All one; revolving
Part One
Circling ‘round, the idea,
“Something about a tourist...”
Revolving-- All One,
It fails--
It’s fallen-- falling, make something
Of that broken scene, he said
remaking--
The Sunflower Altar.
The minotaur carts away,
Tracing another arc,
Crispin journey-- Jaunt to the south
refreshment,
In air, through season
Identity with the Sun
Shading into night-- sea drift
THOU ORB ALOFT!
Sun smeared cycle,
turning to icy self
Original dream, a place one could
Surround oneself with, vision
Broken style
Between polarity
Opening on the new-- world
Dreamed in winter of city snow
The sun is setting
That great hero taking leave
We go on about this death
Scrawl a tragedian testament
The sky is not moved
The story goes on
expanding beyond edge
Ordeal of landscape, my new poem
Is old poem-- over and over
Gaining some sense of a self
In the repetitions.
Color was ironic after all--
Sun and snow.
Spiraling space into apocalypse
Exaggerated to bird cartoon
Fragmented circle, the images clattering
Revolving, climb-- fall back,
into black, and shade
Comic sublime, story.
Waterfall to ocean wave, the clouds
Mount, maybe everything together
The video flicker, passing in car,
cold crystal sun
Folk-- like tale, the myth of opposites in
Tragic comedy,
Spring against black memory
Of clearing space, creating, turning
Staked out and tortured, the politic
Over the hill, any way-- we go on
Everyday thing, a nagging notion
Jays scattering, divine wind-- clatter
The great distance-- falling, all in pieces
The blank,
Hiroshige, Hiroshima
Dive bombing birds, spirit wind
Just afraid of the pain, just tired now--
No please, not today
Revolved into one
Shards falling in slow motion
The pieces ending in ripple waves,
Sound of dead man, no man
Bibble of sorts--
BROKEN BIRDS
The leaves growing in cracks
The villa in webs and broken windows
The melting snow,
faint sun in March
That red object organizing everything,
Modern relics? “Oh Yeah, the nature thing--”
Stumbling upon the polluted lagoon
On the tropical isle
that bombed out looking hotel
The hurricane wind,
images upon images
Turtles and mint shading
Reflecting patterns in sand
beneath
The water surface,
Modern angled shape--
Broken,
Plain to folk--
But POP!
A child off crying--
Pressures of complexity,
the Imagination
Is simple
Minded
The Carnival--
lights over Mexican town--
Reverberating then blown-- to palm rustle
Surf sound, vivid mango orange--
Simple with out ulterior motive
Oriole whistle! It calls, I call
It whistles, I call-- it whistles back
Orange headed god--
Ruffling its feathers and swoops--
Turtle gliding--
stepping aside that
Black pile of rags on city grate
Keeping warm-- flying nowhere
Flapping in the wind, robes
Between elation and despair
Dark stars above,
Fate streaming
distance
Another journey in spring-- time
Gray green, yearly couplet
Outward movement-- South and
Western direction
Nature, whatever--
It’s out there
Out there, equated with--in here
The plain truth and we plunder
Rationalize we feel pain,
We die, We die
I continue
for that bird
Sunday painter indeed!
Then this guy
forever taking off
A flower in his teeth
We were all singing for freedom
Red and yellow--in mountain blue
She led the crowd in her rags
She railed against credit
What ever happened to PEACE?
Clatter of cymbal
crash and squawk
New religion, Howl-- ling
All one-- Church, I guess and falls
Hitler, I guess and falls
Wooden church-- and falls
Phone rings,
a note under the door
Everything changed--
New direction, being out there
I believe as I am poor--
“I’m the last
Romantic of a busted civilization”
A tin can shot out for beans.
A shape of mind
Present secret self
Too much too bare
All of these things
will happen to me--
One day at a time
Whose God?
Something older in the deep air
In here,
seen out there
No way to teach this as true?
Just to immerse myself in this
Beyond, above?
A little and then--
Down-- fallen state
Of fiction turning
That building hid
those lunar phases
Repeating rhythms
And in climax of moment--
Conscious imaginative MOMENT
Stop!
WE TRIUMPH!
ALL ONE--
that at once feeling-- falling
It wasn’t like
I had mastered the figurative
Mode and was moving on to the abstract
A certain color shape and line--
On my death bed
An image to abstract
Form-- no right image, true
Still to go back,
to check a blue
Giotto’s blue, that red in the Mysteries
Bang!
Clap of hands-- at the surface
Springing to moment
and BLOOM
Summer height
Pleasure that changes
Existing self of that moment
Breathing in and out
Weeping bare foot
Something happens
Ordering, remembering
Happening,
testing feelings
Against this wall
Adventure was newly formed
Cycle of water and mountain--
falls and stream
Emptying to desert
Reaches-- final sea
End of distances
No end but no end but no end
Distilled form tossed to air
A knowledge
tossed to air
A knowledge older brought forward
Thrown up-- yearly trip
Which one will find me at the end
I take it in stride
Finishing touches on
the paintings
Want to go back-- you can’t go back
The lagoon, the walk about
Snake song
Fairy path-- there
Blue man in reeds
Against the sun’s setting
Heron call--
another notch tightened
Gears turn,
revolving the moon
Flying through
Easy style American Dream
Leaving the Art behind
Out into space just like--
A whole other world
Discovered
Sadly not so simple
Something I didn’t tell you--
Squares
of dark stained canvas
Sunset bands
Red wall,
clouds moving fast
Star spangled dream
The tower is off in the distance
Behind me
Island memories floating
Dead tree
Fog swirl
into west
Vast flatland
Lightening bugs
Killdeer, Killdeer--
Exclamation!
