Thanksgiving Prayers

Wayward Daughter

when are you coming home
to family
fresh sheets
some cleaning
(one can hope)
to several boys
that aren't even
biologically related
that I find

to gravy
and all things
you look upon skeptically
home to the
few folks
that you'll spend a lifetime
wondering about,
one who has
her mind

on you

A set about Monterey

i've thought in the last week about my life
about clues
experiences
about patterns so on



love isnt an intellectual pursuit
nor is it wrong
haggled
it isnt convincing someone

it isnt someones
brothers advise
or caught on a chair leg
dabbling

it stands with you
under the monterey pines
wrapping you in memory
you say softly

I wish you could see this
as you photograph
a pink
stained glass window

look down at how you are
were
love recognizes you
in the morning fog

it is intimate
this internal sense of
an external reality
close

in the next
four years I'm going to choose
follow my heart
settle into the place

of my heart

Poetry for the Save Our School March on Washington (dedicated to those marching and for those who stand with public education)

The Public School Teacher's Alphabet

A is for Affirm, for all students come to us full of self doubt

B is for Bridge to meaning, across the varied waters

C is for Comfort us in our fears and efforts

D is for Demonstrate excellence and understanding

E is for Equate reason, learning with meaningful actions

F is for Facilitate the exchange of our ideas

G is for Generate with creative insight and connection

H is for Hear every silent voice

I is for Interject only to inspire our thought

J is for Justify sparingly

K is for Know that the unknown is bound in all things

L is for Laugh with

M is for Mediate misunderstanding

N is for Notice something new everyday

O is for Offer different perspectives

P is for Practice over preach

Q is for Qualify statements of opinion

R is for Reason with a heart

S is for Suggest with compassion

T is for Teach to our future by seeing this moment as the opportunity

U is for Utilize resources, experts, students, standards, structure, freedom, nature, observation, data, facilities, community, technologies, text, time, history, glitter, music, theory, barnacles, brains, brawn, talents, communication and every thing under sky and moon

V is for Visualize our success

W is for Welcome everyone and their input

X-amine truths

Yesterday just holds the past

Zebras like teachers are animals of a different stripe,
Can we transcend the black and white?
And fashion our alphabet to write the future?





Once We Met at School

the children of the community-
the good, the strong, the believers, the daredevils-
met on the cement commons staring at the flag
and a doorway of possibility
together they faced the first day

in the cacophony in the hallways, wrong answers, rules-
the structures, the standards, the society-
we marked "a", "b", or "c" to none of the above questions
putting our names at the top of the papers
together we learned of a wider world

there was always an older teacher that recounted their war,
we watched a diminutive woman still collecting tin foil
and folded into the noisy business of school life
cafeteria lunches, text book assignments
debate teams, sports competitions, together singing our generation's songs

some days we sat with the doctor's son,
or a welfare mother's daughter
got our pizza with a kid whose dad was a gardener
held one another through the loss of a classmate
found loves, friends, the "other" as a lot like us

sometimes we knew the kid whose family owned the cab company,
maybe he was bad in math but a journalist
who swept out the local market's small wooden floors
to earn his way, or went home
to cold fries served by the mother of our best friend

we'd loan one another pencils
witness each other's oral reports, applaud,
snicker our way through a substitute that
built our memories of "that time when"
that fills reams of virtual year book pages

they say this is all changing
that it failed us, that they failed us-our teachers
our schools in this public commons
where we met to find ourselves
but you cannot be swallowed by this different version

in our schools we were together once as one nation






Your First Day of School

For many years I've been someones first day of public school
Can you imagine?
Sometimes these backpacked, shiny, hesitant children
Could not even understand my language
As they nervously looked around the big room
Eyes alighting on the painting center
Or teared with giant drops, of fears
And there I stood holding back the dam with my finger in a puppet,
A book and a set of crayolas I just purchased on the desks
Telling rules, showing samples, just waving my magic arms
At these tiny beings, at critically important moments in their lives
When the child met the unknown
Needing to see it as all possible.

What I would like from you is a reflection.
What do you remember of that first day in school?
Do you remember? How was the room arranged
Did you go outside to play? What kinds of feelings were you experiencing?
Was the day long, or did it fly by like water through fingers?
What will be the first days for our children's children
If we lose the understanding of a free, fair public education?
What will we tell children, that because they were born in this neighborhood
Their days are to be spent on drill, practice, explicit removal
Of the opportunity to dream of all the things, or nothing to go "to" at all,
Another will now know themselves in the academy.
Can we stop and think of these future first days as something
We want to give to every child, in perpetuity?








