Unfinished dates:

The old man and retired tennis star were leaning in very close over some nachos and cheese from the local pub. It was their first date.
She asked him about his daughter.
“Well she married a nice Mexican man who can’t speak a lick of English, but best to them; I’ll be dead soon, and at least she’s moving forwards and happy, even though I know myself her Spanish is terrible. I mean, Que horrible!”
“She’s a good kid though, but got knocked up pretty early on, but the fellow seems to be a gentleman. They’ve been married 23 years by now.”
“And you, do you have kids?” He asked, savoring the jalapeño he had placed on the top of the cheese cheso.
“I’ve had great success in sports, but little in parenting.” She said, remarking that she had moved up north to escape the heat, but did miss this spicy cheso sauce they made in these parts.
“Yeah, they now have hundred of salsas down here at the market, he said.
“Some even made of cactus with peach or mango—whatever you want. Things have gotten sophisticated in the south.”
“I was about to leave myself, then my daughter got married and I got old. So decided to stay, and wait it out.”
“Where did you want to move to,” he asked, noticing them playing an old Waylon Jenning’s song.
“Scotland” he replied without thinking. That’s where my real family are from.
“Real family?” She asked.
“Yeah, the inlets of Scotland are filled with my blood.”
“Even down here, I just try to find things that remind me of, I guess what they would call, “the homeland of the heart”—that is if you wanna talk fancy. I just call it plain old nostalgia for someplace you know you came from, but can’t get back to.”
The waiter came and once again filled to the brim their enormous iced tea cups.
“No shortage of tea down here though!’ He ended his thought with.
“I’ve never been to Scotland she said, but did play a tournament in London once.”
“Is that right! You must’ve been. Big shot then.”
“Not at that point, I was just beginning. But it was amazing to see the churches and castles in that place as a young woman. Everything I’d hoped it would be really.”
“But then I had to come back and finish school, and learn to make a living in case tennis fell through.”
“Did it eventually fall through?”
Oh no, I thought it said on the dating app, I ended up being a champion for three years straight. Best in class. Brought short money, but I’m glad I finished my degree.”
What did you study?
The suffrage movement.
Oh.
The nachos ran out, so he turned to get the waiter’s attention.
“Could we get some more chips sir?”
“You bet!”
“Hey, where are you from, they don’t say-“you bet” down here.”
“Ha-I’m from the Canadian border sir, just going to school down here myself.”
“Is that right? What are you studying?”
Nuerology, but to be more specific genetic theory!
“Is that right, you must be pretty smart then, since I’m not even certain what that field entails?” He asked with slight curiousity, perhaps avoiding returning to the women’s suffrage conversation.
“Well, you’ll have to tell me about it sometime when you’re not working. I come in here all the time. I’m nearly regular.”
The waiter got another huge basket of chips piled in a red plastic bowl.
“They’ve been using these bowls since I was in college here, and that’s many moons ago.”
“When did you go to college?”
“Well I started three times, but when I finally went was 68. That’s when it took hold of me—you know knowledge and learning. Before then, I just saw it all as a way to make money or get a good job. What did you want to be when you grew up”, he added, a bit surprised he had.
“Well, you won’t believe this, but I wanted to be a priest, and since that wasn’t possible, a nun. But I quickly learned that neither were in my stars. I was good at tennis by age eight, and everyone said, It would be very unwise to head toward the church for any sort of reasonable career. And, I suppose they were right, but I always have wondered. I mean, I wouldn’t have made any money, but maybe I would have been something more like content. Don’t get me wrong, getting back to your question, I was able to put both my kids through university with no debt, and one’s a teacher and the other a film maker now; but I do wonder what a more monastic life would’ve been like.”
“That’s interesting, I never wanted to be a priest, but I did think of becoming an artist for a while. But it seemed as impractical as your priesthood dream. Just no real work in art, so I went for law. Even had my own firm for a while. I doodle these days from time to time, mostly flowers and birds, but a little abstract; even had a show of my work recently in a little local gallery; but I do at times wonder if I missed my calling. You said “content”-yeah, that’s a good word for what it feels like when I’m making art. I never felt content from law. But it was lucrative to be sure.”
They two had cleared nearly another half stack of nachos, when they both simultaneously decided to ask one another out on another date.