Crickets
answer back
I stand in the rain
It’s almost dark
Old song, Old song
Out into that
older space
Dreaming drunk
I paid for this!
doubt to dream
Propelling one forward
It took long to learn--
Things got dangerous
Wide open spaces that
feeling of having arrived
A deep breath
Red bird swoop
Lark rising
Thunderstorms last night
Maybe clearing things out
4 way flashers and
windshield wipers
Into the night
Big idea! flashing
Shield dreaming
Name-- born in thought
In the reeds--
floating
Revolving zodiac
Mind turning
Walking in the world--
Stop in time
That fly catcher
flutters
Kite-- like-- the Idea
The Hero
Altar of flowers
Simple Giotto
Villa--
wall and--
A World
Plaster cracking--
Truth of surface
rending--
Maybe, I was done
I took off
ONE.
Stop, to that --
Time. parts left behind
The 30,000 dead--
left behind
Getting out of the car
Dry wind, warm wind
Just too dangerous any more
Daisies bob
Daring, daring
Picaresque
gypsies out in the wide--
Music leading the blind
Deer that bounds through abandoned site
The central character,
SURPRISE
Lightening flash!
Among red rocks and juniper
Smelling the sage
Horizon’s western flavor
White cumulous reflect
Already intensest
high altitude
Flickered shadows flee
Across hills the
empty spaces searching
Crow flies
Sure hollow strokes
Sky intelligence
Hearing the flute in his head
Wind storm
driving through
Fighting this wind
Through desert the snow covered
Spring mountain
Winding highway through
I wonder how people live
In this ruined
place of my dream
Repeating, repeating
End of the road
Died with the radio on--
Dreaming his name
Sunset on the beach
Winding
around over hills
The moon risen
Reflects water, place of depth
Space usually hidden
Squawk-- quak, great blue--
Hero-n losing myself
Writing it down
Something in the object
Alive to a next moment
Just in writing it down, the Ordering
Juxtaposed thought,
some surprise
I hadn’t realized
Making a life some shape, color, line
Then this need to tell you,
Comic world made,
putting together
But this fragmentation is real
Broken, HORROR
The REALITY is frightening
Black tears fall
Here?
But--
I have my own war
Getting further away
Maybe I should stay--
just ask me to stay
I’m in that rather die mood
The abstract violence--
I’ll fight for it--
but not with you--
Dreaming place reflecting
Stars, chanting
The things
Wandering afar
Wave breaking
Swallows
weaving
Through fairy path
I am all heaven, bluest heaven
Mountains greener blue
Orange dazzling--
outburst
Swoon
High up
Offering it
UP
Up in the hills
Looking down at
all of this
Wild north beyond
Hard to leave
At the end it
keeps on ending
In old dirty coat
Round comic hands
Clown face and Ball bat,
Umph!
Words come, the words are
beyond
Form their world
Heaven turning -- hell
I tried to go back
It was a bad time, my entry wrong
My paintings rolled in the back
Over the mountain-
lost its wild aspect
Not to be recaptured
A hike down into
See it in rocks
Drawings in the rock
Drawing the basket
Bowl design--take what I can
get out fast
Must be here somewhere?
All revolving and--
Swerve, another wobble-- round
Being the wonder
God and the imagination are one!
I’d have missed what gave to me
my life’s ride--
Walking the paths from
Lagoon to ocean beach
And back
Driving highways to museums --
back east
One was in a shopping mall--
Wild landscape as metaphor
Headed back
Chinese seasons in
black zodiac turning
Beautiful porcelain
A river unfolds Buddha
Becomes the world
A strength to get
beyond another winter
Go round and round
All grossly alive and booming
The world alive, One
Seeing all things
Revolving style
Space to surface,
Here
ONE, saying it again
Western sun
Behind me
Still, still-- unformed
Oh, that’s what makes us!
You are here
to love the earth
Still unformed
Looked like my only chance.
The wind howling
Huddled in my-- Indian
Diamonded blanket
Too tired to
straighten up--
Having arrived too late at dark
Like last evening in the sunset
The mesa upended into this
elevated mass of
Darkening shape
There in the sunset
Purple swoosh
Curve of road
The stars were appearing
in the dark part
It changes the way you look, at the land
Woman with clothes blowing in the wind
“Old woman from down in Mexico--
Yaa Yaa Ya Ya Ya---ya”
I got back by October
The trees were
already yellow
I’m up at the lake
Painted last evening
Another sunset
Quiet and stubborn
Changing at whim then
solid steady--
Up Chama way my inquisitive friends
Not much moving out here
Junco twit
Constant, thit-- thit
Here I am
Here I am
The tortured tree
there in the middle
Of the world, Crow flies through
I counted
six blue birds in the tree--
How is this going to work?
I drove south to get out of the rain
That rain in the desert-- smell.
Have you ever smelled that!
A house overlooking the ocean--
In the hills
I never planned to stay
Just couldn’t
get past it
It was broken but
we saw it as beautiful
Shards of what it had been
All striped patterned memory--
A figure strove to emerge
Out of that, space-- nothing there
An IDEA!
