contemporary art

Nerves made of rope or some kind of metal that frays. When you look at it.
I am sitting in a tree with ten monkeys. When you look at me.
The sounds coming out of me tuned to a dog whistle.

Even the wind outside the double panes ruffles me.
I want to hit something or kiss you.
This will not hurt, but it could be a slow-burning barn. Filled with owls.

We were a far away building once, in a painting by Mark Rothko.
Do you get it?
Of course you do.

Why Philosophy Is Not Boring

At the edge of the red church,

its vast sides turned against one another
in an architecture of long angles and eaves
dark shadows and leafed-in Sundays

where the neighborhood slowly awakens
to owl sounds and church bells breaking in
softly on a million tiny sleeps

full of dreams written down with a pencil
the dark lines little stove pipes pointing
at the dying sky you can see from the roof

where ideas like language and belief
were tossed around easily – things I actually
would love to catch but just can’t seem to see

in the fading light of the alley that reflects only
night in the broken stained glass of windows
on their ancient yet visible hinges

like fingers with lips and clothing in piles
that we land in only every few nights
together alone with this secret so close

to an outer wall crowned with glass shards
some rotted out but others still sharp like bad fins
in the good dream I keep trying to have,

you kissed me.

not nothing

It feels like pins falling from trees.
It feels like dogs howling miles away.
It feels like an owl in a church.
It feels like the rain.
It feels like the sun.
It feels like singing.
It feels like music piped into a forest.
It feels like a lake.
It feels like hitting a tennis ball flat and hard down the line.
It feels like baseball in late summer.
It feels like a hot bus.
It feels like a hot mess.
It feels like standing on a wire.
It feels like falling from a great height.
It feels like flying.
It feels like eggs frying.
It feels like being barely hungry.
It feels like being asleep.
Or like dreaming it all.

Where You Find It

It was almost spring that night. Balm
and underwind tugging up the hem.

Pavement and its strangers stretching
far around, an ocean of irrelevant eyes

that finally allowed us each
to look, to really see the other.

Thank you for talking me down.
Thank you for coming to me.

A thousand dreams later: You must
stop saying these things to me,

each day a weight I wake to shed.
I carry none with me but one:

If you only look for bits of it
you can find a kind of happiness…

so that by night I’m looking up again
for the bite and shine, some way

to assemble the terrible light as it circles
again too near, so very close to you.

Myth of a City (excerpt)

Scene 23: Rocky’s Constitutional

Bebong & Rocky are thrown off by daylight savings. Falling back is always a celebration, a night of staying up to see the time change: wine, biscuits, popcorn, beer, cookies and maybe a rash phone call or two by Bebong…

The first morning of normal light is rather blurry. They decide to prolong the party.

Looks like a new day, Rock. Bebong jumping-jacks through the kitchen, goes straight for the couch. He’s got his warm-ups on.

Rocky smiles with all his teeth, drinks the last of his water from the bowl. He’s always ready to go out in his full fur coat.

A tiny rain about to begin. Church bells and the sudden train.

Having forgone raincoats, Bebong & Rocky reconnoiter the damp neighborhood. Bebong jogs for one block. These are excellent shoes, he tells Rocky, who’s very much into the ivy lining the sidewalk in front of the smallest house in the town, where someone’s typing a long and half-meant letter.

Bebong & Rocky stop at the little house with ivy. A recliner on the front porch, dead hanging plants, Christmas lights, a wilted grocery bag on the doormat.

Night comes and a clearing. No real rain, after all. Not really.

And no more typewriter. No light from the little house except now the tiny Christmas lights. Blinking in no real pattern. So much silence. Orion. Bebong pulls Rocky away.

That’s enough, he says tenderly. That’s enough.