Less is Better

Break up your shapes

Use three colors

Take no prisoners

Don't think about the thing

Think about the shadow it creates

Match the thing to the shadow

Get to the shape

Remove the personality

Talk to the bone

Light the flame

Why not paint? 

Rather than be in pain, when I light a fire on my own bone?

Get lost in looking

Take your hammer

Smash the standard

Lift the spirit

Free the mind

Simplify the simple

Complexity the complex

Do all the details

and get your idea across, or just do one detail.

Photograph the half.

Freeze the frame

Walk the tundra

Wrap the cloak

Kill the horse

Sleep in its belly

when the cold wind blows. Or save the horse, for Pete's sake, get a rabbit skin cloak, freeze a bit on that one cold night, then you'd have the horse to ride another day, and be the Pony Express, traveling fast to deliver the message.

Coffee is a Boisterous Holiday

Adrenaline

Peppermint

Red Scare 1950s now my windows tint

take a hint

take a free sample

take a boisterous holiday

you've earned it. 

Sitting quiet in the cafe

next to a mini-vase of flowers, purple-green-and-orange 

overheard:

Yeah like I don't think that like coffee really gets its due

Like how do you mean

I don't know like tea is great but coffee you know it's got this kind of pick me up

Famished

I am famished, not for food but for fame. I eat glitter and swing madly on chandeliers, hoping for some attention.

My brain has been botched by forgotten fantasies, I lived the dream up in the streetlights.

Now mercy comes to me like a black cat, sleek and mysterious, angry from clamoring in the alley for food.

His eyes dart up at me, as if to say, do you think you know what famished is?

I light a smoke and walk across the Main Street.

The power lines here cast shadows.

Mercy and Hope are playing cards, I watch them through the shop window.

Meanwhile I am out here playing checkers with my mind, waiting for the man.

Blinking

The clock is blinking. It says 9:35. 

But it's not 9:35. 

The entire Earth spins in space at a set of degrees unknown to me,

its axis falling back and sinking into the blank slate of the infinite black sky.

Who am I?

My eyes are blinking, machine like regularity

along with my heartbeat.

The Blue Egg

There was a whisper on the wind

a quiet sound hardly begun

a leaf resting on the overlap

of the waters of the bubbling brook

Was it I who mistook love for rage?

Hate for happenstance?

Breath for beauty?

The robin flies away

I am left holding this empty blue egg.

image source: istock

Hands

Some hands are meant for hammers, some hands are meant for tea

Some hands are rough to drive the nail, some are gentle, delicately

Now I see

I have these hands myself, both capabilities. 

My Monarch

The monarch opens up her wings

to sing in this silent spring

my heart whispers winter

but she's having none of it

Shhhhh....she's sitting on the rock

a dream of flowers envelops her

amidst the rain

her beauty sleeps

a deep slumber

about to awake

from the cocoon. 

image source: internet

Masonite

Proverbs and metaphors

Symbols and hummingbirds

eagles and robins

rabbits and holes.

Shovels and syrup

coffee and lead.

Masonite and plywood

forces and hoods

wheels and wagon loads

pioneers and pimps

marbles and pool cues

strongmen and rooks.