Birdwatching (Sketch)

"La Puente" (Sketch in ballpoint and colored pencil)

"Mar de Miel" (Ballpoint and colored pencil)

Paper Garden (Sketch in ballpoint)

Cultural Center, Doha (Sketch in watercolor)

Cubist Attempt (Sketch)

Corner Man (Poem)

Many said he sat upon his corner,
canvas on a spindly easel,
and painted smile after smile after smile.
Upon filling the canvas,
he would paint it over black, and continue painting smiles.
No one who passed him ever left without happiness on their face.
The corner where he sat stared at a small park,
and millions passed each day.

Then one day, a building rose up scattered,
high, looming and gray.
The park disappeared,
along with the smiles on the man's canvas.
Gloom settled in like nighttime on a bird's nest.
The canvas remained white,
and covered in straight-mouthed faces.

The ink dried, and slowly people forgot where the man sat.
Slowly, people forgot how to smile,
and eventually only splinters of a broken frame lay scattered on the curb.

Canary Streets (Sketch)

First Day of My Life (Sketch)

Crumbling (Sketch)

Sword Hilt (Sketch)

Going Home

He smelled the wet canvas, fresh,
recently finished after a lifetime of work.
He gazed at the picture and words,
swirling in a maelstrom of activity,
blending, blurring speaking clearly from a distance,
shouting in his ear.
The painting stood, head height,
two arms wide,
a cacauphony of color no one could understand.
His left hand held the last brush,
his right locked firmly on the grainy wood behind.

It was purposeful then,
when he tipped a pint of thinner over the top,
and watched it streak muddiness down the length,
like a rejected lover walking down a midnight lit street.

It was purposeful then,
when he punched a hole in the corner,
and cracked the frames' spine over his knee,
a lifetime of work, a masterpiece
smeared on the dark hue of his denim.

His feeling of failure,
at destroying the picture
at letting down the craft,
knew no bounds.

The joyous laughter of the paints,
colors, brushes calling him back,
calling him for another go,
were subdued now,
watching sadly as he slumped down the wall,
a rolled clump of canvas clenched furiously in his fist.

Spectrum of Words (Poem)

The place before me, windy with an angled sunset,
bright and hard light-streaks like glittering gems,
curled over a mountain broken into red and brown facets.

The flower waved and swayed,
smiling at a marine-emerald day,
alone and larger than the sky, dancing a fuchsia vision

I saw it in a valley where thoughts took shape,
jutting straight from a sea of green,
cutting deep where horizon met land,
a valley where thoughts danced and disappeared.

It took only moments to descend into its beauty,
where a spectrum of words wrapped themselves into stories around me.

Geometric (Sharpie Sketch)

An Eddy of Scorn (poem)

A girl, stranger to frienship,
sits still next to a small bend in a river,
surrounded by a dusty-brown olive orchard,
their fruit staining the air with a tang.

A girl, stranger to the sky,
sits still remembering everything she has lost,
surrounded by a small cake-layer of mud,
seeping into her ziz-zag patterned dress.

A girl, friend to a mirrored world,
peers down into a silver eddy,
collecting and reversing its flow,
whispering, rippling and crinkling its liquid laughter.

A river, ceaseless,
stares back at her,
and flashes images of a silvery world,
a world which lures her, and shows her lost memories.

An uneven sunset,
stealing silver and scorn from the river,
changes the pictures she stares at,
and blocks her slow fall into a torn imagination.

The Light in the End (Poem)

His scraped knees and gangly legs hung over the edge,
heels knocking against chipped stone,
laces double-tied in two careful loops.

The hole spanned two meters,
deep as an endless eye's pupil,
no iris, no lashes, no brows,
cruelly confident where the boy had none.

In his hands he held a ball of light,
shimmering, swimming, sifting illumination from dark,
swirling in the reflections of his deadened eyes,
this ball hung suspended between palms.

At moments it weighed as worlds would,
at others feathers and hope in limbo,
and still others it would spin confusing contours,
dragging the boy's glance downwards.

Within lay memories and musings,
insults and inebriations,
failures and the strands of gossamer separating them from happiness,
strands thrumming in the silence.

It murmured nervously as the boy's face shifted towards nothing,
arms outstretched,
extending the slim arc of bouncing light closer to the middle,
throwing his face into inkier depths.

Hopes never make a sound as they fall,
and the boy cocked his head to the side,
as the orb slipped its hold
and quickly dragged its light down into the darkness,
clicking the shutter shut in his mind.

Elephant Friend, Thailand (Photo)

No Greater Freedom (Sketch)

The Language of Trees (Part III; Poem)

"Where are you!?" I screamed into the dust,
a vortex of noise slamming and hissing its answer,
while I scrabbled on all fours, cutting palm and feet.
I reached for her hand, frantically tried to gain balance,
and sobbed into a sandstorm.