The tattoo artist was out of her depths that day. He was more than she had seen.
Having written the stories of at least five people on their bodies that day, with such great articulation, that each went away knowing themselves much more; she was now exhausted from seeing.
She grew up in a protestant church which emphasized the ears not the eyes, but from a young age, she knew she had the gift of sight more than hearing.
She became a catholic because they seemed to like the visual arts, and instead of becoming a nun, decided for tattoo art.
Still when with clients she rarely spoke. She let her eyes tell the story.
And see it.
She would look at the person starting in the eyes, then work her way down to where they wanted each tattoo.
Then go to her sketch book for about thirty minutes before returning for her showing. The clients were nearly always shocked by how keenly she had discovered what they themselves often could not articulate.
Then she would get to the work of incarnating this person’s image onto their bodies.
It was a like a silent therapy she was offering for those who knew they needed something, but just weren’t sure what.
They went away knowing much more about who they were, and where they were at on their journey. For many it was the first time they had risk inscribing anything on their bodies which would last the rest of their lives.
She did this for years. But today, she had come across a rare client which she was having trouble reading.
She had to look at the them longer than usual; and was having trouble even seeing into their eyes, much less reading the stories of their bodies.
No, today she would need more than her sketch book, she was going to have to return to prayer, where she had learned to see in the first place.
As a child, when she prayed, the heavens would open, and she could see angels and creatures coming and going. In fact, even at this age, every time she prayed, she would start seeing things.
This was just how God talked to her, she would tell me one day.
Pure silent image, and then she would just know what He was saying.
This is how she came to believe that God didn’t just have a thousand thoughts towards each person, but a thousand visions about them daily. When she took to time to pause and see, she nearly always saw an image for each person, one which related to their needs.
In this sense she felt herself a visionary, but one who applied her craft to people and their bodies, drawing out their inner identities in ink.
She was writing their stories on their skin.
But this tall lanky fellow who had come in was giving her trouble.
Was he just not open to being read—like one who goes to a palm reader with clinched fists? Or, were her own eyes cloudy that day. She would not know until she went to pray.
So she told him, I’ll be back in forty minutes, I need to seek this image.
As she closed her eyes to see in her little back room, where she usually sketched; she saw a great void. There were no edges, and it was something like liquid dark purple lava stretching out endlessly like a sea which was tilted upright. A wall of nothingness, one like she had never seen. After the image would not recede, she returned to the tall man and asked: what is your name?
He looked down and ashamed, and said, well that is one of the reasons I’m here. I have amnesia and really can’t recall. Like that fellow in Bourne identity, I have forgotten who I am.
“When did you forget your name?”
“Well it started when my wife died several months back. She died in our bed unexpectedly, and the very next day, I was able to remember all the families numbers and the right emergency services to call and all those laborious details one must do upon death, but just that very morning, the ambulance driver, looked into my eyes with care, and asked me my name, and I simply couldn’t remember it.”
He continued: “I’m an artist and make collage from found street poster art from particular cities, and I try to tell the identity of neighborhoods by montaging all their discarded or left behind posters—band posters, and invitations to yard sales, and scraps from alleyways and bathrooms….but the thing is, I never sign my pieces. So I couldn’t look there. Although, again, I remembered all those neighborhoods by name and place and date.”
She had read once about “selective dementia” that some develop after trauma—where one forgets of blocks out certain events because they are so painful. But she could not imagine why this sad sir would have blocked out only his own name.
Was it shame or some guilt he felt about his wife’s death?
“The night she died”, he went on, “We had been out drinking and smoking at a Jazz club. I knew she wasn’t supposed to be smoking as she had had some heart problems the previous year; but we both just needed to have one of those jazzy nights which make you feel fully alive again. So I let it go. After going to bed that night, about an hour later, her heart just stopped.”
That helps she said, “Do you mind if I try to take a break and see again, before starting then?”
“Not at all, if you think it will help.”
She returned to her prayer closet. Closing her eyes, this time, she saw the exact same image, but something was slightly astir. The lava like void was slightly rippling-a barely perceivable undulation had happened.
Excitedly, but still not given and image, she returned to talk to the tall still slouching man.
“I did not yet get a clear image for you, could you return in one week, and I will see if I can see enough to get started on something for you sir.”
They parted.
A week later, the man returned slouching even more, but his eyes a bit more lucid from the potential for hope.
During her week, she had become obsessed by the man; all her dreams were occupied by it, and her waking life too. But the second day, she had decided-remembering the desert monks from her catholic lessons and those early church practices-she had decided to fast.
After the second day of fasting, something remarkable occurred.
She was in her prayer closet at the tattoo shop, when it did.
She closed her eyes, as usual, and focused on the tall man.
She once again saw the grand towering void of dark purple lava, slightly undulating. Then suddenly, an enormous voice like gentle thunder spoke,
“His name is Bob”! She had never had her visions speak. She had never her the audible voice behind or within her visions. But it was clear, loud and in such a kind tone, she was transfixed on it! It was as if silent film had shifted to talkies. That moment the voices were heard. She was in something like wonder.
She opened her eyes, when the Voice came. In shock mostly.
She went back to the main room to see if others had heard the voice.
No one had.
She immediately called the man and asked him to return to the shop. He came that hour. And when he arrived, she simply said, “I think I know what to tattoo on you now friend.”
She took out her inks, and slowly over two hours, inscribed the letters BOB on the man’s right arm, where he could see it clearly.
She asked that he close his eyes until she was done.
When he opened them and looked down, he began weeping and then looked up right into her eyes, standing fully tall he saluted her with his right arm freshly tattooed, and turned and walked out into what was the bright sun, that day.

