inside the ribcage

Here, at this time of the year, the sky flatten 
the hours. It becomes almost impossible to tell,
sometimes, the time unless you press your pulse

to know you are still among the living. Here,
where every thing has become so efficient and
then not. The selvedges are ripped, if one cares

to notice. Such small things like the seeing
through an opened window the lovers, now kissing,
have forgotten to close. Most of the time

every one has learned to move with flat-line
hearts that have become so civil, so tirelessly
euphemistic that at times I am beginning to feel

this calamity, incredibly scripted, un-human.

to believe again

the exact moment of your coming of age, do you remember? the moment when 
the rosy scales from your eyes fell
and your heart grew a stone
and you finally see

the world is not what you once thought it to be?



                                                                   --on reading college freshmen essays

palimpsests

some days ago, two young men made a performance called "white wall".  it was made of a white sheet held high and wide, with two cuts on it where the men placed their lips and talked between themselves.  the audience were meant to overhear.  their conversation short: about how nothing signifies something; how something could be anything; and anything, nothing; and how even nothing means something; and something, anything...finally the men ended their play, possibly out of breath chasing their own conversation's tail.  i thought about bertolt brecht.  and waiting for godot.  someone from the audience whispered virginia woolf.  i said nothing, thinking of the young man who thought of the performance.  how difficult it is to be "new" these days.  how the world must be older than we think.  older than it lets on...

yesterday, a korean artist brought out her painting of a girl whose head was lost inside the clouds inside an upturned fish bowl.  the goldfishes swimming on air outside the glass, swimming beside her ears. her other painting was of a girl with extra large rabbit ears.  surrealism.  how she recalls dali in the background of her figures, in the strokes and colors she chose.  how her portraits call frida in the length of her women's necks, the slopes of their shoulders, the immobile staring of their heads. 

today, i begin reading The Portland Vase... 

 

  

 

 

expression. of peace.

after red


i tell my lover i am going to do painting today.  i will go to the hardware store and buy the paint brushes.  flat ones intended for walls.  those that are meant to color.  and are unapologetic.  i do not care if sio montera says not to use house paints.  that they are not meant for art.  great or otherwise.  i will get a few pieces of good wood.  some nails.  a hammer.  a white canvas.  and build myself a frame.  large.  and rest it on the wall.  i have a stroke in mind.  it is blue.  and slightly convex.  concave.  when seen from the other end.  center bottom thrown to top far right.  i mean it like a wave.  of something else.  maybe a part.  of a circle.  even though it trails away