Most of his later color field theory abstract, contemplative but very emotional work is what Rothko was known for, but i always liked his earlier more almost representational stuff-still abstract but more figurative, almost fairy tale like pieces.

This is my favorite from that season of his artistic life. I once, wrote an art-to-art poem response after seeing it the first time! And now, have found it. I often make art in response to art, feels like the right way to honor that person. This painting, almost feels like Kandinsky, but also very personal. Nice.

Art keeps creating dialogue as we go! I look forward to seeing what he is working on now, in the art gallery up above!

My art response to Rothko’s painting:

There is sea, sky, and

the unseen swirl between

two worlds,

two lovers…on an edge

between- that

is,

us

all.

That

kingdom

is always

in our midst;

but too

Rarely edged awake, or just

seen.

much less

lived in.

For only

Love

can live

there-

by that

Sea.

Mocking Birds are not Thieves

listening to a mocking bird on my roof today

The mocking bird is not mocking,

she’s talking for all the silenced birds ever

 remembering all their songs

As a reporter recalls a story;

Or a jukebox encases

The history of song;

 not plagiarizing as supposed-though

all artist are thieves and inventors too-

we all sing other’s songs;

but mocking birds just

impersonate better than most

And knew it all along.

They are impersonators not imposters!

And don’t care, like comedians,

What cover songs they sing. 

I rest my defense

Of our borrowings

Of other’s melodies. 

Mock on, until you know

Your own voice friend. 

That you mock so well

Is a true original.

When I read poetry, there is that density of meaning I love. Like getting to know a person over many years, you nuance your relationship, as in marriage
Or, as with reading scriptures, it is more like a gateway or dimensional entrance—a larger window into The Real. Still, art comes closest to sacred text, I think. Music takes you into another realm, one already there, but not seen or heard without the help of art. Maybe this is why most sacred text are largely poetry! the Bible for instance is over a third sheer poetry. It’s the most direct, and requires to most of us to lovingly encounter and know.
As I study, there are always different densities of knowledge. Different weights of knowing.
Just as in conversations with strangers versus close friends.
Casual contacts are also fine and needed in life, but with an old friend, the density of exchange and encounter goes deeper. The risk is higher as well with deeper exchange or encounter, there is greater risk of being hurt.
Like marriage, it is a huge risk to “meet” another’s heart over and over. But the wine is richer, more nuanced, and potentially more mutually transformative at the end of the days. Sometimes casual contact is good, but it can’t sustain you in the same way a poetic dialogue is able to. This is one reason it is good to look or listen to great art. A stranger in a bus stop or train station, may give you insight into life unexpectedly; but sharing a meal with a friend, can alter your life’s course.
Just as a merely entertaining film, can be needed at the right time; great cinema, can change how you see yourself and the world. I like reading poetry, for the same reason I like being married. It’s a higher risk, and more rewarding or potentially life changing encounter. And it requires or calls forth more of yourself to know. Poetry provokes the heart towards more of life, as they used to say. I suppose all great art does so, as well as all depth relationships. But there is something uniquely rarefied about how poetry does that.
If our lives are like a concentric circle or a dart board, and the bullseye or very center is what we are most intimate with; I think poetry requires us to let it into that inner circle in order to know it. And poetry again like marriage offers that opportunity. It’s good to practice that sort of intimacy, it is exercise for the human heart!
“Loving the Lord with all your heart” assumes your heart is fully engaged. Reading poetry is a practice for engaging your heart!

What we say about ourselves when no one is watching (a work in progress)
What we write beneath our bridges….notes towards a piece on cities and identity:

Berlin, a rough coated man driven to speak
Says I want to be in black and white color bleak and tell the truth,
But gay and straight as I am.
In bold relief, like an abstract expressionist painting or even bolder him.
Both in and outside the lines of this word written on old trains and beneath bridges. Alexa can you stop this train. What that bridge is saying is too true.
Alexa can you stop this train before we all die? Sigh.
He is a bridge himself, with words written underneath.
In London it is the underground workers who carry the soul
Of the place, and know her poetry by heart;
They can quote in pentameter the rhythms of the trains so you know
And are properly oriented to her flow.
Jerusalem it is the markets, the men and women, the scent on their skin,
And round white stone rooftops in evening-moon on her is a given-
Which put her cumin cardomin scent on your skin forever.
In Prague, the silent draped, veiled night-misted cathedrals everywhere you look.
And go beneath any bridge in any of them to hear
Where the murmuring true words were/are conjoined-the silent night graffiti of being, written while we were asleep.
(Where a city writes itself on its own walls, which usually the kids do best);
Read slowly as if you had forever, and is if you knew your own name well,
And you’ll hear their names still being mentioned in graphic whispers
By angels and birds, overheard
By kids traveling through, but
Mostly, by the trees left standing still, holding the notes and marks of knowing…
They’ve seen the most of wars and passages-watchers and snap shot artists.
They’ve been taken in a million selfies.
But parks, bridges, bird poop and memory holders,
And fallen walls recall, just as well, and perhaps as articulately
All Our names. As we pass
Beneath city bridges. Or live there
For a while, gazing at rough coated men, or lovers
Trying to write our names well in some place, in a kinder grace
With which we font our songs where it doesn’t matter—bathroom walls
Or beneath bridges, no one will find us now, no one articulate our lines, and
Few will even notice at this hour of night in time.
What we say about ourselves, when no one is watching.
Listen where you wish, but our names are written beneath bridges.
And the trees’ refrain, more quietly, their words we speak about ourselves
Beneath our bridges.

