IN THE MOUNTAINS OF CHINA

IN THE MOUNTAINS OF CHINA

In the mountains of China
An apricot holds
the architecture of sunrise
in the rosy blush of its flesh.

Last in line, photographs,
a doorway from the past,
breaking the silence.

Architecture of sunrise
the firebird of the alps awakens.

8/24/2007 Writers' Group

The wild northwind

When the wild north wind blew, my horses would dance and skedaddle down the fire roads as if death were on their heels. They became unpredictable in flight with leaps of fancy and sudden swerves that left in my heart and stomach abandoned by the side of the road, or caught in my throat. They imagined fierce creatures chasing them, they took the bit between their teeth and ran harder still. Their hooves beating a staccato on the hardpan earth by the lake. Inevitably gravity was around the corner in the form of a cliff, or low hanging branches. I don't know how we survive childhood. But those horses, once they had run their course, were weary with a savage grace and they had a lightness of step, a new glint their eyes. And I realized it invigorated them. Perhaps they felt more alive at that moment, having run a race with imagined death, and won. Descendants of the tireless Arabian, hey held their tails up high to the wind and pranced more like swallows them horses, with nostrils flared, and breaking a sweat and solidly alive. 

(A Bedouin escaping his enemies threw off his cloak in order to let his mare run faster but her tail was raised so high it caught the cloak and he still escaped.)

8/24/2007 Writers' Group

ARCHITECTURE OF SUNRISE (short takes)

ARCHITECTURE OF SUNRISE (short takes)

An apricot holds
the architecture of sunrise
in the rosy blush of its flesh.

Last in line, photographs, 

a doorway from the past, 

breaking the silence.

Architecture of sunrise 

the firebird of the alps awakens.

8/24/2007 Writers' Group

The architecture of sunrise

A faint haze across the sun colors the evening light into orange and amber. A shaft of light paints the curbs so red that Niel's afraid to park there for fear of tickets. But the sun's about to set, no police will come. It's as if the fading sun were leaving us with a phoebian gift, painting a picture to be rebuilt in the rosy-fingered dawn. The architecture sunrise splashes against the slopes of the mountains and leaves sinewy beads in the canyons of its absence.

8/24/2007 Writers' Group

A nature of the mountains of China

An apricot holds 

the architecture of sunrise 

in the Rosie blush of its flesh.

Last in line, photographs, 

a doorway from the past, 

breaking the silence.

Architecture of sunrise 

the Firebird of the alps awakens.

8/24/2007 Writers' Group

A 9/11 survivor

Today I met a 9/11 survivor, an artist, Jeanette McKinley, who told me tales of what it was like being at Ground Zero. She talks of  huroncito depression, of how the material world accounts for little. She can’t make her art.. she is mute. She and Jane Bark trade conspiracy theories, but when it got interesting was when she told her personal story. I had no notebook, no camera, so this will be a story told in spurts, in no particular order. I will write until my wrist tires. I took a spill on a month ago and I am gimpy in both knee and wrist. But 911 is on everyone’s minds, subtext, and context. No time to write, but then the story dissipates. Unlike Allan Beavans, she was given a few more years’ worth of life to contemplate being a survivor. (She died a few years later of lung cancer, having breathed in lungfuls of toxic smoke.)

At the No Name Bar

We are at the No-Name bar in Sausalito, once my mother’s favorite haunt. Tonight it’s a different crowd, there’s a whole lot of hog-washing and posturing going on before this event. Sign up for open mic was at 8:30. Everyone’s late. First one up is a drone, drowning on in his own voice. Whole herds of hopeful guitarist enter the doors. Women aredressed for poetry readings. There’s a couple deep throating it. Yuck. This is a very tolerant audience. Anything goes. He drones on and on. I’m doing the math, at 15 minutes per person, we will be here all night. The emcee is lame. Number two plays a classical piece. I’m scanning the crowded room for people I might know but everybody I knew is long gone. The next one is a mouth harp piece, dude is on LSD. And now it’s 10 PM. It’s turning into an endless Neil Young kind of night.  I’m taking photos in the dark where people are ghosts, moving faster than light. I am bored. It’s all relative, we talk of those neutrinos moving faster than the speed of light. My camera is demonstrating the principle now. A truck passes, it’s transparent in the camera —only the lights show where it has been. I am nameless in the dark at the No-Name with Neil and Jack McElroy who is knocking it back on heaven’s door. Jack, an Irishman, is passive aggressive. I can never figure out his game. It’s like sliding your hands up and down a guitar neck seeking the right fret. At this rate, Neil’s turn will never come. I haven’t hung out in a bar in ages. I did this open mic thing for 20 years and I’m antsy. Luckily the photography is a good distraction. I am literally shooting to keep my sanity. Hostile boredom is a lethal combination. Am I shooting through photographer Jan Bogaert’s eyes, or is it in my own composition emerging through the lens? Will this night never end?

No date