Gull

Watercolor on 8.5 x 11 bristol 

pencils, down

Original mixed-media drawings. All of these were drawn from still life props.

Pencil 

Pencil and Charcoal 

Pencil and Charcoal

Conté Crayon

Huntington Beach

Image overlays done with my Nikon D3000 

White Lines

white lines
make us nervous
white lines
unnerve us,
where do we draw the line?
we are only 25

the logic of our design
floats freely between two minds,
not within these lines
that are either black or white

darling;

would you rather be a sketch?
an undefined etch
blood without its stream
flows but what does it mean?

but let's not complicate;

a heart does not lie
and we are here until we die
that is neither wrong nor right
this is neither black nor white

if we only
learn to comprehend,
without words we cannot misunderstand
(with our eyes we can exchange)

white lines draw the end
silence is our only friend

Anaïs Nin

“I disregard the proportions, the measures, the tempo of the ordinary world. I refuse to live in the ordinary world as ordinary women. To enter ordinary relationships. I want ecstasy. I am a neurotic-in the sense that I live in my world. I will not adjust myself to the world. I am adjusted to myself.”

—

Anaïs Nin

Perfect Death

somewhere between her foul mouth and genitalia

a life dying to take her first breath

raging impurity of oceania gives birth to a perfect death

imbued with wisdoms of the waves

waiting for a wilting love

the irony is what she craves

kills her more than life above

the dirt ground choking under her feet

diminishing sky in her lover's eyes

chasing life is as futile as the quest for truth

and the arrival of death holds no surprise

event horizon

infinitely dense content overload resulting in a near-brain implosion
thank you internets.

firefly

unexpected firefly flickering his light

tangos with the shadows and dances with the night

nocturnal creature swiftly roams looking for a mate

marks the dark as his home, such a lonely wait 

he saunters onwards on this journey

humming a single man's free will

an anomaly between the trees
in his heart so still

Love is a Parallax, by Sylvia Plath

Perspective betrays with its dichotomy:
train tracks always meet, not here, but only
in the impossible mind's eye;
horizons beat a retreat as we embark
on sophist seas to overtake that mark
where wave pretends to drench real sky.

Well then, if we agree, it is not odd
that one man's devil is another's god
or that the solar spectrum is
a multitude of shaded grays; suspense
on the quicksands of ambivalence
is our life's whole nemesis.

So we could rave on, darling, you and I,
until the stars tick out a lullaby
about each cosmic pro and con;
nothing changes, for all the blazing of
our drastic jargon, but clock hands that move
implacably from twelve to one.

We raise our arguments like sitting ducks
to knock them down with logic or with luck
and contradict ourselves for fun;
the waitress holds our coats and we put on
the raw wind like a scarf; love is a faun
who insists his playmates run.

Now you, my intellectual leprechaun,
would have me swallow the entire sun
like an enormous oyster, down
the ocean in one gulp: you say a mark
of comet hara-kiri through the dark
should inflame the sleeping town.

So kiss: the drunks upon the curb and dames
in dubious doorways forget their monday names,
caper with candles in their heads;
the leaves applaud, and santa claus flies in
scattering candy from a zeppelin,
playing his prodigal charades.

The moon leans down to took; the tilting fish
in the rare river wink and laugh; we lavish
blessings right and left and cry
hello, and then hello again in deaf
churchyard ears until the starlit stiff
graves all carol in reply.

Now kiss again: till our strict father leans
to call for curtain on our thousand scenes;
brazen actors mock at him,
multiply pink harlequins and sing
in gay ventriloquy from wing to wing
while footlights flare and houselights dim.

Tell now, we taunq where black or white begins
and separate the flutes from violins:
the algebra of absolutes
explodes in a kaleidoscope of shapes
that jar, while each polemic jackanapes
joins his enemies' recruits.

The paradox is that 'the play's the thing':
though prima donna pouts and critic stings,
there burns throughout the line of words,
the cultivated act, a fierce brief fusion
which dreamers call real, and realists, illusion:
an insight like the flight of birds:

Arrows that lacerate the sky, while knowing
the secret of their ecstasy's in going;
some day, moving, one will drop,
and, dropping, die, to trace a wound that heals
only to reopen as flesh congeals:
cycling phoenix never stops.

So we shall walk barefoot on walnut shells
of withered worlds, and stamp out puny hells
and heavens till the spirits squeak
surrender: to build our bed as high as jack's
bold beanstalk; lie and love till sharp scythe hacks
away our rationed days and weeks.

