I had a friend
A sniper
Not a movie
A sniper
Who came back unable to live with us
When we went shooting
He never missed
He was in the jungle
Tied to a tree
Until he nearly died from
Some vile amoebic rot
Put him in a hospital in Japan
He came back
Married a woman
Kept a big spider
And a snake
Kept them in aquariums on shelves
With a giant hookah in the middle of the room
He’d let the spider out
Let it crawl around
And the snake
Inside your shirt
If you weren’t careful
He still needed some hazard
Some threat
Some kind of edge
We smoked
And then his young wife
Would coax him into bed
Where he slept with a 45
And the dreams
Of what had passed
Still uncomfortable without his back to the wall
He’d seen too much
I guess
Felt too much
Perhaps
Done too much
The marriage did not last
So he left to build sailboats
He was my friend
But I let him go
Threw him away like so much trash
I was unsure
Afraid of what he might do
You can’t be too careful
Around people who play with spiders
I had a friend
He was a sniper
He came back from the war
And died young
I could have done more
But maybe not
I’m sorry
I no longer knew who you were
Reality
Or a story
To make money
For some Hollywood producer
To glorify war
And reassure ourselves of who we are
How strong we are
How deadly we are
How right we are
How decent we are
That killing can be justified
I had a friend
He was a sniper
Now he’s dead
Died young from jungle rot
There’s no movie about his life
Just reality
Attic Man
dweller in attics.
Do they find you there
did they turn your eyes to the wall
Attic Man
Man of Questions
Were you just bad or
you just bothered them or
you didn’t go with the couch and
your questions were old, Attic Man
you asked too many of them and they said
they said
they said
Turn away attic dude
turn away from these questions of
why we couldn’t get along
and why we let our religion get in our way and
why we fought with each other
instead of baling
baling like crazy together.
Why don’t you just look at the
darkness of the wall and ask
why we don’t care
enough for
Her
to save Her
As poet, playwright, publisher, and activist, Lawrence Ferlinghetti helped to spark the San Francisco literary renaissance of the 1950s and the subsequent “Beat” movement. Like the Beats, Ferlinghetti felt strongly that art should be accessible to all people, not just a handful of highly educated intellectuals. His career has been marked by its constant challenge of the status quo; his poetry engages readers, defies popular political movements, and reflects the influence of American idiom and modern jazz. In Lawrence Ferlinghetti: Poet-at-Large, Larry Smith noted that the author “writes truly memorable poetry, poems that lodge themselves in the consciousness of the reader and generate awareness and change. And his writing sings, with the sad and comic music of the streets.”
I didn’t get much sleep last night
thinking about underwear
Have you ever stopped to consider
underwear in the abstract
When you really dig into it
some shocking problems are raised
Underwear is something we all have to deal with
Everyone wears
some kind of underwear
Even Indians wear underwear
Even Cubans
wear underwear
The Pope wears underwear I hope
The Governor of Louisiana wears underwear
I saw him on TV
He must have had tight underwear
He squirmed a lot
Underwear can really get you in a bind
You have seen the underwear ads for men and women
so alike but so different
Women’s underwear holds things up
Men’s underwear holds things down
Underwear is one thing
men and women do have in common
Underwear is all we have between us
You have seen the three-color pictures
with crotches encircled
to show the areas of extra strength
with three-way stretch
promising full freedom of action
Don’t be deceived
It’s all based on the two-party system
which doesn’t allow much freedom of choice
the way things are set up
America in its Underwear
struggles thru the night
Underwear controls everything in the end
Take foundation garments for instance
They are really fascist forms
of underground government
making people believe
something but the truth
telling you what you can of can’t do
Did you ever try to get around a girdle
Perhaps Non-Violent Action
is the only answer
Did Gandhi wear a girdle?
Did Lady Macbeth wear a girdle?
Was that why Macbeth murdered sleep?
And the spot she was always rubbing –
Was it really her underwear?
Modern anglosaxon ladies
must have huge guilt complexes
always washing and washing and washing
Out damned spot
Underwear with spots very suspicious
Underwear with bulges very shocking
Underwear on clothesline a great flag of freedom
Someone has escaped his Underwear
May be naked somewhere
Help!
But don’t worry
Everybody’s still hung up in it
There won’t be no real revolution
And poetry still the underwear of the soul
And underwear still covering
a multitude of faults
in the geological sense –
strange sedimentary stones, inscrutable cracks!
If I were you I’d keep aside
an oversize pair of winter underwear
Do not go naked into that good night
And in the meantime
keep calm and warm and dry
No use stirring ourselves up prematurely
‘over Nothing’
Move forward with dignity
hand in vest
Don’t get emotional
And death shall have no dominion
There’s plenty of time my darling
Are we not still young and easy?
