Musings ~ Reflections ~ Transgressions ~ Art
Well Weathered POEMS By
Joe Raymond
Table of Contents If You Want to Know
1
My First Love
3
Rainy Gray Day i
5
Rainy Gray day ii
8
Mea Memoria
9
Iowa Harvest Ritual
12
Chained to my Cathedral
13
Tethered Off to Sleep
15
Brown Bean Ballet
18
Brain Train
20
Blacksmithing
21
Our Ischemia
24
Kju
26
Crimson Black Night
28
Tea Bowl
30
I Am the 1%
31
Remember Me Well Weathered
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Reflections On paper, Dyslexia, Dysgraphia, and Attention deficit disorder don’t read like an effective prescription to becoming a creative writer. Long before they were a diagnosis, I battled against them. Even now, I can spend hours and much frustration and predictable re-writing working to get a result out of my head and on to paper. With poetry, it seems like the next poem marinates for a while before I begin to write. When I start, it can be largely written in the first draft or two. It’s like the keyboard becomes a funnel, lining up the words in my head, letting them flow into something more cohesive. When they come out, it’s with the volume of a garden hose. When I read poetry that I connect with I see images. I am a toddler artist but what I know instinctively is that my art will be crossing lanes of communication. My poems can stand by themselves. My art, as it is, is beginning to do the same. When they merge I am told they resonate in a much larger fashion. “Well Weathered” was written during a personally difficult time. Many of these poems are powered by the catharsis of dealing with the death of a parent. That process also reminded me of all the blessing that come from living a life well weathered. I hope you enjoy this reflection on mine.
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Acknowledgements Lace (11) modified from royalty free license https://www.featurepics.com/online/Lace-Background-Picture291123.aspx
All other images in this publication are works by the Author Previously Selected for Publication in Etchings Literary and Fine Arts Magazine Issue 32.2, April 16, 2020 https://issuu.com/etchingspress/docs/etchings32.2 (xiii)
Poetry: Etchings page numbers = *( ) “Chained to my Cathedral”
(13) *(41)
“Our Ischemia”
(24) *(55)
“KJU”
(26) *(69)
“Tea Bowl”
(30) *(39)
Art:
Etchings page numbers = *( ) Tea Bowls
(29) *(40)
Self Made Man
(16) *(26)
Unwinding DNA
(25) *(44)
1st Place Doris Gott Armentrout Award Etchings Literary and Fine Arts Magazine Volume 32.2, April 16, 2020 “Tea Bowl” *(xiii) The John Gormley American Art Clay Award, April 15th 2019 Submissions included Chawans used in “Tea Bowls” ______(31) *(40)
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ART IS… …according to a dictionary:
[from the 1300s] Skill; its display, application, or expression… [from the 1600s] The expression or application of creative skill and imagination, typically in a visual form such as painting, drawing, or sculpture, producing works to be appreciated primarily for their beauty or emotional power. -- Oxford English Dictionary Online To me the thing that art does for life is to clean it – to strip it to form.
– Robert Frost (1874–1963), American poet, in Fire and Ice: The Art and Thoughts of Robert Frost , by Lawrence Thompson (1942)
To give a body and a perfect form to one’s thought, this— and only this—is to be an artist.
– Jacques-Louis David (1748–1825), French painter, in Jacques-Louis David , by Anita Brooker (1980) Ideas alone can be works of art….All ideas need not be made physical.…A work of art may be understood as a conductor from the artist’s mind to the viewer’s. But it may never reach the viewer, or it may never leave the artist’s mind.
– Sol LeWitt (1928–2007), American artist, "Sentences on Conceptual Art," in Art and Its Significance , edited by Stephen David Ross (1994) What I dream of is an art of balance, of purity and serenity, devoid of troubling or depressing subject matter, an art which could be for every mental worker, for the businessman as well as the man of letters, for example, a soothing, calming influence on the mind, something like a good armchair which provides relaxation from physical fatigue.
– Henri Matisse (1869–1954), French artist, Notes of a Painter (1908)
I don’t think art is elite or mysterious. I don’t think anybody can separate art from politics. The intention to separate art from politics is itself a very political intention.
– Ai Weiwei (1957-), Chinese artist, “Shame on Me,” in Der Spiegel , November 21, 2011. vi
What is art? Art grows out of grief and joy, but mainly grief. It is born of people’s lives.
– Edvard Munch (1863–1944), Norwegian artist, in Edvard Munch: The Man and His Art , by Ragna Stang (1977) To evoke in oneself a feeling one has experienced, and…then, by means of movements, lines, colors, sounds or forms expressed in words, so to transmit that feeling—this is the activity of art.
