Blog Archives - High Desert Art

High Desert Art

View

6/30/2014

View

Looking out my window
I see the men
From the Italian Deli
At the corner
Of Thirty-Fourth Street
And Second Avenue
Come outside
And lean against the building
To smoke.
They stand
With an indolent grace
Impossible to ignore,
One leg bent
At the knee, a foot
Braced against the wall,
Looking dangerous
And madly sexy.
I buy turkey sandwiches
And precise squares of
Congealed rice pudding,
Luscious potato salad,
Thin-sliced ham
And antipasto
Every chance I get,
Just to look into
Their dark, dark, eyes.
Then I take it home
And devour it,
Savoring each
Delicious bite.

Encounter

6/28/2014

Encounter

A table in
The corner.
His sandpaper
Voice
Rubs over her
Consciousness,
Over her
Skin
And into her
Hair
As he talks
Of another woman.
His
Face
Is handsome and
Rather ridiculous.
“You’re her friend”
He says,
Downing his drink,
“So see what
You can do
For me.”
He leans closer.
She leans away.
“Life is not
Song lyrics,”
He insists.
“Love can
Cut you up.”
He looks around.
“I have to
Go,” he says,
Stands up
And walks out,
As disgust
Rolls through
Her like
Butterscotch
Pudding.

Plot Line

6/26/2014

Plot Line

The main part of the crops
Failed because there
Was no rain,
Then the rain came,
Flooding the house.
About that time
The barn burned down,
The baby needed
An operation
And Sonny’s best girl
Married somebody else,
Just as brother
Came home from
The Army
In a fix,
And it all
Fell apart when
Uncle Bill
Got out of jail
And found no one
Was glad
To see him back.
Meantime a tree fell
On the new truck
And the two
Youngest brothers
Got into it
Over that waitress
At the Dew Drop Inn
Whose husband
Got so drunk
He drove
Right off the highway
Into a ditch,
And everyone was sure
He would never
Walk again.
But Pop got them
All in line,
And by the time
Aunt Faye decided
To leave the boys
The ranch,
Emmy came to town,
Met Carl
And they got
Married
In the spring,
Just when the new
Corn
Was coming up,
And things were
Looking brighter.
So it all worked out
For the best,
What with
One thing and another,
And it just goes
To show
You never can tell.

The Question

6/24/2014

The Question

So she says to me
‘I’m going to leave him.
Or maybe I won’t.
Maybe I’ll go to Paris
Or maybe I’ll just forget it.’
‘He lies casually.
He tells me he’s going to A
And he goes to B.
I know,
Because I follow him.’
‘It isn’t stalking. He has
All the oxygen and I
Have to breathe.’
‘He borrows money
And doesn’t pay it back.
He drinks beer in the morning
And listens to strange music
That hurts my ears.’
But what worries me,
What I want to ask you is,
Do you think its love?’

Poem for Roger, Who Listens To Snow

6/22/2014

Poem for Roger, Who Listens to Snow

Ah, your Northerners,
The Norsemen poets.
Denmark, Norway,
Perhaps Iceland,
Finland
And the Faeroe 's.
Scandinavians all,
Swedes all.
Like unto
Each other
In their nine worlds,
Under the branches of
Yggdrasil.
They struggle against
The ice,
The isolation,
Far from the sunny
Gods of the Greeks.
Here the gods are not
Capricious,
But likewise, not
Immortal.
Baldr dies and
The Inevitable
Is mourned.
Comitus is valued,
Life is measured and
Mostly tough.
There is no promise
Of redemption,
The wolf is
Already at the door.
They are distant
From my universe,
And it shows in
Their poetry.
Familial, peaceful,
Cautious,
Loki
The only
Scalawag
Among them.
I exist in
A reckless land of
Heat,
Spices,
Olive oil
And flagrant
Hope.
I know they
Are there,
Perhaps singing,
But I
Cannot
Hear them.

