Pictures above my typewriter when I was 26
From poems, texts and artifacts (found in a box)
Jack Kerouac on fire
escape
A drawing of a flower pot by my girlfriend. No flowers.
A portrait of James Joyce
A man circa 1930 in a white apron leaning out of a window selling pies
My father standing on a ladder screwing a light bulb into the ceiling of a dark room. I don’t remember the place. Only: I am going to live there. No windows. No air. Little rays of light shoot out from his palms.
A sign that says
THIS IS YOUR COUNTRY DON'T LET THE BIG MEN TAKE IT AWAY!
A shimmering gold portrait of Jesus that moves when you do
A withering Thai monk
A bum eating lunch
There is something there, no? In these pieces? Worship writing food light father hunger. A picture of pictures. Made of words.
The documents of absence always linger: mortification of flesh and blossoming spirit, housekeeping and care, worn skin and blood, cellular matter pulsing, circling bones, feeding them, a silent man vanishing into a cloudscape, singers perched like birds on the sill of a dirty window, untraceable things dancing. Singing memory’s song.
Things change, sometimes in interesting ways. A string quartet plays "Lonely Woman." Then. A quiet filled by transistors on summer nights, dark conifers in winter, sadness and everlasting spring in blooming gongs.
What’s going on here?
We are pulling time apart. Not thinking much but loving much.
The Indian poet says: "I think of all the breath I wasted in marriage that should have been spent in prayer." Oh yes.
A bicycle ride home at dusk through a shimmering green hell. No one is watching. Nobody says a word.
Music I listened to while writing/composing this:
"We are pulling time apart." Whew. Dead hit.