Poetry
I sit quietly in the chair
While my nail technician
Paints this beautifully soft,
Pastel purple color on my
Nails, and I can’t help but
Think: I love these bright,
Simple-minded colors, because
They contrast the complexity
Of soul entangled beneath
This flesh of mine.
I was once engulfed in the depths of absence. The piercing light returned my soul to presence. Yet every so often I catch a glimpse of the underground. The shadows remain to give form to the otherwise obscure nature of eternity. One cannot be known without the contrast of the other.
traces of life. feet pacing.
from the weight of it all.
under tasks she finds only
confusion.
aimlessness uncovers
eternity
nowhere to go. but her feet
keep running.
The more time that passes from my studies at grad school, the more I am drawn to the simple. Not the theoretically complex simple, not the complex masking itself in veiled simplicity, just, simple. It was necessary to learn theory and history, to be so inside the ‘mind’ of it all, but I have become increasingly disinterested in making art that ‘challenges’ the medium or even makes the viewer think in any way. There are enough things in this world that make us think and keep us locked inside our well-furnished minds - what I find is an increasingly dwindling space of experiences that makes us FEEL. I hope for my photographs to make you feel something, maybe peace, something unexpected, maybe it enlivens a long forgotten cob-webbed memory, maybe something similar to what it conjures within myself, maybe nothing at all, maybe the sharp pain of apathy.
Anything to help you feel the fullness of what it means to be you, alive and breathing through those lungs - with your own thoughts and memories and ways of looking at the world; With your own unseen universe that I can only imagine how cavernous and wonderful it is. As Robert Frank so succinctly put, “when people look at my photographs, I want them to feel the way they do when they want to read a line of a poem twice.”
I am in the process of re-learning how to think less, and feel more.
Someone In My Dream Asked Me What Your Name Was, 2023, from the ongoing series Traces of Silence
Photo made 2023; Poem written 2016
Dreams,
Dreams,
Jelly beans.
I toss and turn
Like a laundry machine.
I dance in the night
Unafraid of the curse.
I smile in the sun
Knowing I’m my cure.
Love is here in my very bones
Wrapping me in blankets
Like an oversized coat.
The plane floats away
As the leaves turn green.
The train passes by,
Oh what a strange dream.
Divinely intertwined
Tangled in cotton
The window is open
The air is crisp
The Full Moon rises
Now this is bliss
I feel held together by threadbare shoe strings
And worn out elastic
But he said I spin the finest of silks
_
I reside beneath the guise of personality
A busy mind makes a foggy mirror
Spirit is synonymous with light
You are spirit disguised as human
My brother
Michael is dead.
I danced around him
In a blue tutu as children.
I snuck him sweet chocolate
And we rode the rocking horse.
Our parents took us to the zoo,
He was always smiling, my silly,
Sarcastic, sensitive little brother.
He could not speak but he spoke
My name when we were children.
He taught me the wordless gift of
intuition and what the spirit world was like.
We would watch his eyes and know that he
Was dancing with the angels in divine light.
Oh brother, I love you so
We shared more than blood,
We shared a light-filled soul.
An ineffable bond I could not know,
Not truly until you went back home.
But now that you’re there,
I sense your presence everywhere.
I feel the thread between your soul and mine,
One day we will dance together in the great divine.
Blue swirls drown my soul
As we sit and wait for the unknown toll.
I anguish in a green taxi waiting in traffic -
I see the beauty in her mismatched outfit.
The pain of your death is searing
And yet somehow it helps me see more clearly.
All that is real, true and worth the most
Is that which no man or mind can compose.
“How Infectious!”
Infection!
Get the jab or die!
FEAR! DIVISION! ANGER!
(The changing faces of suffering)
What has happened to this world?
He was only talking about
The infectious affect
Of her radiant smile.
She told him,
“With a world as dark as ours,
We have to be our own sunshine.”
Different stories
Same past
Who says
This life is last?
We are diaphanous spirits
Drifting in worlds unknown,
Even to ourselves,
Ever dying into
Our highest becoming.
Self-Portrait
I seek the underground in broad daylight
God winked at me as I crossed Madison Ave
Daydreaming for a glimmer of nighttime secrets
Live with your heart anointed in oil:
All that is shallow shall be repelled,
for only Truth’s depth can arrive
THE MORE LOVING ONE
by W.H. Auden
Looking up at the stars, I know quite well
That, for all they care, I can go to hell,
But on earth indifference is the least
We have to dread from man or beast.
How should we like it were stars to burn
With a passion for us we could not return?
If equal affection cannot be,
Let the more loving one be me.
Admirer as I think I am
Of stars that do not give a damn,
I cannot, now I see them, say
I missed one terribly all day.
Were all stars to disappear or die,
I should learn to look at an empty sky
And feel its total dark sublime,
Though this might take me a little time.
(From The Marginalian)
Walk to the edge of your mind,
Find the feeling of that edge -
Your feet teetering towards the teeming unknown,
The ground giving way to emptiness.
Now, JUMP.
Only those who have lost themselves completely
may hope to understand who they truly are.
This planetary playground,
A fable full of footnotes.
I stand watching a wildfire
In the crack of a sidewalk.
Eight moons encircled us in the night sky above
As I stood in the heart of a familiar forest.
Every pearl slowly revealed herself after the last,
Clear yet veiled by a familiar mystic design.
The radiance of a boiling star passed as she spoke,
“true wisdom lies beneath the illusion of distinctions.”
We awoke in the luminous shade of Crescent street,
I could not find the moon for she became me.
She Dreamed of Eight Moons (I and II), 2022, Limited Edition Lenticular
Photographs, Multiple Sizes Available, Shop HERE
