All his life he had traveled. Traveling was home to him. Now all that had changed. With the pandemic and his illness he was stuck in one place.
So, he had to figure out something. How do people stay in one place? He wasn’t sure.
Then he met the nurse Pam. He had more than attraction, when she was giving him a bath in the mornings, He wanted to see inside her to be one. This had never happened to him. When she came into the room, he felt that old feeling like he was traveling, but it was more like scuba diving in this case.
He had never scuba dived but now could imagine it through his feelings for Pam.
This must be why people stay married, he thought, and just choose one person to go deeper and deeper with, into the endless mystery of identity. Or something like that anyway.
Still, even with Pam, he needed to get out.
The courtyard of the old red brick hospital was lined with Crepe Myrtles—pink mostly but one had pink and white blossoms on the same tree.
He noticed them daily, in order to keep in sync with the seasons through his window on the fourth floor, but he felt so removed from them, like looking at a painting, but not being able to smell and touch the subject. Life had become a simulacrum, and he wasn’t sure he could live in a copy of life without touching the real thing.
So, he asked Pam one day—“Can you take me down to the courtyard?” She said the doctor had forbidden him to leave the floor he was on. But she would “See what I can do.”
One night, he heard a creak at his door. It was close to midnight, so he was startled. It was Pam.
Come on Sean, let’s go.
She had a flashlight, which was the only light on the floor. She took him to the fire escape down the hall, and quietly opened the door. The night air arrested him with life. He was suddenly intoxicated feeling.
He grabbed her hand, so as not to stumble down the steep steel stairs.
Once at the bottom, she turned off the flashlight and everything was moon illuminated. She led him to a bench just beneath the half circle of trees.
He could not see their color at night, but the powdery fragrance they emitted seemed to enter his pores. He suddenly felt so alive again!
They sat down together, at first at a distance, then Pam drew closer. It was almost too much stimulation for Sean.
“I wanted to tell you something.” She said.
“The doctor said, you may not have long, which is why I’m sneaking you out.”
At first, he didn’t respond, as he was so overwhelmed by all the new sensations.
Then snapping out of it, he said: “Well then, would you marry me?”

In the line of Praha

My Prague is soft
And unseen, delicate as a courtyard of roses
Something beneath goulash and tourist
Something quiet and real as water
Smart and beautiful
Scribal and poetical
A font
You could stare at
All night-one
Written in glisten
Read through fog,
I see her often
Through the fog
She is not only
What was broken—those dashes, and ellipses…
She is a mystic
Who sings
In solid silence.
And I’ve gotten
To really know her
Through time
As a line worth tracing
Forever.
And she likes animals and children
And the way an ink pen feels in your hand
And campfires and sausages
And endless conversations far
Into the night. She is like that,
My Praha.
We talk of death
Loss, memory
Underwater synagogues
And fallen crosses
Floating on the river
And drunk tourist
Trying to still gaze
At something deeper
Than they imagined
Her to be.
In her forest
We sip plumb brandy
And chase fireflies
With kids
Towards monasteries
We know are still there
In that glow
That makes even her
Jazz cellars still sing
At night
Into the forest
At night as scho
Of Ramah
A woman’s voice aglow
In lament and stern continuance
Something like an argument that a poem
Can’t die.
//
It took me all day to clear last night’s glasses
From the forest outdoor picnic table
I just couldn’t leave that conversation we all
Had far into last night…
//
Prague is like a refugee
From herself. I miss her
I want her to come home
In the meanwhile
Everyone is watching
The shape of her body
Where she was thrown into
The dark river’s waters.
And even that shape
Is attracting tourist.
While I am just a refugee camp
As I am with people, just waiting
For them to come home.
//
My native tongue is robins, cardinals and hawks
But that’s another story
I speak nations and cultures as well
And many dialects, given
The situations
But mainly in water glisten
And color
The sound of evaporation
And conjoining’s return
But also cranes
And Mexicans singing in the morning
At work. And unfortunately, also
The the cadences of building falling
And wars mounting. I know those also
But they are less clear
The cardinal chirps when it starts to rain
Are my home. That and Spring itself-
In all her ebullient hope.
I can also speak church, synagogue and mosque pretty well
If I tune into the tone of Love, that is. Intonation is everything
With us. And love is a native language to us all.