Crawling, I searched for her tent, any tent,
where moments before, within, I had been sheltered, comfortable,
warm and peaceful.
Sand stuck to my eyelashes, covered my teeth in a crunchy film,
and ran in muddy rivers down my cheeks where tears fell.

I was lost in a malevolent maelstrom,
wondering if this was the complicated road she had spoken of,
wondering how I was supposed to do anything
when the marketplace I had seen only moments before
had disappeared behind a curtain of grit.

I continued shuffling,
while the smirking wind kept up its howling,
holding my soothsayer forever out of my grasp,
until from one moment to the next,
I bumped into what felt like someone's leg.

"Yes, yes! I understand now," I cried,
"some of the most difficult roads are those you cannot see,
they leave you blind to joy,
and cast whip-tails and shadows of questions wherever you may walk.
I understand, I understand..." I croaked, half-choked but not letting go.

Within a few heartbeats,
the wind scattered and swept itself away,
while I slowly raised myself to my knees,
painfully pushing off the ground with scratched hands.
My eyes turned slowly skywards, seeking,
and I heard a deep rumble from beneath the tree,
almost as if the Earth were chuckling.
I bowed my head quietly,
stooped my back, and unwillingly,
loosened my arms off the tree and let them fall to my side.

The Bellowing Wind ("Faceted Life" Sequel; Poem)

I stooped and bent myself in half,
in order to re-enter the tent
where she still sat, sublime silence drifting towards me.
I felt the outside din folding in upon itself,
like shy violin chirps grown suddenly quiet.

"Here," the old lady beckoned with a finger,
bent like leather left too long in the sun.
I stepped carefully over mounds of carpets,
worn thin by feet seeking other stories,
threadbare from ceaseless pounding and cleaning, and took a seat.

"It is simple, as I said," she told me,
"but you must walk down complicated roads first,
and learn how to talk to trees."
"Wait, talk to trees?" I questioned, curious,
even as the humming wind outside grew into an agitated note.

"Certainly, my strange interloper,
how else will you learn how to create?" the old lady croaked,
as she let the words bonce around the tent,
seeking solace and solitude away from the growing gale.
Her eyes still sought mine hungrily, beneath her weathered face.

Glancing nervously upwards,
I attempted to wrestle meaning from her statement,
as waves of tent canvas fought each other for freedom
from their earthly spikes,
and the kerosene lamp spluttered, afraid of the coming darkness.

"I'm afraid of you," I intoned evenly, carefully.
"I'm terrified of walking out there, seeing what I must do,
and knowing you will not be here when I return."

"Perhaps when you know the language of trees,
and when you have sat quietly enough with your cold heart,
will you know where to find me," she said,
as the tent tore free with a thump,
and spun me into the darkness.

Sky Garden (A Sketch)

Beneath the Faceted Life (Poem)

I was not there,
but I will record what she told me,
the simple story this old lady whispered to me in a raspy voice,
while passing through a dusty marketplace
on her way to see an old friend.

Her face, wrinkled like cracked seashells,
eyes like garnet stone,
and red like a bull's slow blood in a Spanish plaza,
hooked me into her story,
and wouldn't let me go.

Life according to her is simple,
it can be told in small sentences,
tiny powerful phrases,
snippets beneath what others face,
their complex stories unraveling like stone ribbons.

She told me unhappiness is ambitious,
that a twisted circle can break where it should be joined,
that I must step behind the creative curtain,
where titles without authors are lost,
and a poet scrambles and skitters under a mountain's carapace.

I responded like a weak gust of wind,
"This is not as simple as you state," crone.
"I cannot build simple stories
beneath this faceted life.
Every angle glints and winks a different way.
Every twist and turn leads to new stories.
Every cut and polishing changes the plot,
like a shoal of shimmering fish."

She sat hushed for a moment,
earth brown shawls, tattered coat blending in with the dust,
our tent humming in the wind.
She stared at me with eyes far less than sated,
licking lips colored by the flickering shadow cast by our kerosene lamp.

I had walked five paces before she called me back.

(To be continued...)

And This Blue Marble Shifts (Poem)

She says a spirit watches over her while she sleeps in bed.
She says when her eyes open,
and her heart awakens,
that this spirit holds something in each hand.

In one hand rests a kiln where soft songs of fire shape the contours of a lie,
and in the other other a mask of a young girl's smile,
surfeited with sugar and sunshine.