I chased her with a yellow tulip.
She was not home.
She had no home, So
I chased her with a yellow tulip until I found her
Beneath the bridge.
Too late she said
It’s for my funeral now
But what of easter
As a train crossed over us
Your favorite is next week
And I promised to deliver this tulip
And take you home.

Amos, a shepherd poet
Sang dark wooly warnings to
The exploding cows of bashan
To the splitting mountains of the nations
Thunder came
Rocks stones and trees split
In fact everyone split
At the voice coming from this
Little good shepherd poet.

//
Before the internet:
Back when we had poems and songs which were only ours.
Back when you could trout fish alone with Richard Brautigan
And look at the sky through telephone lines
And consider death with Rilke
Or smoke in some alley with Paul Westerberg-
Without being overheard
Or overseen.
Back when there were private conversations-
Words meant just for you.
Back when you could even read the Bible
For yourself, and see things Luther never dreamed
Back when everything was a fresh discovery in Love
With babies heads popping out of the wet private womb
Of wonder. With only angels watching over us.
//

One poem
Is a morning prayer
For society
The writer
Is doing invisible work
For the whole
Catching a fish for us all.
Cohen, Brautigan and the gang
All the fishers of dimensions
Kandinsky and Christo included
Are fishing for us all with a flashlight
in the lake
Called night.

//

Before the internet:Back when we had poems and songs which were only ours.
Back when you could trout fish alone with Richard Brautigan
And consider death with Rilke
Or smoke in some alley with Paul Westerberg-
Without being overheard
Or overseen.
Back when there were private conversations-
Words meant just for you.
Back when you could even read the Bible
For yourself, and see things Luther never dreamed
Back when everything was a fresh discovery in Love
With babies heads popping out of the wet private womb
Of wonder. With only angels watching over us.

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.