The Love Song of the Public School Teacher

It was 786 steps to school when I lived on Maple Avenue,
1241 on Roosevelt Street and several thousand to my high school and junior high
I walked there past Victorian houses set in hills
Of working class folks, professors and plumbers
Townsfolk that sent their kids to the public schools
If we had private school it really escaped me.
I was counting my way to school.





You Never Know

A public school teacher
Doesn't know their long term successes or failures
Except what a newspaper, visit or letter brings

We fail to find out, for all our love of "data"
Not charting our kids into their lives
We don't even ask them to communicate their perceptions school

We don't ask them who among us
Made the difference, or didn't reach out well enough
They'd be glad to tell us, and we'd deal with more truth if we did ask

As it is now, you just never know.




The March

"Children are more than test scores," Jesse penned,
Plucking from history's oxygen
The notion of movement
Steps for change, a march towards
The right to reclaim the American ideal of protest, to say something important
The goal to help shape public education policies
One step at a time.
One drop at a time, coalescing into the river rushing
People along his path heard the footfalls- Anthony, Susan, Stephen, Jonathon, Diane
Actors, journalists, politicians, parents, children, activists, pacifists, educators
In books, blogs, tweets, releases, calls, whispers into the wind
Coming together into a call for action
"Students are more than test scores."
Teachers need the autonomy of a professional standing, to make critical educational decisions,
They stated in so many profound ways, this
Deconstructing, privatizing, selling away a public system
Destabilizes the ground of our commons
where democracy meets to ensure our nation.
For these children, now, today, people are placing one foot in front of another.
In a march,
Assessment must be meaningful, evaluation must be fair,
An end to narrowing the curriculum in areas of poverty
Already so very narrowed by their need, it all calls for a
Better design for school change that grows real leadership
and will not degenerate into petty power,
threats, punitive measures that ultimately punish children
"Children are more than test scores"
As these marchers rise to show that their home grown responding in leadership
Is something that can come to aid us in the ninth hour
Save Our Schools and March in Washington, to wave farewell to July 2011,
Then, please, continue the marches, efforts, for public education,
"Children are not really test scores"
The organizing, befriending, talking, writing, conversations
Allow a public school system to find its way
To survive and prosper, serving these challenges and children
The march can be sustained as a mechanism to support
A dream for America's future.
" Our Children are so much more than test scores."




Once You said,

President Obama said, because I heard him,
Why can't the unemployed build the schools of the future
He posed this as a question
That stills the air even now, unanswered.
I voted "for" that because it echoed within me.
Internally, from my past, I saw those beautiful structures at Cooper's Rock State Park
Where we once as a family cooked up our outdoor breakfasts
Built by the Conservation Corps.
When another President, unafraid and undaunted, said why can't the unemployed build our state and national parks, place art in our governmental spaces, photograph our people
Find their dignity again in building a better community?
The nation pulling together to answer troubled times.
Those were the stories my own father soothed me with
as I grew from a cradle he crafted
Holding a wooden toy boat he carved for my brother.
But cynicism grows, a debt ceiling looms, black humor pokes at possibility
The schools of the future still need to be built, not generously assistedinto the goals and money of our commerce and corporation
No, directed by America's people visioning for their kids
The schools still need to be built, not of mason block and cement alone
The children of today, need these public spaces to create our tomorrows.





Pledging Allegiance To The Brand

I had a dream a week ago
Every student in my room
Dozens and dozens in traditional
Rows, and not my class at all you see,
Had brand symbols tattooed on the foreheads
Symbols of corporations, or corporate sponsorship.
I thought, "It's come to this."
I had traveled to a future day
So I started to teach, but I was using antiquated thinking
So much couldn't be taught without a
Sensitivity to their sponsors.
And I woke up.
Within an hour, completely unconnected
A friend was suggesting I find corporations willing to donate
To make up for the loses of supplies
In a state slashing everything in funding to education.





Whale Watch

When I taught Kindergarten nine years ago,
They gave me a set of these thick test booklets,
Directing us to "test" the children on a fixed schedule.
So I opened up the teacher script, which demanded adherence to the text,
and read aloud.

Three children, new to anything like school, and not speakers of English,
Decided to take their pencils and submerge under the tables
Which suggested to them, and then others, "whales."
After my fussing and fuming off script, they breached
As I started all "over again" saying to the group
To find the "big star"
Several children looked up.
Then other children looked up.
It asked them to put your finger on the star, now fingers wagged at
The north star on our ceiling.

