atl

In one pocket I have hidden chocolates from you
And knives.

Speaking my real thoughts to no one

In bars and at lecterns I have told the truth
Fairly often, but hardly ever to myself.

Patricia Goedicke

I didn’t see you, tall, dark, intense,

with three bouquets of flowers in your hand.

On Walnut and Broad, between the Union League

and the Indian Campsite, you stopped me,

shoving flowers toward my arm.

“At least, I’m not begging,” you cried.

The desperation in your voice

spiraled through my feet while I fumbled the few bucks

you asked for. I wanted those flowers—

iris, ageratum, goldenrod and lilies—

because in desperation

you thought of beauty. I recognized

the truth and human love you acted on,

your despair echoing my own.

Roberta Whiteman, Philadelphia Flowers

Every fifteen minutes

a patrol car cruises by. I jolt awake

at four a.m. to sirens screeching

and choppers lugging to the hospital heliport

someone who wants to breathe.

The sultry heat leads me

to the window. What matters? This small

square of night sky and two trees

bound by a wide brick wall.

Roberta Whiteman, Philadelphia Flowers

I saw in Louisiana a live-oak growing,

All alone stood it and the moss hung down from the branches,

Without any companion it grew there uttering joyous leaves of dark green,

And its look, rude, unbending, lusty, made me think of myself,

But I wonder’d how it could utter joyous leaves standing alone there without its friend near, for I knew I could not

Walt Whitman

The rules are posted: only the toughest
habiliments, the superego
of raiment can take such agitation.
And only the poor are invited to endure
the sneezy powders and clean resentment.

digital nikon still broken,

at least it gives me time to update from the past.

silver linings and all that.

but progress is being made, today the l.c.d. screen flickered at me. woo.

oh the heat, oh the rain, wait- does savannah have a monsoon season? 

a garden grows in the hood.

burritos again, bestiality, upwords.

my dig camera short circuited today. 

 fuck. 

seriously? this shit really happens? 

and last week my 35 lens decided to stop staying attached.

(oh, and the economy is failing and i can't find a job.)

fuck.

man,

fuck it.

playing art, eating burritos, and brainstorming pizza toppings...

With both hands snap the fetters you made with your own heart chords;
Take to your breast with a smile what is easy and simple and near.
Today is the festival of phantoms that know not when they die.
Let your laughter flush in meaningless mirth like twinkles of light on the ripples;
Let your life lightly dance on the verge of Time like a dew on the tip of a leaf.
Strike in the chords of your harp the fitful murmurs of moments.

savannah on fire

Sing the song of the moment in careless carols, in the transient light of the day;
Sing of the fleeting smiles that vanish and never look back;
Sing of the flowers that bloom and fade without regret.
Weave not in memory’s thread the days that would glide into nights.
To the guests that must go bid God-speed, and wipe away all traces of their steps.
Let the moments end in moments with their cargo of fugitive songs.

so, i'm grateful for the 4 hours a day it's dangerous to be outside,

it gives me much time to read and read and read.

i take books as lovers and cannot inhabit the real world until our affairs are over.

just finished divisadero by michael ondaatje; a quiet but forceful book, it tore me open and

 sewed me back up by the end; a supremely satisfying read if you're into good books.

now an excerpt from a rainy day past, its def not any close to this weather now- but it's nice to remember

beautiful day to be at the beach here in savannah, 

but where am i going the spend the next 12 hours?

oh yeah, in the inkjet printing lab staring at a computer.

not quite the same as being outside...

I should have begun with this: the sky.

A window minus sill, frame, and panes.

An aperture, nothing more,

but wide open.

california

i dreamed i drank an arrow shirt
and stole a broken
pail

...but we live by the grace of the simple fact that our bodies take good care of us.  It's in this sense that I tell students that they have to be able to trust themselves.  What we all have to do is to use this bodily wisdom, staying close to the kinds of processes and ideas and emotional anchors that are most appropriate to our feelings, to ourselves.  You can't evade your ideas, which are precious to us, but micromanaging our ideas can be as much of a hinderance as they are a great help. 

... When we are young we are self conscious, we think about what people think about us.  As artists, the more we think about our audience and what we are trying to present, the less, perhaps, we are in touch with the physicality of the experience, the particulars, the minute details of our experience.  

Emmet Gowin, talking to John Paul Caponigro

You wanted happiness, I can't blame you for that,
and maybe a mouth sounds idiotic when it blathers on about joy
but tell me
you love this, tell me you're not miserable.

P.S.

I close my eyes and see 

a seagull in the desert,

high, against an unbearably blue sky.

There is hope in the past.

I'm writing to you

all the time,  I am writing

with both hands,

day and night.