It was mercy I survived 911, being so close

To falling bodies

But it

Decided not

To take me out yet.

So the coup failed

At least in my case.

And, Grace seems to have remained,

Despite our fallen buildings, and continuously falling bodies daily….

And I’m still here, writing silent words on the parchment of the

Wind

And remembrance. . aware still, of each name which falls daily;

And I’m sure Grace is catching us all!

But then, Grace is a different type of coup–

–

more like a mother’s hands catching us, as we tumble off a swing set when young.

The dog
On my street knows
When to bark and how.
But we talk when
We don’t need to-or worse,
When we should listen
To her nuanced
Many cadenced
Lament.

//
An old amplifier
From when I played
Sits still
Behind my piles of recent books.
Waiting to proclaim something again.

//
So many paintings and photos
Around me now
All which seemed to matter
In the moment
Now, they together gather dust
Having not seen
The light
Of day.

//
I may do nothing with this photo
Or this poem. But this.
Take it write it
And leave it here.

//
I loved roundly
If not always deeply
But circumference matters also.
But depth of field is better now.
Each particular name-and entire world
To love.

//
When young, I loved so broadly
Unabashedly
Giving thanks for each name I met.
Now it is less than a handful,
But pierces and peers more deeply
Than before.

//
Craqueiure

When it came to life
I ran towards her anomalies freely
I wanted to know her
Through the cracks

//
Coup de grace

It was mercy I survived 911 being so close
To falling bodies
But it
Decided not
To take me out yet
So the coup failed
At least in my case.

//
What will the coyotes (or artists for that matter)
Do now, that the walls are so high
Perhaps, become
Tight rope artist
Or just live in city parks
Until they are needed again.
Howling
Into
Urban winds.
Painting their tracks
Like graffiti on walls
Discovered the next day.

//
I wanted to be the church
Not to visit it.
A living chapel or circus canopy-
Like a Chagall painting
Where everyone could fly
If they wanted to.

//

There’s lots in a name!

As a kid I sang a song while running down my father’s church halls, which echoed on those long linoleum halls, all which led to the fellowship hall.
The song sang like this: “I’m not a boy, I’m Derek DeMonte.” I sang it over and over. Not sure how it came into my head. But I had a need to declare or at least celebrate my name so that it would resonate through church halls. So it came from somewhere.
Some of it was probably ego or the need to be seen, or exist. But some of it was something I still carry—a sense that everything and everyone has a name. No-one is nameless. Everything has identity. 
Later in life when I read that God had been called “The Father of names” it started to make sense to me. And then when His Son was called the Name of names. It resonated. Everyone has a name. And each name matters.
In Judaism, a person exist now as long as someone remembers their name. That people really like names, and still refuse to even pronounce in prayers The Name of God.
I like their reverence for names.
And much of my life has been about knowing I’m named, and going on a discovery of that name, and then helping others feel safe enough to find their true names.
In Christianity, we say our identities are “hidden in Christ”. That is He who knew us before we knew ourselves; He who, created us as master poems, as St Paul put it; also is able to reveal us to ourselves, and even celebrate our names as something He wrote, and that we get to collaborate in writing out together even in this life.
In Revelation, it talks about our “white stone names”; that is our already forever names which only God knows. This is part of what it means that we are hidden in Christ.
Our names and callings work in tandem. You remember in the old book it was said of Jeremiah—“I knew you, knit you, and thus, I called you to do this and that…” Our names and pathways in life are connected.
But identity precedes calling. For what we do changes seasonally, but who we essentially are is eternal, and where we meet Him is the source of all our life’s actions.
King David similarly declares: “I am wonderfully made!” That’s not an ego statement, that’s a statement from God’s perspective. He was letting God sing the song of David, or the song of himself.
I hope that when I was running down church hallways singing my name, that I was beginning to sing it more as one of his songs, than just my own.
God seems to like to sing us as one of His songs; and this seems to happen best when we are singing to Him.