Restaurant

6/20/2014

Restaurant

Sunday lunch.
The old women
Come to the table
In dun-colored coats
And knitted hats
They don’t remove.
Transparent hands
Dissect the meal,
Tendons and
Knobby bone prominent.
They speak
But no one distant
Or even nearby
Hears.
Satisfied,
They flutter away,
Soft boots
Making no sound.

Mr. B

6/18/2014

Mr. B

My sculpture professor was
Slightly manic
Quite short
German
Industrious
Talkative
Demanding
Fierce
Talented.
He jumped around
Lectured constantly
Cultivated patrons
And had built
Single-handed
A glider
Which he flew
Over Virginia.
In Europe
He restored altars
Bragged that once
He had swum across
The Danube
Shore to shore
Said his mother
Baked a rum cake
Every morning
Soaked it with

A whole bottle
Of rum
And ate it
Before nightfall.
We disagreed
About everything.
He resented the fact
I would not
Make his coffee
When I arrived
In the morning
That I was friends with
His ex-wife
That I persisted
In painting.
“You should give up
That goddamn
Painting,”
He told me,
“And do sculpture,
Where you could
Make a statement.”
I paid him no
Attention
And finally,
He gave up.

D.C.

6/16/2014

D.C.

Washington was work.
Everybody worked,
For the Agency
For the Fund
For the Committee
For the Bureau
For the Report
For the Investigation
For the Inquiry
For the Regulation
For the Member
For the Official
For the Good of the Nation.
Worked
Toward the Deadline
Toward the Election
Toward the Judgment
Toward the Resolution.
Worked
All day
All night
After hours
After the paycheck
After it was futile
After everything
Had failed
They worked on.
I worked
At The Corcoran School.
Worked
With an axe,
With a chainsaw,
With a handsaw
With pneumatic chisels
With a bandsaw
Cutting wood
Cutting steel
Cutting stone
Cutting it close.
Worked
With industrial epoxy
With sharp blades
With heavy hammers
With an acetylene torch
With safety goggles
With Band-Aid’s
On every finger.
I cast bronze
And aluminum
And plaster
And caution to the winds.
I lived in
Work clothes
Work gloves
Work boots
Work schedules.
When I got done
I went home
To paint and
Worked on.
Because
Washington was work
And that’s
Where I was.

Here

6/14/2014

Here

In New Mexico
The spring winds come
Bending the trees sideways
Blowing papers down the street.
Dust billows in clouds
Obscuring sections of
The Sandia Mountains
Until they disappear
In a haze of sand-laden air.
When will they stop,
Folks say to one another
Just as they said last year
And the year before
When will they stop?
The old Elm tree
In my front yard
Leans precariously
Away from the wind’s
Stern breath and
Scatters down
Brittle sticks
And delicate new leaves.
Every morning
I gather debris
From the grass,
Filling my hands,
Knowing that tomorrow
I must do it all again.

Photos Today

6/12/2014

Photos Today

Ten paintings are
Wrapped for transport,
Wedged in the trunk
And seats
Of my car
And taken to
The new photographer
Replacing a woman
No longer
To be found.
The usual jumble
Of rooms
Cobbled together,
Steps up and down
Props and tripods
And backdrops hulk
Under the glare
Of powerful lights
And silver umbrellas.
Shots of
Impossibly elaborate
Weddings
Dot every wall.
The couples
Gaze raptly
Into the
Lover’s eyes
Or vigorously kiss,
The groom masterful
The bride radiant.
I wonder if
Any lasted beyond
The first anniversary.
I decline coffee, tea,
Water and soda,
Pet the friendly Corgi
Leashed to an office chair
And study this new fellow,
Big, muscular, ex-Navy,
Thirty-three years
In the trade.
He grips
The huge camera,
Lenses extended,
And shoots
Digital images
One by one
As I hand them over
And they are positioned
On black cloth.
At last
They all are done.
I rewrap, repack,
Accept the CD,
Pay all I can endure
And drive home,
Exhausted.