In The Loft - A Magpie Tale

It Must Be Time For Lunch Now,
Frances Woodman in New York, 1979
image offered by Tess Kincaid
Mag 137 *click here*

In The Loft

You're so black and white!
That's what he said, turning away.

She just huddled there
offering her fork
as if no one cared at all
and that tugged at me,
me wondering on
all the pain I found in her
weep sweet eyes as they
fastened on my bare
naked flesh and the pile of clothing
at my bruised stained feet.

September 30, 2012 8:20 AM

The words lead and I am as far out at sea by the end as you are. There's a story here and I am not sure I think well of the characters in my poem but there it is.

End Game

End Game

Tightly curled within,
your grains of granite press eyes
and ears and my mouth
as if I shall be
buried here just forever,
a sentence pronounced
in all your sternness
for my poor showing this time.
I still do maintain
my inner posture
willing to tell all the world
of my devotion.

‎September ‎29, ‎2012 8:50 AM

Field Theory - Reprise

I am really happy I did not fall for the idea that I should somehow be captain of my soul. My life is so far from anything I could have planned. Every time I bring some new venture into my path it seems that everything changes. I have often said in one or another context that I am on the cutting edge of my own life. I basically am not competent to run it because I have never been here before. There are some roadmaps and guidelines available. There are principles that I have chosen to follow, but these don’t really tell me what to do on this day to day basis I might be able to really use. So I have to go by rules of thumb, some dead reckoning, and take suggestions as they arise. It is in this context that yesterday’s post was offered.

I quite literally can’t do worse if I flip a coin. I have in fact run my life on coin flips before.

Field Theory

I took you from fields,
brought you into my home state,
expected your blooms
and the scent of you
to change my life forever.
That is what happened
but in a surprise
move, you pried my hands free
of their hold on you.
Sailing off on winds
that I could not understand.
You gave me myself.

February 27, 2009 2:24 PM

A theoretical M theory multiverse. One of the bubbles is ours. This is theoretical. It is background radiation bubbles that we see in this picture. We cannot see past the background radiation. The universe goes opaque at that point, with all the light trapped along with everything else because the distances are too small and everything is too hot. The background radiation was the first thing that can now be seen when the universe went transparent. It is very far away which is equivalent to saying it was a long time ago.

Field Theory II

The long redaction
of strings reaches past the rays,
theoretical
motion faster than
little dots of stranger light,
lonely hordes, photons
all, corpuscular
at this precious momentum
but field theory
holds firm just the same.

July 29, 2009 10:11 AM

Detritus

The poet is forced. He wearily scrabbles out from and into his disheveled abode at least once a day. Once the detritus of his wanderings were not so steeply piled on the worn out steps.

Where to start?
Everything cracks and shakes,
the air trembles with similes,
No one world's better than another;
the earth moans with metaphors.
- Osip Mandelstam

Now that one hits me right where I live. I am clearly guilty of contributing to the unnecessary trembling and moaning of the planet. An indictment of all wannabe poets, everywhere, who all should be convicted of inveterate littering, of creating incorrigible messes for the rest of humankind. We are members of a species who now must accept its place among all the rest, who slog through ever increasing drifts of detritus as if we poets suffer universal brain eczema and internal head lice.

scrab·ble
v. scrab·bled, scrab·bling, scrab·bles
v.intr.
1. To scrape or grope about frenetically with the hands.
2. To struggle by or as if by scraping or groping.
3. To climb with scrambling, disorderly haste; clamber.
4. To make hasty, disordered markings; scribble.
v.tr.
1. To make or obtain by scraping together hastily.
2. To scribble on or over.
n.
1. The act or an instance of scrabbling.
2. A scribble; a doodle.
[Dutch schrabbelen, from Middle Dutch, frequentative of schrabben, to scrape; see sker-1 in Indo-European roots.]

in·vet·er·ate
Adjective:
Having a particular habit, activity, or interest that is
long-established and unlikely to change.


in·cor·ri·gi·ble
Adjective:
(of a person or their tendencies) Not able to be corrected, improved,
or reformed.

de·tri·tus
pl. - detritus
1. Loose fragments or grains that have been worn away from rock.
2.
a. Disintegrated or eroded matter: e.g. the detritus of past civilizations.
b. Accumulated material; debris: e.g. "Poems, engravings, press releases, he eagerly scrutinizes the detritus of fame" (Carlin Romano).