Something about GOD,
before GOD being --
Black and white scene
Elemental shape that emerges
Snake and bird,
earth and sky
I was climbing a hill through snow storm
When on the way down hill, the
Snow was already gone
That sun shines into the afternoon space--
Out in the American Desert
Making-- grasping my irony--
My anxiety--
To keep on, not to end up
Talking to myself
On a telephone
in the subway
Jumping out there!
Well, there was this adventure
All the black paintings
had gone gray
They had started wild, an authentic--
Just plain thrill of painting it huge--
Then it all breaking up
Losing the priority--
Trying to go backkk--
You can’t go backkk.
Find it in the
future I thought--
Backing up -- anyway
taking that side road--
A shape floats surrounded by a line
A line names it
A line, Into being, Idea here!
Well, supposedly there are no lines in Nature
This assures suspicion of the thought--
this
Towards abstraction-- repeating
Falling
Oatmeal on my hot plate
Get my muffin, coffee
The paper in the sun
Toss the idea
Get going on something
Till dinner
Reading and then those
lousy rental movies
Well, yeh-- I got tired
I drove to town to look at the blankets
Craning my head to see
the towering cumulous
Yeah, being the Tourist-- the Cloud
Hope-- I never tire of this.
What we liked
The earth tone was cheap and the red
Border rare--
“There was a landscape in
that emptiness,” he said
“As the west was fenced the borders came in--”
Disappearing in the dark night
The stars were right there
Sucking one in--
the white capped
Unknown mountains
Some chores-- the silence
My head revolving
Flying
Away with me
I’m turning around with
my arms outspread
Trees all yellow along the river
Winding through
some story worth telling
Building-- meandering
This world, a body- itself
This eye attached to corner
Black images spilled
Painting is dead
No more room--
stumbling through with
Flash light up front
Feeling lost
“Every one wants you home.”
Rushing to bring all this together
At least in my head
Sparkling water, sparkling light
Is there anything else
Sierra sun in the west
feeding the birds
Comet blazing
That scorpion in the moon shadow
Palm waving rustle
I revolve them--
Lost something
running around
The road through the Indian reservation,
Heading
home at sunset,
Dogs on the road, the trailers--
Blue Christmas lights
“Soulful conversation-- “ referred to
Couldn’t find any of these wise men
But then didn’t know where to look
They seemed all in the bars
dotting the dusty land
“Charlie, we are soulless men.”
All the talk of goodness left me barren--
Some process that discovers!
To participate one must
pay up, he said
God, Gold
Nothing behind the curtain
I’d miss it all so00
Odometer turning, this old car
Century cycles
All things come
and return
The story going on
Empty center, flags blow
Moment pass-- pass--
juggling keeping aloft
How now
Falling
Watching the overlook
The eagle wheeled
Overhead, screams
Floated over the white mountains
The neighbor was shooting off guns
I’d walk up there for some exercise
What’s bad is good,
what’s good is bad
only smart people see this
A landscape
Blown up
A figure over top
To abstract extreme
Here I sit at the picnic table
Up at the lake--
Thinking about
Something I thought or saw,
wrote -- dared
I LEPT out--
Fell flat on face.
The wicked
Sublime come down.
Super market check out,
Fashion magazine
What if the stars only came out once--
Every thousand years
Hoping I never tire of this
mirroring of mind
Creates us--
Wide curve-- Swerve
The mind is our body
Eating the world
Creating itself
Our unconscious is conscious
that Deeper, deep
This automatic
We learn it into existence
I’m up driving around Coyote
Reading Fashion Magazine
Reading Neitzche
Reading Desert
He’s dead,
so is God
That fashion guy lives up there somewhere
Afternoon sun setting
The night sky revolving
Those timlapsed clouds rip past
Exploding Atomic Bombs
Had to think of it
with that forest fire
Looked like a mushroom cloud
Shards of pottery
Dead weeds
Tumble weed
Natural facts are
spiritual facts
Things out there--
He pointed to his heart
Figure with the
Tibetan Prayer flags
Empty spirit bottles
Mountain top wind whistling
Ending for a
long time now
I have to live with this
First one can’t believe
On my way back--
Sleet and a slushy hail
The wandering woman is black--
Suddenly in front of me!
In the wind
Divine eternal is not
so fashionable
Except in this mystic fashion
He said, in a bad time-- I saw inchoate
As unfortunate,
a resistance was involved
Rhapsodes, rhapsodes--
Sand blows under the door
Blip! Eternal Return
Like the gods before
Here now
Pop Comic Pilgrim
She just lit up
Poor Freya
couldn’t see
Her old face sage like
Something
she couldn’t tell
Would she stay or go
The flags flipping
Yeah that’s it--
The western note book
I get hiking and
off I went
I got up there
hiking back the flat top
It was getting dark
Kind of froze--
Working back
Fast as I could
Tripping
in strewn stones
I kept looking east
A rhythm over
I’m chanting-- I’m on the path
I’m on the path
My God!