She says the evening before,
a fuchsia sky smeared the horizon with a lighter hue,
where clouds obscured far more than the sky.
She whispers that the spirit lives just beyond the noise line,
like crossing a raucous road into a prairie of crickets and whispering wheat.

She says this spirit resides in the marshes of madness,
in the mire of peoples' minds,
and will never step foot amongst the living.

Yet there it stands, two hands held up in question,
silent in her room
and this blue marble of a world shifts slightly towards the unknown.

A Discordant Note (Poem)

She stood ankle-deep in mud and silt,
at the edge of a slippery stream sailing by,
stock-still and a little bit afraid,
as if she were tied to the tracks of a train,
and didn't know if she would escape in time.

Memories eddied around her,
memories like sticky juice on a hot summer day,
back when she was young in her age of innocence.

She debated whether or not to invite fate to its normal meal,
knowing that some gifts, once neglected,
can never be reclaimed.

Her mind was a sky the color of sooty wind,
and the rooms inside her head were flung wide open,
inviting in the spring-side sunshine,
inviting in that discordant note in a familiar song,
one she could not quite place,
one she could not quite understand,
one that brought her inevitably closer to the middle of that swirling stream.

Inkpoem

Rage can be a bitter plum, spilled inkwell, or empty words. -b.c.d.

The Dizzy Kid (Poem)

He sat alone,
around him a cacophony of noise muffled,
the carousel of water surrounding, spinning, rising, falling,
the sky pebbled and the color of pigeons.

Waves thumped against his inner tube,
lifting one side gently,
tumbling it down roughly the next moment,
sucked into the onslaught of the next wave.
In circles he rolled and rolled,
like when you start chewing a tasty piece of gum.
Then, as if losing interest in taste,
the wave pool would quiet for a moment,
and the young boy would stare and twist his head,
here and there,
this way, that way,
wondering what would wander his way.

Surrounding him,
swimmers on their backs, stomachs,
up and down like water-held pogo sticks.
Swimmers screaming, laughing, talking, smiling,
spluttering water swallowed by accident,
all anticipating the next waves to roll
forwards, sideways and from behind,
spinning tubes like dizzy tops,
bobbing, slipping, hopping
to a wave's rhythm and roll.

The kid spun himself lazily,
one arm back and forth,
staring at the sparkle shimmer coming off the water's surface,
composing poems in his head.
Poems about silence and movement,
poems about ink spilled into water, staining blue,
poems of strange men wandering deserts in search for secrets.
In thought, lost,
He did not hear the hum of machines starting,
nor the yelps of joy erupting from all around,
nor even feel the tube begin its exuberant rocking.
Instead he sat like a wedged V inside his tube,
and smiled at the sky, thinking out loud,
"No wave is the same shape,
no wave moves the same,
no wave tells the same story."

All hello's and no goodbye's (Poem)

Sun-burnt slinky shimmering,
Sand-glow on a flawless sunset,
she's walking towards me,
all hello's and no goodbye's.
My hand reaches around her hips,
sinuous curve in my palm,
and my breath runs a short fast race,
that it loses.
Underneath her tangerine sunset
I smell oceans and coal-black nights chastened by a trillion stars.

Bunk-Bed Thunderstorm (Poem)

It was four a.m.when the thunder of
equatorial rain began to pound
the aluminum siding of the church beside my building.
Eyes popped open,
brother sound asleep below my top-bunk fortress.
Irises shifting lightning fast,
from chocolate brown to hazel,
as slivers of light do to my eyes after midnight darkness.
Motionless...
a slow exhausted smile creeps across my face,
a veiled snapshot only childhood excitement can attain.
Snug and warm as freshly baked bread,
I
tune all my adolescent senses to
the nature surrounding my concrete city,
pouring its heart out in white ribbons,
and sound-slashes,
emptying its sky in howls that
shake our apartment's sliding living room windows...
And as I lay there,
cognizant of being sole spectator in this trophy display
of Caracas beauty,
the dark corners of my mind slowly crawl into sunshine.

Sentinels before the Haze (Watercolor)

Across the Pond: Cities in Silhouette

A Different Canvas (Poem)

Yellow light soaked the large room,
loft-like, spacious, comfortable,
wooden floor polished with time and bare feet.
Above, a roof etched in lines of steel and iron
laced its way through heavy timber beams,
ceaselessly watching, ceaselessly still.

An enormous divan dominated a corner,
while easels, paints, brushes, varnish, rags and dried splatter
littered the room like forgotten ideas.

