Sometimes art isn’t the sort you can see from a cross the room.

 Sometimes you need to get closeup to understand.

This was a different type of day.

Prophecies will pass; as for waging tongues, they will cease; as for notorious knowledge, it will fade.

There were garments everywhere. Where did all this come from? i’ve not entered the Cave of Lost Children; these clothes all too large. All i can make out are the elongated Botticelli figures looking as though crumpled at the bottom of a canvas. Sandro was certainly a frustrated fashion illustrator. Who owns that arm? Whose leg is sticking out over there? Which has that unnaturally long neck? i divert more than stare, wanting to know just enough to ponder the questions. Shall i ask for a line-up? Would everyone begrudgingly amuse me? Not likely. Elbows + knees pointing like Burma-shave signs, mimicking the way out. There are enough faded ghost signs here reminding them of the middle world above. Damn, i forgot the popcorn. Journeys are always a better film w/ concessions, but not a stand in sight.

i’ve come searching for someone in particular. For some one specific. In the stream of consciousness the ‘I’ is the thing relevant. i really hate that. i; again.

For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when the perfect comes, the partial will be pissed away.

Proactivity is not working so to have a sit. Dropping into the fetal/futile position, i form the ‘O’ in hope, or in pOssibility. The hole for them to jump through + escape into. Hoping the sought soul will recognize a hero + leap at the chance to be saved. Hoping goes nowhere. Empty handed doesn’t pay. Returning empty handed is half a defeat. However + alas, this quest will remain unfinished. Mute souls scatter by to ask questions for unidentified reasons. Not enough to pay a visit, just borrowing? 

Don't they recognize me? A glimpse of news from the war overhead. A torn piece that fluttered down the small shaft. Perhaps they are unaware i am a broken off bit of the thundering, catastrophic, never decisive conflict. From down here the Megiddo battle playing out above ground is a soft roar that rocks + comforts + lulls, like hearing a far off tide slushing + bruising the sand.

When I was a child, I spoke like a child; I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I gave up childish ways.

Strap onto my back + you can be recovered. Which soul dares?

Soul retrieval isn’t what it used to be. So many in the lost-to-be-found, so little time.

Go find yourselves. Ha! i should have worn that T-Shirt. i give you reasons when you ask for a yes-no.

i’m cold + dampish in this work. My garments wait along w/ my power animal, back at the entrance. Unless he has retreated. Perhaps humility is good for something.

Okay, someone steps up to the plate. ID is affirmed.

We see though a glass, darkly; the mirror dimly, but then face-to-face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully un/known.

Hey Willi, what ya got there? (Power animals can be annoying. If omniscient, why ask?)

What i came for. Have a look-see, no don’t look. i got it. Just lead the way.

Everyone’s thin neck has its own kilter.

Meaning?

Everyone has a unique point of view.

Soul retrieval has become soul searching. i guess it always has been.

 So now? Faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the great test of these is love.

 - Corinthians

(Note to myself; as i sit here editing these from pages nearly12 years on, i'm reminded that art really + honestly records the moment — because i read back on this page, this thing i wrote down + i say, where was i? what the fuc was i trying to say?)

 I like a view but I like to sit with my back turned to it. -Gertrude Stein

There is no absolute point of view from which 

real and ideal can be finally separated and labelled. 

-T. S. Eliot

As a means of contrast with the sublime, the grotesque is, in our view, the richest source that nature can offer. -Victor Hugo

Albeit not an easy task … the universe has succeeded in temporarily overwhelming me. 

So, my retort is to face the corner, pencil in hand, + learn to draw.

 These images were taped together + stuck in an old sketchbook. i love the idea of triptych. Thinking what this one was about, or rather, what i was trying to say other than putting things together + seeing how they relate. i do remember this was the day that i was costumed as a gypsy + kb tied me to a Metropolitan column. Screaming during the photo shoot until a crowd had gathered. We did, however,  disappear before the police showed up.

Reckless.

It had something to do with that wall installations for an italian nightclub. We made illustrations painting white dancing macabre figures on black plastic trash bags. Behind on deadline, + very impatient, we doubled the number of images in half the time by wet coping them on more trash bags, Rorschach test style. Ugh, that reminds me of painting backdrops in an abandon house, winching as we heard the rats chasing across the sagging sketchy roof.

You know, creepy.

Of course there were, + are, also the true quiet profound moments. Those just don’t seem as loud, or come forward as often.

Strange.

Hello up there stop

Supply + demand has flubbed gone awry as there is not any chocolate in the house to be found stop General time is standing still + specific time goes out of the window w/out being sent stop On my desk sits a dark oxblood leather attaché wallet stop It is soiled in the bottom edges w/ splattered bird droppings + the lock smashed + half missing stop So it seems i have in my possession the curious case stop But the brown shoes have now gone missing stop The moonlight over through you stop Alert all who may not care

Yours

L. Dangling

End of an Arrow

The sky is alight + forms distress signals i am unfamiliar w/. The stars are not wholly still, but alive w/ vibration as though the earth’s mounting energy obscures the clear deep space. Branches camouflage as com/radicals dart away into the greenery, trailing fire w/ the ironic confidence of Hansel + Gretel.

i am drawn to this warming flame, it leads me. When the way out is baffling, the way in is too clear. W/out border crossing, w/out fence caging. No walls to graffiti messages for others to misinterpret. Free to play w/ dancing flame, + the appropriate longing to inter/fear w/ emoting. Eyes of fire are blind. All’s fair. There is no need to qualify the hankering for this inner war of passion, nor the outer suffering. In this confusion nothing is forgotten, only left behind.

i’m hit. Assumption fills the being i am. Dropping my chin i see an arrow protruding from my breast. Blood leaks down, rushing toward the earth in an anxious soaking to become one w/ the subtle energy that we all belong to in the end.