The moon
full rising--
Pink Sky Blue
The snowy mountains
I’m on the path
I luckily got to the stony cliff
To crawl down at Dusk,
And I’m letting my self down
When I see this
This petroglyph sign
Pecked into the rock
A circle with a line
Same east west direction
The path, I’m on--
I’m looking up
into the western sky--
Blazing angels wings over the Pedernal--
Grandfather mountain
I got down a blind man with a stick
Picking through bones
Moon castings
Shadows over the dim land
Down in the shadows of the river bed
Falling over a cow’s pelvis--
gleaming
Even in the dark
I carrying it along
I remembered the Mountain Lion and--
I go with no choice
Onto the highway
Lights of cars--
dark highway
On the way home
Walking stick and
bone on a rope
Indian Memory
2000 looming--
The saw-like magpie sound
Woke me-- pinon jays--
Flying in flocks
Sacred to profane, falling
Keeping all the ideas in the air--
Juggling
It’s a hard place to live
Going around for a while
not able to paint
Through flickering video projections
Waiting around in the dark
Waiting
Beautiful painting next to that
MOUNTAIN
that dog’s name is Peppers
My adopted companion
She sits-- staring, she doesn’t need me
Exaggerated self
Relating to any movement-- out here
There’s an old Indian circle
It’s been here a long time
Wind blows hard
enough to unearth shards
Of Anazazi bowls
There facing east
The dog out there
Orion tumbles
Like the gods before
It rained and was
gray for a week--
After hardly a gray day.
Clouds pile up--
mountains snowing
But then, it lifting-- and Spring!
Turned directly
Into Summer!
Not sure here--
Birds--? good, Yes, still--
Warblers and orioles
Yes!, following the river green,
line through ochre
Arriving, Yes!
Just at the right time
Cottonwoods sprouting seeds
Another good design--
Howling
Incessant spring wind
Knock, knock--
knocking
“Everyone is dying here”
“I love your Blue jays--
have faith I do-- “
I make this map of my ideas
Tanagers were in the cottonwood all day
Bird flies-- where it stops
There the god is!
Returning to plain air
And the surface was flat
Trying to speak-- all one
Cycle-- cycle
This shape on the wall,
An exclamation!
Jays, scrabble
Tic tic tic
Birds fly through
Sunflowers are 6” high
So many combinations
Like code
A Rose breasted bird
Grosbeak beside a Lazuli Bunting
They will make it now
I never knew I could own it--
The Banker replied,
“it was no problem--”
There dominating the mesa
Blocking the view
We could own it--
The fragments
of some other Idea
Many pieces scattered on the floor
Hoo Hoo
Stars, dust, dirt
The abstraction to
ONE, question
A red square
on the wall
Repeat it, repeat it
Something has gone out
Maybe the way
I fragment them
Fragments them--
Aloof to the beauty-- some pose
The professor lectured,
Walking in Beauty
the Indian said,
Seeing order in the things
On the path
Naming, ordering, beauty
Beginning of the world!
So far away
“and not the least didactic! ”
she said
You think me didactic?
A Duck?
That this empty world should not add up--
covering my face in hands
To One, peeking out
Bombs falling
from HEAVENS
Flags Waving, waving
Suntanned boy waving with blond crewcut
I keep seeing
the airplane
I still can’t-- believe it
Banners flying, blue sky
Squirrel in the park, pigeons--
Comic antic
Lovers dream
Blue sky down below
This empty flag
flip flag flip Silent
Absurd
I have a dream
Embody the ideals
Inflating blowing up
Memorial of crashing building
Fleeing crowd
Horror
reflecting in eyes
Flaming birds flaming birds
Tiresome to talk of how
we’ve purchased it
Their feet are on fire
Falling
No One Idea
The sparrows--
The sun slants
through the tall buildings
Men down in long alleys
I’m out walking
the shards
The blue hills
The silent wind
Purple tragedy,
red square fades to white
On the wall
A form equal to the listing of reality
Lost
Black and white
Depth into presence
Tragedy
We make Art,
not to be able to--
Represent--
We go on never able
We just go on
Something
beautiful
Remembering--
So this beauty?
Towering monoliths to
scattered wisp
Woke to sun
Death-- death, sounded like--
Bells arriving
Sheep, goats
Black sheep hops over
The black brush
Dry grass
Mournful bells
silent sucking space
Tawaquaptewa--
sun sitting in the sky
Airplane flying--
The great star drooped
Tearful night
Surrounding cloud
These heart shaped leaves
A sprig I break
What picture
shall I hang?
The thought before
knowledge of reality
Black and white shards
Red, yellow, and blue
out lined in black
Coming, coming like the Sun
Like Reality, reality
Death
There the god was!
The shield!
exclaming, his name !
Naming his dreams--
not so easy to tell
A walk around the pond
That last end--
and new morning
The path I’m on
The what that happens
The fairy
path through
The black and white snake of
The makings of a place
Would I know how spectacular
How intimate
Tripping
Wide space--
Weeds
splendid silhouette
Curve of angel’s wing
High cloud in setting sun
Evening dream
Heron flies--
all happening now
Reflected lagoon
Orbit of blue mountains to sea
Cool air, damp scent
Held in black line
Through oranging--
deep color
That particular combination
Darkening tree
Ship receding
in floating world
Remembering--
Cricket shrill
Pitched quality
Why I wanted to be here--
fading
Given that pose-- away
Swallow swivels, and dives
Around a bend and up a hill
Along
A ridge of trees
A barking seal
Out there wind and
Diamond chop
W,W,Water
blown--
Part Two
Orbit world
Old pine
Moon rising
more than old
Sun setting
All revolving,
thrown to wider horizon
Rich life ending
Moments remember
Failing light
Abstract
Bird flies
Stop!