As a kid
My uncle made me a red wooden rocking horse.
It was really a sleigh to the sky
I knew so, the first day I tried it out-
Horse-pulled toward the moon, me
Meant to be rocked in plain aire, could finally see them
Like the Hubble or better yet, now like the James Webb.
Back then, I took a lasso with me
My parents didn’t see-
Invisible like wonder woman’s
But not for wars or battles.
For, Jesus never killed,
Which struck me, even like lightening way back then.
How did He fly without killing insects, I mused as a kid.
Even the fish and stars followed Him in willing pools;
As for me, I wanted to corral the moon and stars
And be myself
In their midst-to sparkle with them and like them…
And to know each, by proximity. To whisper their names in passing…
Later, when I watched Philipe Petite tight rope
Between the world trade centers, it all made sense.
We want to sky walk as kids, and some of us do.
That was me then,
Wanting to lasso the Sky way before I had a telescope
Or phone app to see them well
-and then release them all like fish back to what they were
Before I saw them.
I was a boy-wonder in love with words
Cantering wildly into the Sky above,
Unabashedly seeking the reel and rhyme. Rocking my way
Towards glory in time.

Or at best and least, wanting to test
The limits of my uncle’s red rocking horse

in real time.

The writer and words:

We renew finer edges of words
Tumbling, backwards, as we do
Towards and at times into, a dark well
Of meaning. You and I, I and you
Keep our names veiled and short-like the nameless word pronoun.
So as not to be too naked as we write
But, we know, each word has come a long way
To visit us today. And we greet each in wonder
As a guest, worth undressing forever.
Both of us
Eventually
Denuded.

//
The raven’s voice
Is black tailcoat
The ladder leaning on the house
Is heaven’s stairway
The stars are beyond names
The little girl blowing bubbles
Is a floating fairy floating upwards
This computer is a minefield
And golden bridge
Which harps her way
Across the globe
Leavening behind time’s watch.

//
The street is also a snake
And how we use our hands is time
And a hummingbird is short term memory
And a drain pipe is a nest of voices
Mugs and cups and the holding lot of containers
Are flies swimming pools
And mobile oxygen masks for us
We carry our medicine not in bags but in cups
And containers. Birds nurse more directly
Mouth to mouth, which we do only if we must
Like when we kiss or give mouth to mouth resuscitation
But bikes clearly have wings for children
Not just training wheels but also wings
That only they still see.

//
I don’t believe in my unconscious
But when I dream I see
I don’t believe in you
I don’t believe in me
But when I dream I see
I don’t believe we can rule ourselves or others
I don’t believe in buildings. They have no eyes
And cannot dream.

//
As a kid
My uncle made me a red rocking horse
It was really a sleigh to the sky
I knew so, the first day I tried it
I took a lasso with me
My parents didn’t see
Invisible like wonder woman’s
But not for war, for
Jesus never killed
Even the fish and stars followed Him
As for me, wanted to corral the moon and stars
And be
In their midst
That was me then
Still is.

On the sociology of Cranes

Cranes mate for life, and
After doing their courting dances,
Make large marsh nests from local supplies-
Cattails, sedges, burr reeds, bulrushes, or grasses-
And other sturdy nearby terms.
Together, they hone the nest which she
Usually designs while he supplies. They both
Guard their eggs from coyotes,
Owls and others by spreading wings
And thrusting their legs at their enemies
In a grand show of protection
After fledglings fledge
The parents move on
To hang out with other
Empty nesters. And they
Venture on into
New adventures
Together alone.

Trees tell us our names to us if we listen.

Tonight, the trees are ours
Love. These trees must know our names by now.
In case we forgot them. Or they, their’s.
This blue green silent slick glow of misty evening on leaf tips
memory knows itself
Well enough to know us, still, I’m sure.
On their christening evergreen branches, hanging under unseen weights-power lines and man-made magic-on our own behalf.
Silence and the knowing of our names, speaks freshly in wetness
Eternal us, the trees in our streetlights
Certainly see and re-call Face to faces us.
For we named them as kids
And now rejoice in recalling our own names again,
Called out by our older elder tree
Friends. We all
Broken iced branches at night, sing our names despite us,
Fall slowly as poems through mid air, forgetfully unread,
As rain at night through the branches of an old cold tree.
We each have names, and trees tell us ours on certain nights,
If ya listen well, at least to trees my Love.

Baptism

Growing up church
Christ haunted
Steeples already leaning
Like lightening towers
Impaling and protruding from my gut.

I wanted what it was hiding.
The church was surely a billboard for something.-what
Was it advertising?

Still,
my life was nearly baptized before I got here
I nearly drowned in the water of my grandmother prayers
Before I was here.

Womb waters like mercy. The womb like love of God called Mercy
Was where my contours formed, I’m sure. But I needed water
To go under something. I needed to nearly drown to know.
The tadpole me knew. That much Yet,
I was up to my neck before I realized
The Name of water, even.
Much less my own.
And then, the Jordan River. The warm sinking
Into ancient memory mineralized liquid
Where Jesus went under the first time,
And was recognized…
And, just then, my young nubile body, along with the nibbling fishes
On my knees, skin tingling in desert warmth,
Knew it was loved by something, and so bowed down under something
Bigger than buildings or languages, or the tender hand of my father
Who sent me under. More like
How a baby looks at your face
In babbling wonder when it first comes out.
Or a thousand sermons
Compressed into one haiku of you, one
You can actually listen to-a homily
Of immersion into Love’s sweet wetness…
Before you know Comfort’s kind naming
Or the great dunking, drowning yes to life.
One has to die to know their name.
We submerge to emerge into our names, in The Name of baptism.

Exile and return:

The merrymakers sigh
We say good bye
The tambourines slip off our gowns
Now to night and silence, and
making signpost back this way…but
For now, these warped harps, strung out on bushes, will wait to
play again as friends do.
The Circus is meant to leave town
So it can return.
The women and kids
Will bare tambourines again
And the wine will make merry
The souls of men and women again.