The Watch
Any second, the loss... unclasped from hand
and we are falling, in sense and person
disparate, separated by a muted past...
a totem of figures, and long shadows that hug
and laugh... at efforts, so easily disorganized
...lost some place along the green, tallied
expanse, the face of the master mime,
tick marking in space, still, and rolling
forward, by luck, in the calendar
returned back, to me, affixed to the wrist
... the sundial on my heart
Homeless Eyes
She punctured me from out of glass
Without intent as she strode passed
We broke the barriers of class...
The mask society permits...
To gaze into her windswept eyes...
So hungry and unsupervised...
How many of us still survive
Bouncing upon this rustic plane?...
With judgements quashing liquid hearts...
And pointed views like traffic cones...
It's easier to close the door
Where yowls mutate and turn to roars...
I see her digging through the trash...
This angel from another sphere...
The broadcast she keys in is vast...
Her shirt in shreds, as she draws near...
Ebony skin so dark and deep...
I'll see her when I go to sleep..
She floats over the concrete slabs...
Where shooting stars go flying past...
Bold advertising overhead
Will paint a world unequal to
The broken sequins from the chain
That someone dispelled in the rain...
To gaze into her windswept eyes...
So hungry and unsupervised...
How many of us still survive
Bouncing upon this rustic plane?....
They're closing books on human rights...
Decks are stacked, the lines extend...
Now more than ever, I'll need a friend
To gaze into my homeless eyes...
If you have something left to give...
If you're susceptible, and raw...
If you resist the claw machine
You'll find me dancing by the stream...
Maybe tonight when moonbeams spill
Our sights will lock and without words
We'll shed our chains, the flood within
Will draw us spinning out our skins...
Bunny Villaire
5/6/24
Edit #4
Void
walking through a dark night
a dark cobbled street
not a single light visible
till
till i saw a dingy bulb through a presumably dampened cracked french window
hunger there was plenty
i elbowed through the glass and entered the room
empty it was
from there i entered another room
empty too
the only lit house was dampened with emptiness
as always
i had reached my conclusion just by the second room
the second page
so i decided to walk through the emptiness
walk through more rooms
that i did
room after room i found lit low watt bulbs but noone there
there were books with pages so damp that they were almost see-through
wooden sculptures with dust
but i kept thinking that someone must have switched on the bulbs
i reached the fusebox only to find that the bulbs were direct
yet they hadnt fused so someone must have lit them soon
finally i reached the only room at the first floor
it had a terrace but to a dark sky
that only room had a paper glued to the wall
the paper read
" so you like so many before you have reached here -
you will go from here too
this is not a haunted house
nor a cured curse
this is lit emptiness
and if ever in life you want to think of lit emptiness
of buffered mutiny
of rampant tyranny
of adjectivised mysery
of a pulse contingent life
and
and
of a lit emptiness
visit this house on the darkest street again
and maybe that time the street is lit
but this house is dark
that will still be lit emptiness"
Paso Por Aqui
Paso Por Aqui
May 01, 2024
I own these streets
It is I that pay for them
It is I that defend them
It is I that keep the people who live here
From moving elsewhere
For my benevolence
I ask for very little
Perhaps and apple when I stroll by
Perhaps a greeting from another passing by
Perhaps something more
As I pass by here
The pavement is as solid as my word
However, today, others see cracks
Cracks mean weakness
And weakness means revolt
My streets do have cracks
As any grandmother has on her own skin
These cracks demand respect
For these cracks display the character
Of the person who earned them
I own these streets
And I’ll be damned
If another challenges me
For their possession
Maybe, I will begin
Taking possession of more than the streets
Maybe, I will want to own the people who walk upon them
Maybe, I will want some more than others
Maybe, I will want all of just one
Just to show what ownership really is
Fall…
on hard times
of mankind
into the wrong hands
down
into a coma
out
to pieces
behind
for it
off the wagon
apart
victim to
from grace
into as state of disrepair
(en) angels
of empires
between the cracks
into a trap
on one's sword
short
I find it curious how something purported as being good shares the same phrasing: to fall in love.
4 AM: The Night Before An Exam,
I draw everyone i’ve ever loved
charcoal, pencil
composition paper
I draw my father in goodwill wearing a sombrero
and his mother’s smile
I can’t seem to get his eyes right
(were they always this bright)?
I draw close friends
1 through 7
I need to be thinking about catarrhines, and locomotions of spines,
and stereoscopic eyes
I draw Darcy,
in our old bingo club classroom
wearing a happy birthday! headband
from the box of dollar store prizes
I still have the pink plastic duck on the dash of my car and Sophia has the other—what are the strategies of a mother
against infanticide?
what are the stages of a primate’s life?
I draw Uri,
who i swear, acts like they’ve known me since i was three
sitting in a school chair
pom pom hat pulled over their face
and i laugh so hard i nearly make myself dead by way of falling out of my seat and hitting my head
(just like i did when i took the photo)
I draw Sarah,
at the county fair
green t-shirt and gold glasses and red hair
I draw my brother and my sister and her children,
in the San Juans
only two and twelve years apart but i swear my niece and nephew
look so young compared to us siblings
Gene flow -
also known
as admixture is the process of allele frequencies changing as a result of
of interbreeding or the movement of a population to the other
I draw a strange picture of my mother,
bike helmet and fleece vest and a face without rest
(no wonder i left the nest)
there’s a vain page
full of self-portraits
borderline ego-whorish
why do i have so much tit in this pic? damn look at that waist and that pretty incongruent face—allopatric speciation is the division of a species as the result of geographic barriers resulting in different phenotypes for the
new population
I draw a series of crushes
from the mind
(and i can still remember the way Zac pushed his thigh against mine)—platyrrhines’ root is derived from platyrrhini meaning ‘broad nosed’
I draw the people i don’t talk to anymore
drifted or mutilated
something in it’s faded.