[French détritus, from Latin detritus, from past participle of deterere, to lessen, wear away; see detriment.]

Oh Lord, I am sorry.
No, really I am.

To the proprietor of the inn at Whiskey River:
I am warning you...my next post.
I am sure you wish me to avoid gratitude for your part in this confession.

Self Portrait

One Stupid Wraith - 3WW

Thom writes:
Each week, I post three words. You write something using the words.

Then come back and post a link to the contribution with Mr. Linky (but please, link to the exact post, not your blog, by clicking on the exact post title and paste it to Mr. Linky below). As always, there's no hard-and-fast rule that you have to post on Wednesday.

To link up with this week's Three Word Wednesday *click here*

This week's words:

Chance; Entice; Savor

...were born three beautiful puppies. The father is Butch's Take The Money and Run...

One Stupid Wraith

You should take this chance,
this last damn chance. He dithered,
seeming to waver
where he stood, half baked,
smokey, shivering like glass.

Strange that he would come
to me now, a bad
penny bent on this purpose:
to entice my play,
that I should savor
this gig, should take the money
and the dog and run.

September 26, 2012 6:15 AM

...and as posted on Whiskey River, shared with my gratitude:

"The truth is you already know what it's like. You already know the difference between the size and speed of everything that flashes through you and the tiny inadequate bit of it all you can ever let anyone know. As though inside you is this enormous room full of what seems like everything in the whole universe at one time or another and yet the only parts that get out have to somehow squeeze out through one of those tiny keyholes you see under the knob in older doors. As if we are all trying to see each other through these tiny keyholes.

But it does have a knob, the door can open. But not in the way you think. The truth is you've already heard this. That this is what it's like. That it's what makes room for the universes inside you, all the endless inbent fractals of connection and symphonies of different voices, the infinities you can never show another soul."

- David Foster Wallace
Oblivion

Why He Made Me Eat Arsenic

Image comes from Arrowrock Photography, one Robinstarfish, prop., to be found somewhere in the Idaho interior. *click here*

I wrote:

"Your photo actually led me here, the summer of 1968, me in Dacca, East Pakistan. I don't know why. I am grateful, though, both for your image and that British MD who supplied both diagnosis and poison. To this day I confound hepatitis type C blood tests. They misconstrue the hepatic scarring left behind by an invasion of Asian amoeba and the arsenic which killed them." Thanks for your image. I am using it with this poem today and of course giving you full creds.

Why He Made Me Eat Arsenic

The world was never
what we meant for it nor I
as if my liver
grew great colored spots,
sending strange spores out to play
among the dust motes
strewn by sexual
vegetation clinging to
the verge of all things.
My belly really
ached, swollen, dissipated,
the large red iron
ball held in the bag,
the center of David's sling
readied for hurling.
Nothing left for it
but to eat wafers maybe
would work but half kill
me along the way.

September 25, 2012 6:02 AM

Clarity Of Mind - Reprise

Mickey getting himself into trouble.

In 2009 I submitted poetry to Jo and Christines' publishing venture Ouroboros, and I appeared with one poem in the spring issue. I submitted six. This is one of the other five, one that I am partial to because it highlights one of the ways that I don't seem to fit this world very well.

Clarity Of Mind

I get the broom out,
Looks rather worn, used before,
Which makes me snuffle
About the state of things.

Something in me is sure stuff
Done should stay done, if only
For awhile, but no-

Here is the floor of my mind
All dusty again.

Written December 16, 2008 6:36 AM
Submitted to Ouroboros but rejected.
First posted April 7, 2009

This is caricature of Walt Disney joined with Salvador Dali. Much of the original Fantasia draws on Dali's surrealism.

Images from the blog Online-Inquirer for September 6, 2012 *click here* The subject of this post is the perennial nature Walt Disney's Fantasia.