Then jet the blue tent topple, stars rain down,
and god or void appall us till we drown
in our own tears: today we start
to pay the piper with each breath, yet love
knows not of death nor calculus above
the simple sum of heart plus heart.

unsung

sounds will not suffice to say 

how much it is we swim

in melodies of blue and gray

dancing on a whim

silently, we know no chords

but silence knows us better

anxious for what is stored

beneath this quiet tremor 

words have failed us many times

but harmonies prevail 

in a sea of crisp white noise
electric rhymes set sail 

what is an & sir?

what is an & sir?
would you dare say
is it the way home sir?
or is it where I stay?

what is an & sir?
would you ever claim
that it brings us together sir?
or will it make us stray?

what is an & sir?
is it more-or-less?
is it a sound argument sir?
or is it truth-less?

you want an & sir?
are you looking for it here?
I'm sorry sir- I don't have the answer
I don't have it my dear.

wake up

it's so simple
as you say
even when we sleep
waves carry us away

while bringing us closer
in a spiritual way
better in dreams
is our trembling fate

saves us from tempest
earthly desires
the waves travel between us
while pushing us higher

wake up
on the crest of this ocean
we are the tides of our passion
a microcosm of heat
energy everlasting

belong

where are you purple flower?
you are a natural, lonely pose

an endless stamen
between shameless petals,
your saccharine nectarie shows

your moon peeps
from behind rocky boulders,
settles above smoky peaks
shrugging his lonely shoulders

lights up the night
the search for you is all he knows

and he never seems to wait for us,
he just goes and goes,
stealing all of our time
warping the days into nights,
flashing a guiltless glow

spinning circles around the earth,
tranquility is for the weak of heart (this he also knows)
in the dark his madness empowered
searching for his purple prose

in white

white walls
white walls
white waiting-welcome walls
we were there, do you remember?
wearing our beat-up overalls

white paint
white paint
a dripping monologue
we had a dance, do you remember?
waltzing in and out of dialogue

white words
white words
careful, special scenes
we had no tapes, do you remember?
just our fragile memories

navy blue

she rises clear above the range as
a silent moment brakes and
we focus on her flight

moving slowly, dressed in a strange

disguise of fog as

she changes in the night

your shadowed face is plain and as
predictable as her movements

shifting in and out of sight

the only color i see is navy blue,

swimming between me and you
turning quiet moments bright

sitting thigh-to-thigh

I glance your waning eyes

filled with sudden might

pressing your head against mine,

our eyes locked tight

a sweet kiss revealed

beneath her pale moonlight

copy-cat

i make things that look like things that other people make
i am an artist
i am inspired
but i am also a trembling fake
what would it look like if I was not among the rest?
would i be uninspired and irrelevant
or would i be at my very best?

Drown

Last time we went swimming
the sea stood up and hugged you
as though you were responsible
for keeping it blue

Bianca Stewart, 2011

summer thunder

beats like thunder,
words are echoed
i'm not fully aware
resounding in my mind
sometimes
sometimes
sometimes i'm here
sometimes i'm there

falling to the ground
i'm nowhere
falling without a sound
i'm nowhere

blackness
blackness
i'm happier there
gracefully by your side
you don't know it but I still care

time is convulsing
it's not me
it's not me
summer thunder is
blissful blackness
i'm still here don't you see?

Every Word You Say

Your words are branches long and limber

I leap from comfort to hang from timber

Someone once told me I was Godless and brave

I'll hang onto every word 

you say

Your words come from far and travel deep

they drift up and fall down blue hills, so steep

I'll keep a bookmark in the best parts of my life

To hang onto the words

you say

Your words tell a story, a beginning - an end

They grow from a gentle tree, around the darkest bend

I'll water them until they bloom the utmost conviction

So I can hang onto the words

you say

On making it, says Ira Glass

“Nobody tells this to people who are beginners, I wish someone told me. All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there is this gap. For the first couple years you make stuff, it’s just not that good. It’s trying to be good, it has potential, but it’s not. But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is why your work disappoints you. A lot of people never get past this phase, they quit. Most people I know who do interesting, creative work went through years of this. We know our work doesn’t have this special thing that we want it to have. We all go through this. And if you are just starting out or you are still in this phase, you gotta know its normal and the most important thing you can do is do a lot of work. Put yourself on a deadline so that every week you will finish one story. It is only by going through a volume of work that you will close that gap, and your work will be as good as your ambitions. And I took longer to figure out how to do this than anyone I’ve ever met. It’s gonna take awhile. It’s normal to take awhile. You’ve just gotta fight your way through.” - 


Ira Glass

The Cult of Dying Adonis

beauty like Adonis, bearing
nothing but a simple frown
born from foam, he left to roam
and in her arms he drowned

searching for his Venus,
knocking down pitted castles of sand
left him nothing but the nectar's blood
from Nahr Ibrahim, to his drummer hand

Medea dips down to drag him
tosses him towards the ocean's waves
Persephone's Eleusinian mystery teaches
him naughty ways to behave

never if he followed a fresher trail of flowers
could he be more fire-and-ice
from Cythera to the Cypriot, as she danced her way about
Venus calmed his solemn cries

forgetting where he came from
the fruitful belly of the ocean's crest
he fell to Sirens calling on his lonely
crashed and burned his boat just like the rest

The Only People For Me

The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn, like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars.

-Jack Kerouac