– Leo Tolstoy (1828–1910), Russian author, What is Art? (1890)
In 1917, Marcel Duchamp, using the pseudonym R. Mutt, submitted a store-bought urinal, which he titled “Fountain,” to an art exhibition.] Whether Mr. Mutt with his own hands made the fountain or not has no importance. He chose it. He took an ordinary article of life, placed it so that its useful significance disappeared under a new title and point of view (and) created a new thought for the object.
– Marcel Duchamp, Beatrice Wood, and Henri-Pierre Roché, The Blind Man , 2nd issue (May 1917) The craftsman knows what he wants to make before he makes it.…The making of a work of art…is a strange and risky business in which the maker never knows quite what he is making until he makes it.
– R.G. Collingwood (1889–1943), English philosopher, The Principles of Art (1938)
Adapted from https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/57501/27-responses-question-what-art
With so many radically different definitions of art, is it any wonder that it has taken me most of a lifetime to discover that I could own the moniker of artist?
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Artist’s Statement I credit society for giving me the filters through which I had learned to see the world. I credit myself for beginning to strip them away so that I might imagine the world as I want it to be, not the way I learned it should be. Anyone who has started or has watched someone start a fire with a bow drill knows that it requires a special kind of perseverance & lots of friction to get a spark. Since beginning to write in my Volume II, I have learned that creativity is very much like that; I constantly tell myself to just stay focused on the task at hand and keep at least one hand in motion, frenetically stroking the bow. When I decided to return to school in revivification it was a purposeful decision to do so without a plan. This time around I relied on walking through open doors. I stumbled into ceramics & backed into studio arts. All the reading and writing I did in Volume I was technical. Imagine my surprise when I became enamored with reading & writing poetry while in an English General Education course. Perhaps that’s why they’re required. This journey is newborn new. I feel strongly compelled to share my poetry connected to the images I see when writing. It is my deepest desire that we connect through the words and images on these pages. Like skiing in new powder, my art, my sculpting, my pottery, my writings are all unmarked trails. Join me, & let’s have a great run.
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If You Want to Know If you want to know who I am, I am an emerging artist, not because I create great works of art, because I regale in pantones palette, because I braille textures, because I scrutinize most every form & imagine it transformed, because I am battered in the surf of a sea of what could be. because making art is about seeing the world as I want it to be, not the way I learned it should be. If you want to know where I am from, I am from humble beginnings Having little, I learned to share what there was because there are always those with less. I am from fractured streets and broken homes, where the gutters overflowed with bigotry as leaves in a heavy fall rain. I am from bloody fists & thievery & hard labor necessary to fill a plate & with little chance of escape. I am from Thanksgiving dinners for fifty, & respect for all who serve I am from a time that is nearly as close to the last century as it is to today I am a recovering minimalist who had been sinking, strapped to an anchor of gathering instead of living.
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If you want to know what I have done I have lived several lifetimes Because today may be my last I have been ballasted in a submarine a mile below the sunlight, I have stood on mountains so high that I touched the heavens I have, through pure stubborn will, saved a life and despite it, lost another & I emerged champion in my own embrace with death. I have partnered in creating life, twice, and seen those lives regenerate well. If you want to know what I believe, I believe in humankind’s inherent need for a higher power. I believe that you are not my receptacle nor my buttress, nor am I yours & I believe I loved you before we met. If you want to know what I expect to do in Volume II, I expect to find my voice so that I can better shout our stories. I will learn to speak in violet prose & dance a fuchsia foxtrot & I will spike my nose with onyx & silver & turquoise if I choose. I will be my own best physician by breaking my tethers to the past. I will look for love in all the wrong places because that’s where I found it & I have relinquished your right to my scrutiny. I will have you know the me I must yet be.
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My First Love It was Santa, surely, knocking at my door was this truly, really, him, the man of Christmas lore? Even absent all his finery my heart said it must be there he stood, upon my floor― had he let me see? Our golden fire-fly hearth-glow proved his generous girth and adorned his beard of snowfall white and framed that playful smirk. I have a gift for you my boy through twinkling eyes, he said so gleefully I followed him as with outstretched hand he led. As if it were a magician’s act, a bike sored ore’ his head out it came from―gray truck―sleigh bed my two wheeled chariot in red. Her handlebars, the shape of gull’s wings led by gleaming, shiny spring she was so much more than just a bike―she was everything! I cried out in gleeful panic― when will Dad be free? ―It would not matter how short the time― it would be far too long for me.
