Collage of trash found Oct 8&9

A recent sketchbook page

Those Were the Days

chalk and pastel on paper

Doubting Thomas

acrylic on canvas

The Path

acrylic on canvas

New Exhibit

My work will be appearing in an exhibit September 7th-29th at the Fort Worth Community Arts Center. More info is at Preservation is the Art of the City.

Here is a piece which will appear...

"On a Line by Philippe Soupault"
acrylic and collage on Masonite. 6x6 inches.

Night

She Stoops

Words for the Wind

The New American

Late Nights

The Road

Sold Out

The blue, or sapphire, plastic WAL-MART bag
bulging with black plums and sweet cantaloupe,
a fetus in its amniotic sac,
bursts as it lands on the volcanic dump.

Homer, Trojans, tampons, mockingbird chirps
mingle in the stinking heap, seeking links,
non sequiturs like an Exquisite Corpse.
Solomon’s vineyard feeds Breton’s blue fox.

Tell me, Wallace Stevens, tell me now, what
device can tame these acidic scents born
from the mush of books, beasts, mildew and Donne—

not something jarring like a rifle butt,
but formal, fitted, proven as a worn-
out filter, say, fourteen by ten by one?

Fort Worth Art

Here's a link to my work published in a new online site dedicated to Fort Worth artists. I'll be sending some new work. If you frequent my blog, you have probably already seen what's currently up.

Browse the site and check out the other artists here in Fort Worth.

Fort Worth Art Space, Aaron Roe

The Double Landscape

The majestic eye loosens from its stem.
You must kill the tree to know its true age.
Its rings are wrought of gold, its gold is gray.
The satin thorn wields its fang without rage.

No breath is made in the absence of clay.
But drop by drop the air consoles the lungs.
The pressing storm expands the shrunken field.
The peach tree blossoms quiver like white tongues.

The still lake lies like an abandoned shield.
Spears of rainfall deflect off its surface.
First darkness sleeps beneath the silver roof.
An elusive swimmer seeks his purpose.

A child collects fossils to prove the truth.
Hair, string, straw are all the bounty of nests.
The proof of life rests in nurturing death.
When the hawk drops from flight, the birds confess.

Being

Cage

The Sophisticated Life

Grounded

I've been away from this blog way too long. Here's a poem that was recently published in a chapbook entitled CONNECTION: A Collection of Poems Inspired be the Art of Thuy Saliba.

Grounded

Acorns and the pit of an apricot,
some red berries from the prickly hedge
(not to be eaten), and three spiral shells,
brittle and whitened with vacancy, rattle

as the child drops a spoon-shaped fossil
into the tin can. No museum would suit
her specimens better than this metal
collection cup, and having reached the edge

of the yard she spies a single red leaf
grounded beyond the iron gate. With the tips
of her fingers she can nearly tease

the leaf into her grasp; then the wind lifts
and from the overhanging branches strips
a boughburst of cardinals and canaries.

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.