eyes are open
open, open, open
and we are talking
calling one-another
to share
experiences
you are there
and
i am here
and
all is as it has been
until the switch flips
and the lights go out
with no explanation
with no warning;
now
you live in the dark

the kicker is
we knew it was coming
we all know
this one truth –
that every light goes out
yet still it shocks
and catches us off guard;
we live as though
we’ll last forever
with thoughts of

“one day we will do this together
just not today…tomorrow”

this belief that there is time;
the things we’re missing now
will happen someday
if we just wait long enough
and then a heart stops
a brain explodes
an ill-timed car swerves
and the switch –
it flips
and nothing we planned
ever gets to happen
because we were fools
living in the dream of future
instead of this present reality;
look at what we lost.

and listen,
can you hear the cries of
“I wanted more…”
drifting into the distance
like echoes fading to silence?

When the cats are away

The mice will play

In the full burning sun

Of the bright blue day

But when the cats come back

Mice prepare for attack

Hiding in the shadows

Of night’s deepest black

I have always felt shadows

Even with my eyes closed

For they bring a sudden chill

And a darkness felt within

That drains your life away.

Once alone

One becomes used to it

As if it’s correct

The right way of being

Then one becomes two

Slowly

Like mountains pressing together

Into something new

And daunting

While you were sleeping

Now when you walk

You walk together

And when you breathe

You share the air

Having merged to the point

Where pulling apart

Takes scalpel and saw

Leaves blood and bone

Scattered on the table

A talented surgeon

May be able to save one

We believe what we want to believe. We create what we want to believe. Gods, devils, monsters, heros… all created for our convenience. All to explain all of our pain, all of our good fortune.

We believe what we want to hide from the truth… it’s too painful. We believe we love… or we don’t. We believe we hate… or we don’t.

We believe what we want to and we know others do too. The greatest evil is the twisting of this knowledge to our own benefit.

We believe what we want.

“What am I in the eyes of most people? A nonentity…
Yet I want to show by my work what there is in the heart of such an eccentric man.” – Vincent Van Gogh

“Art is a human activity consisting in this, that one person consciously… transmits to others feelings he has experienced,
and that other people are infected by these feelings.” – Leo Tolstoy

“I paint self-portraits because I am so often alone, because I am the person I know best.” – Frida Kahlo

“There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed.” – Ernest Hemingway

“Vulnerability is the birthplace of creativity. Connection is why we’re here.” – Brene Brown

“You think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read.” – James Baldwin

“There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.” – Maya Angelou

“To be an artist means never to avert one’s eyes.” – Madeleine L’Engle

“The hardest thing is to do something which is close to your heart, exposing yourself to vulnerability.” – Marina Abromovic

“This is no book, Who touches this touches a man.” – Walt Whitman

“I’m so unused to being—well, understood, perhaps…” – Vladimir Nabokov

The artist’s almost pathological need to be understood is like the sudden, insane, illogical desire of a soldier in the trenches of war to stand up and wave at the enemy only to have them lob a grenade into his midst killing them and everyone around them.

Some artists fulfil the need by taking another person, cutting them open and climbing inside of them to warm up from the cold of reality and existence…oblivious to the destruction they wreak upon the other.

Some artists do both.

The artist is mentally ill…everyone around the artist knows it, but not as well as the artist themself.

i am dull
to the pounding
of these storms
that should tear
me to shreds

i am concrete
poured into the valley’s end
stopping up the sea
on the other side,
unbreaking

i am a ghost
waiting outside myself
watching the world
dispassionately unfold
around me

as i stand in a pool of loss

knowing

i have not wept

never think
you can escape
what you saw
as a child
to become

better

you are bound
in iron bands
to who you were
to what you saw
to what was done
and still being done
to you and to yours

cursed to live in delusion
a cockroach
treating leftover crumbs
given like a gifted cake
hiding in the dark
afraid of light
and what it exposes

you are the hand
tied behind the back
you are their happiness
ground to dust
and thrown in their eyes
blinding them from beauty
you are the shackled legs
of the prisoner
never escaping;
they are hobbled
because of you…

these are the lies
that tie us to the ground
and tear off our wings
that we might never fly again

but,
maybe we know better now

My column in this week’s Winkler Morden Voice and Altona Rhineland Voice newspapers.