And then...

 

Change is like that strong smell

of cut grass or chopped wood

that stops you still.

Patterns, a symbol can be

an illegible sign, 

at first glance.

Or a certain light at sunset, 

or dark that whispers

Where am I coming from?

You are always going

Somewhere.

Next to nothing seems impossible.

I am next.

Painting by Orazio Gentileschi, 'Portrait of a Young Woman as a Sibyl' (c. 1620-1626) from Google Art Project via Wikimedia Commons in Public Domain. 

Aloha

Everybody's Home

Burns to the ground

At some point

The scenery changes

Like that

Old memory of

Open fields

Filled in with

Buildings

Now 

Vacant and

Antiquated after

Remote working

Everybody's Home. 

Painting by Jules Tavernier, 'Kilauea Caldera Sandwich Islands' c. 1886 at San Diego Art Museum in Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

Broke girl

They say

When you break 

A big bill,

Into smaller ones

It spends faster...

Change is always 

due

When offering more

Than-

what it's worth.

True

Enough-as a theory.

Change is more 

Of a fundamental

Proof.

What you see

Is what you get-

Exchanged

For small pieces

Worth saving. 

Painting by George Elgar Hicks, 'Gypsy girl' c. 1899 in Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

Nickel Linings

When counting blessings

like spare

Change

keeps

Adding up to

Less sense

than we thought we had,

stashed In crevices

it is the

Change

Saved

For a rainy day

That makes its way

Toward

Something found...

Even green

wears off

Leaves

and becomes something

More

In time, interesting...

The zinc sky reflects

Itself

empty

but unbroken. 

Painting by Matthias Stom, 'Woman counting coins by candlelight' (Allegory of Avarice), c. 1635 in Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

Chrysalis

Madame Butterfly,

Sometimes we be-

come

that which hurt

Us, that one we abhor

All the more

Consumed

and eaten alive.

One can feel this,

as a matter of growth

inside

as cocoon cannot keep

safe 

its contents.

From moth to monarch

Color comes to show

Consumption.

I have become many

Delicate versions

Of a creature

That becomes-

Part of

creation.

Canaries are placed inside

Coal mines

by us, to save us

from poison unseen.

Other-

Wise

I have chosen

To hover at the blazing

Hearth

making smoke rings

with ashen wings

while warm

blooded bodies

Take shelter

soaking in stillness.

I can

Still

fly away.

Painting by Edward Mason Eggleston (1882-1941), 'A Day in June' c. 1932 in Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

Command prompt

 

You know

I couldn't sit down

for the longest time-until now

and realized-that meant I was staying.

In shock

in a new Purgatory

between the life not gone

and the one not yet begun.

Of course 

change isn't This to That

transition is a stretched out process

that sinks, tears, and wears on the traveler.

Perhaps progress

is just change

that never arrives-per se

or takes a seat...

Painting by Vilhelm Hammershøi, 'Rest' c. 19905 in Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

Another Autumn Awaits

 

Falling comes naturally

as common as fear 

another body

knocked down-

Learning how to climb

up to the canopy 

out of the arbor awnings

each branch a rung

bell 

a ladder 

has no top

The horizon awaits this distant gaze

further than 

a crow flies 

an escape 

too far to grasp, too afraid to take

it all in

to begin again

asking...

What is more

No-

body needs to learn

anything except 

landing 

softly

before rising again

with an icy wind

at knifepoint

only to return 

home, rootbound

thirsting 

for more.

Artwork by Ellen Thayer Fisher, 'Fall leaves and Acrons' c. 1885 in Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

Run-on sentences

Keep reading as if the book

were a bible-
Take it with you,

I plea-

You can fit in

a few new affirmations

now and then-

Other currency

is needed

to retain

value.

I beg you
to commit
to memory
the lines,
(psalms)
that will save you
from having to make
up endings.




Artwork credited by William Etty, in National Gallery of Art [CC0], Public Domain.

Well-being

I choose not to spend pennies of thought
for the benefit of others opinions
who have made no personal investment
into the savings of and for the consideration of
a profitable shared account wherein there is only one
authorized signatory and not that of the opinionated.

Buddhist principles encourage us to
'Let go' of attachment but 'Hold on' to
your spirit, stick with it, lean in-
to the fall, don't hold your breath,
all obstacles are opportunities.

I clear some space and feel smaller.
I create conflict and make a mess.
I clean the slate, gently blowing off all
calcium deposits thin as chalk.

A moment ago, I slept,
Now I know why a funeral is called a-wake.

I have lost it and found a-way
back to the well-
being-whereby
change was inevitably tossed in.



Painting by Kazimir Malevich [in Public domain], 'Woman with pails' c. 1912.

Clear as mud

Enveloped, as I had been
         folded
into the dark mournings,
one after the next stroke of
grey palette,

And when standing
         upright
among the five foot stalks
of daisies and poppies
where painted ladies
couple up twisting aloft

precipitation,
and what precedes,
a worm, a cloud, a momentary
          levitation
inconsistencies become solid

Silver change strewn across
the steel
sea,
sense
              the bottom
of the well, whereby my feet
have sunk
in.

Artwork by Umberto Boccioni, c. 1902 [CC0] in Public Domain.

Weather (or not)

There are no problems, I have been told,
simply-events, an occurrence.

It is no coincidence, it suddenly occurred
to me, occur can be like low tide, recurring.

If there are no problems, are we living
in a comfort(able) zone, which becomes
uncomfortable,

like growing out of shoes,
or them growing apart
from you.

Returning our attention
to the steps we take, looking down,
we notice the children all looking up.