The Poet Ponders Things - A Magpie Tale

Image: David Salle's Flying Down, 2006, courtesy Tess Kincaid's The Mag *click here*

September, 2005: To celebrate its 25th anniversary in September of this year, ART + AUCTION magazine asked 25 luminaries to reflect on the changes they have witnessed in the art world.

David Salle
Artist, New York

When I came to New York in the 70s, it was common not to expect to be able to live from your art. I had very little idea about galleries or the business side of the art world. It all seemed pretty distant. When people started paying attention to my work, it seemed so unlikely that somehow it wasnt so remarkable. I made my work for a small audience of friends, other artists mostly, and that hasnt really changed. At the same time, having shows is a way of seeing if the work resonates with anyone else. Having that response, something coming back to you from the way the work is received in the world, can be important for your development as an artist. But you have to take it with healthy skepticism.

When I first started to show my work, the idea that artists were known beyond the art world was still a novelty that excited some people and offended others. I dont think it means anything particularly. The idea seems to be that artists are too malleable to retain their values if they come in contact with the media. Its silly. If you're an artist, its not going to change what you do, and if you're not, then it doesnt make any difference anyway.

I dont think there is much relationship between popularity, measured in prices, and meaning in art. Popularity in art is the same as in politics: Its the result of a reductivist message endlessly repeated. Sometimes the popular is also the best, but its not something you can count on. For all the apparent change in the art world, I dont think things are really much changed for artists. Historically, every kind of artist-patron relationship has already occurred. There is no ideal condition. I still spend most days in my studio, alone, and whatever happens flows from that (emphasis, mine).

From the September 2005 edition of ART + AUCTION.*Blouin Art Info*

The Poet Ponders Things

Thousands follow me
on this blog and yet it's still
me in my ratty
chair - my sit bones ache
if I sit too long and I
wonder how I will
survive. The sun is
out this morning but that's it.
Nothing else has changed.

September 23, 2012 11:37 AM

Myrmecochory

Myrmecochory

Many little feet
up and down my stalks, laying
down scent, wish they didn't.
But they take my gifts,
my best work offered this spring
to the whole wide world,
small pulsing dark bits
of promise, planning, singing
dreams of future life.

myrmecochory: the dispersal of fruits and seeds by ants

May 9, 2010 12:00 PM

The seeds cooperate with the ants, typically providing a "fruit" called an elaiosome on the seed which is attractive, or else the actual fruits are attractive. In the photo above, copyrighted by Rufino Osorio in 2010 *click here* the white material on the side of each seed is the elaiosome, present as they freshly open and which will dry up and disappear shortly - though not before the ants help themselves to the attractive stuff and help the plant by spreading the seeds to other locations in the forest.

The plant in the photo is Virginia Snakeroot (Aristolochia Serpentaria).

The Importance Of Feathers

A barn owl named either Rocket or Romeo, this picture cropped from Lucy's original.

Lucy writes: "They're just mature birds now, but only weigh about 9 oz - the birds are weighed meticulously and their weight logged in metric and imperial. 'Try to find his head,' said Paul 'it's no bigger than a golf ball.' We ruffled among the silky soft feathers of the head which yielded endlessly like soft cloud, somewhere deep inside there was the tiny skull, but it was quite elusive."

Lucy is a poet and blogger who lives with Tom and Molly (a lovely happy dog) near a town in Brittany, in France. Lucy and Tom are British expatriates. Lucy loves working with her camera as much or more than she likes to write. Her pictures are usually very high quality. She does not manipulate them as far as I know, though she may crop some of them a little. Recently she and Tom and Molly visited Fauconnerie Bretagne, a falconry in the French countryside. There were raptors, including owls, trained and in training. You can see the entire story, a wonderful one at Box Elder.

The Importance Of Feathers

Owl has a bird brain
inside a bird skull with eyes
that stare straight ahead.
Owl has her feathers
all smoothed and shapely, designs
that cry predation
to the small creatures
who scuttle in the dim time
after the sun sets.
If you remove all
the feathers you will not see
owl at all but see
a tiny bird skull
atop a scrawny body
all bones, beak and claws.

‎September ‎20, ‎2012 8:08 PM

Earning My Allowance - 3WW

Thom writes:
Each week, I post three words. You write something using the words.