The boy who had remained on the carpet coughed.
I went over to retrieve him. Yes, I had, in my nervousness over
All of this just left him there, forgotten.
Inexcusably true.
One of the whales required the facilities- swimming rapidly through the currents
A pod followed.
After all it was our second or third week in school,
Lots of ocean to explore.
I felt these tears spraying me, frustration and personal failure
Beaded sweat down my back.
Because I had too many books, I'd placed book boxes in the bathroom along the wall,
The whales opened the door going about business, to reveal
An interest in Native American literature and leprechauns.

Question after question
Filling in bubbles, with kids not seeing bubbles, drawing doodles, my children now using
Pencils that broke or were turned around in hands that couldn't grasp them
Having never been taught how, I could not get through it
My rescuing a mermaid took more time, taking an eraser
Swimming to shore.
It all was so long, well over two hours- on two days.
Books flipping, pages turning, children unable to see page numbers or know numbers.

My favorite mentor, because
every teacher no matter how experienced needs a coach
said to me, as I swam over to her at recess,
"Well if they do poorly, and they don't have a clue what's happening,
it'll just allow us to show progress when they makes us do it again."
And she smiled. At her humor.

All I could think was
"Oh my God we have to do this again."
This really was not like the testing we were already doing.
Calling a child to recite colors, numbers, letters, to write their name,
To try to read a small book, to do hundreds of tasks related
to what we were teaching.
This was such a big booklet.
With fill in bubbles, fat number two pencils-
The sea otters chewed them really like beavers
And the one test booklet floated rather nicely in the sink
For fair William.

This was how I first
Came face to face with how
Accountable we now were going to get,
Watching the whales on a test day while
My small ship started sinking.



Dibels

My school is late to this party,
we can thank the literacy coach that "got trained" and into it- well after everyone else is questioning this test for children like we have,
Here we are.
She just got Nationally Certified,
So the one minute races
To beat the clock began
We DORF, sift and measure
In this recipe for success in a failing school
No excuses.

My first graders fixated, with this coach
on reading nonsense words quickly
Very quickly.
These are entirely without long vowels
Many violating the patterns we know such as the lovely "pis"
For the second language learner so early in the introduction of English
This test is a particular disadvantage.
We do know that!
The child may well sound out "get"
But make no connection to that word.
Now they could stay with nonsense, so difficult for those struggling the most.

Daily practice for months took over reading groups
as lup, zat, pif, dut
Became what once was time for SSR,
teacher Read Alouds, story reading practice, journals
We dove headlong
Some students were so entrenched they could not then
accept silent e and long vowels.
When I tried to introduce them.

They then were graduated from "at risk" groups
generated by the test, alone, as if it knew best
That placed students with no letter sounds with a reader at second or third grade level
together as equal
From scores
Going now
To practice reading paragraphs
In one minute.
Stop and summarize even if you did not read yet enough here to understand any meaning
Fast. You must go fast
Fluency.

This they took on as in all things
With serious, sincere, studious first grade effort.
Some growing confident, others perceiving themselves as lesser readers
Developing skilled diversions, aversion, creeping towards shame
Now having lower scores to "prove it"
Felt this as "less" with much now "identified"
"to be addressed"
A coach so pleased that this sorting was so well done.

Where once we were reading the daily news, performing and memorizing pattern books
Like Madeline, reading our Rosemary Wells, Eric Carles, Tomie De Paolas
Summarizing Ramona the Brave.
Ah, this was so specific.

Yes, I did work to help them
Succeed on the Dibel's, I was ordered to give it.
Because no child can stomach this feeling we introduced so starkly
Of their failure.
But I do know how to work through these early days in literacy
Differently.
and well.

Yes, we're late to the party,
But do we ever sit down and talk about
Which invitations we are accepting and why?
Or what we might well expect to see in students that must
Approach reading a little differently
Because it is a second language?

No. Not in a mandated reality, we don't.




Walking Man
Jesse Turner

Walking Man

A momma follows your footsteps
Sitting on your shoulder
Like the proverbial bluebird of happiness
Aware of your courage
To stand, walk, care for how
We educate our children in public schools

Walking man

Your daughter, more precious to you than life,
Looks to see her father
Place a silly hat upon a head,
Reaching out in a Sear's suit
To all the young readers
That look to our public schools for the best that we can be

Walking man

Those that saw your steps, heard your refrains,
Listened
To you offering the wisdom in this gift of sight
Seeing our children-
For that we will walk along side you awhile
Sharing the march with the walking man.









