My girlfriend eats breakfast earlier than I do. She eats the same thing every morning. A bowl of granola and yogurt with fresh blueberries and a hard boiled egg. She knows I like to have a hard boiled egg too. So she leaves the cutting board and the salt and pepper out on the counter for me. I peel my egg and cut it in half. I don’t need to add any salt and pepper because I can just roll my egg in the salt and pepper that spilled on the board from my girlfriend’s egg earlier that morning.
Month: June 2020
Beyond skin
I wake up with my hand plugged into her heart like a battery. Her closed eyes staring past her eyelids innocently into the ethereal. My hand plunged deep into her chest in the dream world where skin is a permeable barrier. She breathes all the deeper, undisturbed. For a moment I feel as one with her not unlike the sexual encounter. It is as if we have both entered the dream world tethered together by skin. As if the dream world were a movie theater and we both handed the ticket man our ticket with the same seat number and proceeded into the movie theater to have the same dream at the same time and as the same person. I cannot feel where my fingertips touch her chest. It is like when your leg has fallen asleep and you can only feel above your knee. I can only feel above my elbow. The rest of my arm seems to be plunged into and past her body into the sleep world where my forearm and hand are cut off from physical sensation. My other hand cups her neck. We lay on our sides facing each other, an arm’s length apart, connected only by my two hands touching her, and some other link that goes beyond just skin.
Inspiration from sensory experience
Changes in my sensory experience are a main source of my inspiration.
Sitting at my desk in my apartment, I am experiencing the same senses. I can hear the sound of traffic on the street outside. I can see my computer screen and the white wall behind it. I can feel the cushion under my bum and the wood against my back. I can taste my saliva. I can smell the bland air. I am experiencing the same senses. I am bored. I am not inspired.
So I get up and put on my sneakers and go for a run. Now my sensory experience is changing. I see new storefronts every block. I see new people and new cars. I hear conversations and children laughing. I smell the pollen from the summer trees. I feel the wind and the sun and the cement beneath my feet. My taste is about the same—just saliva.
Now, this is not to say I could not have changed my sensory experience in my apartment. I could have turned on some music. I could have taken a heroic dose of acid. I could have punched myself bloody. I could have sat down and tried my best to enter a deep meditation.
What comes in through your senses is already art. Life itself is art. What you see is a painting. What you hear is music. What you feel is dance.
As an artist, I am more of a translator than a creator. My life, my sensory experience—this is already the art. It is like clay given to a sculptor. I take the sound or music and the sight of the sky and turn those experiences into words. But in some sense, they are already words.
I am like a kaleidoscope or a prism. The experience of life is light. I am not the creator of light. Nor am I the creator of myself. I am merely a vessel.
It is still work. It is not as passive as standing there and letting light pass through. But it is work already set into motion by forces greater than me, and I must merely play along.
untitled
I get nothing done
All day
At my desk
Double guessing
And triple checking
Like I’m still in school
So I get up
And go outside
To run
And clear my head
And all my problems
Solve themselves
One after another
Somewhere
In the back of my mind
While I focus
On not getting hit
By a car
untitled
I run all over town
Without a notebook
Practicing
How to hold
A hundred poems
In my head
I pick favorites
And sometimes
Have to forget one
To remember another
The trouble is
I get a full head
Halfway through
As I’m still out and about
And seeing and smelling
And so poems
Keep pouring in
Which is when
I have to run
As fast as I can
Repeating every poem
Silently in my head
And looking down
Until I can get home
And start writing
To make some space
Statistically speaking
I make these
Small calculations
For my chances
Of survival
Like whether to walk
On this side
Of the sidewalk
Or that side
And wonder whether
The time I take
To make
These calculations
Is greater than
Or equal to
The time I save
Surviving
Park photographers
I watched two
Photographers
At the park today
As they
Took pictures
Of the birds
And the sky
One of them
With the long lens
Stood in the shade
Resting his camera
On his leg
Like a hunter
Holding his gun
Lazy like
Waiting to shoot
A bird in the trees
He waited like this
Still as a cat
In the shade
Only moving
His other arm
Not holding the camera
To take drags
On his cigarette
The second
With a small camera
Stood in the trail
In everyone’s way
Looking up at the sky
At a trail of smoke
Left by a plane
All of the passersby
Stood for a second
And tried to see
What the camera man
Was seeing
He pointed and explained
But some just didn’t see
Or understand
What was the big deal
About a trail of smoke
In the sky
Kitchen music
A pleasant crunch
Cutting across
Four stalks
Of celery
Triple washed
I got a handful of blueberries
Out of the carton
And went to wash them
But I dropped one
So I picked it up
And washed it again
And you wouldn’t believe me
If I told you
I dropped that blueberry
A third time
But I did
And washed it again
Tree and sun
Laying down
At the base of a tree
Looking up
Through the branches
At the sun
It is a tall tree
With many branch layers
So only some sections
Of light
Reach the grass
In between
Splotches of shade
The sun twinkles
As the leaves blow
And shift in the wind
I have to shield my eyes
With my hand
When the leaves blow
Just right
To let the sun
Shine through