1997 Brooken Beauty California
On this abandoned cartoon road
A prairie chicken, headed south
roadrunner,
toot-- toot--
Scrambling from reverent pose to road movie genre,
Well, looking for a place to camp,
arriving to suburban
party of water toys, they’re packing up jet skis
from the week end days spent--
zooming--in and around
Uneasy, I look around and notice in the orange grove
a small tiny black shape.
Some how catches my attention, through the noise
and general theme park scene--
then a flash!
of red as it turned, a flag-- a tanager?
no, a brighter fire-lit orange
smaller shape,
a vermilion, yes-- !
A Vermilion Flycatcher!
A mascot for this new experience of Colorado River
desert water world, WoW,
I’d seen many pictures of this amazing
little bird, unreal to me till now,
I clicked my tongue
As it flew up,
and still in mid air
A display of defense or just showing off !
At the end of the day’s sun bouncing
from it’s breast,
amazed, something truly happened!
1997 Brooken Beauty Joshua Tree
I’m out there painting anyway
Arms thrown up in ecstasy, a Heretic
Twirling, in the space of my NEW religion
One, one, one--
Out painting, as the Hero, in the Sun
Stars
We’ve left the earth for second
order Culture, Madonna God
tired of the endless silence,
the blank stare of the sky.
But I got out of the car!
could see everything
and its relationship with the other,
walked up the hill
the rock, sand, wisp of grass
the bush to bush
the lizard here
to there
Bird call in the wind --
I spot it over there!
the lizard scurries
to there
through there
t t t tracks of a tortoise
sun going down
sun coming up
Everlasting beauty
I’m stretching canvas, cleaning up the Ranger Station
making a camp, figured out the water,
made two paintings today
A ga-- at every thing, then, one in the evening.
Painted the clouds, and then today they’re gone
I never saw them again in a whole months time
pitched the tent and made a fire
painted the sunset
thinking of that desert tortoise as I drift off,
the sun and the landscape, all revolving
that range to the east in shadow
then better at evening with
long lines across the canyon
the yucca and cactus bloom
already dark in shadow
by 3 PM shadows moving fast
across the valley, new wild flowers
arrive daily, I take note with paintings,
A Scott’s Oriole singing
from the top of a Joshua Tree flies--looping
from bloom to bloom, yucca flowers.
A chain-link snake slithers at my foot,
in an ‘s’s’ curve
between bushes, disappearing -- but there,
I can see it’s whereabouts-- as I finished another painting
and now dumbly staring in exhaustion
into the fire.
There! the god was
the bird, stopped
the shield
brought forward
dreaming to ideal
form
stop
oneness
with the world
clap of hands
bang!
ther-e
the god is!
the Mormons
I read, saw the trees
like Joshua leading
them on to the Promised Land
nature presenting
experience rejuvenating Art,
I take the abstraction of the cycle
and add it back to representation,
making a larger modern nature,
fantastic in large color form and
elegant line
putting the content
back upon that great abstraction
cycling, mythos
the sun comes up
the sun goes down
the hero
still arriving,
again and again
each day from the East arriving
from dream
the morning light
the mock epic
pop pilgrim
art flashing
at every end,
a beginning
flashing
before our eyes
all the cycles
These two sections have been one and I will probably put them back together.
In Joshua Tree I spent enough time for the actual naturalism of the place to grow to a metaphoric level and the symbol world I am after. The figure then represents this all. Then all is metaphoric of this created whole world.
The anxiety and the encroaching, “pressure of reality,” here is less in these passages, and the paintings unfold on their own among this plenitude.
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