Talking "FOR"

Being united behind an angry woman
With her broom, determined to sweep away the "bad teachers"
Out to the curb- not to say it is acceptable to allow poor methodology or praxis-
It just is the wrong message
Or the wrong agenda

The wrong symbol

We can find teachers
Shining examples of leaders,
Speak to their realities
Learn from them-
It isn't hard
But the change in emphasis means everything.

The symbol

Let us call forward exemplars of those that lead peers, students, demonstrating their abilities not JUST in sets of scores but in their producing projects, plays, poems, papers, books, articles, research, reflection, models, quizzes, portfolios, exams, files, dioramas, scrolls, artworks, choirs, debates, math nights, festivals, murals, teams, mock trials, competitions, missions, read a thons, libraries, and so much more.

Let's look to them-
our public education heroes
Centering on what they teach us
Allowing them to mentor us
With something other
than a stick.




Entitled

Yes. I do believe
Every child is
Actually entitled
To the best possible
Free public education
America can give them.
One that grants them
The opportunity to realize
Their potentials through
Great leadership, teaching,
Technology, literature,
Science, Math, Art, SSR

Yep.
The works.
The full entitlement.

I see it as a
Star shooting across
A western sky at the dawn
Of a new age
Where the challenges
They face, that we have left to them,
Largely in our folly,
Are met by their light

We must give them that.




What Can I say About Tests

Teachers need to know what your students know
Have they got their letter sounds, did you instruct well enough
Can they grasp the concepts, content, what needs re-teaching
Where do they need support? And it is as varied as every child.
You must figure this out,
Use the data to inform next steps, and even see yourself
Your teaching, school, students realistically against another.

Where I fail to understand tests is what I have witnessed
First graders tested every three basal stories- choices of what they read dependent
On easy prefabricated purchased test formats- for three to five hours in tests.
A fifth of the reading instructional time spent in the assessment
Of the reading program. Entire Fridays, mandated, day long testing sessions.
I fail to understand using data to condemn the teacher, one without the ability to select the content/curriculum, who cannot choose their students, done over supporting her efforts with programatic supports. I fail to get a test as a curriculum.

Which is what we have packaged and sold ourselves.






Child

seed
love
mother
father
child
birth
bond
care
love
hold
ouch
change
dress
trust
watch
speak
grow
school
numbers
letters
sounds
words
recess
tests
fears
teacher
report
reassure
label
sort
group
read
write
win
lose
self
memory
survive
thrive
become
test
bubble
please
rebel
debate
play
finish
graduate
dream
adult



America's Got Talent

He washes cars in a tiny West Virginia town
Which is not who he is, but a part of him
Then strolls across a Hollywood stage singing Sinatra
Dreds pulled back, tuxedo on
A foot in the ramps-his roots,
Reaching for his sun.
I happened to see him on America's Got Talent

Public teachers know these children
In hollers and urban dead ends
Dreaming of a day they can
Step from Logan County into a spot light,
We have so much talent
To water, cultivate, support and search out
Because it surely is time for their voices to rise.



Paul

A long long time ago, over fifteen years, my class contained an entrepreneurial
11 year old who liked to question, argue, debate, and generally engage me in
proving to him that I had something worthwhile to offer
When we created our model economy, in the form of a town, Paul pretty soon
bought the bank, because he won a lottery, demanded a stock market, sold and purchased
the entertainment, and even allowed a welfare state. When we needed a criminal justice system in this 6th grade he tried a case as our first District Attorney. "This one," I thought, may well kill me. He brought to court several three inch legal volumes and dressed in a suit.
He actually hated the art we did-my real forte. Balked on making Buckminster Fuller models,
moaned when I assigned contour drawing or taught Pysanky, and really, excelled everyday. Nothing I did then would be "tolerated" now. Nothing. We journaled it all. We also wrote journals as characters from books. I almost lost my job then. He said I used too much "direct instruction." He did lose his job. What I did never fit the District "ideal".
Paul however absorbed every lesson, took it all as play, and went to the edge. I see him in my mind's eye.

He sent me a note a few years ago. Thanking me for being one of two teachers that inspired him. Thanked me for the creative contribution to his life. He'd graduated UCSB and Stanford too, I think-in several areas. He's an artist. And yes, I do tend to make artists. But I had not expected this. I fell into the blue sky we teachers sometimes feel envelope us once in a great while. He is a photographer with these major clients in a global world in LA. His website is so slick I find myself uncomfortable looking at it-is this possible "Do you remember me?" We keep in touch, a bit, as I see him devour his world. Someone that taught me so much, that I taught in our public school- once upon a time.

