Month: August 2014

No poems, only birds. My classic contradiction.

August 28, 2014 — Leave a comment
Sitting at my desk after work tonight. I reckon I could write you a poem, or something of that sort. But I’ll hold onto any words I have in that nature for a day or so. Trying like I do with a pen drawing. Before I begin with the pen work I let the drawing sit in pencil and examine it for a few days. Each time noticing things I hadn’t before.
I like doing that with words too. This helps me find their power or something like that.
 
I finished another large flying hawk. The layout of these drawings is simple but holds lots of texture. I feel good about this approach and would like to now put these birds into other positions in the natural kingdom. No easy task, but tonight’s pencil studies show promise I feel.
hawkfinished.jpg

The most recently finished of my 2’x4′ hawks on plywood.

Climb the ladder to bring her the Moon.

August 26, 2014 — Leave a comment
It’s that vacation, or trip you went on. You saw something beautiful that reminded you of somebody you care a lot about. Maybe you wished they were there to see it.
That strange dream of a wonderful place and you thought, “My goodness if only I could bring all my friends here!”
 
Tonight I sit down to my piece of 2’x4′ plywood. It sits on my TV dinner tray that I covered with goofy stickers from here and there a layer of shellac on it helps keep the stickers down, and allows me to spin the plywood around with ease to get at any angle needed.
I get some headphones out of their hiding place. They are quite huge and sound like wrapping a concert hall around your head.
My pen is sitting next to my phone on top of a book of poems.
 
When the headphones plug in and that just-exactly-perfect song is rolling through them into my mind. I grab the pen off the book and I go on that vacation and have that strange beautiful dream. I think of many different wonderful people. And while I can’t take them to that moment of joy. I can show them the bird I caught in the wood-grain during. To turn off time, leave California for a few minutes to find something beautiful for the people you love.
 
I like that Idea, it seems romantic.

Deal

August 22, 2014 — Leave a comment

“I’ve been gambling here abouts
for ten good solid years
If I told you all that went down
it would burn off both your ears…” -Robert Hunter

 

I laid out another life size hawk in pencil on plywood. Then I saw this tree in my head and heard The Grateful Dead coming through the branches. I tell you if I had a dime for every time that happened I’d own the bank.

On a branch in the back of my mind.

August 19, 2014 — Leave a comment
I walked to California in concrete shoes,
Midwest boy with the nothing-certain blues.
 
She walked right past me with a halo made of lead,
I turned to look when I should have tied my shoes and fled,
 
She looked like spring and I looked like a thousand winters.
whenever I got near her my thoughts turned to splinters.
 
 
 
 
I’m not often sure who “she” is, but that’s an owl, I can tell you that much for certain.  
 
 
 

It was her again, but it was all right.

August 10, 2014 — 3 Comments
She promised me poetry on my grave.
Or at the very least, to try and behave.
 
And as she stood there in the rain she made good.
I write my own poetry on a piece of wood.
 
Time yet not for a bed of dirt.
her words only echo they do not hurt.
 
Sifting through these ashes I found the words,
Bringing to page the largest of birds.
 
In my noblest of efforts to think ahead of my pen.
My thoughts drift back to her again.

Holding still.

August 2, 2014 — Leave a comment
That one summer I made all those hawk drawings.
 
Hiding from the drought with a glass of wine and a veil of feathers over her head.
 
She had a halo like a red-tailed hawk.
 
It could make me stop in midsentence.
 
Pulling the car to the curb 236 miles from Los Angeles.