HIS FACE

October 20, 2011,  Paul.  Paul stares up from the sidewalk.  Paul knows you are looking and that is ok.  He is mildly amused tonight because of everyone that is passing by, some noticing him, some not.  It is after all, just a sidewalk, and any portrait there is bound to be stepped on, marred, altered, diminished or maybe enhanced.  Here is a face of expectation for himself and maybe only hope for others.

RED HOOK TEMPTER

October 16, 2011.  I am on my way to the closing of the BWAC Fall Show.  I take my favorite bus ride and I see this portrait as I ride by.  I know I have to go back.  I want to liberate you from this fence.  But I have no tools, and not the will to do this thing, to remove you from your designated place.  Will you be there later?  How will your form weather the coming frost, the winter, this season's sun?  This is your place, you will manage as best you can, as you were intended to do by whomever made you.  I will look for you again.  And in the darkness I will want to take you with me.

SO MUCH TO SAY

October 16, 2011.  Are our lives like this?  So many words pushing out, wanting to be heard, and what rises?  The biggest, the loudest, the brightest.  Or can I endeavor to hear you no matter where you are?  And if I see you, can I wade through all the noise to reach you and hear your voice?  All those voices, all those statements, all that importance, but in the end it sifts down to the singular.  Can I hear you when you are speaking to me and can I connect with your sorrow, your happiness, your worries - today, right now?  I want to come through the layers to find you and understand you.  Tomorrow I can reach another.  Today belongs to where I am and with whom I am.

A VIEW BEYOND

September 18, 2011.  A view out the window on a clear day at the what is left of a factory on the waterfront.  All that remains are the bones of what was once a thriving scene where hundreds were employed in a backbreaking job.  Now it sits, picturesque on blue waters, framed by the window I had earlier opened to let in the crisp afternoon air. It has been painted, photographed, eulogized, romanticized, its roughness forgotten in a world that has moved along.  We no longer wish to toil with our hands in this way - we leave that to others as we pursue finer things.

LINES

September 11, 2011. 

Chairs to infinity.  Simple folding chairs, lined in straight rows, waiting for an audience that never came.  There were viewers, like me, mostly silent, reflective, but no one moved to sit in the green space, leaving only the painful reminders of those that were.  A few grey pigeons that did not mind witnessing and participating in the memorial.

WHAT'S OUT THERE

September 10, 2011.  A small silvery planet circled by rings and four moons floating in a vast sea of stars lighting the sky, whether it is day or night.  I walked on the subway and there it was, ready to make me look and consider that there are others out there.  A little distraction, a flight of fancy, during a subway ride.