Introduction

Originally, I composed the contents of this blog as a book, thinking that I would publish a follow-up to my first book of images and poems entitled Missives published by Codhill Press. However, after having designed the follow-up book as well as receiving reviews from a few friends, I felt the need for a fresh approach. I played with ideas of publishing this material in other digital forms, but then I wondered if making the contents available in a blog might invite interaction with an audience, albeit virtual. This appealed to me as a worthy experiment, allowing the readers to comment and respond to the works if they felt moved—even to invite a conversation if that should develop. Don't know what is possible, but we will see how this evolves…

Poetry for me has always been a private matter—a way of digesting. Over the years, painting too has become a more clandestine practice, but as a painting mentor wisely explained to me, "If the work is not seen by others, it has not really become a work of art." A life takes place in the piece as it touches others, and others are infused with the life in the piece.

Most of the book's content was read and viewed at the Orchard House Cafe in 2011 where I began to form the idea for the second book. Each work corresponds to one of the three headings: Colors, Inbetweens, or Hard Stuff.

So, if you are interested please subscribe to take part in reading and responding. I plan to post the blogs on a daily basis for about 2 weeks, and will finish with a closing blog to conclude the process. I conceive of most blogs as virtually endless; this one will complete itself perhaps to live in the "digital" world until it is no longer needed. Or perhaps it will give me the impetus to publish this as a printed book where those who wish can own a paper version as opposed to one composed of code.

I hope that you can take part either silently or as conversationalists.

 and to begin…

 We will start with the Hard Stuff…because one has to start somewhere….

Hard Stuff

I speak of the surface and the words
have no weight.

They drop
as dead flies do
while falling in flight
having lost what once
tethered them to the air.

That life in their buzzing,
in their zig zag meander,
steered by desires
for raw, dead meat
and dung
left on the side
of the path.

Their tiny lives living
on what is left behind.

And rejuvenated
in the underworld of Earth.