Then come back and post a link to the contribution with Mr. Linky (but please, link to the exact post, not your blog, by clicking on the exact post title and paste it to Mr. Linky below). As always, there's no hard-and-fast rule that you have to post on Wednesday.

To link up with this week's Three Word Wednesday *click here*

This week's words:

Absolute; Fall; Nestle

Shell cordovan (or cordovan) is a type of leather commonly used in shoemaking. Cordovan is an equine leather made from the fibrous flat muscle (or shell) beneath the hide on the rump of the horse. The leather derives its name from the city of Cordoba, Spain, where it was originally prepared by the Moors.

Earning My Allowance

My chores included
shining my Dad's cordovan
shoes among others.
Absolute pleasure,
that leather - I would fall into
its horsey scented
sheen and nestle there,
in the feel and shape of his
football player feet.

September 19, 2012 9:29 AM

The Butcher's Temper

The Butcher's Temper

I'm glad you don't know
what happens when I'm all steamed,
those shit things you say
to me as if it
was my fault we're in this soup.
If you knew how I
sever you, take your
fingers off and your poor toes
one by one, careful
to stop the bleeding
you would be glad I just hack
the mushrooms and meat.

‎September ‎18, ‎2012 8:32 PM

I have to give homage to Rachel at The Waxing Moon for the idea I used here. I love her work by the way. The other source (of the first lines):

I'm your wicked Uncle Ernie
I'm glad you won't see or feel me
as I fiddle about...

Uncle Ernie is a character in the Rock Opera Tommy by The Who. Uncle Ernie sang Fiddle About written by John Entwistle, and is a song about a homosexual pedophile. In early live performances Entwistle sang the song. In later live performances it was sung by Keith Moon. John Entwistle is arguably the best rock bassist who ever was, though he himself once stated that the Who didn't have a proper bassist. Rolling Stone readers once rated Entwistle number one.

Trying To Catch Up

Trying To Catch Up

You're too fast for me.
You won't hold still. I'll have to
set a frigging trap,
anticipate where you
might go in your leaps and bounds.

You swooped in, kissed my
special places - my neck
still tingles as if you sucked
out all my good sense,
left behind enough
of you to skew my life north
of my old intent.

May 9, 2010 11:22 AM

Venus And The Sailor - A Magpie Tale

courtesy Tess at Magpie Tales

*click here*

The thing about Dali, he was prolific from the outset and mature in his craft at a very early age. This Venus and the Sailor is one of three expressions of the same idea. The first two paintings, this and another, were done the year Dali was twenty-one, in 1925. The later expression was done in 1926 when Dali turned twenty-two and is an homage to a Catalan poet, political activist and member of the Catalan avant-garde whom Dali admired, a man named Joan Salvat-Papasseit. Joan died in 1924 when he was only thirty years old.

Venus And The Sailor

I was twenty one
and still drafting on my soul.
You were twenty one
and laying it down
on the easel of the world.
You spoke all those tongues
and wore those strange duds,
and I ran behind my home
boys trying to find
some way to live in
my time - you a swab caught by
the love of goddess
and me the love in the hope
of a warm white light.

September 16, 2012 11:32 AM

the other Venus And The Sailor also done by Dali in 1925

And the homage to Joan Salvat-Papasseit:

Here I Am - Reprise

Pictures by Tim Page from the Vietnam war that formed me.

Tim Page is a photographer, journalist, and author of Page after Page: Memoirs of a War-Torn Photographer; Tim Page's Nam; and the coeditor of Requiem: By the Photographers Who Died in Indochina and Vietnam, the 1997 winner of the Robert Capa Gold Medal Award, the International Center of Photography Infinity Award for Best Publication, and other awards. He resides in Kent, England.

In 1965, Page began taking photographs of the border conflicts in Cambodia and Vietnam. Eventually, he became one of the most notorious combat photographers and renowned for the images he captured. In the movie epic "Apocalypse Now", the dope smoking, crazed photographer played by Dennis Hopper at the top of the river is said to be based on Page. Page's friend Michael Herr created the role and also wrote the well-known book "Dispatches", where Page is one of the main characters. Tim Page was wounded several times whilst working in Vietnam.

