Monday, August 31, 2009: ffffound! Quoted from: Yay Hooray | Best use of Live Journal (Official)

The Negative Space

Choose the negative space,
And focus on what is filled:

Either the knobby vase,
Knuckled, architectural,

Or the faces in profile,
Twins or reflections.

The failing daylight
On the last day of August

Or the almond-shaped
Shadows of leaves

Smudging the walkway
Like thumbprints.

The endless options that fill
Our lives--channels,

Cuisines, products
Ready to solve our needs.

Can you flip this scene
And see what these obscure?

Hunger, the desire to clean,
To control our neck

Of the woods, the anxiety
That hovers above our choices.

Friday, August 28, 2009: Quoted from: czechoslovakian matchbox label on Flickr - Photo Sharing!

Remnants

We planted the vegetable garden,
And moved

Across town, to a home with a smaller
Backyard

I often pictured another family (blond
Mother,

Dark-haired father, two little girls, not
Unlike

My family, but just not us) kneeling or
Crouching

Uncovering the carrots and onions
I want

To warn them—do not dig too far to
The left

What would they make of our pets’ bones,
Remnants

That stay until they have crumbled into
soil

Thursday, August 27, 2009: http://www.behance.net/Gallery/Avtandil-_amp-Marita/281246

Nordictrack, Gazelle, Bowflex:

These sound majestic, like Greek gods

Or names of mountain ranges.

When they arrive at her doorstep,

A heap of metal bones collapsed within

An enormous brown box,

At that moment, the dream dissolves.

She called a stranger and asked them

To send it to her, two weeks ago.

Ever since, she’d been imagining

Carving herself, as a sculptor reveals

The figure within the marble

With a sharp tool, a blade, perhaps,

Or a chisel. These machines could cut away

Everything extra that had settled

Around her body: routines of

Seatedness, rewards she bestowed

Upon herself, generously as

A parent, her persistence and

Her comfort, the fatigue and aching neck,

The muffled longings.

Tuesday, August 25, 2009: Quoted from: today and tomorrow

Tilt

For I have looked up at the steep, towering buildings

Forming the maze of the city,

And have been sent reeling,

Have felt the street tilt and pull away from my feet

The sheer grade of its stone face

Tipping the horizon on its axis

Monday, August 24, 2009: Notcot #24352

Illuminated Manuscript

Teachers, editors, designers disrupt the sacredness
Of the typed page. Their comments grow amongst
The printed lines, crimson grapes on evenly-spaced
Vines. Arrows traverse margins like laser beams,
Lassoing disorganized words. Teachers, editors,
Designers—you must thrash about in our documents
Like a dog caught in tangled reeds, I know. I do not
Fear your decoration. Step into my words. I invite you
In, an unexpected guest. Pardon the kitchen, the mess.

Thursday, August 20, 2009: Quoted from: Alan Lund Gard photography

The Pool

For one summer, I loved swimming.
I spent hours at the municipal pool
With my eyes open underwater.
The painted concrete at the bottom
Was smooth beneath my feet,
And the lights embedded in the walls
Shone, tiny portholes on a radiant ship.
Pallid legs and tips of feet, like felled timber
pierced my aquamarine haven here and there.
I don’t know where it went, my thirst
For water and chlorine. It passed swiftly
As a season. But the body remembers
These sensations--the desire to be submerged,
To be slowed and cooled, weightless.

Wednesday, August 19, 2009: Quoted from: Design You Trust. World's Most Provocative Social Inspiration.

As the teacher wrote on the board, microscopic bits of chalk
Rained down, larger shards that fell to the floor and snapped.

On their way out of class, the students run fingers along
The metal gutter gripping the chalkboard’s lower edge,
Touching and gathering the fine powder, the sediment
Of long division, vocabulary, instructions.

Tuesday, August 18, 2009: Notcot post 24194, Tang Yau Hoong

Look out from the coast in the day, and there are barriers
For your eyes to crawl over and cling to, like barnacles.

Maybe the grey, smudged fingerprint of a mountain,
the tip of another piece of land, a blurred edge of foam, sand.

At the very least, clouds bunched and catching the wind
Like white linens pinned to a clothesline, reaching into the breeze.

But at night, looking out into the ocean of inky sky
Perforated by pinprick stars, where can your gaze settle.