Do you remember when we were going down Race St in your car and then—
The Siamang is an endangered arboreal gibbon native to Asia. NWM (New World Monkey) or OWM (Old World Monkey)?
I scribble down beloved faces
looking for traces
See the beauty
—what we define as beauty is screwed, because i swear it's the catch in the light or the way Sophia's eyes looked so bright cradling an opossum or my sister in 2002 looking like a fool—
in all of them
And i think to myself it’s a real shame
that half of them
deride, deny, despise
themselves
When i draw you,
I am saying i love you the only way
i know how to do
I am begging you
to see yourselves the way I do
Footprints in the sands
I firmly believe that we never hear a song twice. And I don't mean, that it's the first time you hear it that matters most. It's the time that you heard it, really held it, within a circumstance that sets the music for you, fitted like in fine jewelry. That gemstone, that cameo, or picture in the locket, becoming surrounded by auditory gold, or silver if preferred.
Then, with every glance back at the music, we see it as if turning in another light...
yet, somehow, that most significant instance, is there in the tint of the shadows, or highlights, and becomes a near or distant accompaniment... as mood that goes with, in the background.
We seldom sang at home. It turned out that was a great regret, to our adults. Our dad sang us songs sometimes. Our mom once confided, when we were grown and on our own: "I thought for sure having two girls meant there would be constant singing around the house..."
She never sang. We dare not either, except in private, where there were no adults to criticize. (I make a point now of singing loud with my little boy, and my heart cheers and flutters at every attempt of his to follow along with lyrics, to hum a tune, or invent his own songs. I want for him to know that freedom of spirit.)
Criticism was taken very seriously in the household, immediate and extended family, as an art form in itself in the oratory tradition. I understand now why mom held her tongue rather than be scolded and reminded that her tastes were too common.
I'm listening now to Diana Ross and the Supremes and remembering the grimace that passed across faces. No one wants to be shamed of the music that finds resonance within themselves; for reasons, more oft than not, hidden or incoherent, and psychologically complex.
As I'm dwelling on music that moved, emotionally or intellectually, impacting our path in some way, I can't help go back to this one song involuntarily, that on hearing once as a teen, I could not listen to again, but would shut it off, or walk away. I have blocked the title, and the artist, only to say it is a commonly played 80s tune by a rock band with female vocalists, and it must have been, objectively speaking a powerful number, to have that gripping effect on a young person. I had trouble wrapping my mind around the moral implications, the ethics, and where I would place myself into the situations of any one of the characters that would be involved. It was story song, a rock ballad. (I am leaving no clues here, so don't trouble the mind in trying to retrace any leftover grains.)
I won't listen to it even now, yet I commend the impact. That is art, isn't it? and we remember the footprints in the sands of memory long after they have been wind swept and near irrelevant. Things change. They certainly shift. A little bit of sensory input, goes a long way, many a times.
I've never been to a grand concert... It would terrify, I imagine. Once, on impulse I bought tickets to the unlikely proposition that 10,000 Maniacs was to play live at our nearby ski and summer resort and conference center called with southern homeliness Mountain Creek. That was very bold of me, but familiarity built up confidence, and I sometimes make a gamble on odd chances. Tickets, for me and my sister; we never went. The concert was "canceled" a day or two before, and it took months to get a refund. Maybe cynical teenage imagination was at play, but we decided somebody had swindled a quick loan from the community... it was quite hard to believe that our little locale would be visited by any such name brand in music, just too good to be true...
https://youtu.be/c0b7ltFrB34?si=yZZz542f3eufMGef
As a theme, I've been drawn to songs about the passing of time. Maybe it's because the first cassette I ever owned was Cyndi Lauper's 1983 She's So Unusual album, and my favorite track was Time After Time.
https://youtu.be/lx8-95fPjHc?si=uEe9FB3qZCnDqi6P
I remember receiving the cassette soon after starting school, so I would say I was six or seven years old. By that time mom had already run off from our home twice; with us and without us, children. The tune has continued to grow in meaning for me.
Eventually, I did some church choir singing, and to this day those hymnals, memorized, are among the most comforting musical tunes for me. I'm thinking of songs like Here I am Lord; On Eagles Wings; and Amazing Grace, among others.
I'm trying very hard to think of a song or album that I felt initially one way about, and then, on rehearing, changed my mind... and it must have happened, but apparently nothing that strongly felt, as I am not recalling. Maybe I feel less dismissive of Frank Sinatra or Linda Ronstadt or similar voices that I thought, early on, lacked depth... unfair judgements, immature, and I chide myself against these notions, nowadays.
It takes quite a lot of vulnerability to create songs, lyrical or instrumental, of every kind, especially as a cohesive body of work. Yes, there is music that doesn't suit the moment, but it ought not be dismissed altogether... Or deemed as good or bad. I've tried very much to be open to all music and to its ability to nurture our soul along the journey. We are blessed, when we can turn and return to music again, if only reliving it in our hearts.