Poetry On Sylvia's Cal Tech Graduation-June 11, 2011

"Starting a Set Of Poems
To My Daughter"


Hazy from sleep and a cold in my head
I hear your grandmother
Shouting into our phone
"Call back, call back"
And then I'm frozen and her
Narrative continues
"She's not here yet
And I don't know what
You are saying.
She's graduated, call back."
She's the deaf one but
She considerately shouted as if
They were as well.

And I can't help.
So I figure that someone
"Out of area" on the look-up
Piqued her interest
And she got on the call
Then into my dreams a bit
Before I came to
To start a set of poetry.
On Cal Tech's 2011 Commencement.





Something Your Sister Said While We Were Waiting

There is a woman at work
Well, in fact she worked for your father,
Vacant, thin, surviving
A mother and a teacher
I remember once asking her
If she ever experienced extreme anxiety
Which made her say yes thoughtfully and then go.
A really, really nice person
Seeming to exist without conflict
She retired, took up painting
Just spent a year in Italy
Making art,
Sophia told me

This made me both a little envious
And aware that things really do change
Dreams percolate, stuff brews,
Despite appearances to the contrary.
We do, in our life, harbor inner artists.
What will call you Sylvia one day?
To stop the this and move to the that?
I don't know,
But it amuses me today waiting your entrance
To think about it.





I Bought A Skirt And Went as A Hippie

Way back in '61
Stardust permeated everyone
Feynman lectured
The zen of the motorcycle
In 2000 and 11
Folks held up iphones
Arms laden with designer bags
Caught digital stars


So here you are then
My daughter, who I knew with a third eye
Raised by two artists
In the place that scientific dreamers built
Getting your BS in Science

It used to be their "boys only" dreamin' club
Fun, fun, fun
But in your year 33% of you
Had more feminine charms
Arriving on your scores and whatever they use to divine these things

Someone on the phone
Four years ago told me she was off
"To the Industrial Military Complex"
After that I stopped being able to speak to them
It was such a robbery of my hopes, I awoke.

I'd given you a set of those early lectures
when you were in the 7th grade
It had not fully come to me
That they had come to that
Propping up and designing missile systems over starpaths.

Do you remember the strange kid
Chanting a repetitive I don't know, staring blankly,
When we were walking in the hallway
While in the next room
They were constructing a hot tub

We were visiting with you on a rainy, dreary day
After you were accepted
Going to look at the Hogwart's school
With the Guernica mural
That you chose-CalTech you said was your dream.

Today to see you on life's way
I wore a batik shirt
Thought about times lived in wax resist
And all your effort
What we've learned from moonbeams.





My Sylvia

I caught a glimpse
A smile in her
Processional
The recognition of
My daughter
Where we were
Like a compass orienting
her in this latest
Performance
Somehow it marked the
day.


In life
we are oriented
by the love of others
Their recognition
of us, expectation,
the rapid moment of our
existence in which for
it seems just a second
we see the potentials,
the accomplishments
and delight.
One to
another.





Diploma


Degree
Indicates
Professional
Luminescence
Of
Maturing
Adult










Commencement Speaker
Ahmed H. Zewail


An Egyptian chemist that didn't win a Pulitzer
But did win a Nobel Prize gave the address
To the students. What I heard in the
Words was that 80% of the world can't hope
Could not, would not, ever, walk in their shoes
And know just the opportunity to go make
A fairer, better world. This is something
That maybe was kept secret over the
Last four years, at least my daughter said
That to me once. My mind admittedly
Wandered to how I was in the 80%.
I'm teaching trying to send them off to real dreams,
Reaching toward this elite, just hoping for a few to change this world,
And certainly thinking of the children in poverty
I teach, 100% not here today, with most having
Parents not knowing school.
He spoke of the obligation to build
a better world. He spoke of Egypt and
What he saw in their peaceful revolution.
He spoke of democracy and poverty.
Quoting Jefferson and Martin Luther King Jr.
This is a time when people in the
World aspire towards freedom through
education and he asked graduates to
engage scientifically in building a
World to solve problems that keep
us divided, unfair, ignorant and he
Did this saying he felt a personal optimism.
A hope, a way to turn technological
and scientific discoveries into bridges
of new possibility.

It falls on those Cal Tech
Kids to carry that into meaning
From June 10, 2011
We wish them well.