Sky and star flatten into cloth, embroidered with connected
Dots, with constellations. How can I accept that the sizes

of stars denote not size, but distance, that the tangled strands
of lights unfurl like bulbs loosening, receding, drifting.

Friday, August 14, 2009: Quoted from: Postcard pack (vol II) front cover final draft en Flickr: ¡Intercambio de fotos!

The buildings gleam,

Steel and glass fingers on a robotic hand.

The skyline says hello,

Welcome to this part of the world that we have built,

We claim this land for you.

The human urge:

Let’s put a tower here,

And build it higher and higher

So that we can see and be seen.

Thursday, August 13, 2009: Quoted from: CH-1989-0552b.jpg (JPEG Image, 600x470 pixels)

Once captured in film and wound around reels,
photographs and songs now appear instantly,
summoned by a button.

Did you ever pry a cassette from clamped-shut
Tape player, and find skinny black ribbons
Spilling out like tinsel?

Have you slipped postage stamp-sized slides
Into a notched carousel? Tamed the flickering
End of a wild film strip?

Lifted the twig-like arm of record player
And gently set its needle to the ridged disc,
Black as repaved road?

Have you beckoned to a recorded voice,
Released portraits onto a screen? Have you?
Does anyone know how?

Wednesday, August 12, 2009: A Simple Portrait

His knuckles had never been the same
Since he touched the piano.

But he moved away from home, and didn’t
Own a piano, nor did his friends.

In his sleep, his fingers sometimes fluttered gently,
Releasing scales and rehearsing.

August 11, 2009: Quoted from: INSPIRATION: Tebe Interesno | FLYLYF

The Woods

Any section of forest requiring at least seven minutes
To walk through, or any clump of trees
dense enough to obscure roads.

An indefinite place, characterized by trees, leaves, dirt,
Patchy shade, solitude.
It begins where you say it does, and grows

Up around you as you walk. If there is path, you might
Follow it. I have lost an hour,
Two, beneath, inside, surrounded

By the woods. You can read the seasons in the leaves, the future
In the tangled clutch of branches. You will
Lose your way, at least once.

Monday, August 10, 2009: Quoted from: The longest solar eclipse of the century - The Big Picture - Boston.com

The longest solar eclipse of the century
Transformed sun into crescent, then thin ring

The black disc of the moon blotted the light
A dilated pupil, a black hole

For six minutes and thirty-nine seconds
Some people watched with the help of a lens

The rest of us saw only through replicated images
Photographs of the eclipse and eclipse-watchers

With flat, black filters like 3D glasses
Shielding their eyes, mouths agape and full of shadow

Friday, August 7, 2009: Quoted from: Matt Duffin—Fine Art

Galoshes

Dark mornings, puddles,
The squeak of rubber against elementary school linoleum

The surge of rainwater
Unleashed from buses and large cars

During rainy trudges to school
You were warned to step back from the black, shiny road

By the wavelike whoosh
A hushed crash that could drench the hems of trousers

If it weren’t for the galoshes
Those boots reversed everything—shoes over pants,

Morning dim as evening,
Water unfurling from the ground, rain upside-down

Thursday, August 6, 2009: Asasi on the Behance Network

Reconstruction

Old railroad tracks are embedded in the asphalt
In the road behind your house.
The metal snakes along the road, both buried and visible,
like the blue blush of veins in your forearm.
Someday, these tracks will also be buried in an ocean
of cement, and your house, and also mine,
and only the tips of telephone poles and their wires
will peek out into this new landscape, volcanic, reconstructive.

Wednesday, August 5, 2009: On the Street...Sheila Scotter, Melbourne

The Elements

Day gloves shielded her hands from
What—from sun, perhaps, or dirt.
From the elements.
In chemistry class, I used to stare
At the periodic table--the
Sympathetic sigh of gold,
The metallic gag of silver--
And wonder, which of these
Was a threat to a woman’s hands.

Tuesday, August 4, 2009: Quoted from: Lovely Package®

Brown Bag

Brown paper bag, the plainest and most mysterious
Of all wrappings. Whatever you contain, you also
Conceal. Crinkled around bottles, you allow any
Beverage to appear in public. You hold lunch,
The meal of modesty and obligation; groceries
Fill your cavernous angles, and breathe three
Dimensions into your corners. I take you apart
To cover a textbook, or a gift, and voila! A second
Skin is born, tan, even, coarse. You’ll become
Whatever I use you for, without objection, and
Hide what’s inside from any prying eyes.