Portal
Portal
Step through the door
between two worlds,
one to be departed
and one to be explored,
one comfortable
and one is unknown.
Threatening. Necessary.
Fall asleep and awaken.
Waking and sleeping
are different worlds.
I flee from troubling vision,
sweating, out of breath,
flying not as well as before.
Awake, escaped, relieved.
Sex. Orgasm, “La petite mort,”
the little death, release that comes.
Dissolve into the universe,
indistinguishable for the moment.
Go from particular to oceanic,
a self to non-identity.
Surrender and then return.
Old Guitars
Old guitars lean on chairs.
Sound boxes curve
like bodies of women.
Blank music paper scatters
to catch notes which fall
from long fingers
with blue knuckles.
Tantric mandalas
of guitar chord spin
for a moment in the air.
Cigarette smoke settles in waves
around un-barbered heads–
islands in a phantom sea.
Music played urgently
pushes back the void.
The world shaped by it
can be photographed
but not the sound itself.
Young men who chase after ghosts amuse me
Young men who chase after ghosts
amuse me,
when I fight through haunted night
to keep them at bay.
I want to say, “Just give them time;
they’ll arrive,”
but I don’t want to spoil their fun.
Tissue frays; sharp becomes fuzzy.
Night falls.
Look straight ahead, not side to side.
Shades gather.
Don’t make eye contact or answer,
or they will never leave.
There is no hope in their words, no joy.
“Do you remember me?”
they mouth the words.
They have no breath to make the sound,
no heat to warm the room.
I need a warm touch, not ghost words.
I need a throbbing pulse,
Not the rustling of dead leaves.
Captions/Thoughtscapes #2
Rain paints Louisville with a silver sheen.
The town smells like a fish hatchery
when rain settles in for days.
Green algae grows on sidewalks
and shoes will rot unless you dry them.
Strangers in raincoats hurry across streets,
dodge the spray of cars with squints.
Stop action: a tidal wave of water
thrown up by a bus,
frozen in mid-air
above soaked pedestrian
who meets the muddy baptism
with a grimace.
Apartments stack in squares
the private places
between diseased trees
and wire poles.
A half million private universes
hatch ecstasy and nightmare.
Victorian porches
please the eye with a fantasy
of walking the ribcage
of a titanic sea serpent,
bleached by time
to a palisade of bones.
I would not have heard you
Click on photo for larger view
I would not have heard you,
lost as I was in myself.
I may have wondered about you,
but I would not have heard.
I would not have heard you
above the whispered storm
of doubt and imagination,
of thoughts that would not leave.
I would not have heard you,
though you cried for me to do so.
It was not my choice, nor plan.
Forgive me if you must.
I would not have heard you,
lost as I was in this dream.
I awakened too late to hear you,
too late to take your call.
Memory
memory
is bitter black coffee
always tracing
the was against
the wish it was.
moments
are pages yellowed
in time’s acid –
edges crumble,
feeling lost.
i return
as my own ghost,
translucent and silent,
remember everything
and then forget.
Syd’s Journal, Volume 11
“I have come to understand that the act of recording, be it the written word, image, sound or video is an important and valuable thing in itself. I have gigabytes of still pictures and I don’t regret shooting a single one. I only regret the pictures I didn’t take and the journal entries I was too busy to write. The funny thing about my mind is that I’m really pretty smart when it comes to understanding things, but my memory isn’t worth a damn. If I don’t shoot a picture, jot down a journal entry or something, I lose it…”
This is a collection of my recent creative work in writing, photography and graphic art. I hope you enjoy it.
Topics: Singular Vision, Remembering and Recording, Dying, Mt. Carmel, Doug’s Spurs, Inner Fires, I want to go moose hunting with Sarah Palin, Heaven Bends Close, Thinking about the Beats, Art, Graphics, Photography, Poetry
Click here to read: Syd’s Journal Volume 11 (requires Adobe Acrobat Reader)
Reflections in Time
Click on picture for a larger view
These are windows which let in light but cannot be opened, and doors through which I cannot walk. They are in my mind and lost in time, but they return to me now. My gaze pushes through them and I remember. There are some which I can’t quite see through because they are still in the future, and they are hidden to me.
A day comes that isn’t a day. It’s a thousand days – days passed and days yet to come. Some are clear, and some are hazy. I don’t really know why it happens. Situation and circumstance twist themselves around and come to a moment of clarity when the past, present and even hints of the future become visible at once. It doesn’t last. It’s purely temporary, but for those few hours or days, it is like standing on a ridge with everything ahead and behind in view. The moment is usually accompanied by a fear of trusting the scene unfolding in the mind.
Windows and doors full of light, memory and possibility, separated from me by time, a hundred people and places I’ve been surging across each other like the tide coming in – this is the picture. It is confusing on the surface, but tied together by the internal narrative of a human life. For a few moments, or maybe even an afternoon, the whole story hangs together. For a little while, there is an element of certainty and clear seeing.
It leaves as quickly as it comes. The sacred hologram of non-linear time collapses to a single thin thread – tomorrow morning, the next meal, the next job. The picture remains as a memory, its ambiguous special dimensions spilling across each other in ways that no longer makes sense. At least the memory remains.