Bugs

Unfurled from my web, he meanders,
Sidestepping my venom en rout.
I want to spit, but cannot
Want to pounce and devour,
But cannot.
I know your games, your sly little exit
Through the side exit.
You melt into the shadows,
Scampering like a roach
In my kitchen,
When I’ve turned on the lights.

Be a coward, slip away.
Keep it easy, baby.
Cradle yourself…
Be what you need,
Because I know,
I had you in my web,

and I didn’t eat you.

Dirty fingernails tap it out, trail the end of the end of the beginning.
Swallow your pride girlie, you weren’t worth it. Keep telling yourself it wasn’t meant, just not meant, to be meant to be. Youth evades your grasp, for beauty is temporary in the eyes of its beholders, flawing quickly, fading into the banal, lost to another moving image. Another moving fantasy. Another false attempt, to make what is not meant, meant to be. Measure it, tap it out, who was here, and who was there. Present, past, present past, it’s all a void, a wanting. Pulse accelerating, while you’re stuck contemplating, debating, truth? Truth……….is pulling you to self-destruct, a ticking time-bomb knifing its way through your mind. Can’t stop shouting, while Reality laughs in the wake. Reality is, girlie, you don’t matter anymore. Reality is hell, and this hell is the truth. Wear blinders, put cotton in your ears, but know it. Tap it out. Accept it. Fade it out. Accept it, until the end is the end, and love can be filed away and categorized as something it never was.

curdling

Stuff my hand

Beneath the pillow,

Nights not the same

Without you.

Its getting better

My mind now coasts

Right past you.

And when I pray

Its not for you;

Its for me.

Not us

To work,

To last,

Because it doesn’t matter

Anymore.

Too much lost,

Too much gone,

Too much past.

I can’t face you in life

I can’t face you in sleep

We’ve curdled

And all that was sweet

Has soured.

In the process of...

Starting now, I am going to start posting paintings that I am working on. I haven't painted in a while, and so I can use all the help I can get. So artistic people, please help me out with any ideas or tips you have for me. This is Pat's painting (right).



He wanted a tree with a green and cobalt color scheme.He wants it to look like this other tree painting here (left). It doesn't. But this painting is annoying, my hearts not in it....and he likes it as is.....so yes, I am copping out. Unless, anyone has some quick tips to spice it up?


This is one of the other paintings I am working on. The theme is metaphysical wit....yes John Donne bladee bla bla! So my idea is to make the table a compass....and then either skeletalize the body...or make it naked and feminine...I think I need to get rid of weird mannequin torso in the background, and what the hell am I doing with the background??? I just don't know! This is one of those "it made sense in my head" paintings, but once I started barfing it out it doesn't work so well. Help!

I don't know

Under my skin, you cling,
a tendon running the length of my torso.
My heart entangled amongst a web of nerves,
tentacles, twisting a hangman's noose -
you have pulled,injecting my veins
with your hurt. I feel it.
I feel

you-

lining me, salty as bone-marrow.
I have lost you,and now I lay on the floor,
collapsed, a puddle of flesh and fluid and tears,
my backbone in retreat. I have broken my bones,
and so they have fled.

In every piece, in every cell
you live, like resin.

My body betrays me.

Perhaps, in time, I will shed you.

Reverberation

Palm in cupshape,

Fashioned,

Drum a sound.

Sound a beat,

Beat a rhythm.

Fingers dash, dash and tap

Breath,

Exhale.

Louder, louder, louder!

Pulsing, steady, harder,

Accelerando!

Panting, panting,

Gasping, but steady,

Hold steady!

Hold steady!

Silencio!

Tapping, lightly tapping;

Rising, calm

Trickle,

Like rain,

Beading, gathering,

Then streaming,

Blending

Into sound,

Into sounds,

Into beats,

Into rhythm,

Into me,

Into us.

Side Note on B-more

With rockets and bombs we have blast forth the New Year, 2008. Ripe with potential, and frothing at the lip of a full glass of champagne, this virginal calendar burgeons for us a new beginning, a fresh start. For Baltimore: The Greatest City in America, the New Year provides an empty page, and akin to a wash of Listerine, Baltimoreans are hopeful that this New Year will cascade through our streets, blast our beloved cat-sized rats from the alleys, and irrigate the innermost trenches with the motto of Believe.

Believe, the motto plastered to bumpers and billboards, and costing over 2 million dollars, was to perpetuate optimism among locals and ramp up tourism in spite of dire statistics. Did it? Does it work to Believe in Charm City? To “Believe” by definition is to have conviction, trust, confidence, dependence, and expectation. Nonetheless, words like conviction, confidence, trust, dependence, and expectation categorically contradict the Baltimorean mindset.

Instead, I believe that Believe was to resonate a more numinous definition, that of hope and faith. Hope and faith by association typically refer to something that hasn’t happened, may not happen, has yet to be seen, is continuously challenged, and potentially always disappoints. Within this context, Believe makes entirely more sense as our city’s motto.

Perhaps for you, Believe, or hope and faith are terms that you apply toward a lover, a friend, a son or daughter, maybe even God. Words like these are optimistic in tonality, romantic at the root, and vague in expectation. They insinuate that something could potentially happen, could potentially change, but at the current time has not. They refer to a blind state of optimism, an intrinsic, irrefutable love toward something or someone. These words ignite desire and passion; they elevate emotion, but unfortunately fail to deliver.

Year after year Baltimore fails to deliver. It fails to deliver 282 individuals home, alive. It fails to lower drop-out rates, to increase literacy, to increase affordable housing, to decrease homelessness, to lower crime, and to regulate honesty and integrity amongst city officials. At the core of Believe is a city of desperate, frustrated, and seemingly apathetic individuals suffocating amongst the cloak of impending statistics.

At the core of Believe is a city of stifled, intelligent, creative individuals who must arm themselves for battle, and for once put up a fight, carry it out, and make a difference. It is easy to rant discontent, to point out what needs to change. Baltimoreans are good at that, in fact I’m doing it right now. But, it is quite another thing to implement a direct course of action.

We need to organize an infrastructure within our city, with the sole objective to bring about change, start a chain reaction, and fight within the boundaries of a muddled system. We need an infrastructure built by the actual individuals who live within or around Baltimore, who are invested in it either physically, emotionally, financially, and/ or creatively. A culmination of talent and perspective needs to occur, and we need to unite as a city, in spite of our economic, racial, or educational differences. In 2008, we need to bring about change, and we need to bring meaning to the word Believe. After all, we paid quite a bit for it.