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I ran out to my Father the moment he got home and begged him Daddy, please, young children―we need to roam! Next I knew, I was on her seat, his cheek nearly touching mine one hand on my hand on the left and the other on my spine. He began to run and I began to fly I was terrified inside, but I would never cry. Don’t let go Dad, please, I squeezed out, trying to hide my fear not until you’re ready he said; one hand on my left hand and his other―now―on the rear. Run three was something special, I had barely lost my fear when I noticed the absence of both his hands and only silence in my ear. The moment I realized I was by myself, And I turned my head to see I began to wobble―and―when I looked front again, I was heading for a tree! We hadn’t covered breaking yet ―only how to go― at least my crash would be softened thanks to fallen winter snow.
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Rainy Gray Day
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The sky is always painted with opalescent shades of silver oxide when we plant our loved ones in pots of steel and concrete. We fertilize the ground above them with rainbows of dead bouquets and plant our monuments of stone yet the sunshine escapes and will not play come funeral day. Heads, large lead balls crushing weight pressing down on puny hands wrists of those who grieve threaten to snap bearing the weight of the cold dead sky. Perhaps it rains when the collective arrhythmia of breaking hearts attracts heavens’ tears. Perhaps color drains from the world when our loved ones depart to light their torch on their journey home. Are these reasons why the sky is always cold and gray on funeral day?
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Rainy Gray Day
ii
San Francisco Bay, long and shallow windswept harbor dotted with peacock tails perched on stiletto canoes as white capped key-lime pie waves slam against tympani sailboat hulls, beating staccato bass lines crest, trough, crest, trough tearing holes through the surf on a running tack for home Submarines fly underwater and roll like pigs in a plume when topside in battering high seas and driving winds and when the two marry, they spawn a gale so fierce even the old hands scramble to the weather decks else they become salt licks for the sea Under the altar of the golden gate the crew pray for a break in their channel fever and endless dry heaves as they joy-ride their derelict, half-flooded pop can into the crashing surf towards home and death becomes preferable to the next empty retching peristaltic wave When the maneuvering watch ends and their iron maiden is cleated off at the pier, The Petty Officer stands ready at the after-engineering hatch, waiting for the 1MC to bark the order that signals the end of maneuvering watch; time to unseal their sarcophagus, and open the passage to the forgotten world on the other side Standing at the bottom of the escape hatch, head back, the Petty Officer is savoring angels’ tears on his tongue while the winged cherubs of wind give mouth to mouth to the oil-soaked putrid air in his tinny can Their sprinkling of anointing mist fills the damp, drab sky he left behind while Heavens white and gray robed seagull cantors chirp welcome home He revels under the miraculous opalescent dishwater gray sky vowing to never forget this baptism at the end of his cruise from hell And he stands for an eternity under the runny gray sky, breathing in the port and accompanying the acapella winged choir and marveling at the gulls murmurations and he never forgets the miracle of that Rainy Gray Day
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Mea Memoria By my mother’s example I learned that shadowing her dancing while standing on her toes is training for puddle prancing in warm summer rains. I learned, through physical contact, that brooms and mops fit boys’ hands too and that housework is only women's work to lazy men. I learned that, as a parent, we will always place the needs of our children before our own and that this is her commandment. I learned that we just need to figure out what is right and do that. It won’t always be easy, but it will always be right. I learned that there are times where we will be knocked to our knees by life and the best thing we can do while on them is pray.
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I learned that singing is healing, that giving is the greater blessing, and that all actions, even inactions, have consequences. I learned early about the power of laughter and poetry and she loved to share both. She would sometimes, in her most lyrical voice, begin― Beans, beans the musical fruit ―and I would laugh. I learned how to wring the very last bit of living out of life by her example. I woke Mother at five minutes to midnight on New Year’s Eve. She exclaimed Well, I guess we will both be here next year! and then grinned at me with her knowing Mother’s grin, and we were. Together, we shared the birth of 2020, laughing and -
this was our last.
I learned all this from my Mother’s lap and then I cradled her in mine. Even after her passing she continues to parent and I continue to learn. Today I received her recorded Birthday wish so that with every passing year I will always be able to remember that she forever holds me near.
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Iowa Harvest Ritual Rustic red paint flakes burnished boards trodden bare under maternal hooves Wafting warm oats in the morning dew Flies always, always flies swishing tail next to my three-leg stool. Slightly amber, launched by practiced gesture ringing out against the metal pail churned into silken butter. Bountiful sun Heaven kissed stalk, only wind and luck to bless the union affirmed by paradise rains. Pearls of golden nutriment, delectable between the teeth, confectionary gestating quilted below husks of green. Kneading, rising, kneading, baking, wafting chestnut topped fragrant butter’s sponge. Freshest baked bread, richest hand churned butter sweetest corn just off the field hand hewn preacher’s table for sixteen Creamery butter slathered, hearth-baked-fresh-milled-bread cob-cradle threats of diabetic coma from the sweetest of sweet and that butter sopped bread, indescribable treat.
