Upcoming Exhibit

Five of my artworks will be in the 9 X 12 Works On Paper exhibit opening this weekend at the Fort Worth Community Arts Center. Visit the site at www.fwcac.com

Waking

This poem of mine appears in the current issue of descant.


Waking

When we reach the other end
and say “We’ve come so far,”
what’s left to decipher?

The winter morning rising
glows like the element in an oven,
dislodging our stiffened joints.

Is this a resurrection?
No, we were only sleeping,
at least I was, I believe.

What you dream will decide,
so I read myself to sleep.
The words convince my faith

my will is strong to believe.
The page of night replays the page of day.
The faith I shake shakes itself awake.

The Good Life

inkjet print, Liquid Paper, charcoal, highlighter

Now Appearing

I'm the featured artist in the current issue of the online literary journal Wazee .
Browse through the site to view these four artworks and my profile page:

A Pocket Anthology of the Human Spirit

What you find in the night

Ace of Spades

Place On Straight

Featured Artist Page

Boredom Never Sleeps

Here is a poem Mike Amador and I composed at Cafe Bliss around 1994 using the Surrealist game of taking turns writing lines. It was then 'smoothed out' for better line breaks and flow. Lots of fun. Everyone should give it a try.


Boredom Never Sleeps

Boredom continues like coins
sleeping in her dress, like empty cabinets
and a chest of drawers never full.
But boxes of pillows rob the poor caverns,
find people awake in realization,
waiting for a match to exist, hoping
figures of plaster images
never shatter away.

Still life pictures move, unstill in ice.
A music candles the shadows on the wall,
the wall of bricks and paintingless frames.
The trains of rain slow down with a screech,
as headhunters sweep the streets with heads full of hair.
Wax melts. Hair singes with the song.
I am dying in my coffin.
I am living in my life,
coughing in bed.

What's left to learn? What's left to learn.

wood, paper collage, acrylic, charcoal, glass, metal, pencil, ink, stain




close up view


April 2003

Another old drawing...1993

Voltaire

Exhuming Proof

Jim Morrison sporting a black beret
at a sidewalk café in Paris,
no doubt hung up on Bukowski,
or Elvis cruising Albertson’s
for bananas and Peter Pan,

such rumored cameos pander
to those in doubt, while you have to wonder
whether Lazarus doubted his own
death as he stumbled out thinking
all he needed was to sleep it off.

In Duccio’s Raising of Lazarus
the air provides the proof, as you see
one witness shield his nose
to stifle the resurrected’s stench;
but Thomas had to assess, had to
prod his finger like a thermometer
to warm the mercury of faith.

Some cadavers never turn up,
and you’re lucky to find a loose shoe or a few
strands of hair woven in a sparrow’s nest,
though the fields are combed.

Others are towed up by rope
rather than divinity, exhumed to settle
old disputes—like if the bones in Hico
truly belong to Billy the Kid.
An expert in forensics waits with scalpel
in hand, eager for the word of permission
to scratch the tell-tale itch.

O CURIOUSLY GREEN

An older collage

The Nature of Dreams

Everything you read is

Opens like an ancient coin

She grants safe passage

paper collage

What can be found in the night

pencil on yellow envelope

Place on Straight

paper collage and pencil

My Parrot

Like Abraham before me,
I scribbled my solemn verses
on the back of a shovel,
by candlelight when the mood struck me.

My parrot would repeat after me,
perched on my shoulder
like an eccentric professor;
I admonished myself through him.

The day he died I took up my shovel
and buried him in the woods.
My words were lost to the moist earth;
none were recovered.

Untitled collage made August 13, 2006

A Pocket Anthology of the Human Spirit

An old drawing I did of Ezra Pound using the photo off a book of his poetry.

Degas Done Better

collage with charcoal

After the Flood

This poem originally appeared in Grasslands Review #13 way back in 1995. I thought I'd put it up since I believe that literary journal is now defunct.

After the Flood


A waterlogged breath from a dry tongue

There are no tents in distant lands
or gods rising from chiseled wombs

like there is no smoke rising on the horizon
where wet sticks sulk
current-beaten among the bulk of weeds,
leaves, branches and bodies. No footsteps

but these of sixteen feet stepping from wooden planks
and another, neither stranger nor Father,
stalking among the sun-fasted faces.
This figure, shadow casting shadow,

moves among the vines of the vineyard,
enters the tent in which he already waits.
His eyes gaze across his own contours,
staring, in any land, with foreignless features.

Experiment...please respond

Here's a little experiment. Please leave comments on how you would interpret (if you even do) this particular collage. Just curious. Thanks.

Night Out 

Whirl

Ref

Dinosaur Valley

Here's a poem of mine which originally appeared in descant 2002, volume 41. I just thought of it because of a recent trip.


Dinosaur Valley


We crossed the low river on large stones
To where barricades held back and routed
The water to reveal the prehistoric tracks
Pressed in a portion of dry riverbed.
None of it was as exciting as we had hoped.
Then the rain came sprinkling on a light breeze,
Growing heavier as we headed for the car
Until it seemed when we were all loaded in
That we were submerged in the soaking gusts
Rinsing tourists, cameras, and sunshades away.

So we drove back into town, to the square,
To browse the overpriced antique shops,
Owned by unseen middle-agers,
But well stocked with elderly ladies
Versed in histories and obscure objects.
I hunted through a thicket of canes
Until I caught hold of one with a lizard carved
As if creeping upward towards my hand.
I have no need for a cane, as of yet,
But I studied the intricate pattern of scales
Cut into being long before my birth,
As we sipped our rural lattes,
So good, and served by a beautifully normal girl.

With no intent to stay, we are staying,
Imbedded in a flimsy motel
Until the rain decides to tie itself off.
The clear morning gave away no sign
As we headed out for what was only to be
A day trip to enliven vague memory,
A chance to wipe the glass of the display,
And brush the sand from the circular fossils
We stumble upon from time to time,
Just to see if they live up to the pulsing warmth
They once were, or if that warmth never was
And only seems to have been when looking back
Between the mounds of collected essays.

A small plant sprouts from under the baseboard
Beneath the bathroom sink. Drip of the faucet.
This motel may hold a little longer.
I lie in bed and listen to the rain,
Hearing each distinct drop chasing another,
Crashing and running from the roof,
Plunging through the night into buried streets and lots,
Into every roof, into dumpsters and gutters,
Onto a bicycle leaning against a wall,
Motionless, all its wheels poised on the tip of turning,
And through the trees into the swollen river,
The river crawling out, absorbing,
Filling the prehistoric steps
The way darkness fills my shoes
As I slip them under the edge of my bed.

Our Hostess Masquerades as Eve

Buckle Up

Passage

St. Francis, in his youth, discovers the seed passes through the bird and into the womb

The Discovery of Fire

An old collage

Here's one of the first collages I made over a decade ago (1995, to be exact). Monica and I were making collages one evening in the apartment we shared. Monica, do you still have the one you made? I remember it included a fairy ( I think) and several images linked together making a branch.

In the end

Swiss Fertility Goddess