shows in Pittsburgh!

Thurs 16 July
.... Most Wanted Fine Art --- w/ Melissa St. Pierre + Mike Tamburo
..... 8 pm

.... The Nerve --- w/ Dave Bernabo + Edgar Um Bucholtz + Christian Butcher
.... 11 pm

Fri 17 July
>> Salvaged from the Domestic Forest <<
new work by Joanne Hsieh and Melissa St. Pierre
....... Future Tenant Gallery (for Pittsburgh Cultural Trust Gallery Crawl)
....... 5:30 pm to 9:00 pm
....... performances at 6:00, 7:00 and 8:00 sharp

Sat 18 July
...... Unsmoke Systems (Braddock, PA) --- w/ Edgar Um Bucholtz + many others...
...... Benefit for Book 'Em --- program to bring books to prisoners ---

Mockingbird

Moments of clarity. Serviceable joy to the max. A reach for the ledge.
Under-pre-misconstrued points of departure are reality testing itself through credo,
soon to shift, to melt into opposing trajectory.

Rants used to share bliss, words used to undertake meaning.
Transient belief; momentary calm.
the undertaker with his palms clasped.
soon to jostle for surf space with a four hundred watt lightbulb wedged in the space
between my ears.
redo the makeup. Al is well.
May Al be Happy
May Al be Peaceful.

Smile.
This is how we will come to understand
that the mockingbird does point to a concrete reply.

transcription

2008
20" x 20"
oil on canvas

under the auspices

2009
72" x 72"
gouache, charcoal, crayon and
graphite on construction paper

Secret City Names

. . . .

This is hunger: a bare finger pointed at the sky.
It doesn’t take long for the branch to dry.
Skin wrapped tight against the bone.
Punch the clock and the dawn starts.
Save the last drop.

So let it begin
the dance
Blackened and split

A stark efficiency
that brings out the beast in everybody.
Stomach empty, body light.
Senses keen from want

quickened to search for food or lie frozen in wait,
yet taking life at a slow drip-
By whom?

All links in that cold chain,
How to cut the lock?

The road freezes,
the shopkeeper turns
to the dry dusty corner where the spirits lie.

What comes will come again,
for she moves between bed and desk
like the sun.
or house and field
eternally

Dropping keys along the way-
Here-
and here-
but for the return
since one can only look ahead.

They will sleep forever
from scene to scene,
wave to wave,
weekend to weekend.

So much easier for sun-blind boats to drift,
than to be dragged along to destiny
by pairs of hands and seeing eyes.
Finally free, stop trying to understand-
you're seeing what isn't there.

There is a shot and sparrows fall,
but don't let me look,
i must pass undisturbed -

Through hunger,
life orders itself-
Circles form as
winter comes to make bedfellows of all.
Go not knowing where.

What comes will come again,
and somewhere,
I know where--

I saw the road tilting upward, fringed with green as I passed by.
Please.
Driver, please turn around.
There's some country there, where I would walk forever
I know that road, I've searched it with my eyes closed-
and if I follow it, I know the way,

It leads to a back road, and there the mind is free.
A highway on which few cars pass...
On one side is a slope, desert and dry,
then the right side falls away,
and after a while, brown sunny hills.

a primordial place with hidden pools and sighing springs where god speaks
There I dared ask your name.

nuclear sunrise

2006
36" x 51 1/2"
pastel on butcher paper

Hand to Mouth

A meditation on human eating and human reproductive fixation.