Carousel

At three
She bravely sat
On a white horse
They took a snapshot
Transferred it to a T-shirt
And onto two cups
We picked them up later that day.

damn Joni Mitchell
for steeling away
that carousel
folding it into such poetic
melodic genius
leaving me
to blabber

Her dad kept that shirt
Through five moves
When it seemed
Everything was lost
To storage

damn Joni Mitchell
for steeling away
that carousel
folding it into such poetic
melodic genius
leaving me
to blabber

He wore her
When life took her
To CalTech,
After two high schools
a valedictorian
telling us to
be autodidacts

damn Joni Mitchell
for steeling away
that carousel
folding it into such poetic
melodic genius
leaving me
to blabber

He unpacked her few boxes
We left her in
a dormroom,
We were so silly
it felt like abandonment to us.
But we did it for her.
Her dreams

damn Joni Mitchell
for steeling away
that carousel
folding it into such poetic
melodic genius
leaving me
to blabber

He put that shirt back on again
For her day
Of graduating
A proud father
Saying things are ok
I'll always love you.

damn Joni Mitchell
for steeling away
that carousel
folding it into such poetic
melodic genius
leaving me
to blabber






Re-cycled Rumplestiltskin


Your gown was made
From plastic bottles
Rumpelstiltskin spun into
Fabric just to celebrate
The sciences of Cal Tech
And the death of myth.
He used a mountain of water bottles
(That maybe cause breast cancer
Over time, which is
Why you'll want to wear
The gown sparingly)
Plus who knew what he could do
With water resistance.
Rumple longs for the old
Alchemical days when
Gold was enough
It appears Cal Tech wanted
a New Age Image.

So our kids will have to spin their
Own fortunes, pay for this schooling
Clothe the rich
And ask not what Rumple
Can spin for them, but what corporate
Industry can be built
On recycling water bottles into
Ball gowns.








Snap Crackle Pop


Behind me
Sat a thirteen year old
"Kid with a Plastic Cup"
He cracked it
All through
My daughter's graduation
Through the Processional
The silent anticipation
(they had no prayers)
Through the speaker
Through the address
Through the hundreds of names
Through his own sister's name

I wanted after awhile
To recycle
the cup
Into a new gown
But I was specifically
Told to
"Be nice."
Which I certainly was.

I was also told he must
"have a condition."
His mom leaned in
To tell him
(I was hoping it was cup stuff)
that she
was looking forward to
His graduation.

I think
His condition
Must be
worthy of my saving cups
For his
Big day.

Visiting LACMA, in Poems 2011 (in progress)

In this set of pictures are poems.
This set will take me awhile to write, and I'm adding daily, bear with me and scroll.



y
m

Subsistence
by Sylvia Puglisi

Four million four thousand

Three hundred twenty-four

Corn flakes. In neat boxes

Is enough to survive on for

The average expected life.

And, if you run out, due to

Proclivity for carelessness

Or unexpected emergency

Or plague of cereal locusts

You can always eat the box.

The Egg, the Girl, Mozart and a Tiny Guard

World-Champion Bullshitter
by Sylvia Puglisi

This next piece addresses

the fundamental impossibility of art.

The blank wooden canvas represents art

into which the frustrated artist cannot cram the themes he desires to address

the personal and the political.

Frustrated, he instead takes a step back

and photographs this abortion of his artistic process

in turn framing and presenting that photograph to the viewer as art.

This abandonment of his artistic goal

in turn achieves that very goal

and creates the original piece of art that he was unable to create.

Thus his inability becomes his inspiration

and the paradox of art

draws the viewer further into the empty frame.

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The Immigrant Woman


She worked in a seed factory
In Philadelphia when she was
Just twelve years old
A city of bricks, mortar, history
And industrial explosion
Her job was to put the tiny bits of life
A dozen to a packet for seed catalogs
Her wages kept her family in a tenement.

She bought a tiny copper bracelet
From a first paycheck for twelve cents
It is in my jewelry box drawer
The only legacy left to remind me
Of her, her needs, desires, decoration
Passed from mother to daughters
Until it fades out for my girls
Only a shadow now


Her womanhood would bloom
Blossoming into people that gave me life
I teach school now to other immigrant children
Alive with hope and dreams
My great grandmother had no
School room days past the fourth grade
Destined instead to factories,
Building the future
With her beautiful tears.








Twentieth Century City of Angels


Overlooking the age
This erect angel
Stands gazing down at
Those climbing
Those descending
Staring and sitting
Caught in repoussoir
She's wrapped, bronzed in a nude's
chiffon slip
A female fertility goddess
In a Kazan film
Stella and her sister
Breeding life in LA
Humanity climbing Bunker Hill
For a shot at the view.