"Today you will say things you can predict and other things you could never imagine this minute. Don't reject them, let them come through when they're ready, don't think you can plan it all out. This day will never, no matter how long you live, happen again. It is exquisitely singular. It will never again be exactly repeated." - Naomi Shihab Nye

Wiki says: Naomi Shihab Nye (born March 12, 1952) is a poet, songwriter, and novelist. She was born to a Palestinian father and American mother. Although she regards herself as a "wandering poet", she refers to San Antonio as her home.

Fundamentalism

By Naomi Shihab Nye

Because the eye has a short shadow or
it is hard to see over heads in the crowd?

If everyone else seems smarter
but you need your own secret?

If mystery was never your friend?

If one way could satisfy
the infinite heart of the heavens?

If you liked the king on his golden throne
more than the villagers carrying baskets of lemons?

If you wanted to be sure
his guards would admit you to the party?

The boy with the broken pencil

scrapes his little knife against the lead

turning and turning it as a point

emerges from the wood again

If he would believe his life is like that

he would not follow his father into war

That's Naomi. I don't know how to make this blog indent as Naomi did, so I took the last verses to the center and italicized them myself. I think it works okay. Now I will write my response.

Here I am

I sit in corners,

try invisibility

on for pensive size,

wondering if I

must fight on this day or that,

or if it ever

will work, this crouching

in accidental corners.
Please just forget me.

My purity leaks.

My integrity is frayed,

Lord. You worry me.

Once we ran away.
We ran to Cox's Bazaar
where crabs stared us down.
They crawled across us
as we slept rough on the beach.
That monsoon dropped on
us May 10th. I won't wait
so long to get up
or whisper my love,
and I will not go to war.
I will not go there.

Written and First Posted December 13, 2010 6:58 PM

Revisited and modified September 15, 2012

The crabs found on the beaches near Cox's Bazaar in Bangladesh are Red Crabs.  They have prominent eye stalks and they look like this:

Red Crabs tend to migrate at certain times of the year and are famous for it on Christmas Island, found in the Indian Ocean.

Clipped Wings - Reprise

Time by ~imperioli

"Human salvation lies in the hands of the creatively maladjusted." - Martin Luther King Jr

"Someday we'll look back on this moment and plow into a parked car." - Evan Davis, Presenter for the BBC

"I wonder if other dogs think poodles are members of a weird religious cult." - Rita Rudner, Comedienne

"If we don't change direction soon, we'll end up where we're going." - Professor Irwin Corey, American comedian, satirist and pantomimist

I think there is no doubt that I am creatively maladjusted. However, I do not feel the fate of humanity is in my hands. I do feel a destiny. I hope that I am aligned with that destiny in some way. I hope that my poetry and the other things I write and gather are part of that destiny instead of a side note or worse, a diversion.

I have no idea if either my work or my hope is important. I have saved my work in totally redundant ways, not only here on Blogger but on several remote hard drives, both of my computers and well over a thousand of my poems in two hard copy folders, hundreds of paper pages in each folder. Save my work for what? Why?

My poems are like musical performances - here in the moment and then gone. As musicians well know, the music is changed by recording it. So are my poems actual performances in the creating and when I return to them in just hours they are not what I wrote in my heart but belong to some other creature of the past, not me.

So in contrast to all that saving of the work, I have carefully stated many times that I am not attempting to hold copyright to open blog work that anyone can grab. I have a global readership. The top ten of my posts have all been accessed over a thousand times, and the top two posts over five thousand times. I am sure that relying on a global readership's goodwill is pretentious if not just plain stupid. I think there is no doubt I am creatively maladjusted.

Clipped Wings

To think of you with
wings is to lift my own heart
into the slipstream
of your feather light
flight beyond the slow moving
silver moon, twilight
colored sky, sunset
calling out your name and mine,
but I have clipped wings.

August 31, 2009 3:53 PM
This work first posted November 20, 2010
I have modified the creatively maladjusted paragraphs for this posting.

Might Be Pissed - 3WW

Thom writes:
Each week, I post three words. You write something using the words.

