wondering why

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

ahead of his time

Richard Yates had true courage to write the truth no matter how painful or unpopular, to live the truth no matter how short lived, to expose the hypocrises of the American Dream.

zipcode art

curious how grants are so lopsided, favoring counties.
aside from the obvious fact that the county designates
funding, why should it matter where the artist comes
from? what happened to the art? that's what i want to know.

anonymity

"Names no longer apply and he can't find a satisfactory substitute. All the limits and expectations and experiential bullshit people bring to nomenclature, like the attitude copped when they hear the name of their first lover, their estranged mother, their crazy aunt or their incorrigible ex-husband. No one is truly different because name, rank, profession are always reminiscent of someone else’s identity, someone else’s station in life. You are only true to yourself, he thinks, that is, if you’re capable of it."

speechless

longing to be a visual artist
words so tired, so poor, so arrested.
not sure what being a writer means any more.
without an attention span what's left?
recording for the sake of it
validating the alphabet
creating new syntax
for what?

why not?

there's always this vague suggestion
of meaninglessness masquerading as dependency.
i don't know what to do with it
because of course it's meaningful,
and there's no path, nothing
circumscribed, nothing definitive.
there's now and then there's
nothing and we're supposed to figure
out how to navigate in between.
that thought, that touch, that sound,
that space, that breath. this is it.

the calm...

where is my mother?
backward, forward, that rocking motion.
we become accustomed to it. expect the shift.
a member of the hemlock society in its nascent years,
now she is projectile, a missile with a programmed
target and the ability to forget.

the deeper resonances

In retrospect he finds it hard to believe he was actually capable of giving life... remote the more he thinks about it. The life force that seems to come of its own accord, free of premeditation or constraints. He wishes it was infectious, her vitality, her confidence, her devotion but knows she's paying a price she can’t afford. If anything, he has to give her more. He has to find a way.

remember me

don't know what's more important. memory or substance. as in, what do i remember in my conversation with my mother vs. what were we really talking about. and then, let's not forget this other dynamic that gets in the way. huh? the question? why? where? was i there? were you? love, love, love. that's what i keep reminding myself. all about love.

reality check

forget the paycheck. time for a reality check. to check in
and see what's really going on.

1. am i doing what i really want to be doing with my life?

2. if not, how can i redirect?

3. and with all that excess energy from doing what I want, how can
I help someone else do...whatever.

what if we were, no, are happy? what if...

In a Deeply Troubled World

there is thought strangled,
manipulated and twisted to resemble something.
what? that doesn't matter. it isn't recognizable;
it doesn't exist. we go on and on about the issues
when the issues are dead. the mind is vacant.
the life has gone missing.

is mother dying?

i really can't ignore the plaintive cry of the Long Island Railroad anymore, especially in the middle of the night. and when i lose all patience, lose all sense, lose all focus, not for anything in particular but for the cumulative effect of life itself, i have to admit (unlike my parents) i know nothing. i do know...i know nothing at all.

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.

hospital holiday

always seems those days are the ones in the emergency room. don't feel right. hot. spaced. having a hard time. who is thinking of me? who am I thinking of? who can I, how can I, think?

i keep saying, why am i still here?
what have you been up to?
no. talking makes me feel more relaxed. makes me feel safe.
what do you mean you have to go?
there's a perfectly good bed in the second room.
a TV, a computer, ice cream, vodka.
what else could you want?
i haven't heard from her in a long time. i keep calling. usually she answers.
i thought, no one would know if something happened to her.
how would anyone know? who would tell us?
what? yeah.
we talked yesterday.
i know. i was talking about today?
who would know? who? tell me who?

why does my world...

seem so skewed, so out of sync, so out of control. we're talking impact not addiction. family not stimulant. when the love is so big there's so much to lose. when the love is so skewed, it's out of control. when the love... the love... love.

Long Time No Write

What can I say? Life is an expanding universe that is so hard to keep up with sometimes you just give up. Not give up literally, just figuratively and then
one breath of fresh air, two, three, thirteen. Why is that number so magical?
Do you remember? I do. Everything about that age was transforming. New AWARENESS,
new BODY, new PRESENCE in the WORLD. I sat at a cafe in Nice and ordered
my first drink, a Cinzano. When the waiter returned and saw that I had not diluted the drink with water, he looked disgusted and I finally figured out why it had tasted so bad. The reason I was there was because Bea, the sister of
my foreign exchange sister Suzanne, tried in her very liberated yet respectful way, to say I have to fuck my boyfriend so scram. She was stuck with me in her apartment that summer. So I took to the streets, talking
to hookers. The pressure to wear a bikini was formidable and I painfully marveled over the rocky beaches with their amazing boulders that were so flat, all these sexy French women laid their nearly naked bodies across them to pray to the sun. I wondered why I couldn't be like them. Have their bodies. Know the love. Hunched over, I made my way across the boulevard, thankful to get to the other side, while trying hard not to expose myself too much. I was 13, after all.

what constitutes the end?

this is the question. one we ask ourselves over and over throughout our lives. always seems to come up no matter the circumstance. in this case, i'm thinking about the end of my novel which just doesn't seem to want to end, as if it has a life of its own and i have nothing to do with it. and then there's the issue of the end, what it means, death. so much death all around me. always the prospect. so i have come to adopt it as something i encounter in my every day life, part of what to expect and in the case of my novel SEPTEMBER 10TH, death keeps knocking on the door. it's where it started and it's where it all ends (eventually) but that's past the place i intended.

above and beyond

do you get the feeling that the universe is in retrograde?
have people lost their ever lovin' groovy minds?
can we not reason or relate or contemplate any more?

these are the questions.

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

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.