the boy now child now boy

That your parents are not perfect, are not Gods, isn't that a realization that is famously responsible for often great anguish, sometimes great mistakes, and one that brings with it a risk of estrangement?

Take it upon myself to remove the lingering sting from the blunt smack suffered in another's worldview.

With each day I will relax, release, a touch more.
If I let more of myself in to the relationship, the easier we will be.

I have, as a rule in my life, tried to keep a separate space for myself, both inside myself and out, where I alone go, thinking that this is how I protect my identification as an artist.

I'm wearying of holding up the fences, and all they really do is keep these flowers from those, and neighbors from talking.

I will relax, I will give in, I will wait for time to do what it does.

at any age

watching home videos clips from a month or two ago,
with happy jackson in my lap,
they might as well have been from another lifetime.
he smacked me in the face almost reflexively, his mood turned sour just watching the two of us on the screen. as had mine, seeing my oblivious smothering, seeing his righteous bewilderment.
and that smack was a reminder of why i must keep my mind focused, keep my distance, keep remembering that he isn't as needy as he wants us to believe, nor is he as mature as we want him to be, only all of 3 1/4 years old.



paint flows freely, i'm going to paint and smooth all the scraps i come across, i'm going to give them away until they start to come back, i'm going to send that big blue disc out to wisconsin, get that last monkey off my back so i can stand up straight.

or you could only eat purple food, because it's gonna get me in touch with my blood cells.



thanks jess

or you could shave some dandelion stems onto them, set them on a tray on the windowsill in the sun.

a painting of my girl libie

a big radiating roundness of joy

waves and rays and vibrating and colors just barely there from the intensity of light

bedsheets with pale colors and inks washy and pencil drawing big big big as a bed where she slept when we first brought her home

a fabric flung spread onto the surface of the wall, no dimension, no hanging, but removeable, roll it up and bring it to a new place,

maybe just tacks

maybe frayed edges of the linens,

listening to 'this unfolds', four tet.