Don’t shout.
I danced on his grave
The dance of the living death
So little time left
For any of us
Left behind
No cause
No purpose
So I danced
It seemed like the thing to do
It felt right
Go away
Just leave
From under the ground
Deep below
In a wooden box
The protest came
I called out to myself
As I danced
It seemed like the thing to do
I felt no pain
No guilt
Just the ongoing
Fullness of revenge running out
Pointless revenge
Spiritual self-immolation
Not a part of the whole
An observer
Separate from the rest
Outside of myself
Watching me as I danced
Unfulfilled
A witness to futility
Interaction, contraction, reaction
Shooting craps again and again
Until it ends
And the Reaper grins
At our naïve failure to live for something
Other than ourselves
Other than to be
And to be satisfied with being
So we dance
Pretending we have meaning
Giving us the courage to believe we have something
Beyond one another
Suddenly it’s 69 again
At some grungy bar in Minneapolis
CS&N are screaming
Rejoice!
We have no choice
But to carry on
Now it is sampling
Then it was stealing
Either way, the truth still works
Ron Olsen is a veteran cross-platform journalist based in Los Angeles, California, United States.……Ron Olsen at Wiki
He writes, “I’m a semi-retired Peabody Award winning journalist who now writes
essays and an occasional poem.”
Kyle Baker is a “two dimensional artist out of Nashville, Tennessee. His charcoal drawings of people seem to capture an intimate look at the individual.
Charcoal drawing has an intimacy that started with cave drawings. Charcoal and stone were the expressions of man’s earliest age and every artist marvels at the cave drawings. Charcoal paintings date as far back as ca.23,000 BCE. Cultures utilized charcoal for art, camouflage, and in rites of passage. Art is made with the crudest of implements and charcoal drawings, as detailed as they are, are no different.
Monica
Preacher-Johnny
Powell-Street
We-finna-put-it-on-da-map- detail
We-finna-put-it-on-da-map
Skateboard-detail
Portrait-of-Jackson-unfinished
david-michael-jackson by Kyle Baker
Caravaggio: His paintings combine a realistic observation of the human state, both physical and emotional, with a dramatic use of lighting.….. Wiki
All artists go for perfect form, shape, shade and color. They differ in the expression, the motif, in what they draw or paint. Some artists paint every day objects, fruit, landscapes or nature and, in those motifs try for some intangible something called beauty. Kyle Baker finds beauty in the homeless man, the guy on a skateboard, the wise old man on the street, the gutsy, the raw, the real. His drawings are visceral. We turn away from the homeless man. Kyle seems to find beauty in the “similarities and differences.”
His people have a dignity about them. His drawings are often life size. Kyle starts at the top of the page and the drawing is revealed downward. His hand is always resting on clean paper as he works down the page completing the forms as he goes.
I know Big Steve, or it seems I do, Kyle Baker’s drawings of people in charcoal and graphite all seem like people I know, or have seen lately, on the street, in life. There is a universality to these drawings which, “combine a realistic observation of the human state.” Thank you Caravaggio. He didn’t say it, of course. Other people write the words because the artist thinks in “dramatic use of lighting”, like Caravaggio. Our art is formed by our heroes. The artists study and emulate, then reach their own conclusions.
Here is an interview with Kyle Baker
What is the motivation for these drawings? The motivations behind these drawings lies in the search to apprehend the subject. Such drawing takes a lot of time. Why do you select the people you did? I select the people I do because of the similarities I have with them which is then paralleled by the stark differences I have with them. What are your goals as an artist. As an artist, I hope to be able to work as a full time artist sometime in the near future. Who are you artist heroes. Why? I love the classical. I really like the contrast Caravaggio used in his pieces and I also thoroughly enjoy Van Gogh due to his story. Since you draw so well, what do you think of “modern art”, abstract art? I like modern and abstract art. I also think there is a sense of abstract in all art, including classical work. What is the purpose of art. The purpose of art is a hard question. I do not know . . . only the artist knows the exact purpose of their own art. Does art have a social purpose? Does an artist have a duty? Art can have a social purpose and a duty, but that lies in the hands of the artist. When did you start to draw; was there a beginning event, artist or piece that knocked you down and started the journey? I started drawing in high school. Barry Mcgee was one that I always liked. When I went to New York I remember being really in awe of a Chuck Close painting I experienced. Where do you hope to be in 10 years. In ten years, I hope to be happily married, live in a small house with a studio room, make art full time, and have enough money to travel where I want to go.
Kyle Baker’ s art is off to a good start. His first show of these drawings was at Hanna Lane Gallery