Then come back and post a link to the contribution with Mr. Linky (but please, link to the exact post, not your blog, by clicking on the exact post title and paste it to Mr. Linky below). As always, there's no hard-and-fast rule that you have to post on Wednesday.

To link up with this week's Three Word Wednesday *click here*

This week's words:

Hinge; Lethal; Need

Might Be Pissed

I'm a well oiled hinge,
might as well be, I suppose.
You open me up,
hang your doors on me,
use me though I am wearing
down. I harbor thoughts,
lethal thoughts I guess.
I need more from you,
or less - if I took an axe
to your panels, would
please me no end to
hear the thunks, see splinters fly
and see through the holes.

September 12, 2012 6:01 AM

I'm done now.

Lingua Franca

A painting of William Shakespeare, believed to be the only authentic image of the Bard made during his life. Photograph: Oli Scarff/Getty - lead image for an article found on The Guardian (English) website

William Shakespeare - as the recent movie illustrated, was he a real guy and if he was did he really write the plays and if not who did - is a source point in the history of the English language. He (or what he stood for) did more to change English into its modern form than any other person or single pointed influence. There is more to that story however, and not too distant from his time was something called "the great vowel shift" where English became more recognizable in its sound. Before that shift, English had German or Danish (Norse) sounding low class and French sounding upper class roots and many dialects that had not so much to do with each other. There are many remnants of all that still in the English language. The vowel shift is the main beginning of English as a language worthy of being the lingua franca that it is today. To think that among other things this is sourced in creative insults...

Musing On Shakespeare At The Globe

If I called you out
would you stand up and shout back
some creative jab
or just knock me down
at your foul flat fiendish feet?
I would like to think
you playful enough
to work your gnarly magic
even at this late date.
Lord knows we need mirth
as much as anything else
in these latter days.

So here goes:
You bootless beslubbering
beetle headed bladder
dripping hedge pig.

September 10, 2012 4:45 PM

The Big War - A Magpie Tale

Breakfast, 1921, Fernand Leger, 

courtesy Tess at The Mag. *click here*

Wiki says: "Léger's experiences in World War I had a significant effect on his work. Mobilized in August 1914 for service in the French Army, he spent two years at the front in Argonne. He produced many sketches of artillery pieces, airplanes, and fellow soldiers while in the trenches, and painted Soldier with a Pipe (1916) while on furlough. In September 1916 he almost died after a mustard gas attack by the German troops at Verdun. During a period of convalescence in Villepinte..."

The Big War

When the gas rolled in
I had nowhere I could hide
and it took me out.
Fucking mustard gas.
As I waited to go back
to the line I drew
your face and the pain
on it inverted, upside
down and in only
three primary shades
of gray but I need to kill
something, maybe with
the big guns in back
of us down the long lines, blow
the Boche all to hell.

September 9, 2012 9:30 AM

Heat Lightning

Photo from the photo library of NOAA, Lightning over Norman, Oklahoma, 1978

As is my usual thing, this poem and blog post springs off another, a poem by Susan Mitchell posted on Whiskey River first lined "Once driving west of Billings, Montana"...

The idea of a lightning strike in the road and running into it was so impressive I had to do something with it.

Heat Lightning

If I hit lightning
while driving on some high plains
road, right there in front
of me and me through
the pulse of it and the clap
breaking my presence
into shivers, shards,
and the road peeling asphalt
away from my life
as I go airborne -
would I sprout the wee folk wings,
see by pixie light?

‎September ‎8, ‎2012 3:53 PM



This heat lightning storm in Nebraska was caught around 10:00 PM, June 4, 2008. The sound means nothing and I would mute the show. I would love to be in the middle of this. I don't care if it's dangerous. The grandeur of the whole thing lifts my spirit unlike most other experiences on the planet. Once when I was in high school the family took a two week road trip. While driving in Utah headed toward Las Vegas and Lake Mead we were surrounded by a heat lightning storm in the mountains on all sides of us. Mom got really nervous. Dad just kept on. Toni and I in the back watched it all and I just about broke out singing. I do so love extreme weather.

Playing In Traffic

image and explanation from Oddity Central see more images there.

