Naked Under a Cloud (Poem)

Slippery silouhette
naked in the sun,
she slips a cloud on over her skin,
and wears it with smiles.

She dances on curbs,
during dark gray days,
days trembling with tears from the sky.

She shimmies sideways
floating by cobbled streets.
She rises above steeples,
and takes flight with birds in the evening breeze.

Sunday Sunflower (Sketch)

Looks Can be Deceiving (Sketch)

A Slip of the Tongue (Sketch)

A Sunset Gone Stranger (Sketch)

Impressions of an Island (Sketch)

Pulsing Towards Sunshine (Sketch)

Octopus (sketch)

"Waterfight" (Sketch)

"A Night Falls" (Sketch)

Who pulls the chain that raises and lets down the sun? Who pulls the moon, or is someone throwing it around Earth on a huge lasso, drawing the tides in and out of their inexorable pattern? A town crier passes through the Earth's stage, shouting "The sun will fall! the sun will fall!" Who listens? Who heeds the ribbon of light dying on the horizon's edge, and whispers to his/her friend, "How long before the sun bleeds out? How long?"

 

"Tree of Life" (Sketch)

With every piece of life comes death. 

"Bottleneck" (Sketch)

Sunshine & Lizard-skin (Sketch)

Eaten from Within (Sketch)

Jellyfish Parachutes (Sketches)

And it was only in the darkest hour that I saw through three worlds, and felt the roots cling tighter into the soil. I glanced up and glimpsed a handover of dead leaves and worlds embroiled in their own anger. Jellyfish parachutes drifted quietly down while on another world a planet's rings confused ice chunks collided. Beside me, through a window of roots, I saw where these falling objects would soon lie, and shuddered to think at the windows of escape closing with each twisting and coiling ladder.

"Alien Take-Over"

"Hi Brennan" (A Eulogy to my Grandma)

"May I buy a vowel please?"

"Uh, well, yes, there's three of those!"

Ding, Ding, Ding!

I remember these sounds,

and your smile, eyes glittering with joy,

watching wheel of fortune on a high school night with me,

wondering how you always knew the answers

without looking at the T.V., knitting non-stop

needles singing and shimmying against each other.

I remember your Simmy and Sammy bed-time stories,

how they fed my imagination with imaginary worlds,

and how I could never recall the last few words of each night's story,

because the touch of your hand on my shoulder

was enough to lull me to peaceful sleep.

I remember the smell of your duppa,

the comedy of colors on everyone's Christmas sweaters,

the crackling of wrapping paper,

the kids' bug-eyed looks of anticipation...

Then a frigid train ride to Chicago Christmas tree awe,

and the sugar cookies I stole from your kitchen, warm and soft from the oven.

A smile instead of a frown, milk instead of a "no."

I know of your ceaseless love of God

and the sad joy you carried in your heart of Carl's passing.

Or the faith you had to keep your family safe during partition,

and the shake of your head when your two silly boys would sled down the hills of Murray.

I remember you pinching me when my dad preached,

(with a smile of course, that famous Davis smile)

and how a yummy lemon drop would fall into my palm

for every part of the service I could keep still through.

I remember your Bonneville SS,

and its fresh leather smell, terrible power and unquenchable speed.

"Do you need me to drive you anywhere today Gram?" (wink wink)

I remember the smell of your Park Circle hallways

how it felt like home to run to your door,

how it felt like home to see your smile spread ear to ear,

how I have never seen you unhappy,

how you have never for a moment stopped loving me,

your Peanut.

Go in peace grandma, and tell grandpa you're home.

I love you.

Iceberg Storm (Sketch)

Between ash-gray clouds and rain like a wet sheet of sadness are tiny puffs of clouds. Hooked to an angry iceberg, they sway, swish and slash across the sky in terrible fascination at the trap laid for them long before the dawn awoke and retreated hurriedly at the sight of the ashen horizon. I am fascinated to how one thing hooked to another allows no movement, freedom or exit. Yet they are together, perched halfway between the sky and ocean's floor, floating somnambulists to a sea's rhythm and rhyme.