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Chained to my Cathedral To ride on the worst of days, dogma on the best of days, rapture. Two wheels turning abandoning thoughts. Muted voices canter cherub praise. Devotion to the liturgy penitent legs rise and fall winding cranks. Pursuing silence inside my cathedral walls. Humbled labored breathing devoted heart’s pumping meditation overflows. Turbulent air genuflecting, chanting note-less in the howling, expanding silence of suspended thought. Collapsed Cathedral turns inside to out. The emptiness resurrects. Thought ascends, benediction begins. Clarity, creativity, reasoning, patience risen from empty coffers. My ride restores communion for the soul, therapy for the body, penance for the mind. Until tomorrow’s sacred ride‌
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Frankenbike
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Tethered off to Sleep A million science fiction movies flood my sleep Plugged into the machine that ensures my breath And sleep brings quill pen flourishes conjuring On my parchment cuboid brain Mining fresh synapses While Papa John Pizza prances Vaulted in darkest friable obsidian. Hallowed Halls of creation, too familiar to walk. Tethered, Resting, hosed like a purple passive Punchy ball. No more delight tonight
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Brown Bean Ballet Daybreak pummels slumber sherbet sunrise injects painful shards between my lids Standing empty-headed marionette my disconnected adopted homeless feet shuffle derelict along my bedroom floor Wobble―forward―sideways―forward brushing sleeping halls dangling on drunken puppet strings In my kitchen ― Love brews Addicted scratching claws happy nectar treasure pods aluminum handbell choir intones Beethoven’s Symphony no. 5 Anticipation swells crescendo―decrescendo―caesura silence before the lever throw CLACK, seconds are minutes while pumping―pumping―pumping injecting Love’s heartbeat into the bowl Savoring aromatic interludes while the lilting amber-brown waterfall dances pas de deux with tiramisu liquor Prancing, swirling, dipping, leaping under my nose Lapping heavy cream foam in breathless anticipation Slathering my Love from lower lip to foam sopped nose Dancing the Brown Bean Ballet perfects the sherbet sunrise
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STOP
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Brain Train I am aware of my gelatinous brain’s sloshing about, simmering in its firebox while the engineer stokes the boilers and I listen to McKinney speak “Praise for Your Mother’s Passing” my already hampered productivity derailed, his words threaten to boil my clotting gray jelly. Pressure on my instep over-laced roller skate phantom pain performing synchronized locomoting, alternating right and left wheels sprinting, beside him, on our ribbon of parallel pewter railroad tracks. I suffer from flutters of brain track switches after another night’s invaded sleep inescapable horrors break dream synapses into sharp-edged peanut-brittle painful bites. My reflection is losing weight I demand to understand the kilocalories he expends while Greco-Roman wrestling our night terror train to the last stop on the line? We have ridden this gray rail ribbon for a millennium and can’t admit we want off the train. Welcomed distractions, building silly toddler marble runs purposefully preoccupied with organizing twists and turns for our destinations final station waiting, anticipating, avoiding that clanging brass bell. Guilt for wanting to hear end of the line.
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Blacksmithing Rebellious brain strained by days long self scrutiny inside a silvery lens reflection sculpting my own shadow. Powers of observation now stillborn fingernails dragging clay packed, foot mashing firewall - race car week one more rhyme will make me scream. A Kahlo I’ll not be this day; Dorian gray visionary reflection beyond the pool of reflecting glass, peering through to the past I slip inside my introspection inside his space blacksmith place. His shop wrought and acrid, sooty leather adornments, his bellows blast, his crushing will subordinates iron, grimy vice grip fist, beating hammer, glowing iron & tempered steel collide ca-clack, ca-clack, ca-clack sizzling oily water bath molten red surrenders, inviolate. Forearms - wrought iron strands of sinew respectful seas of men parting making a place at the table remuneration hard labor and fair pay compact stature, herculean heart taming metal, blacksmith forging friends, Samuel P, Grandpa.
