poetry

penumbral

penumbral s

almost a shadow
almost an echo between
vast uncertainties

hidden voices wandering
the uncharted borderlines

This year’s Wolf Moon comes with a penumbral eclipse.  For Frank Tassone’s #Haikai Challenge #120, and also linked to OLN on dVerse, hosted by Grace.

penumbral close up s

This is a watercolor with a moon photo collaged on top.

I’m going to be absent from posting for awhile, though I will try to check in with what everyone’s doing.  I’m moving into a small temporary space, putting most of my stuff in storage, and hoping to move into a permanent home before 2020 is through.  I won’t have a drawing table and not sure how many supplies will fit into the space, but I’ll be back to doing more work of some kind as soon as I can.

deficits

deficits s

the world gives me wide berth
as its sharp edges leave cuts in my flesh

passing by in starts and stops
a broken narrative without a plot line

I cannot remain but where I am
fits nowhere leaves no mark

feeding me endless empty words
that catch my throat and heart

I am alone

standing still shouting
an unnamed beast

trying to wake those lost strangers
hidden inside the shrinking circle

too many voices fallen silent
too many gaps grown between

what is left to be
sacred to be denied

For Sue Vincent’s photo prompt, above.

deficits close up s

stormstruck

stormstruck grid s

stormstruck magnetic

It’s clear the Oracle is feeling the world’s distress.

stormstruck close up 1s

I had a dream recently about weaving paper.  I’ve done it before, but in the dream I was using wax paper left over from monoprints (I’m low tech in my technique) and weaving painted paper through it.  I’ve been saving the wax paper images and wondering what to do with them.  I used newspaper that had been underneath my watercoloring (protecting the drawing table) and cut it into strips.  I like the interaction of layers, papers, and paint.

 

The newspaper happened to be the front pages with headlines about the Synagogue shooting in Pittsburgh in 2018.  The world seems to be falling ever deeper and deeper into a vast hole.

stormstruck close up 2s

why was
the bare sky
crying raindrunk
wind whispering
with the shadow language
of raw rusted light

Poem up at The Ekphrastic Review

the water under the bridge s

My poem “the water under the bridge” is included in The Ekphrastic Review’s Victor Gontarov Challenge responses.  Gontarov’s painting is entitled “Gogol’s Dream”, and many of the responses did refer to the writer and his work.  I chose to focus on the dream.

mermaid s

Sometimes the formatting does not come through, and that was the case this time, so I’ve included the poem below with the correct line spacings.

this disordered arrangement
it cannot remain
as it is it is

always somewhere else
transparent shadow
what it was it was

a current of emotion
a glimpse of possibility
what could be could be

a conjuring that takes
and spends itself in fragments
what is not is not

no single body holds it
it cannot be arrayed
what it is it is

always disconnected
from story, form, the why
and what if what if

man s

My thanks to editor Lorette C. Luzajic for once again featuring my work.

January 2020

january 2020 s

jan 2020 news words s

My January grid turned out to be a circle.  The words were taken from a NY Times section that summarized the 2019 year’s top stories.  I tried to take all the negativity and give it a more positive spin.

january 2020 grid close up s

 The birds may have been climate-changed out of their respective states, but they are still here.

memories conjured
in opposite images
balance transition

anything can be portaled
where borders cross into birds