The sky is never the same.


Painting by Eugene de Blaas [Public domain].

Marker

It occurs to me that a threshold

is essential for crossing over

leaving one place, entering another.

A transference or transcendence

if done intentionally

the past stays outside.

It occurs to me rather suddenly,

despite making plans and beds,

tucking corners and ducking blows,

this was all about some body, 

a place to rest

and what to do with what remains.

I have reconsidered 

that it may be the most selfless thing

to be buried in a plot, or swallowed by a sinkhole, 

instead of scattered

to sea, disbursed widely

without

a mark(er), a fold or ripple,

a place

where others can go

to meet with Memory.

This is the last thing I can do

for those whom I held the door for,

for those that may be missing and seeking

my presence-

No body

needed more than a place to rest. 



Painting By John Singer Sargent [CC0], via Wikimedia Commons, 'Open Doorway, Morroco, c 1879.

An Art a part

On PBS the show "Civilization(s)" or some such name,
chronicals the human
                                 
                                 amongst humanity.

In a sense, the dawn of man
thru the hours
to the twilight of Idols.

                                         The
                                  form of self
                            fashioned by and from
                   some self-wanting to express
                                self by making
                                  another self.

Michelangelo famously pardoned his images
(from exile on the mountain),
like Capone on Alcatraz (the Rock)

-sharpness being no more requisite of tooling
than persistence in method(ology).

I doubt they knew
                     who was waiting on the other side. The face emerges
masked in fine dust.
It is a face of surprise
that does not expect
the stranger standing
                                 before Him.

The idea came to me-I did not go to it
                                 and yet
the unexpected visitor
leads the way
                                 by blocking the wrong path-
ways, giving way
to avalanches and mudslides and this (re)arrangement
was an expression                               of liberation
                                from the body.

Water will
evaporate eventually,
the granite
breaks
down
its crystal components.

The two cannot compare

Maker and Made.



 Painting by Lovis Corinth, c. 1904 in [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Bulbous

The earth slows down
just enough to focus on a handle
as if made for us,
made for touching and gauging
the sum of all things
with the unbearable lightness of possessing nothing
earnestly.
Time flies, hope levitates, spines flex in-
tensely repulsing gravity
just to keep up-
right
after the fact, I heard back home
the mighty oaks had toppled on perfect-
ly calm days,
the redwoods, however, stood their ground.
Meanwhile,
down here, the passiflora
already swallowed the fence
and now nibbles away at the eave.
On this evening
the colors come too quick to name.
It was
the tulips
we were expecting
to Spring,
the wait was too much to hold still.
Over centuries,
it has been discovered
our heads have become rounder.
When I look harder
it seems like
Venus' belt is shrinking.




Painting by Franz Werner Tamm [Public domain or Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Round the bend

At this time
change felt like the fog rolling in
and when driving into the road mirage
and not hitting a thing-

in a blur that stranges the familiar,
stretches out time a little
like a band,
rubber or air-the change

lingered heavier than mist,
more solid than virga,
icy in all the same clear ways that
when you try to cut it out

from what was always
called Now I am-
like routine and rut,
running along the edges fray,
more than decor, drapery, or flax
like flux, anticipated
or a natural change
of season.

It could have been
Only that-

At this time,
comforts naked shoulder
cooled in the exposure,

where same,
felt somehow strange
like never before.





Image credit By U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Moving moments

Fell upon, as light as drizzling

mists indistinct as an inkling.

There was a sense of something strange a-

round the sharp corner.

He walks confidently 

into newly woven webs,

framing the finished work.

The ground sloped, gravity pulled a-

long his footing in a groove.

One in front of the other. 
He counted on this order. 

Crossed over to a new dimension,

blended into this one image.

He is held up

to the sky and draped in silk,

with webbing in the corners, 
brushed by invisible lines.

He finds her hanging
where he left her last.

Never again

does he take

the last passage 
back. 




Painting by Claude Monet, 'A corner of the apartment' c. 1875 in [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Bare witness

It was miraculous-

the way life gets to see itself

Change

genetics 1-oh-1

the children brought here

with great struggle

and left to die

without effort

holes on hearts and all

last names

shorter than

last words.




Watercolor by William Blake c. 1794 [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Growing pains

Something happened
he said
but wouldn't say more,
and he changed.

Something just clicked,
she said, at that age
she guessed
but couldn't say what.

Something felt different,
like stepping into the wrong shoe
but I couldn't tell what-
It was
(left or right).

Painting by Thomas Eakins [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Skywriter

The clouds pursued an equilibrium of their own.

The jaundiced glow fell over the soft heads of innocent beings

not looking up.

It may have drawn more in, pulled more up

had the wind changed dramatically.

as if the dark atmosphere

and hot air

weren’t enough warning

persisting in taking shape across the glass bubble sky.

It was clear as day to those that study the signs that clouds make,

The ambiance made moody thoughts thunder through.

Painting by Konstatin Bogaevsky, (c. 1920's), Clouds, in Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons. 

liminal

Fine. Pretend, thinly.
Smile. Pull the cord. Middle C.
Pluck the inside strings. Up.
Ply your arms, for others.
Cut. Hung. Behave. Trim and Prop her.
Hear yourself first, thought, same.
Note turned to tone?
Silence is preferred by the self
Above all else.

Despite, to spite the intolerably cruel,
Endure. Niceties, stand still. 
Erect, not flinch. Faces. Places.
As though-
As though,
You remember You
From somewhere,  around here….

Painting by Vincent van Gogh, The peasant churchyard (1885) in [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.