Terrestrial

3×3″ on watercolor paper

The Giant Upstairs

Downstairs, terra cotta tiles cold under bare feet, small and chilled in the night, walls blue and deep. My mother and I, standing in the hallway below the stairs, and my father above, two stories tall and voice like a brawl. Fury like the night, howl and moan. And I am full of love, he said. There on the bed in the day, bone thin and denying the moon. I said, we’ll see, but the demand was a map, of the world and all those stars. Outside, shining down on the lake, and my mother slept in my bed, while I lived, I lived, I lived, and while she remembered I forgot or never knew. What is a life when you hold it in your hand, what is a hand you hold when the life slips? The ashes were not black the way she wrote them. They were grey like feathers, dust and stone. Gravel, and I didn’t want to hold them. Didn’t want to speak my distraction. Distraction? What is a pain when it’s edges are so soft? I am full of love, but he roared from above, and I the cowerer, the map-less bird. Please, will you show me the way, he asked, will you take me by the hand? My paths wander, and my mind is shuttered. A tower of mortar and brick. Steady, it is, with an eternal hum like the sea inside a shell. I hold you at a distance, arms stretched, and I can’t answer these questions, because there is no choice in these meanderings. A path, that is the request. A preview, and a happy ending. I am full of love, he said, and I drew my hand away. Built the castle and the tower, too. Stared down at the terra cotta tiles and the mid-night chill, sky-tall and howling at the moon.

(from 6/2/09)

More hills

Blue for a Bride

I made this for a friend’s wedding a few weeks ago. She was a lovely bride…

approach

crowd volume, café afternoon
we measure innocence in ounces
stack lovers against sugar
sweets and skin

wonder when will we be lovely in this light
like cheeks flushed from chill
the beginning, cautious and complete
belly to the ground

at the counter, sweatervest and trousers
french roast no cream, approaches
just like a Rossetti painting, he suggests
but my hips are not so wide

duck out, sidewalk swims in dust
my hands taste like water in this cold
light burns the sides of houses as we pass
neon bright—as if we were welcome here

Crossing

In the parking lot you taunt headlights
singing that old love song
overdressed for your intentions—begging proof
for every inch.

_

Don’t leave me like another
lover.  Licking my lips chapped.
I’ve run out of alibis.
I am threadbare at the knees.

_

Give me a ticket and I’ll slap you
rip knuckles on wires.

_

Asleep with our boots on
skirts twisted and much too tight
we refuse to be saved but are justified.

_

In this waste I am old like those churches
arches high and breathing from the ribs.
Echoes rise thick with dust.

_

You find home in the brawl
fists full of hair
breath heavy and limbs deep
in the earth.

_

Yellow Hill

3″  x 3″, oil pastel on metallic acrylic

Red x 3

3″ x 3″, oil pastel on metallic acrylic

Silver Bloom

oil pastel, 3″ x 3″, on metallic acrylic paint

Forest fire

oil pastel, 8″ x 8″, on metallic acrylic paint