Monthly Archives: March 2014

celtic cross

I am offering a limited first printing (10 prints) of celtic cross for sale. This fine art print is a 13″ x 19″ black and white on Inkpress Media Matte 60 Bright White Inkjet Paper 10 mil/200 gsm. Inkpress Paper has an average permanence of 100 years when displayed behind uv coated glass. Each print is numbered, dated, signed, and shipped in an acid-free mat-board envelope. Your satisfaction is 100% guaranteed.

digital photograph of celtic cross elmwood cemetery norfolk VA

$35.00 plus $7.00 postage

Sold Out

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running with eyes closed (i just want to see)

cold cereal blackberries in the richness of tv tag sky weathered boards left red in a leaf after the green land occupies the thought of ticks buried deep in the flesh pumping a flooded basement

in the heart of the matter concealed pictures of dead relatives drinking ice tea hunting for wet creatures stepping on stones across creek pebble pools filling with crayfish walking into spider webs

picking up daddy longlegs by the legs and flinging the sweet scent of fresh cut hay resting on hay bales over treetops the high pitched whine of a saw blade drops octaves into wood

red dirt throwing a new baseball on the roof struck by lightning ears ringing deaf japanese beetle june bug comic book frogs in the darkness whippoorwill whippoorwill whippoorwill

little white church with large black voices rising on hands clapping rhythms saturday evening worship filling the landscape with jesus eternal summer tadpole moths bang against the white-light of window screens

tossing tea and chocolate chip cookies in predawn paper route roll up the car windows to keep out dirt-road dust peanut butter sandwich trees slowly absorb rusted barbed wire bounding down mountains of sawdust leaching acrid rivulets of dark tinted tannin

pokeberry purple poison tin cans full of bullet hole chickens scratching in the dirt surrounding live and encroaching green stained soles of barefoot fireflies pulsing florescent yellow in mason jars covered with foil tops punched with pencil holes

matchbox cars in the dirt window fan swoosh of passing cars muffled in humid night doppler effect national geographic cutting grass climbing trees front porch bear yellow light-bulb leather headed buzzards riding thermals above road-kill baking on soft asphalt

cutoff jeans pulling weeds gnat clouds and red dirt clumped sweat loud hands ticking on a midnight watch laid upon the dresser basketball goal ply-board backboard on twin pole 4 x 4s plastic car and tank models swimming at summer camp

can i have a cricket on a string? can i have a cricket on a string?

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time capsule (the warmth of vinyl)

“…the launching of this ‘bottle’ into the cosmic ‘ocean’ says something very hopeful about life on this planet.” Carl Sagan

8-bit is a byte
try as you might
to turn on the light
off or on, zero or one

analogue is warm
giant size the norm
imperfection storm
to come in waves

corduroy carl wise
search the alien skies
voyager probe flies
a golden record spin
(16 2/3 rpm)

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he wore his mother’s cross

“I looked the man in the eye. I found him to be very straight forward and trustworthy… I was able to get a sense of his soul.” George W. Bush

a strongman wishing he had an empire
sent the cossacks after pussy riot
for singing a protest song at his olympics
a song about a shirtless man on horseback
in a land where words will get you killed,
where journalism is a death sentence,
and plutocrats preach “russia for russians”
through ultra-nationalist movements
of an old mother filling the stomachs
of her proletarian children with vodka

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in the land of my birth (10,407 years of tidewater people)



I. aborigine
once, the permanent home of the people; the chesapeake walked on water here, thick with oyster-bed-skyscrapers underfoot

barefoot children covered in bear grease (insect repellent) ran through camps

ancient knowledge (wealth) passed down in nights spent, spearfishing from a dugout; fire-basket fish-magnet on a pole, reflecting off dark-water-wind; filling squall weary canoes

tribalization of natural resources — circular hoop socialism, insuring the tribe’s survival; harmony in the blue crab state, governed by custom

consuming only that which is necessary

II. war (wholesale murder)
all was not utopia, prior to first contact; the chesapeake were not here to greet the alien invasion; these lands rendered seasonal hunting grounds

the powhatan stood here with blood on their hands, their shaman had preached a vision

a disturbing vision of conquest and doom; to rise from the shores of the great estuary

preemption was preached at council, the die cast; the small band of chesapeake had to die; for they lived at the mouth of the bay, and would birth a conqueror

peaceful until, under cloak of darkness; death came screaming across the land; the chesapeake awakened to unspeakable terror — brutalizing, bludgeoning, and running through (every single man, woman, and child)

infant skulls caved in — blood soaking dirt; a nor’easter of wanton slaughter, perpetrated by hands with blood in their eyes

the shellfish people, wiped from the earth; hastened to join their oyster-shells-mounds in the dirt, hundreds of chesapeake murdered

a tragic miscalculation by the powhatan; for a few years later, the all too real nightmare arrived on their shore in fulfillment of the prophecy (supernatural belief)

III. contact
institutions touched the tidewater in wooden ships full of men dreaming treasures, spreading disease and hard sole shoes

laying claim to: pieces of earth, pieces of water, pieces of sky, pieces of human flesh with feelings of manifest destiny (supernatural belief) that god’s will be done

all the while seeking to free minerals from the earth, so to lock them up again in a strong box

a foothold in this land secured: muskets and sermons, iron pots and smallpox, forced relocation into wooden pews, broken skulls of saved-soul-savages forced into bondage for labor (exploitation) the swindle written on parchment, separating people from their birthplace

“the powhatan are kissed on the mouth by karma”

IV. civilization
the land where your placenta is buried behind the monolith of box-store, with the super-low prices and wages

around the corner from the mega-church where one size religion fits all

repeating rows of chain restaurants, line the parched streets of dehydration; salt to taste, of sky-high blood pressure; homogenized land of the suburbanite with a cul-de-sac in each hand, greedily filling greasy dumpsters with free enterprise pollution

“i don’t want your cancer!”

the land of my birth; pulling up roots and putting them on a train, an automobile, a plane — to take you away from the land and the hurricanes, that have begun to intensify

“how can you connect through asphalt and iron?” now just a place, like any other place

“what has happened to the people’s land?” it’s posted private, fenced in — access denied, divorced from the rich organic mud that permeates the soul at low tide “i can’t get to the water’s edge”

leaving the blue crab to contemplate broken heat pumps, and the oyster to invest in retirement funds; we have become lost on the land — heron’s heart is heavy with the loss of the chesapeake

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