The root of the vein (A dream)

It was stunningly clear to me. I had awakened within my dream as a man halfway buried in dark, damp, moss strewn soil. I could not feel my legs. I could not feel if I had toes, nor understand where our instinctual human urge to bend legs and sprint down a hard dirt-packed path had gone. My chest was bare, a single enormous muscle carved down the middle, ending in the dirt that started at my torso. I was breathing heavily, and tufts of grass came puffing out every time I wheezed or coughed with lungs filled with lichens. I was screaming but there was no sound. I looked down at my arms, heavily etched in sinuous muscle, and saw they were a dark caramel brown mixed with rock gray. Branches, twigs and vines began growing just around where my fingers should have been, and curved in lovely arcs out over the forest floor, twisting, growing and wrapping themselves around other trees. My entire hands were a tangled mess of vines, choking one another as they wrapped and wriggled towards a sunless freedom. I looked up at the canopy, still silently screaming, and shoved my "hands" deep into the earth in order to free myself. Instead of lurching upwards and out, I felt my hands quickly entrench themselves deeply within the mossy floor, and I began sinking quickly. It was then I felt the tree growing out of my head and I awoke.

A Zipper Moon (Sketches)

West Coast Blur & Whir (Sketch)

Mindwarp in Ballpoint

Rainbow minnows and piranha bites (A dream)

Setting: Friends, family and former class students at an outdoor seaside garden party...hours before I had been trapped in a building with laughter in the background - when I finally got out I was running down stairs and saw some former students of mine coked out on the stairs staring at me as if they knew they were lost but couldn't ask for help - sprinted past them and ran out to the garden party where everyone wandered around alive, but not. They looked at me yet couldn't ask me anything, their eyes pleading for help. I ran around shoving and jostling friends and parents though they could do nothing but fall or stumble to the ground as I touched them...at this point I felt strength as superman fill me, cliché as it might sound, and ran to the water, wondering if the dark waters held an answer as to unlocking my friends' dilemma. Swimming deeply I began to see swirling movements in different areas and approached one of these areas carefully, seeing rainbow colors mix and swim into each other so quickly it appeared an artist was blurring paints on a palette. Reaching out with my hand, I felt individual fish whirling in a ball, and suddenly saw one latch it's teeth on my index finger. I should have wailed in pain though knew I was immune to this piranha-esque minnow. I took ahold of its head and squeezed it hard enough to crush and powder bone, yet it accomplished nothing. Releasing it back to its bait-ball of color, I realized the bait-balls were in certain shapes and spaced apart from each other as if with some hidden design in mind. I flew straight up out of the water and climbed a few hundred meters over the sea. Gasping in fear I saw the fish were all in the shapes of the buttons on a PS3 gaming hand controller, and were blinking in a sequence, indictating a game was being played. Soaring higher I could see hundreds perhaps tens of thousands of these "controllers" being used and it dawned on me that my friends were being masterminded...except by who? Moments later I was back on shore after acquiring one of the minnows, a purple pink blue combo of scales flashing in anger, and definitely not dying from being out of water. The abject fear in my friends' eyes grew noticeably greater when they saw the fish; I took a knife chopped it in ten pieces, placed the pieces in a bucket and lit it on fire. Within I heard the same laughter from earlier in my dream, and moments later a voice like sand and salt being rubbed against each other spoke to me. "We are millions and you are one. You will fail." I placed my hand in the fire and screamed. Then I awoke.

Zip-lining for Carl Jung

Brennan: "Ummmm, actually I can't really tell you the de..."
Jung: "No, really, I insist. Please. Have a seat."

---
Last night...

Deep within my r.e.m. cycle I flew between buildings on a zip-line. Think 'Fifth Element' set combined with a Costa Rican jungle settling down to a fog-saturated day. Except the jungle was made out of concrete and steel, I wasn't necessarily attached to any safety device, and I was going the speed of a small motorcycle. Needless to say I only had one thing to say:

"Weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!!!!"

Childish insinuations aside, this was no trip for a weak-hearted mere mortal. Ah yes, I forgot to mention I was immortal in this dream, and I had an enormous bow and arrow set strapped to my back. (Certainly a dream-relic from my daylight conversations about Rambo 4) Zinging through the city, I appeared to be looking for something, which turned out to be a boat floating on a sea of gray rubble on the city's floor below. Now how you might ask, would an immortal such as myself solve such a tricky situation as falling hundreds of metres to boat which appeared to be literally rocking back and forth in a bed of mortar?

Let go of course. (I would have made Freud proud with this one)

Falling quite rapidly would normally elicit a scream from most people but I calmly notched an arrow in my bow mid-flight, and landed on the deck of the boat with a thump and sharp splintering sound.

"Follow me!!!" I screamed, lifting my bow to release an arrow into the sky.

Sadly, I awoke, because the three beers I had while watching Spain poorly beat Croatia earlier that night decided they had somewhere else to be.

Mechanic's Alley (A short encounter)

Recently I visited my mechanic in Şaşmaz here in Ankara, in order to fix a clunking issue with the steering. You would think a visit to the mechanic would be simple and event-less. Not so much. A written picture of this area is as follows...