The Kentuckian

"take life in big bites, son"
Lil Eli looked to Big Eli
Set down on canvas by Thomas Hart Benton
Then one day onto a whiskey label
Burt Lancaster conjured some
Hollywood promotion
For his The Kentuckian
Starrin' America's own heartland
Father and son headed for a Promise Land
Milk and honey in Texas
Blowing Gabriel's horn
There was teacher Susie, servant Hannah
Elias Wakefield, his boy
Sam Bodine's bullwhip
Ole Walter Matthieu grimacing in a western
All landin' in LACMA
Publicly not seen since commissioned
(except on the booze)
Pulsing with movement
This man stares toward
A future in the great American West
Our artist's vision projected on their screens.







Bubbles

Circles with infinite points of symmetry
Bubbly soapy instant points of happiness
Floating form follows function
Pop, it is no more
Riding the iridescent wave
On a celestial plane








The Hour Glass


Life is where time is kept
In an hour glass
Precarious sand runs
While
Tottering on a
Vibrating universe










Fire Escape


Crawl out of this building
Escaping the reality
A hand runs on cool metal rails
The past recedes
Corporeal dissolves

Raise fire alarms
Screaming danger signs
Freed in the panic
The white starkness
Turned to glare.











Zantedeschia

Your inflorescence
Bring forth the spathe
A spadix juts




fertility goddess

calla lily
carried to market
displaying his wares
she weighs
he waits







The real thing


This is Mrs. somebody or the other
She can easily afford to hire
Diego one figures and she sits to
Have her portrait done
Because she's the real thing,
Her fur can buy and sell him.
Those pearls exquisite reminders
Of aquiline elegance
No peasant, she inherited,
Cocking a look
At her artist in repose,
The reflection of her beauty
Is in his strokes,
He strips away her patronage.






Impression Doomsday

Steak knives
Steel balls
Flying techno
Christmas tornado








No Loose Ends


One arm bandits
Pineapple coladas
Apple cores
Just a collection of unrelated items
Gets assembled in the mind,
What do we draw from this?
Metaphorical connection.







Pictograph

There was a house
A man, his food
Built on the foundation
Of all his ancestors
He spoke, he wrote.
Beliefs rose
Under one roof
They watched
Centuries.









What was Broken
What was Not Broken

What was broken?
This back, yet I hold my head aloft.

What was not broken?
The spirit, so I send my soul on high.

What was broken?
The rib, this Diego was once my Adam.

What was not broken?
Just bones shattered, I am whole in my father's tribe.

What was broken?
This pelvis held unborn and it was crushed.

What was not broken?
The birth of my creative vision remained intact.

What was broken?
My foot I step upon the earth, absorbed the accident.

What was not broken?
The blue hearth, my earthly home, alive in my time and place.

What was broken
in the woman,

Was not broken
in the artist.







Pain's Pageant

Coconut Khalo olive skin
Lemon lime Diego squash belly pumpkin
Pomegranates tequilas infant heartbreaks
Tears mango sienna bloodworm






virgen de guadalupe

Mother of Mexico
Sweet vision of Juan
"These roses I bring you Bishop"
So they may transform us
Turn our blood
To the rose petals of our days
Enfold us in her visions
That we may see her running
In the veins of our children.








at your own risk

if you want you can walk over a pile of gravel in the la art museum
at your own risk
you can not get a big handful
and throw it at the other patrons or paintings
or at a donor clearly because you can read that
on the sign conveniently located right there
so you know whats allowed
in this artland of gravel walkers
singlefile
holding hands
up and over you go
(their lawyers commissioned the sign)





call pensis.is u
fseuo.gdsuop
it.s you birtda go marc
noeebudy knows..
flat oout soewesoome
you for.T
eyes Weslfchfydh tt.y
ed.jdd/.itrs.gdt

jfduy.gydutl..
grilla s.a





They may not have written "Art id ded"

If you left a pile of glass letters
on a platform in a museum
would you expect someone to write "eat me?"
Or feel afraid to interact and touch one piece
to spell out some message
There was a family fumbling through
From the hood
with kids that were climbing over the elevator
like a bizarre reenactment of a Gene Kelly movie
sideways at the ceiling
As doors opened
invading the art rooms
laughing, crawling, tossing, loud
They touched the letters, so hard it sounded like
Lots broke.










Flayed Alive

We don't need in this modern world medieval torture
The mind is wired to explore those notions
Without an actual rack, we go virtual
Modern neuroscience can tell us what synaptic network is pulsing
With their authority of science
Sans the scalpel,we pathologize life in nightmarish depths
Fear of acceptance, magical thinking, splayed across the psyche
The greatest of these tortuous mechanisms embedded in the possibility of poverty
The reality of cruelty on display to shock one into awareness
Then there is anonymity, weight gain, the disregard of the other beings
As you are hoisted on the committees tenterhooks
And found wanting, going to die, commented upon, spammed
Beaten alive perhaps for your woman's figure, life giver be damned here,
Beaten for desires, inadequacies, cellulite, aging, sagging
Hung by the skin that lacked the proper Max factor finish, had a wrinkle, a surface
That bespoke only what you were to others, a shell.
Womanhood today has found a way to art's canvas as the modern scream
I stood, I was ugly in their eyes, I am.











