Ephemera for Christmas--Santa Head

Share |

Inexactitude of Aubade

Sunlight in an Empty Room, Hopper

This morning, something touched the curve of my hip, and I awakened, thinking for a second it might be you. Only the sheet slithering to the floor, only a touch that echoed a touch I once took for granted, your hand in sleep, burnishing.

This morning, you're a little bit farther away from me; this morning, I'm a little bit closer to going where you are. And where are you? And why are you there? And where? And why? And....

This morning, I long for something--the scent of your skin, the scratch of your beard, the thunder of your laugh--and I remind myself that thunder is an echo, it fills a void.

This morning, this mourning.

The Young Widow, Gosselin 

BROWN STUDY

Cy Twombly on influences, on secrets

"I would have liked to be Poussin, if I'd had a choice, in another time. I had a Poussin period in my head. I did Woodland Glade and it was a kind of romantic English thing rather than Poussin. It was just a homage. Just someone I had respect for. I had different crushes on different artists. But I look a lot at Poussin and I have got a whole set of etchings for example. I've always wanted to do brown paintings, because when I was in school I realised in that great room at The Frick Collection in New York, with all those incredible paintings, that the secret to great paintings is brown. And that is one of my great ambitions, to strive to do a brown painting."

brunette, bay, coffee, chocolate, brick, toasted, ginger, rust, chestnut, hazel, dun, auburn,tawny, umber, fuscous, tanned, browned, bronze, bronzed, tan, dusky, sunburnt, seared, sauteed, toasted, sepia 

If I had a choice, I'd like to be an artist like Twombly, to make art and make a life and not worry so much about what others think.  I started late on this poetry business (2007), and after five, almost six years, I feel that I'm ready to start writing my own poems.  Rejections from Rattle, from At Length, from the Oxford American--one of the best rejections ever--for my long poem (which is damned good) only solidify this desire to write more long poems.  I know that the poems will be all right.  Some editor will love them some day.  

Woodpecker, Woodpecker, Woodpecker

When I looked up my Native American horoscope, I was pretty sure that I'd be a big cat or a snake or something else that slinks or slithers, yet I'm pretty happy to be a woodpecker. In fact, my favorite image in all of my poems is that of a woodpecker--maybe I was channeling my inner self-regard when I wrote it.

Here's the poem, which (as are all but a handful) is dedicated to Harv, our long marriage, and how I would rather walk with him than almost anything.  I miss you, sweetheart.

"Taking a Walk with You"

Share |

Caddy Compson, Talk to Me!

Ragged, Unkempt, Strange: On William Faulkner | The Nation

Share|

[HD] Noisettes - Every Now And Then (Live - New Pop Festival 2009)

There's a curtain between Harvey and me, and I want nothing more than to tear it down.

Let the light back into this empty room.

Curtains.

Share|

BLUE FIFTH REVIEW: Studio Version

"Art washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life."  Pablo Picasso

"His face is smeared and dusted all over with marble powder, so that he looks like a baker, and he is completely covered with little chips of marble, so that he seems as if his back has been snowed on; and his house is full of splinters of stone and dust."  Leonardo da Vinci, Treatise on Painting

"Millions and millions who have died...are blowing about.  The dead are blowing in your nostrils every hour,  every second you breathe in.  It's a macabre way of putting it, perhaps, but anything that's at all accurate about life if always macabre.  After all, you're born, you die."  Francis Bacon (studio above)

Here's my take on what inspires me.  "Unchained Melody: The Studio Version"

(quotes and photo from "Bacon Dust," Cabinet)