When you are on a long road painting

Mutters and an Atmosphere

I’ve just finished a painting that will be the cover of the chapbook, Bring Your Own Cup….maybe…

Painting is not my strong suit.  I try very hard and take my time but everything I paint comes out a little weird.  The paintings look cool and are colorful –that should count for something.

There is an elephant that can paint a better elephant than me.

This is not a big deal.  I enjoy painting.  I can say a lot more with a painting than I can say with poetry or a story.  I can put what is in my mind on the canvas and there is no confusion.   I like confusion. I do but painting is more expressive of the mental images.  I like how the mind creates meaning with light and form.  Different colors set different moods.  If I could I would paint more but paints and canvas are expensive. Besides I broke my best brush.

Do you paint?  Are you good?  Why is that the talented don’t paint and creeps like myself paint?  Ok. I know a lot of great painters who paint but my favorite painters don’t paint enough.  They have jobs and lives and budgets, and well, they could make money selling their paintings.  All of my paintings are for sale.  You can buy them. Warning –they cost an arm and a leg.

They are not very good.   If you like twisted worlds of imagination, you will like them.  If you want to look at a painting, my paintings are for you.

You and I are not alike.  Our bodies and brains are lived in.  I’ve damaged mine.  You might ask how, and I might answer with a cough or ask you if you’ve ever made an atmosphere.  You will want to talk about your favorite TV show and I will discuss science and art and poetry.  I’ll play Thelonious Monks and you will say, this is weird or say you really don’t like jazz.

You’ll want me to notice your new shoes and I will talk about the obscenities of a long dead bard.   This will lead both of us down a path of desire.   I’ll desire someone who is more knowledgeable and you will want someone who is not a weirdo.

Time.  What is it exactly?  Space, what does it feel like?   Distance, why don’t you run to catch up?

Ultimately I’ll want to be a lone.   I will go into my office and finger my addiction.  I will write and read and try to comprehend what it meant for Kepler and me, to imagine.  You will watch TV and later, call your best to talk about it.

I will pace up and down the hall, muttering to myself.  I will call my soundboard, and he will belittle me and remind me how pointless my existence is.

Money is stupid.  It is convenient.  It is everywhere.  It causes the waste of natural recourses.  Spend more money, space explorers.  Earth is overcrowded.    How much money do we spend on discovering new ways to kill?   Some people can’t wait to die.  I can wait.  No, really you can cut in front of me.  I don’t care. all of you can go before me.  I have a lot on my mind.  It will take a long of time for me to sort it out.

The more space and time fabric between me and the predicable, the better.  Play the banjo or beat the drum.   Don’t run with scissors

Ever since I started painting my mind has been changing.  It is hard to put in words… Perhaps I’ll paint a poem about it.  What would that look like?  Does your brain try to build it?

Bees are not native to North America.  I love honey and the first person in 1500 something that brought those honey factories to good old u.s.a.  Do you realize that there is this beetle killing your trees?   In my past life I was a tree.  I was never an elephant, sadly. Who are these enslavedthinkers that are barking religion and confusing the masses?  It is hard enough to live.  I am a freethinker.  No one pays me to do it.  Are you afraid yet?

Radiation is a big deal. We need to build a thing you can climb into  and go ten thousand miles per hour and protect living life. How do you make an atmosphere?   Take your time, I’m never going to mars anyway.  Mars is boring.  I want to go to Andromeda

Children are stupid.  They are lazy and they are imaginative.  They don’t care about homework.  They don’t care about safety.  As a parent, you will probably ask yourself, if your child will make it to adult and if they do, what will become of them.  You’ll try very hard to teach them all you know but they won’t give a damn until you die because then they won’t be able to ask you the same questions over and over again to argue with you why you are wrong.   If they stop arguing with you then they have probably learned to accept your inferiority. It is a struggle to survive.  Have you ever got mad?  What did you do with your madness?

I burnt all my old writings.  I lit them on fire and watched them burn. It was pointless act.  I should have known better than to take matters into my hands.