High cloud
Bottle chink, rustle
Frog chorus
Head lights
arriving around bend
A glimpse
Heron rises white
Black
Venus star, yellows
Swallow’s
scribbling
That distance from moment
Value shade to flat
color crack and--
Falling
Through dream
Not wanting to leave
Wilder place
And he’s following a star--
Writing it down
Each day
The
gold finches
Are back
The kitchen table
The flooded warm light
Silent wind outside, the limbs flinch
Whirrr---
and are gone
I walked with the dog
Worried I’d spent too much time
In this abstract head, removed
Missed these amazing
moments here
Playing themselves out
Gold finches gone
Missed the cottonwoods
all in gold
Back along the ridgeline
Down into the wash
A handful of feathers
I’m down there looking
On my hands and knees, realizing
I’m surrounded by Lion’s tracks
These feathers
had been in a Lion’s mouth
Peppers out there staring
Getting old
Future keeps coming at me
Shiny and clear
Got to keep on
Orion on the
eastern horizon
Dipper down low
Milky way extending --
Coyotes yapping--
Anxious dog
The paintings are
the only real thing,
I said.
The reality stacked in the corner
Making one thing
All together--
One thing
Meeting in airports
Studio far away
Removing the whole
of import-- far away
That scorpion climbed the wall
I saw a snake slither across the brick floor
Walls of mud
I always felt the house was in the way
Of the landscape
The bed beside the windows
Stars turning
The sky grew light and
I’d run to the other side
Of the house to watch
the mountain lighten
Down the driveway
The paper was waiting
A car passing, sometimes honked
The dog waited, waiting
I decorated my room
with yellow leaf,
Those blue remembered hills
Comic Cloud!
The Indian shards--
Blanket and Katchina
Abstract from this, I thought
The black and white in space--
in time
The color as life seeking surface
the Sun from Night’s dream
another wall all red
Mythic light flickering
Hard won no easy explanation
The sun is in the south,
passing east to west
The snow stays in the shadows
Of the house all winter
The sun would heat the southern wall
Enough to work in all day long
This process making the thing
The imagined
must be made
And something else happens
Dreams of 2000 arriving
Looking for
what I’ve found
Revolving vision
Stars cranked around
Waking up to see it all changed
Reality receding
Dies-- changing
Bring back
with black line
Lasso and tie it down
To edge
Nail it down
To gray thought
Excavating
Image to mine
He’s fashion POP
and smarts like hell!
That virile poet
as Lion Sun
Lost innocence
Evolving old men
Floating past
Differing juxtaposition
ALERT TO ANYTHING MOVING
What lurks beneath
I’m in the bathroom turning the water
off and on
Trying to decide
What to do
All in a remembered style
One-- thing
No-- thing
Sun-- thing
Some--thing painting
these western sunflowers
The paint always told me--
“How do you make a modern painting
with that old stuff” he said
WHEN IT WAS DONE.
The TV’s all fuzzy
Contemporary guy
Digital DNA-- all like a huge organism
This gene crawling about
Changing off and on
Evolving into
Mystery between
I don’t think I’m going
to find it here, though
Its in the process somehow
One has to get dirty and do it
SUN GOES UP
SUN COMES--
DOWN
That cartoon doodle
Being the form
Making that surrogate
Going around together one-- one--
one--
Turning
Paintings have their own minds
I follow
Cerulean hills
This morning
Green black bush
Purplish--
red sky
Minor key
Dot to dot
Then this wriggle
Swerve
A spare life--
twilight shadow
Wobble
Everything I believe
to be ungrounded
It all comes around again
Absorbing the opposite into the system
and the SUN RISES AGAIN
Peering outside with sunglasses
No one outside--
Implying meaning to all
I’m watching
another sunset
Signs unattached float
“Fictitious”
Ground
Natural fictions
New earth
Very old--
the future of space
I know where it is on the horizon
The moon larger each night
Arriving earlier larger
The moon comes up
the sun goes down
The moon later
There it is now in the morning--
still up
Later, later
then gone
black, then there I see a fingernail --
I’m out painting the sunset
There a sliver
Then the next night
I see It larger
Earlier
The sun going down
The moon full
Coming up
Those same snowy mountains
On a hill far away--
Limping
impostor in pantaloons
Just gone
The rooster scratching
in dried leaves, crowed
The overlooking hill--
We used to make such fun
Of her--
Keeping herself hidden
“Get out!” she’d yell
That vast secret begun
Surrounding the world
Broken world
now the--
Lost world
Returning
Flat line
Straight from my head
From out -- those
blue remembered hills
Relating perceived opposites
Ongoing moments
Stopped timeless
Moments
POP PILGRIM IN BLUE SKY AND
SUNFLOWER
A more abstract-- now setting sun
Seeking the modern moment
Eternal Utopian
Deriving from leaf grinding cycle
Next, next
It’s like spring today--
high low sound
Of a phoebe
Up on the line
The dog is happy as I am
Here in the sun
A small green sprout
appearing there, there
Changing
Up and down coming together
I’m out in those hills
It’s not over yet
Simplify,
simplify.
It’s complicated getting here
It’s wild out here
The dog ran away and--
Coming home after dark,
I sensed
the wildness all over her
I feel in myself
Go-- go
The hero falls asleep in the woods
Dreams a horror
Waking up-- a dream or
the woods themselves?