//
Winston Salem, where I grew up was a small artistic city of churches and old tobacco warehouses. The smell of tobacco being dried was night; everyone rustling off the some church activity was day.
And then there were the artist who often both smoked and went to church.
I liked them. And the few deacons who smoked. I trusted people who knew they had some issues.
But my hometown was a great mix of workers and wealthy and saints and sinners among both.
My elementary school was working class. My highschool was not. My high school was future senators and congressmen. My elementary school was more blue callar. I liked both worlds.
But mostly I liked the artists who drifted in between the unspoken class system.
I still feel comfortable in high and low brow worlds. And like to slip between them daily, and try to stay myself in both. People are just people at the end of the day.
But I appreciated growing up more lower middle, but getting to mingle with the folks who knew wine, and had nice fingernails. And could quote literature.
Plus, those rich girls are pretty.
And I was already interested in girls even in the fourth grade.
My first poem, which was read out loud to the class, because I wasn’t supposed to be writing poetry instead of taking a test, was written to Shaun Grimsly-arguable the pretties girl in the whole school. I’ve always had good taste!
It was a love poem, and my teacher, who herself was stunning and had Polynesian dissent, read my words with such care, that even as a punishment, I felt endorsed as a poet early on. It did not win me the girl, as she was embarrassed by the whole thing; but it did affirm my desire to express myself well.
One thing I learned from growing up though, is that people are just people, and any kid can write a good poem about their life.
//
Cars and what mentors taught me: l

When I look at my life as a film, I see lots of amazing cars, and lots of poetic people. Let me start with the cars. Each car Ive had has symbolized that season of my life.
So if I want to look at all the seasons at once, I see lots of cars lined up—a 69 white Camera with blue leather interior; a 68 Saab, a 68 Volvo (which I out bid Colin Powell for—that’s another story!); another car which I painted as art, still another I bought in Paris—86 Abarth-and left at an airport in England filled with gifts for my friends-still another story; and then the car I left on a bridge while 9/11 was happening. My cars tell my story or at least make the narrative make more sense.
Cars take us in between, and I’ve always been most home in the in between. I’m a liminal person, somewhere between heaven and earth. I’ve been in between lots of places in my life—as I’ve lived nearly everywhere at one time of another. And I know thousands of rest stops, parks and service areas all over the world, but my cars and I would rest there, as we moved towards the next place.
I’ve written my best poems on bridges and bathroom walls across this nation and many others! I know they are still being read! My cars told me so. And they have lots of poems on napkins in all their gloveboxes as well! In between here and there is where I feel most at home! But I travel on, because I do really love people and places. Cities are like people to me, and people are my favorite poems to read.
And my cars could keep me there most constantly. Art does the same, just as prayer does. So driving, making art and praying have become my go to for staying alive.
I really like how we get from here to there, and what the style of how we do so, symbolizes. The seasons of my life had certain symbols. And knowing the central symbols in your life help you stay on the road!
A recurring symbol was uniqueness. Never status or wealth, but uniqueness and authenticity. Each of my cars were cars you had to consider to know. They broadcasted one of a kindness. And a certain celebration of the uniqueness of each identity. I’ve learned lots from my cars.
I know for most people vehicles are primarily functional or about status in society, but for me they have been primarily symbolic.
As for the poetic people, that is who the cars took me to. My mentors and co-lovers of life who lived, as the little man, I often painted in my art-on a tight rope between worlds.
Most of them were artist and healers of one flavor or another. All of them were dreamers of what is truly possible in life. And all of them were encouragers of being. None were cynics about life.
They taught me to see the realm of the possible all around me. The one piece of glass in the woodpile. The odd bird just passing through your region for a week. They taught me to see the anomalies around us which offer wonder.
Even to this day, when photographing or painting, the first thing I see is the anomalies. When I look at art, I see the one blue bird on the far left branch that no one expected. The surprises. The unexpected. The unlikely presence.
That’s how God is to me. What you didn’t expect given the situation. So much suffering, but then, sudden lightning of love at a grocery store or in an elderly woman helping a squirrel. Everyday, this stranger breaks in. Love find a way.
And art is only hunting for that breakthrough. And having eyes to see it when it happens.
As one homeless friend at the Tasty (an old hamburger joint) in Harvard Square said: You stay out in the storm until you get to see the lightening, if it comes, and it will if you stay out in the storm long enough. His version of “He who has eyes to see, see!”
I used to often pray, Lord give me eyes to see your love all around me, even when people can’t. Art is just a spiritual practice for me, in that way.
I see so many people around me just existing but not really living. That is blindness to seeing love in everything, but it does require practice to find the glisten of glory constantly breaking in around us daily. My mentors taught me to make that type of seeing a way of life.
Sometimes I even see people real names either when with them, or in a dream later! We all have beliefs about ourselves, but there is always that one deep inside who has the belief! And I often see that someone when with people. And I try to address them from my someone to their someone. That’s the space where our names get seen!
It’s not just seeing angels and saints “over there”—although that is cool too! It is seeing light in the pile of dog poop in the alley, or the glory of a woodpile at dusk, or the wonder of each person’s eyes when they really open them.
I was blessed both by my parents and mentors in life to be given eyes to see Love’s radiance all around me daily. Art is just a practice of keeping our heart’s eyes open to that flow of glory even in the midst of great pain and suffering. That light that is alway here. But sometimes we have to find the cracks of anomaly around us. I often still pray, Lord, where are you in this scene, this person, this situation. Show me your face here. And then we are meeting face to Face through daily life.

