TASK: a game of cross hemispherics
listen to Mozart in your left ear.
listen to Stravinsky in your right year.
(note that sounds made in your left ear travel to your right brain while sounds made in your right ear travel to your left brain)
listen to Stravinsky in your right year.
(note that sounds made in your left ear travel to your right brain while sounds made in your right ear travel to your left brain)
ROADS
A word of caution is necessary, however, for straight lengths of roads across commons, or the enclosed land of former commons, often show very familiar features, the straight length terminating at the end of the area with which the enclosure surveyors were dealing, but a little experience will soon enable such roads to be easily recognized.
Date:Place:Subject
MVP
After seeing blank pages, the teacher pointed his finger
Dad pointed another finger back
That night dad was named MVP of the basketball championship
That night a bitter teacher called the house
Insisted on speaking to Popop about the finger
As Dad says, no one bothers Popop at home
At home with trophy in hand, Dad received a blow to the face
Someone had bothered Popop at home
Dad ran under the kitchen table to wait it out
Nana begged, “Bill just don’t hit him in the face”
Popop calmed down, Dad came out from under the table
The beating minor
The next day at school Mr. -- finally received some written words from Dad,
“If you ever call my house again you are a dead man.”
Lesson learned.Folksongs from VA: A Checklist
Git along Joe.
Look A-There Now.
Claude Allen.
She Died Like a Rose.
My Lulu.
I Never Loved a Dear Gazelle.
The Tyrolese Maiden's Delight.
John Brown's Body.
Oats and Beans.
Beside the Gospel Pool.
The Lost Babe.
clean and dirty
saw you early this morning
you are out of reach
dirty shoes leave their mark
think you should follow their print?
of the feet that can't stay still
it's more like drowning
better you swim at least till the afternoon
.................
he's got clean clothes
but his shoes must always take him
they get the dirtiest
kick the dust to conceal something that might have been stationary
a single face
another time, stopped clock
always a stranger in the place
--------------------------
too many jams
Aren't you just like those men in a Godard film
always waiting
the next best thing
will suck you dry
feeble bones encased by
you-who is always sure
waiting and fleeing
thinking you left that woman
behind
with striped dress and dark shades
she left you in the dust
of your own exhaust
DAMES
sketches of it
4am morning prayers:
a terse history resonates with an inner tuning, filling me with the reflections of all listening ears
assumptions:
diplomat,"It's going to be a hard audience, almost everyone covers."
audience member, "We are not thinking about you that differently because I know we are the same."
(a case of human contact piercing perceptions)
An encounter:
I was always fearful of being that person with the camera, happily snapping the exotic, those foreign images so beautiful so quixotic to the virgin eye. An Anthropologist's guilt would surge through me every time my index finger bent down. It was a simultaneous shutter with the lens. All until another eye had a look. This eye was a familiar one for it belonged to a man who at one time had daily interactions with the places and people captured by my wonderment. His name was Ibrahim and like many of my encounters in Ramallah it was not one that I will soon forget. No longer privileged to leave the occupied land, Ibrahim had not been to Jerusalem in ten years which as a Brooklynite I would equate it to not being able to set foot in Manhattan. Image not being able to visit friends, family, loved ones just across the river; not being able to go listen to your favorite musician play live or visit an exhibition by an artist you always wanted to see; image not being able to stroll through central park or have a quick bite at that amazing underground Indian restaurant you have come to know so well. Imagine having to relive all of this through the photos of a tourist who is visiting your country for the first time. Ibrahim was grateful for the small taste I was able to provide of the place he had known so well before. His thankful eyes helped to subside some of my guilt and yet I still shutter, now for a different reason.
walk
From the corner she peers
Idly
legs perpendicularly cut
the paved ways that allow crossing
a man stumbles
she looks back
(even though his legs move forward)
tripping over themselves
some call this an accident
she calls it a curse
stumbling was the only way
a physical studder
the unbalanced misstep destined to be
out of synch
like lines crossing in opposite directions
in the moment they do meet
their separate paths become indiscernible
a single space without trajectory
the moment passes like every stumble
he returns to what he knows
one foot in front of the other
the lyric
live by the lyric
or cease to breath without shelter from the storm.
raging deeply it strikes
so protect yourself masterfully, poetically
like he did/ or tried
shape the unshapened into a home
but make it a soft one that gives
and takes
consideration is the opportune ethic
riding forgotten on tails
in backs of minds
bring it to the forefront and consider the possibilities
endless variations
at the fingertips of imagination
reach long and hard to construct that protectorate of ideals
your soft shelter
never blinded by the absence or overabundance
it lets in just enough light
to illuminate an inner song
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