No discovery
No crew
No golden fleece
No Jason- hero-
Sham
Emily Dickinson
There’s a fire out there--
Flume of smoke
No birds this Spring
or not like last
Some Orioles are back
I’m planting some Navajo Corn
Some Hopi Sunflowers
Blue Grama grass
It just all comes together somehow
I guess the tanagers made a detour
Driving down the road
jotting--
Jotting
Like leaves falling everywhere
Oh! going over all the lost paintings
Then all the paintings finally stacked
Everyday--
a life
Takes a life
It was the freedom to pursue
The dream that mattered
I went down and cleaned out the barn
Swept up the winters dirt
and then
I got the idea
To build a bench
I set it under the skylight
The paintings there--
Kind of a thing itself
I locked the door.
Days passed in boredom--
Driving Flatland
Myself this fourth in Kansas
Middle of the country,
middle of the road
Glow of what was behind me--
Heading East
Summer wind whipping on
State Park Lake,
Locals celebrating--
BANG above
and green tree poof!
Center of the world
This world, no-- world
Summer, then
the darkening sky
The strange silence
Mind carries it all away
To name
Disappear from the infinity
Of what it is
passing, passing
Unnamed
Older names
Everything there in its place--
Crossing over the Mississippi
Broken feeling
Weird comic irony
Always leaving,
The Susquehanna
The process is some transcendence
Life’s work
Western moments
already evolve
The paintings rolled in the back
Lost moments, passing forgotten--
Standing bare foot
A cure of that same bare place.
Taunt reality, vibrating there
The equivalent of paint, the landscape
Body and figure coming to fore
that I blew up in the studio
Dream of Achilles
on the beach--
Death obsessed
GYRE, winding
Universe within,
Through deeper deep
Reaching the formal square
And in that depth, A realization!
Surface to quest! muttering
The sunset
Stripes of color, passing
the leaves
Their positive negative shapes
Slight rise
Near and far
Brought together
Still far away
in the dusk breathing
Brahma revolving in dark light
In and out, sucking
The crucifixion of time
in the passing seasons
Narrative climbing
To abstract name
RED WALL
The diamonded reality in
clouds,
leaves,
waves
The great hero that mythy man.
Measuring space
With arms outstretched
Greeting the birds
falling, falling
Through repeated motif--
The great disappointment
The sea whispering, Me.
Civilization’s heights
on frescoed walls
Broken and crumbled
The sun rises on-- and falls
Impossible representations
Glimpses-- that slight
Mountain-- way off
Maroon Belle
Red wild flower
highest snow blowing
In blue sky-- flying
I’m out there
I hear a bird song drift, home
The figures on the vase
Represent this rabbit
Or that rabbit
that hole in the pot--
Thoughts of Animal spirit
Leaving through
Hole-- from this world or into that
This pot already one world
The rabbit in the grass
into that world
THE RABBIT IN THE GRASS
Just as the gods did it before us
In the sky
The hole in it
The Indian’s blanket
the perceived blank
Centered in that emptiness
I stopped to take a peee
I saw a chicadeee
I had a feel--eeeng
This One, One
Rocking back on my heels
Spinning ‘round
Bird and pine
My feet
My earth
A gray jay
lighted on my canvas,
Set on the easel--
Out there in the wide view,
twisting it’s head
Around
To see--
was there any-- theeng?
A new combination to add
Aspen snow and black fir--
yellow leaf
Cumulous
Light
I wanted to paint Monument Valley again.
Before winter
Watching the clouds
in the rear view window
Indian and flute trailing
I was thinking about the interlocking colors
Making a surface,
Flat the way a silhouette
Laid over a striped background
Brought up the sky.
In the black and white
the space stays back
Space remains old space
Juxtaposed beside
SURFACE SNAP! a form
To hold all the amazing details
And tourists
Yeah-- and remember the form
all this at once
Perverse swerve--
Battling the wind
all day
Never stopped
Driving down hill and up and around
Rock monuments
Arising on all sides
I was reading in the tent
The sky full of falling stars
the wind had passed
The black Goya like rocks
Witches.
An animal outside sniffing
I woke to cold and wind
I thought he’d get it
Or he would enjoy that--
I think I’m alone here
We all are-- I heard him say
I woke to cold and
A new wind beginning
A crow pasted on that dull blue
empty space
What extends our lives?
Revolve into an order
Broken bird
Waterfall-- that blasted tree
That blue jay-- way
another ocean wave
End of distance
Mountains from desert
That comet whizz
Shells, leaves
the leavings--
Back up here on this beautiful mesa
Wanting to stay put
Always rushing to what else
There was to imagine
The pieces of-- falling
Into shape each year
Winter coming--
Winter mind abstracting
the center of the world
I stand here-- Cosmos
Relieve myself of--
cartoon sketch
Abstract illusion--
Of getting somewhere
Add a booming voice
Or turpentine aroma
Kind of beat on Road Movie
just weird
Stumbling along
“Just really weird-- Man.”
Lost, man.
I’m an infidel
My membership revoked,
Well lots of weird
touchy feely-- mystic-- al
Lack of imagination I thought
This order is plain-- and plainer
No-- thing
Feel like my culture
sold me out
Still point here
Leaves float
Seems agreed upon--
Nature and the whole
Complex tradition
heaped up
To understand one level
Only makes the complexity
That more mysterious
This twirling soul
Breaking the ice--
Peppers at the door--
Always wanting to go out--
Always wanting in--
then waiting.