//
One meeting Rabbi Telushkin

He wrote a book on Jewish humor, and it wasn’t funny. Like Freud’s book on humor, which was also not funny, it was more about than from, as they say. Still, I though in person, he was funny. He kept making jokes about his own dandruff. And things like that.
Normal things, which we all share, that turn out to be funny.
I was working at a large bookstore, and we would host readings. I mainly did children’s literature, but occasionally, they let me do poets and philosophers—ie the big guys! And very often religious teachers, as I had been a religious studies major in college.
That day, we had a good mixed faith audience who were all interested in how jewish humor worked, and what it revealed about their unique culture.
The Rabbi delivered in a way his book did not; which made me wonder, if he was more from the oral tradition than the written one.
According to some, there were two streams coming off Sinai—one the written on stone Torah, the other the living interpretation of those written in stone words.
Anyway, that Rabbi got me thinking, and it turned out, he was funny.
Not sure about Freud. Never met him, or hosted a reading with him. Although, I did meet Carl Jung once, but that’s another story. And, a funny one at that.

//
Ok, so the only other time I was bothered by the police, was because I had a full clown costume on in Marin county, as I was getting ready to speak at the seminary I was currently attending.
I spoke several times as Elvis there, but that day, as a clown in full regalia!
I was rehearsing my lines in a nearby wealthy neighborhood, and I assume I looked a bit suspicious. Someone called the cops, and they nearly carted me away.
Fortunately, halfway into the conversation, the president of that seminary intervened—saying , he is one of our students!
Thankful for that, and also got to speak that day. Although I was a bit rattled.
Hope my angels enjoyed the backstage moment at least!

//
The role of humor in religion has been a life study of mine. Any religious idea that isn’t funny is suspiciously like propaganda.
My favorite quote from St Paul; “The person who thinks they know it all, does not yet know what they ought to know.”
Stay funny friends. Humor is medicine for the human heart. And a spoon full of sugar really does make the medicine go down!
Don’t trust a preacher or teacher who isn’t funny.
A spoon full of sugar makes the medicine go down is also useful in the art of conversation.
My dad used to say—give two compliments before you give a person a critique. That’s the sugar! And then if you really do have medicine for that person, it will go down into the heart much more smoothly!
I try to practice thinking up two compliments for each person I meet. Even something as simple as, “That color looks good on you”. Then if we disagree on some subject, they already feel loved, before we work through our conflict.

I”m reading a book on silence
While talking on the phone
I’m trying to hear the inner voice
While the tv and internet are streaming on and on…
I’m trying to listen to a tree
While they are projecting images on the grass next door
I’m trying to just be
And everything is
Distracting me.
/

With the local Coyotes
The older ones start it all…
Just after a human siren passes and causes, or at least provokes, the whole messy cacophony;
Then, the younger ones yelp in and on-endlessly!
Not knowing when to stop, or what’s alarming them.
I suppose it is all started by some emergency
We all have, and how we signal one another so loudly.
But it all ends in this frantic yelping into the night…..
Which recalls all our laments,
And our common howls together.