India Ink, Bee’s Wax and Pigment on folded paper

25X19”

 

I steal from her, her silence, her title, her everything

Which is really just wind and water and yes I agree

I’m just a bag of wind and noise and nothing more and here is the but.

But.

What else are we here for?

Yeah, it’s just a skin bag filled with hot air

A little tiny basket hanging below

With the sand man hanging in heavy bags

A westerly wind and the heat in this skin bag

Floating this vessel up a mountain it has no business being on

 

Well maybe noise is why we are here?

We’re noisemakers and maybe hearing our own noise isn’t the point?

Maybe there is some other point to the wind

We gather behind the skin sails?

We inflate the body, this dream of being

And yes there is the gift of awareness

The I am

But yeah, who cares?

Nobody

And yet

There is a reason

Some moment

Brief as it might be

On one day

Someone stands by a window looking out

And they think

Wow, that’s such a beautiful balloon

All those colors sailing in the wind

Someday I hope to be

That balloon.

And that thundering silence

Calls a rain

A rain

That is ironically thirsty

 

On that day I hope it is a hot day

Perhaps children are playing in the water

And the thunder claps

Announce the beginning

And I fall.

 

But it could be winter, quiet

No one sees

And I float

So white in a blue northern light.

 

In the beginning the first plants on Earth were annuals and lived their whole life in a single year. In winter they found a place where the earth was fertile and they began to grow roots as spring came and later they grew above ground and they saw the sun for the very first time and they fell in love with the sun. Because they loved the sun so much they offered a flower. The sun loved the flower and sent the wind to gently touch them.

 

The plants, knowing they had to die soon, discovered that they could move their lives completely into the flower and form a hard shell where they could wait out the dark winter and then live again. But they always forgot their last life. Over billions of years some plants learned how to use their energy to form a seed shell on the outside of their bodies and to grow deep roots where they could sleep during the winter. These plants became the first trees and they remembered their lives year to year and lived for thousands of years.

 

Before man came the trees became very crowded and the trees began to die because many of them couldn’t get enough sun. The sun saw this and felt compassion and spoke to the trees and taught them how to use the energy of the sun and the wind to lift themselves from the earth in order to follow the sun where the sun wanted them to be. The trees listened carefully and they created a cart with wheels like a skateboard. They each followed the sun and moved along rivers, up the side of mountains and some to lonely rocks out in the middle of the sea. As long as the trees listened to the sun and followed to where they belonged they thrived. And the trees learned to grow flowers for the sun and how to put part of their live into the seeds. The life really came from the sun but many times the trees forgot that.

 

There was a tree growing in a valley with the annual plants and this tree saw that the annuals died after they released their seed. And when the time came the tree likewise released seed. One of the seeds grew into a sapling and the sun taught the sapling the art of following. The tree that helped form the sapling saw that the sapling was leaving and was concerned about the hardships the sapling would have to endure during its journey to the place the sun had selected. The elder tree used all of its energy to lift itself from the earth and followed after the sapling to protect it. But because the older tree cast a shadow the sapling could no longer see the sun so it lost its way and stopped moving with the sun and it’s leaves began to turn white and drop off and it began to die. The older tree also began to die because it was no longer in the place the sun had selected. Finally the sun spoke to the older tree and told it that the sapling would die if the elder tree didn’t follow the sun back to its place with the annuals. The elder tree was heartbroken to have to leave but it followed the sun back to the valley and became the weeping willow and the sapling followed the sun up the mountainside and became the white pine.

 

Some of the first humans grew from the seeds from these two trees and other humans grew from other trees. You can always tell by the human heart where that person came from because that is where the original seed is kept. I come from the white pine and the willow and I’m looking for the others in my tribe because the wind told me there is another place for us and we have to plant our seed to go there.

The world is a place imagined
And there is nothing
Just thought
Inflating form

Perhaps it was that first day in fourth grade
When the change occurred
When it occurred to me
That everything had already been
Imagined
That the world was somehow
Complete
Without me

I sat at a wooden desk in a wooden chair
In a brick building on Academy Street
Glass windows
Imagined
I don’t know how long ago
Like numbers and letters
Like 1 + 1 = 1
And the two shall become one flesh
All imaginings
Of dead guys

Oh but the maple trees
Through the glass windows
The whirly birds falling green on the sidewalk
Where we line up single file
To enter the bus
They are their own imaginings
Refusing to get on the bus
But allowing their forms
To be altered
Into the desk
Into the chair
Into this human-centric world imagination

And I remember becoming frightened then
I saw the part I needed to play
Learned the rules
Of this imagining
But what if they ever found out that I’m faking?
That I’m really not part of the imagined
What if I,
like the tree
Refuse to get on the bus?
What if I sell this imagined world?
Sell my birth lie
To buy my birth right
Can you imagine that?





Man who sold the world

We passed upon the stairs,
We spoke of was and when
Although I wasnt there
He said I was his friend
Which came as a surprise
I spoke into his eyes -- I thought you died alone
A long long time ago

Oh no, not me,
We never lost control,
Youre face to face,
With the man who sold the world

I laughed and shook his hand,
I made my way back home,
I searched for form and land,
Years and years I roamed,
I gazed a gazely stare,
We walked a million hills -- I must have died alone,
A long long time ago.

yes,
there was a missed call
and I didn't even think to look
until it was another day
and it was some other people,
like a body-double
who made those calls

Do you remember dreaming this?

I remember waking up
there was someone standing over me
my pockets had been emptied on the bed
there were things I had forgotten about,
important things I
didn't see anymore.
but someone saw them,
saw them clearly,
more clearly then I ever could
with my closed eyes.

I had a dream of sweet music
it was drifting in from the night woods behind the deck
I could hear the rhythm
I could hear the soft cords,
the singing, the sadness,
could hear the thoughts creating
this vast space
like a man who could unbutton his shirt
and be nothing but the wind sailing through,
like my empty pockets were me,
like what was spilled on the bed was lost,
like I wasn't dreaming anymore,
like this standing over me,
this accusation
is the end of all
I heard from the back deck

I can fly, can't I?

Please?