The man stood there half-naked,
loose cotton pants the color of tired gray wrapped around him as if in afterthought.
He held a calligraphy brush in one hand, his left,
and a palette in the other,
half-tilted towards the floor, allowing the paints to begin their downward fall,
mixing themselves in a vivid riot.
His head tilted down and to the side,
watching carefully as she slid out of her clothes,
and rolled to one side with her top leg casting a shadow where shadows shouldn't be.
Hair cascaded down either side of her face,
hair the color of a sudden midnight,
having lost its color in the shadow of a growing dark.
Hey eyes, mischievous and smirking,
led him to approach the bed, and on knees, join her at her side.
His look traveled along her body, entirely smooth,
resting on the smeared paint covering her stomach and legs.

"Paint," she commanded,
even as his hands had already begun washing the previous drawing clear,
soon unfocused, then blurred and monochrome.
His face ignored her, focused entirely on the new painting,
new paint slick over smooth skin,
while her eyes gradually softened and lost their smug shade.
Then, gaining lust and longing,
reaching out for his face,
ever closer until he tumbled from the bed,
alone,
awake,
hands smeared in dark indigo,
listening to the fan's song far overhead.

Leaving the Stranger City (Poem)

Life inside seemed to shimmer and fade,
like koi fish in a pond,
flicking their tails, disappearing into murky weeds.
People vanished then reappeared,
smiling with sunshine,
then just as quickly flitting into frowns, twisted like broken thorns.
Stories began and ended with nothing and everything,
plots seemed stranded as the sand outside the city's walls.

"This is no place for a wanderer," the solitary man grumbled,
Kicking loose stones fallen from a looming cathedral,
a church forgotten in the shadows of the street,
windows and mortar broken like jagged teeth.

"I hear stories, see places and then they're gone,
nothing to put my finger on,
nothing to lean my head against,
ephemeral and permanent,
two worlds pitted against each other in silence and words."
"On the other hand," he murmured,
"this city is splendid for a split mind,
exit and entry both blurred,
city lines etched and erased,
soaring mountain hunched over in the background,
while a desert stands smooth sentinel in the front."

He shuffled and sprinted along,
Comfortable and fearful of not knowing what lay ahead,
what story might be erased,
which words might form on the sketch-board of his day,
or who might put their hand out,
and invite him in, just for a moment..."just for a moment."
After all,
no voice startles like the one you cannot hear.

Inside a Stranger City (Poem)

It came upon him suddenly,
a city as a a snake rearing up its hooded warning.
The glass quieted, stopped its crunching,
and the fiery sun's eyes went to slits.
Rough stone pocked with weeds tumbled up and up,
hatched and slashed from dust, grain and glass.
Domes rose wearily in half-circles,
peeling and breaking as old onions,
welcoming him warily.

"Now how did I get here?" He questioned himself,
one brow and suspicious eye lifted to the city's gate,
hanging  halfway on hinges,
his skin sand and sun-stained. 
"Did I sleep alone along the way? Did anyone guide me?
And where is that din of noise that crossed such a distance?"

With his hand resting and waiting on cracked wood,
he turned his head far sideways without moving his body,
squinting behind at what might have been or where he could have traveled,
and thought it odd that the trees he had loved had vanished.

Moments later, head bent forward,
the man with shadow-work written with the sun's drop took a step,
and pushed open with one hand the doors whispering a thousand stories.

Stranger City Travels (Poem)

He walked miles through shattered glass and grass,
iridescent and gecko green,
splotched and splattered in brown, it waved in tiny circles in a dusty breeze.
Trees scrubbed the sky with their needles,
roots turned and tripped over each other in their haste to greet him.
Sunshine stood still,
severing clouds,
sitting and smiling malevolently close to dusk's nervous arrival,
casting shadow fingers long and skinny up the mountain's spine.

He curiously eyed the darkness etching lines on his body,
and continued on.

The city appeared etched and blotched onto the horizon,
small, shaky lines making up its skyline,
apparently getting no closer the further he walked.
"But...this is impossible," he muttered,
stumbling over the next rise,
only to hear heady noises undulating with the hills,
rolling from an immeasurable distance.
 "What will I do If I can't get there...?" mumbling to himself,
slipping and sliding on lines of grass and glass,
listening to the sun chuckle with unshakable laughter. 

A Stranger City (Sketch in graphite)

Tiger Attempt (Sketch in graphite)

Prarie Fence (Sketch in graphite)

Foal (Sketch in graphite)

Sunflower (Sketch in graphite)

Springtime Sparrow (Sketch in graphite)

Slumbering City (Inktense watercolor and marker)

Valentine's Card in Marker (Freehand sketch)

Onions on a Golden City (Colored Pencil Sketch)

Rio de Janeiro (Ballpoint and Watercolor)

Crooked Fingers in the Sun (Sketch)

Light Thief (Ballpoint and watercolor sketch)

Beautiful Inferno (Ballpoint, graphite and watercolor sketch)