Much like doltish Alice down her 'hole', when you turn off the main highway into the Şaşmaz area of Ankara, you are immersed in what could very well be a traffic conundrum with no escape. Quite possibly the worst intersection in Turkey, (with the Aşti exit off Eskişehir coming in a strong second) the road into Şaşmaz is a roundabout with 8, yes eight, two-lane roads converging into one blurry circle of honking, tailgating, impatience, yelling, hand-waving, more honking, and oh, more honking. Best not to look very hard, and turn in random zig-zags across the intersection, while construction trucks, scrap metal trucks and taxis zip in and out of the available 2 centimeters of space, expecting you not be offended when they yell at you for getting too close. And by close I do really mean 2 centimeters.

Quietly now, after swallowing your throat, appendix and portions of your adrenal gland down into their normal spots, cruise in second gear into the opening of the Şaşmaz labyrinth. Imagine looking at a piece of graphing paper of 11x11 squares from above, with every square being a small strip of road containing at the minimum 14 shops and mechanic joints in EACH square. This is the beginning of understanding the 'compact' nature of this area, stretched out over 10 square kilometers.

Now mind you, the license plate on the car has an 'M' on it, automatically denoting it a foreigner-owned car in Turkey. This has attracted the eyes of many, many people as I slowly crawl in, out and between alleyways of chop-shops looking for my boy Süleyman and his pit crew. Armed with only a business card from my other mechanic Can (pronounced John), I get out of the car a few times and ask for directions. After openly gaping at the tattoos and my lanky nature for a few moments, I am able to get a reasonable answer from what appears to be a 15 year old away from school for the sole purpose of bathing in motor oil. 'Over there,' is my answer, with a finger pointed at a dead-end road. 'Çok teşekkuler' is my response, as I get in, roll another 100 yards and repeat the procedure. It only took 6 more times to find Süleyman, unfold myself from the car, give a kiss on each cheek and ask the standard questions about family and health to automatically assure me relief and admittance to the 'club.'

I was told the car would be worked on in an hour.

But why not sit down and enjoy an enormous beaten aluminum vat of steaming vegetables and meat while I wait? Yes please! A few moments later found me seated between 12 guys in a variety of overalls, smocks, steel-toed boots and personalities wolfing down a veritable mountain of Turkish stew. No silverware? No problem, just tear off a hunk of this thick baguette and use it as a spoon. Deliiiicious. Hands down one of the best local samplings of cuisine I have had in two years. Grandfather, two sons, an uncle, a brother-in-law and a handful of Süleyman's friends comprised the table, all of whom wanted to know my life's story and which team I supported the most in Turkey. Twenty minutes later, wipe the grease off the hands on pants, compliment each other on polishing off the entire vat of stew, and chug down two glasses of startling hot çay (tea).  This while it is of course climbing towards 35 degrees C outside. Suddenly the entire brake and front wheel assembly is taken apart, pieces of tired old rubber removed, and a "ball and socket" joint of sorts removed under a 4 cm thick layer of tar-black grease. I was trapped, and figured sitting down would solve my building anxiety issues and allow me a chance to quiz Suleyman's 8 year old son on what he had learned in school. Nope, not destined to be. 

"Gel," (come) was my order, taken from a chain-smoking sixteen year old who immediately set off with my car's broken parts in his hands. We walked three blocks deeper into the maze and came upon a shop with boxed parts from floor to ceiling. Also chain-smoking, the owner of said parts shop first asked me where I was from and directly sailed into asking what my favorite team in Turkey was. Mine did not matter, but discussing his (Trabzon) mattered a great deal. A few minutes later and 100TL lighter, we set back down the block towards the car which hung suspended 5 metres in the air like a butterfly waiting for its wings to dry for flight. Stranded a few more moments (read: 3 hours) I ended up sitting down on a 3.5 legged chair, refusing cigarette after cigarette, and watching two large vans roll by with their sides cut out and shelves sticking in a few directions selling everything from exotic Maseratti hood ornaments to "genuine" Polo Ralph Lauren dress shirts. And yes, people bought items from their truck while it was still moving. I spaced out for a few moments and suddenly found myself handing over a handful of cash, kissing Suleyman on each cheek and driving off in the midst of a lovely clunk-less silence. As Borat would say, "muuuutch suck-sess!!!!"

Floatin' by (Sketches)

Woolies (Sketches)

Howlin' (Sketches)

Reptilian (Sketches)

My mind's eye (Sketches)

Doodlin' my mind into a blur (Sketches)

1.