Gasping for Air

She might be thinking
that the smell from this elaborate wooden
particle board display
needs venting fans

She might be thinking
that the native art
on display would not have understood
press board

Walking there trying to see through display glass
it reflected your own image at you obscuring every piece
It seemed more of the same timeless stupid carelessness
a stage set

Built in the city that gave you the western
The horses rounded up and the whooping
calls as the slaughters began
blazing on the screen, now this mess

A giant couple rooms caged pieces of simple life
Vessels to eat, utensils,
Elegant baskets
papoose holders, the things that lived and breathed once

Out away from this museum of caged natives
On plains, in villages, a native people with wisdom
That foretold times
So indifferent as to asphyxiate those looking here, choking on meanings




Entropy

I was used to the museums back east
With collections that were so magnificent
Rooms in The Carnegie, East Wings, New York
So Los Angeles was different
It was pretty ratty public art space
Had a few expensive things
No sign of volunteers and involvement with community
Nothing that said let's talk with the children
Just a courtship with celebrity
Guards from the hoods
Something very different happen here
Didn't seem to invest in its art as a city
And we sat outside
On this courtyard to rest there, bad chairs
That didn't want you to sit down,
I recall a recorder player
For the longest time in the eighties
That stood along the one wall playing
Renaissance stuff, threw nickles in his backpack.
Now they've got a corporate monster
A house of glass and steel
Falling in permanent things
amateur hour
Arranged with paintings blocked by furniture
A room to Indians with particle board shapes
drenching you in formaldehyde fumes
The same plaza sits undisturbed
Orienting me again to my times now in a sadder iteration
And there's a new happening courtyard built
Moved over to smooze those contributors
That must not walk over two buildings to see
Things are still really falling in.
Like a lot of the city.
One that bleeds the new.














Disinclined

"Why would this get here
It's a bale of hay?"
She quipped as we
strolled down
The Japanese pavilion
Stopping to see some roosters
Stylistically scratching
I never saw the hay bale, truthfully.
The roosters seemed
Playfully pecking the linen
That might have a moth or two
Such were the fallen times
Of LA's art erosion
Worn carpets, bonsai with no keeper
Just a hacking mess
The guard said,
"I saw you folks before."
To wave off ticket showing.
He told us, "You'll want to go to the top floor on three
then walk your way down."
Saving me the climb.
A kindness
I had forgotten this.
In spaces declined
I started to tell her
How once, twenty five years before
I found it so lovely
Balanced, meaningful.
How
I never could get her father to go in this part again.
Not once in the next twenty years.
But it seemed
My story
not hers.





Screens

Folded
You approach
From any angle
Much is hidden
The plane of existence
Bent
Images
Dance meaning
In time and space
Glimpses
Hint
At secrets
Beyond.














Photo Reality

There was not a single picture in the museum
Of the art that I loved once, which had sought to just be a photograph
Nothing photo real there, no Close, no Perlman, no Fish.
Coming out of the exhibits, driving home in a cramped car
Everything was a painting to me then looking out, there caught in the evening golden light
I lost the dimension of the living
It just flattened into what had no boundary or frame, two dimensional image
It was that missing photo reality work, I understood that empty language speaking
Better than what was being cloistered
IN a modern art space in LA.

There in the art world this group was being shuttled in for 'the auction' party,
People that we mortals couldn't disturb, that was not the art there on the 101 highway
As young fashionably dressed girls teetered on heels
With walkie talkies
To light candles on a walkway , cradled in glass jars, men holding trays in white coats
The LA patrons were feted, (they know who they are),
We held the door for one
Ancient in her wool.
After walking through a building Broad built, we were going home.
What wasn't purchased, or placed in the new museum,
Outside of this place
Actually then held the wonder of the artistic expanse of my mind.











The End

Hanging over the city
Shone a paper thin cellophane moon
This sci--fi looking set in the city of make believers
It appeared over Korea town
As the traffic rushed through a narrow shoulder-less labyrinth
Concrete roads rushing me back to a gated community
In a hollow echo on the freeways I moved
Couldn't find a way to play our game of hide and seek
To get the image captured of how it looked
Or how it felt, for your eyes to silently share the moon with me.