energy go when a person dies, the field around the body, the one that intersects and surrounds us, the vibrational field…”

She says, "People didn’t vacate lower Manhattan because of the toxic residue. They didn’t vacate out of fear. They vacated because of the massive amount of electromagnetism unleashed into the atmosphere by 3,000 dying and deceased people.”

that flawless image

Vanessa is probably better off without him, deeper in love with the prospect that he suffered a tragic demise, like the fate of all great artists who never enjoy recognition or the fruits of their labor while they're still alive. Yes, he decides, death brings with it all the benefits promised but undelivered in life. All the myths… pure, unadulterated happiness, unconditional love, charged flashes of memory altered subconsciously to make within the survivor’s mind a permanent place for that flawless image that never truly existed. And of course the ultimate advantage to the deceased, total liberation from the constraints of ordinary life.

top editor

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BlackPrintsSeriesNo.27

when process is a luxury

i don't know about all you artists and writers, but i'm getting the feeling that "the man" (i'm not imposing gender here - it's just an expression) is closing in. soon art, the creative pursuit, a work-in-progress will be considered a luxury. you know you hit bottom when this occurs. it's all about work, concept, spontaneity, accidents, and after enough years, a certain lack of intention. it is not about art as investment. we can't expect too many people to understand this, i guess. it's the imperfect storm. time to step back, reassess and then let go!

fall from grace

The snap and crackle of the bacon grease doesn’t capture her attention but when Brian drops the jar of mayonnaise on the kitchen floor Gracie wakes up.

“What the fuck!”

He turns around and waves before unraveling paper towels to clean up the mess. She protests the disturbance of a good night’s sleep even though it’s 4:30 in the afternoon and she has the look of a street urchin after a two day bender.

SuperTuesday 08

I snuck my camera into the voting both today and took
a 16 multi shot.......

Blackprint Series No.22

in my right mind

Blown away by the read through, crippled after sitting for three days at my desk. SEPTEMBER 10TH is everything I hoped for, imagination at work- my raison d'etre, family as unpredictable as it is, love, true love and all its traps and trappings, compassion for our place in the world as precarious as it is, clinging at once to individuality, that thing that defines us and defies genetic imprints and to our collective identity, that singular force that encompasses everything, more than our individual consciousness affords. No escape. It's that big beautiful velvet stew of life on the edge. Of what? Time, meaning, existence. Even history can be false.

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