I hate games.  I hate football.   Not that games are all the same or all bad.  I hate them because people use them as way to entertain themselves without thinking anything complex or new.  People want to always be entertained with simple and predictable ways.  Take riddles or ethic problems.  Children love them.  They are good for children. Adults love them too because they are simple.  They, like games have preset rules. You can comprehend them.  You can hold the whole thought in your mind with ease.  You don’t have to take notes.  football is complex. It may be the most complex game.  Watching a complex game is not the same as playing one or designing one and the game despite its ability to entertain you will not make you immortal or help you save your trees from the beetles or get honey in a jar.  It is a soap opera. You are attracted to the emotional elements.  Fan. Fanatic. A fantasist’s way to spend a day.  Fuck.  There is no way in hell I’d go back in time.  There is no way I’d pass up going on to the future.  Unless it was mars and I had no way to return.  I’m not saying I would come back.  I’m saying I’d want the option.  If you get in a boat and sail to a new land mass, when you set out and explore, your boat is waiting for you.  It will ride the waves for you. You don’t need a special suit for that.  The future, who knows what kind of suit you’ll have to wear.  One thing I am sure about though, it will not be biker leather.  That is just the way things are.  It will never be a world where everyone, even those who don’t ride motorcycles wear black leather.  Leather is old technology.  There are better fabric choices now.  What everyone in the future dressed in football attire?  I’d want to come back and slip on a pair of flops and cords.   Are you paying attention?    Wake back up,        please?

finished Bring Your Own Cup Painting

Bring Your Own Cup Painting -work in progress

Summer pastels

Road trip in U.S.A -work in progress

so I am back from

the  road trip across u.s.a

The journey was worth it.

We road on I-90 first

We rode to South Dakota.

We saw Mt. Rushmore

and we saw Crazy Horse

We saw the Badlands

and we saw wall drug

and we saw interstate 90

and elk and prairie dogs

and we saw Yellowstone

the buffalo  and moose and their babies and black bear

and we saw more mountains

the Grand Tetons

- and Idaho- creators of the moon -the lava beds

and we looked and looked

We saw hot San Jose and

saw Santa Cruz dip into the ocean

and Yosemite and the sea lions

in San Francisco and china town

golden gate bridge and we saw the red woods-

And we saw the salt desert and the salt lake

We watched the Neveda desert turn green and then white

and into Utah -we saw Utah turn green

with lush mountains and valleys and rocks turn red

we saw big bones incased rock in dinosaur national park

We saw the Rocky Mountains and alpine tundra

and we saw the mountains turn into rolling hills into the prairie

and then we were home

And we had mountains inside of us and highways and rivers and waterfalls

and deserts and the ocean and red dead trees of the Rockies

waiting for a fire and we hurt as the road led us on in our country

we traveled in a mini van

there were too many of us

we got bored of mountains

baby buffalo playing and frolicking

together.   what could we say

but wow -my goodness

and there were times we wanted to be home

and times we didn’t want the road to end

and times we felt we were the luckiest of idiots

that got to explore u.s.a

even though we ate fast food most of the way

watercolors are hard

i’ll play my flute for you

Roots Of Perception -Work in progress

Brain Pose

Painting, work in progress: Brain Pose

painting: one power

painting; work in progress

click on me for full image

Painting: There is reason, at least

Lady

Lady Liberty doesn’t know where the birds came from,

or why on this late February morning they sing

their five beat rhythm, but it is a sign

that no matter how crippled she gets or how

sad her lovers are, or how many seizures

her bastard children have, she’ll make it to summer. 

She has knocked on enough crosses, the birds

sing to god in her behalf.  Listen

 

Her aliments will crawl back into the soil.

Spring, tease her, twist her legs so at night

she swims in blue rainbows. And wakes

to green prairie grasses wet underfoot.

Open her eyes to love and restitution.

Let her clap the land back into rhythm.

May it work this time and end

the 200 year drought of freedom