The Big Rig Jig is an art masterpiece conceived and designed by famous artist Mike Ross and it was put together from two repurposed 18-wheel tanker trucks. As you can imagine it took an entire team of people and machinery to build The Big Rig Jig and set it in place. It was featured at The Burning Man Festival in 2007.

Wiki says:
Burning Man is a week-long annual event held in the Black Rock Desert in northern Nevada, in the United States. The event begins on the last Monday in August, and ends on the first Monday in September, which coincides with the American Labor Day holiday. The 2012 Burning Man Festival is August 27 to September 3. It takes its name from the ritual burning of a large wooden effigy on Saturday evening. The event is described by many participants as an experiment in community, art, radical self-expression, and radical self-reliance. Burning Man is organized by Black Rock City, LLC. In 2010, 51,515 people attended Burning Man. 2011 attendance was capped at 50,000 participants and the event sold out on July 24. In April 2011, Larry Harvey announced that the organization had begun the process of transitioning management of the festival over to a new non-profit called the "Burning Man Project".

Mike Ross is an American sculptor known for large scale public art projects. Ross is a graduate of Stanford University.

Ross' best known work, "Big Rig Jig", consisted of two modified tanker trucks attached to each other vertically in an S shape, with a truss installed in the tanks that allowed people to climb inside. The piece was built at American Steel, an art fabrication shop in Oakland, California. It was commissioned by the Black Rock Arts Foundation for Burning Man in 2007, and was considered one of the highlights of the event. It toured to the Coachella Music Festival in 2008. Ross described the work as a commentary on America's unsustainable oil economy.

In 2008 Ross was hired by Sound Transit, Seattle, Washington's light rail agency, to design a sculpture for the Capitol Hill Station of its University Link project. Ross' design, featuring two fighter jets sliced and rearranged to appear as if they are kissing, created some controversy among members of the local community who objected to its use of military aircraft.

Playing In Traffic

Dancing down the fog
line, playing in large traffic,
the tractors, trailers
that zoom past your house
on the Interstate - I've come
through the fence to reach
these fascinations.

The big rigs pile air in front
and vacuum up dust
behind as they roar
so near my tangled head games,
my crazed heart's demand.

May 9, 2010 10:22 AM
modified September 6,2012

The Calling - 3WW

Thom writes:
Each week, I post three words. You write something using the words.

Then come back and post a link to the contribution with Mr. Linky (but please, link to the exact post, not your blog, by clicking on the exact post title and paste it to Mr. Linky below). As always, there's no hard-and-fast rule that you have to post on Wednesday.

To link up with this week's Three Word Wednesday *click here*

This week's words:

Banter; Duty; Element

Duty - the oldest sense coming from the Latin. Something I owe due (this is the source word of duty) to my position in the midst of things.

The Calling

No more banter here,
serious as a heart pain
all sobered right up
and focused, laser
lighted on duty and poised
to soar. Journey on
old man. He trusts you.
The element of ascent
is in your long gaze.

September 5, 2012 10:42 AM

In The Updraft

The Lover and Beloved are one and the same.

Image by Gaelyn Larrick. Google her. She comes right up.









In The Updraft

If I were to place
my hands on you they would glide
like a hawk in air
high above the plain,
feeling the warmth and the lay
of things, the rose glow
within, the rustling
presence of all the others
beneath your live skin.

May 8, 2010 9:58 AM

Fish Living

From A Polish Design Site but really the images found there are from all over the internet.

Fish Living

Living on the back
of my fish gives me the edge
I like ever since
I got the set up
right to hold her still, loading
her back with stony
structure and the dirt
for the truck garden growing
pumpkins and all such.
Building the houses
was more fun than I really
wanted I must say.

September 3, 2012 8:44 PM

You Can't Make It Up - A Magpie Tale

Albert Bloch's Summer Night - 1913

Courtesy Tess Kincaid

You Can't Make It Up

This is what happens
during the blue moon, you said
floating off stage right.
It is confusing
I must admit. Then I scratch
myself, my stray itch
brought on by the likes
of you and your departure.
You will leave a hole
that no elephant
can fill, trunk or no, I say.
The lighting is odd.

September 2, 2012 11:13 AM

Written for The Mag. *click here*