Placid waves
wash warm
Over toes, knees,
belly to breasts.
Drink in sun.
Float
cotton-candy clouds
framing
rose,
lemon,
sapphire
sky.
Placid waves
wash warm
Over toes, knees,
belly to breasts.
Drink in sun.
Float
cotton-candy clouds
framing
rose,
lemon,
sapphire
sky.
I have lived in artistic communities since early adulthood. I love the energy, feel it even when I am alone in my room. There is affirmation of the value of creating within an art community. There is knowledge that process is important. The energy in a community where people participate in the creative process helps generate ideas, even as we disagree about the relative value of specific pieces or particular forms of art.
Art for me has been a means of keeping an even keel in a crazy world.
Often when I create, whether a poem, a painting or a song, I don’t fully understand the symbols and juxtapositions of ideas until much later. Art is not a way to recreate reality, but distorts reality in order to fully portray it, like a curved glass will focus the sun’s rays on a single point, and result in a fire.
photo of Baltimore rapper Wealth making a music video in Savage, Maryland.
Holding babies,
Making art,
Singing loudly
In the rain.
Spring is the time of death.
Look out the windows;
Mist and memory drift
from the verdant hills.
At road’s curb,
mangled
bat wing
slate sky.
I drive.
Death lays.
Morning,
the young beggar stands,
blanket thrown over narrow shoulders,
flimsy white undershirt,
a pile of rags at his feet.
We in cars ignore him,
cast eyes at ruby stop light,
and rising cobalt sky.
Escaped sunflower,
sits in a car, a
moon faced woman
w/ styled bob,
reads her cell phone.
Wheeling seagulls
search for garbage.
Undershirt,
dull khaki jeans,
work boots,
he smokes the 2nd cigarette of the day,
carefully counts them out.
He carries his sign
with jaunty steps,
but
his eyes
are hollow.
dream
salt sea foam
clams scurry
dig themselves
into sand
as the waves recede
we are young
i wrap
burgundy and cobalt
gauze scarf
about my torso
my nipples show
i reach out
to touch
your silken sandy curls
as cigarette smoke
sinuously rises
your voice rumbles
weakens my knees
Dark night,
sea seeps into sky.
I make footprints,
sand soft against my soles,
soft against my soul,
dipping my feet
at the ocean’s edge.
First light fills the sea.
Sable brushes
against sky.
Ebony ripples
topped
by pale whitecaps.
Still,
the sea is monotonously calm.
One small wave
lands at my feet.
Clouds fall into horizon.
Sky grows lavender
and pale azure,
flaunts charcoal clouds.
Rain
comes.
I
walk.
East,
stirring of orange glow.
By my right shoulder,
moon peers through clouds.
Sandpipers descend
from
wherever they spend the night.
Feast on
tiny shoreline organisms.
Nimbly avoid
the sweep of waves.
Race forward
and back
from water’s edge.
Skim across the sand
in a motley crew,
in a ballet of
choice
&
fate.
Now,
Bach’s major chords.
Lemon, rose, violet commingle,
create
a path to the horizon.
Clouds consume rising mist.
West light expands.
Sun capers
in cloud mountain peaks,
rises from the sea.
Indigo clouds stretch,
unveil coral cumulous,
so fluffy
I could eat them.
Cloud column rises from sea,
lays against green sky.
Thunder crashes,
booms.
Lightening cracks open sky.
Heat leaps from sand.
Moist
heat
rises,
cocoons me.
North turquoise sky,
dusky blue ocean.
I turn south,
purple horizon,
salmon undercoat,
azure and lemon overlay.
Creation
every day.
Recently, I opened a notebook from a few months ago and found lovely drawings and stories that I didn’t remember doing. I had intended to write on the leftover blank pages but started viewing the work. It felt like I was looking at someone else’s work.
I often put aside writings or paintings for at least a month or more after finishing them, before editing them or making the final touches. When I come back to the work, I have enough perspective to edit words severely, add an extra line of paint, or eliminate a too busy portion. Sometimes I just note what I liked and what I didn’t like about the piece, tuck the piece away, and use that information to inform future work. Then, I move on. I figure that good work will emerge about 1 out of 10 times, if I’m lucky that day. This doesn’t bother me. My artwork is done for my own entertainment, catharsis, and meditation. The final product is merely a by-product of the process. But occasionally, when I look back, there is a lovely sensation of satisfaction of having done something well.