Art Lesson 1

shapes spin and change
in functions and tonalities,
that once discovered,
leap on to join them

from in or out,
parachute and size them
ready to sketch
is ready to draw on them

if this be imagined
if this be like living
if this be like living or dieing,
brash world of deceptions

let's go for seconds

After Effects

Tragic occurrences tend to be sharper in memory
than those which provoke you to laugh from the belly.
Tragedy makes you stand up and take notice.
Comedy allows you to roll with the punches.

A lighting bolt out of the blue in 1850 Montana,
startled two horses hitched to a wagon,
heavy with furniture, maybe headed back East.
It had been wanting to rain for nearly a week.

Meanwhile, a child crossing the road with her mother,
the raggedy doll she carried, slipped the kid's grip.
Likewise, the mother failed to refrain the 5 year old
from turning around to retrieve the toy.

Thus, the elements of narrative align.
The flash, the horses startled, the driver thrown from his seat.
The thunderous horses run over the child.
And the rain comes down in torrents.

Some swear to have seen
on moonless nights,
a child in frontier dress,
holding a Raggedy Annie.

Midway between a convenience store
and a closed movie house, the apparition allewdly floats
on the outskirts of Billings, Montana, 2000 and 8.
What about you, you believe in ghosts?

I don't know that I believe.
If I did, I would not want to see one. Spooky events,
true or no, have a way of getting under your skin.
Witness what happened to Michael after Thriller.

Legendary

It's nothing short of miraculous
that humanity survived the prehistoric.
Civilizations how have we managed?
Survival of fittest, survival of opportunists?
Certainly not survival of the kindest.
The meekest are usually the first put on the block.

Manuela was a prostitute. Manuela was retarded,
infested with every virus in the book,
a few yet undetected by modern day medicine.
Her teeth were rotten, her breath most foul
when the Black Plague decimated the Europe of then.

When Napoleon invaded centuries later,
Manuela's was even messier.
The lady was brothel and open air sewer.
In the streets from Antwerp to Moscow,
in Seville on to Bristol, last seen
begging and whoring, selling almost for free.

The lady was accursed.
She was green fog.
The multiple votive she lit, the gusts blew them out
She was a cork bobbing tired by a dock in the bay,
a syphilitic sore, a painful reminder
to history's spirited high stepping romance.

White Cliffs of Pigment

The cosmos fitted tightly,
not even a grain of sand could be removed,
without entire mountain ranges having to be reconfigured

A master of brush says to his 18 year old model,
I could care less about painting you buff,
the interlocking of angles is what intrigues me

Thus having spoken,
Maestro relocates a lock of maiden's hair
from where it falls behind her nape to shoulder in front

The above executed with the delicacy of how effeminate men
hold wine glasses, pinkies extended like digital erections ---
two doves on a window ledge, look at each other and coo

In the streets below, an ambulance sirens to an impressive collision;
the primary sounds of which were screech, bang, crunch and hiss;
its primary odors, the burning of rubber, and gas and blood spilled

An appliance known as " jaws of life" arrives with the cops
to extract victims from the twisted pile up of two cars and a van,
the Nissan destroyed, the van on its side, the jeep now being towed

The northeast corner of Sedwick and Memorial

Where's Your Antennae Pointed

If the universe doesn't end at a beach,
but is infinite as it is supposed,
does energy/matter stay the course
or thin into zilch?

The question spooks,
and I scrutinize the horoscope for clues.
Do I pray to energy/matter in crowded space,
or pray to a sinking feeling of a void awaiting in my chest?

Guys

Right now, we're in a clinic,
one guy in a wheelchair,
one guy, his keeper of the guy
and me, related to neither.

The clinic TV it is locked into a bullet proof cage,
Under lock, so no one can change channels
nor bang on the screen. Soap opera is playing.
The keeper is giggling

The wheelchair guy's head is permanently sideways.
And I'm kinda sideways, too, trying to sketch the moment.
Meanwhile, the bimbos in the soap are looking mean at each other.
They have a beau in between, and who knows what else

Mean looks held in suspense
allow for sponsor endorsements
Introducing Juicy Juice, to help our children's brain develop.
And next, Pizza with a snap, followed by toilet detergent

In these questionable times, these products reassure us.

War at The Oars

Plump can as soon swallow a camel as a pumpkin.
Skinny is as blind as a bat but sings like a robin.
Together they row across placid waters
Towards a volcano now beginning to burp.

Out on the straits, sits squat in the wakes,
iron-plated and gray, a three tier cake of bellicose pose,
a battleship as big as a factory for cannons and tanks,
looking for trouble to left and to right.

Her guns will not smoke today nor tomorrow,
not while the League's emissaries (in tails and pipe hats)
gesticulate pantomime as they do when particularly harried.
Peace is for them a marionette character in Halloween masquerade.

Miss Peace is flat chested and tall as a pole.
Her pallor is pale. Her eyes are hollow but rather seductive.
She does have some curves you could hold on to,
if only she let you. She dances alone to a waltz beloved by all,

The Blue Danube