I wonder.
Unlocking the gate
A letter
Maybe tomorrow
This secondariness, leaves no foundation
they say language proceeds
Nature out there
Be happy floating
cycling
Something is slipping away
Something is always beginning
I made this strange drawing
A primordial sun
Cartoon like--
a sun going down
A sun coming up
Endless--
Mantra
God and then, God again
Thinking he had died
Or I mean never was
Or I mean yes-- there are these stories
Recent versions of the old story,
new story
Certainly there is a grand mystery
Endless night
Melancholy wondering
What is always slipping away?
The stranger from the East
this (HERO)
Arriving
trickster, coyote
NO TRUST written on his placard
He sees because he believes
He believes because he sees
This is all so embarrassing
This was all supposed to be over long ago
Gods die over
and over-- the leaves crying
Not my words--
Pathetic--
A modern return to original.
Beginning returns as end
The end we long for,
NO MAN SHALL SEE THE END
This primitive
Is our desire at height
he seemed to have died or
Never been more to my feeling
I mean out there
I mean why even him
or any of this anthropomorphic--
Reduction in modern thought
Old gods already dead
Others not yet born
Repeating the phrases
Pleasure --
Reality--
The beginning is the same as the end
all this progress is regressive
Something is slipping --
That oceanic whole BEAUTIFUL feeling
ONE is whole--
The mother
The sea--
Primal origin
We desire it!
Can not bear it--
The origin that is our end
All the memories give so much
PLEASURE
Desires exposed
Eternal return
Joy of the circle
WE LIVE, WE LIVE
Natures rude state
All arising, returning
One--
ORIGINAL
ALL ONE, revolving
Fuse one to origin
Acting out
Savage thought--
This HERO dismembered
Torn to pieces
ONE DAY THE KNIGHT
WILL AWAKEN
THAT MORNING
SLAYING DRAGONS
NO ONE TO BAR HIS WAY
Well, I’m making it all up
Imagining some absolute-- Idea
Given or YEAH, I thought I made it--
Up
The shadows cast a spell
at twilight
Enigmatic time between day and night
The idea rises with the falling
faster
Faster
All at once-- ness
THE GRAND NARRATIVE
Of the Imagination-- some GOD always
arriving
The abstraction speeds up
Need less
Need less
Loss of the ground
Sounds ridiculous doesn’t it?
A confusing desire yet to emerge
Hiding between digital fact
Writing the absent person--
THIS CRITICAL
A language I absorbed -- was designed
Is just as bad,
again the dearth of
Imagination
Wish fulfillment, SMART
Fairy tale
Ideal,
God in oneself--
Gets boring to hear about all--
What are all these
god like attributes?
The Immortality-- ART
Pulling on his golden armor
HE IS TRULY MAGNIFICENT
To Be
Everywhere everything at ONCE
Everyone, every where--
Circle of circles
what’s behind
Circle of circles
Here now present
end of art and
Every one is an artist
Everything is god
Sacred and profane
All One,
Falling
Heaven to Earth
Nothing-- beyond
Always about something else-- and
Increasingly abstract
“What do you mean, no one told you?
Yes, of course,
we all die.”
Images of the same--
Weeping bare foot
To part the curtain
Let me out of this
night-- mare
Whose fiction is this?
The abstract Now
The everything is Now
In its phase as HELL
Cynical Devils abound
Like never before
Reality isn’t easy
Every one here is the same
He’s drinking Coke,
I’m drinking Coke--
This artist thing
just another job
Looking into the mirror
I see nothing
No one there
As endless as it is
Paint into neon
strip
Neon light to pixel dot
And low is high
No ground to stand on
Nothing beyond this
Plastic swimming pool
floating
Promises, Promises
Transcendence-- little beyond
Some imagination, here
Vanishing into self doubt
Dark light
Ceasing to be distant-- wrong real
this no-- place
Nothingness haunts the subject
Broken heel, smeared lipstick, torn stocking--
Leopard skin pill box hat
Has already passed away
I went over there to draw
It just seemed right
To go over there
He had been my friend and
this was his world
He had created
I had been a part of--
Passed beyond it felt
But there was something held--
I had become indifferent
drawing the end
Life turned away
I could not give up the dream--
beside the fiction was my life
Long horizon extending
I was going to draw it
Use what they said,
Was of least importance
To whom, I’d like to know, ah-- ahhh!
Well its ending now
What is real
we are not
Men of Bronze, never changing
The sun goes down--
eyesight vanishing
Day gives way to night
Fly--fall
House blown apart
Sand and snow
We came upon this cross
For someone that --
Died there,
these stuffed animals and toys--
The Sierra mountains were right there--
The highest
Peaks in America-- I thought
Covered in snow--
The sky clearing from a recent
Storm-- a crow flew over-- I saw this sign
for a dead animal pit--
Hitchhiking-- Route 385
North from that bare place
The red table in the sunset
green bottle, Naked man--
The world is flat--
The earth is flat
Made the whole thing up
LIVE AS MUCH IN THE SACRED
SATURATED WITH BEING
THE SACRED THE REAL-- FORMED
The Profane
unformed
This desire to participate.