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Our Ischemia ―My limbs will not carry me today My tousled, occluded heart affray Can’t find her nymphet spirit to dance in my head Crammed full of eulogies and coffins instead Tens upon thousands of blessings she’d pray The chance for one last will be lost one near day Toe top dances, singing face to face: my mother―friend True lighthouse of Grace, from beginning to end Like cobwebs in hail, soul strings will break Leaving only her shell ―fist tightly clenched severed heart threads she will take Interments―infinite―slash My heart skips and stops while life cleaves her away ―My limbs will not carry me today
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Unwinding DNA
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The creation of this poem/print was truly special. My journey to “printer” began in 1973. The smell, the feel, the sense of accomplishment that results from communicating through analog print are now part of my hardwire… The background characters for Kju were carved from hardwood. I purchased them in Bath, England twenty+ years ago while antiquing. I have no idea what craftsman created them before I acquired them, or where they had lived, but they were clearly experienced type when I took them home to wait for the right time to find them a better home. I took great satisfaction in pressing (see how I did that?) them into service this spring. . . I was asked what my favorite letter was. Kju (the phonetic spelling for the letter Q) just seemed to write itself. The rest of the elements of Kju are foundry type and carved forms found in the letterpress collection at Hullabal00 Press whose home is in Crystal de Hann on the University of Indianapolis Campus.
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CRIMSON BLACK NIGHT Absentee, alcoholic, womanizing father, angelic mother, fighting into the night. Twice her size, on his back, his face raked bloody red, as she, angelic mother chose fight, not flight, her choice, defense instead. The boy, paralyzed by the sight of crimson combat chose flight, not fight. The boy, cut too by what he saw through that sliver of light, never spoke to anyone of his feeble retreat into the ink black night. The boy became the man by doing the things a man is expected to do, seldom thinking of the crimson spatter on that onyx-black night & after half of one-hundred years have passed, in the occasional stillness of his nights, he remembers and questions what might have changed if he had acted instead of slipping back into the darkness midst his crimson black fright.
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Tea Bowl I am granite. Wind chisels, sun decays. rain melts, I ascend; greater than indominable stone mountains to puddles in the mist. I am mud. I commence my journey underground, lingering for eternities. My endless quilted slumber below the sunlight ends. My potter’s hands awaken me, form me, perfect me. My potter shepherds me on my journey to where I’ve forever meant to be. He speaks for me, through me, in that finger space where only he and I can hear. My potter desiccates me, in fire he vitrifies me. I dance under the lashings of two thousand fiery tongues and when I cool, I am dense, purposeful crystal. I am forged of minerals, and rain,
and wind, and fire, released from slumber to live ceremoniously. I am Tea Bowl.
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I Am the 1% I am not binary, nor gay, not gender fluid I am violet not purple Almost imperceptibly so, different looks back from my mirror I am neither He, nor She yet I am both―Me I am not blue because bad boys took mine from me when I was young nor am I purple after being unacceptably untraditional finding love I have always been a violet They, or Them I just didn’t understand that They could be Me for too long it was just my crazy, confusing way to be If you see He, that’s perfectly okay with me but I see more She than He looking back at me and I’m finally okay with all that is Me I am not drawn to your slot A or tab B, that’s not where it starts for me I fall in love with your heart, your character, your aspirations and I worry, like you, … will you hurt me? My sisters have always been my brothers, they are the most like me. and I am the 1%
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Dyslexia
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Remember Me Well Weathered I will go in slidin’ sideways & that’s my last promise, half prayer. The point of life is to squeeze as much living out of a life as one can. I didn’t come in through a hole in the ground & I shan’t go out that way. I’ll drive till my suspension is shot, my chassis rusts through & I’m burning more oil than fuel & when I come to a lumbering, creaking, smoky halt, then bake me to a right proper cone 6 as is fitting for a potter. Split me in thirds. Take a third of me home to Mt. Hood & scatter me under twinkling, crescent moonlight on the Palmer Glacier so that even after I’m done, I can keep on keepin’ on surfing her ancient ice all the way to the bottom of the run. Give a third of my gravely meal to a sculptor and let him wedge me into art. I’ll smile eternally at those who appreciate your chosen artist’s form. I have pots, plenty of pots, so pick a simple one to hold my last third. Plant me in it, over my Mother’s pot of concrete and steel… this is important to her. I’ve saved the best of my living for you: celebrate that I came this far & lived this fully in my most special way. My heritance for you is this, my best taste of life. Smother a piece of flourless chocolate cake in a field-fresh raspberry sauce & wash it down with as much Lagavulin neat as you can, & stay awash in her, until you can’t anymore & while you sip, savor her varnish, her fisherman’s nets, her ocean salt spray & the comfort of her Islay wool sweater as you drop anchor on the pleasure cove in your mouth. I will finish this run until the sheets are fully hauled out and as tattered & prayed thin as the pages of a Baptist preacher’s bible & the deck is worn all the way down to the hard grain like the boards of an Iowa milk barn floor. Remember me for having seized as much living from life as I could for I’ll leave nothing else on the table to remember me by… Remember me like ocean swept shores… having lived a life well weathered.
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