Falling to my knees i look up, + sway to an ancient internal rhythm. Vultures form as ink spots above me, then twist + depart as if they were a mere thought flushed from the sky. Everywhere an echo of the outskirts of civilization.

i now long to take a partner by the hand, to follow the parade i’m slipstreaming into. But my mind turns + sees only one. Anteros is wiping tears as he laughs at my shocked numbness. Not asking, nor waiting, as reply he turns + haphazardly lets another arrow fly. It is shot into the sky power/full straight. As its zenith levels, overcome by the earth’s pull of gravity, the weighty point leads a graceful arc down from heaven. Somewhere another is hit in the back. This victim wonders why, even as the answer is known.

The moon fades to blackness + i am alone w/out senses. i hear no longer the breeze through the lacy sifting green. i see no longer the details of this plane. Three mutinous moons shine simply. Three romantic grizzled crones each mocking me w/ a wagging finger. i feel no longer the heat of a burning heart. Only a low resonating hum that becomes deeper, stronger + overwhelms me. A nonexistent kingdom is so very close. The stark whole/iness is the roof of my mouth as it expands, extending beyond.

Not seeing the possibilities can sometimes be a half hallelujah.

-30- 

Compassion w/out emotion is the privilege of very few vocations in life.

They peered into the cryptic question + gazed on the round table of post cards trapped between glass + masonite. Someone belched. A wooden chair creaked.

The brave one gave it a meek try, "The answer can only be; Wonder."

 A complexion of 'eureka' + 'I wish I’d said that' scurried around the table till it hit the final player on his left side. He didn’t budge his poker face.

He remained stone for the rest to figure on whether he was seriously thinking, seriously numb, or just seriously miles away. They each gave up the read, breathed again, heads turning back toward private thought.

It was then he spoke out of turn, not knowing whose it was.

"It’s simply the Tenth Daughter. The stepchild that makes us think of something kind-of-like, sorta-to, or quite-near. Kind-of-like talking up sacred geometry. Speak that to a client and they'll eat that BS up real fast. Sorta-to like suffering through the present situation to have an enlightenment of it later.

And kind-of-like listening to a genius stutter."

The table commenced synchronized nodding and from up above it looked as though they were rehearsing for a Busby Berkeley - Esther Williams swimming moment.

-30-

  Tenth Daughter of Memory / deathbed revenge

(Next month perhaps Tom will have a happy little muse)

First of all, a deathbed does not seek revenge. Imagined or real.

People come to me as a last resting place. A place where you know where you’ve been, but not to where you are going. As elephants traveling out to the bone yard, or where you’ll find the deathly wounded sheltering in holes + scrubs. This place distracts from dreams + focuses concentration. A place people walk into knowing, having somehow decided, they will never walk back out. Everyone spends his or her life circling in on me. It’s like a parlor game. Reality always seems in the next room. Eventually I win.

There is history here. However, none of it judged.

What is missing is the future telling. Foretelling the future is taking away free will. Whose will is it any way? What would become of us if we controlled the present to foretell what is to be? I deal w/ the absolute/tion of death not the meander towards it, + certainly not the way it is handed out.

Everyone knows there is an end to everything that breathes. Does a cure take away free will? That is not miraculous, that is not prophetic, + that is not revenge for the living. No, I do not take away free will, it is will in process.

Second; I am in good shape, not broken down. Though once in a while I am, for lack of space. It is then I need to be re-built. That’s when I come in a kit of 22 easy to assemble symmetrical parts. For more rental dough I come with a pillow, for an uneven total of 23 parts. It is indeed a hard mean little pillow. You pay for the plastic wrap of new.

Thirdly: I do not recognize indulgences. You will have had to already taken care of that before you get to me. I simply pronounce the unconditional after passing the threshold.

Stretching the rules Right Over Yourself

(+ i mean) tedious random notes from a notebook.

Not very often, i’ll look into an old codex + read where my mind was at the time. Try to figure out my connection to the page. First, there is the deciphering of my phonetic spelling, + the mistakes of my furiously getting something down on paper. What''s left, or revealed may, or not, be the original thought.

So, here i go, again.

Dream of a refusal to listen to silent books.

What word describes a combination of misunderstood + thirsty.

Look for an alternate ambivalent tribe.

Revisit an old painting -She Carried a Blazing Flag + was Looking for a Cause.

Meet someone who wants to become a pamphleteer + is not the type you run across the street to get away from.

Articulate ideology.

Decide whether life is detritus. Or not.

Remember; understanding poetry is kind of like asking someone to untie some else’s knot.

Rest on that.