In REALITY
Saturated WITH POWER
MY COMIC FELLA-- IRONIC pose falls flat--
Breaking
No right thing
revolving realization
Makes light
An Eruption into or--
A break in space
the ah-- HA!
Allowing the world to be
Center of creator’s world
Live in a REAL sense
No world shattered UNIVERSE
HOLY PLACE
FROM ONE TO THE OTHER PASSAGE--
Opening a hole to the sky
that ancient Indian knowledge
Delivered in Mimbres pot
epiphany of another sort
Not one idea but many on top of many
Tradition as god, no god
Which tradition is as elegant? Oh, I see!
Fire altar
Repetition of ORIGINAL FIRE
The single candle burning
New world found a crown RAISED
a candle lit
Old things pass away
Things become new
The cosmic tree out my window
I see it! I see it!
The center of the world.
I’ve hiked up to it.
The center of the world, right there--
Pole to heaven--
Across the Milky Way
connecting all
Earth
World
Writing of Heavens
And Hell
Have to make dinner.
Sop, taters-- write this all down
Feeling a bit ill, touch of flu--
something I ate?
I went to see that movie about Pollock
At the festival--
Returning past snow covered mountains
The brutal story
Inner turmoil-- add the drunkenness
Seemed back to nature in that story
The walk on the beach
the paintings surrounding
All surface--
the thing itself
Stopped and still-- dance, dance.
Of life
Seen it-- so long my beauty--
My whole life
Still asking at your age? at your age?
Familiar now-- he used to say
“Ya!-- I like da effect”
“Come on Franz let’s go down to the Cedar Bar--”
Center of the world that studio
Creation of the world
The tree out front--
Bring it all along anyway--
A GREAT VIOLENCE--
DOES THE FLOWER need expression?
This reduction we strive to achieve
Reconciling perceived opposites
ONE
Tried to bring back the sun
The perceived flower--
It must be abstract
It must change
It must bring pleasure
The paintings sinking below the horizon
One by one--
The record of struggle
Paintings redream--
Falling
Sacred abstraction falling through profane
Search mounting to
another--
Poem revolving--ing
Through ALL the seasons
The new, the new
Gone, gone
Same ole-- New Wave
That comic troupe up the hill--
And down, the
Festival air
Seems I saw it some where maybe in the Met--
a shape
The whole world intensity
I EXAGGERATED--
Watched the RED orb drop
cold air
The patient dog
Waiting
The gaudy heaven above
HELL FIRE AND brimstone
this HERO
Torn to pieces flung--
Stars revolved turning
The leaves turn
Seeking black hole
I could feel the power
Of those city walls--
Pulling me in
They were unforgiving--
they could kill a man
I was left off easy-- somehow
Peppers was running ahead
A simple leaf
Revolving in black--
Searching, searching
he had to look back
Strange clouds tonight
Beyond twirlings
HERO blown apart --the stars
just a dream--
Back to black
Fad--de
To-- the end
2000
2001
We all emerged from the bomb shelters
With our hands in the air,
still counting
I was just out there,
One day after another
looking around
Felt I was living someone else’s life
All the painting in the van
Just not masterpieces--
That take every last drop of whatever to make
Back to the gray crack windowed studio
Gray days
Glimpsing another Spring
Somehow
the landscape as I leave
I leave
Is amazing for itself just there
And everything behind it
Because we die--
I had to tell you--
It creates a beauty of sort--
It’s just the way of all things--
I do worry of the pain
Why some die in their sleep
Leaving the pain to others
Some a horrible unimaginable --
We die--
Birds on fire
west of idea
Relics in crusted paint
Tumbling forward
Sunset into blinking night
Moments strung along
Trophy necklace
GAUDY colored CLOWN
Somersaulting into BLUE HILLS
Behind there
in White Sun
Hippy Tu tu
The occluded figure decorated
What’s underneath
She bends to adjust a pump
everyone moves in closer
To the origin
Two men in front of me coming to blows
Long legged beauty, lost innocence
Simple nude in sun
Decorated to height
Beyond
Contemporary surface
I LOVE--
The snap and POP over and over
and-- fallen to sunset
Flickering black branches
Smeared windows
Following the truck--
Over, the hill
A silence in arriving
The Comedian--
Height fluttering
Begging to fall
Mockingbird flown
Not there
Flicking tail at the change
ONE
Vibrating there
There
There
To attain the depth--
He wanted to go back inside
Going through this again
again and again
The yellow bloom in blue
Sun and blue moments
The process evolving
The sacred forms of worn use
and distance
Another fall and revolution
Do it again--
Drifting on a sea of disbelief
Of dyspeptic humor the bare place
To discover ourselves
It is all there is
The cycle itself
Gets me to the ALL ONCE
NOW
The world there in black--
One thing spinning
Stepping back
The space to compare my soul to the
little solace
To not being there
Out there on the cliff
The painting in the studio
I would be alone--
That fate
down the line
I could have kept going and would have
We stopped and turned around
We watched for twenty minutes
Took pictures
I remember it now
Flying up--
floating to another
“the road I left behind--”
The well of depth
Feeding the surface
I just need to paint
Follow the process
Some end I feel,
maybe an end --
Some final resolution,
There-- Here,
One, All One;
Falling--
Revolving
Repeating--
It goes on
It goes on
New York City, February 2001
Abiquiu, NM, Sept 2002
New York City, May 2003
