Crimson Black Night | Joe Raymond

Joe Raymond 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 speaking 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.

This sculpture & poem are elements of a developing installation sculpture. If this piece invokes some discomfort, then we have connected. My motivation is to draw attention to the enduring nature of domestic violence and that observed as well as experienced events can continue for a life time.