Happy New Year!
The holidays were relaxing, as I didn't travel home for Christmas and I was glad when 2013 started off with some very nice weather. In the dead of the North Pacific Winter, I see blue sky out my window and muted rays of sun shining in. I feel very grateful for having the opportunity to work outside all winter long without trudging through feet of snow but am also grateful for the long weekend.
Martin Luther King Jr. Day is a National Day of Service and is this coming Monday. Where will you serve? Our construction site which is generally closed on Mondays will be open with a list of close to 50 volunteers already signed up!
I have a few non-profits that I have been meaning to call but have currently been focused on serving extra time beyond my required hours with Habitat for Humanity by participating on their Homeowner Selection Committee. It's been great to sit with applying families and get to know their stories.
Last weekend though, I took some time for myself to put some final revisions on an old constantly evolving poem. I'm always envious when I hear an artist talk about how a piece of work just “flowed out of them.” Most of my pieces, undergo many stages of editing and/or end up taking many, many months to construct themselves.
“Blind Amplification” is about guilt and the feeling of being judged and scrutinized for insecurities but being able to confidently compartmentalize emotions and calmly put aside differences. “Blind” started as a dark rant on a stormy night and took years to reemerge. Upon resurfacing, it spent months on the butcher block, undergoing brutal cuts, re-stitches and multiple variations of a title that never stuck. It wanted to be simple but not delicate and finally now, is content enough to be shared. Since yesterday was Throwback Thursday, I figured I would post.
Blind Amplification
Mona Lisa's grin glares across the candle lit room;
In the peaceful darkness,
she doesn't know me.
Reality vanishes,
hiding behind a condescending smile.
Her assumptions are what she creates them to be.
As I am audio,
she visualizes celtic speeches
and I hear indigenous drums,
using words as weapons of mass percussion.
The smirk she gives indirectly speaks to me
and a flavor of recognition thickens in the air.
Nothing is louder than silence.
Nervous spanish children speak in tongues outside my door.
They never knock.
I imagine they speak of food in the warm, Southern winter air.
They bargain,
"Swallow our fire and we'll devourer your sins."
Regardless of the potential that sticks unshed,
we've lost sense of our own self worth.
I live equidistant to the catatonic fear and their subtle appetite,
They tell me to reach into the sky and feel what hides inside.
Patient lips, pale and thin,
Mona Lisa's grin glares across the room again;
She doesn't know them.
Like a pantomime,
plotting constellations,
I set her sun into a moon
and without her feline eyes,
the guilt is gone.
A subdued exit after a gut wrenching performance,
liberation lingers in unnatural illusions.
Mona Lisa's grin glares across the room;
She doesn't know us.
(This photo is not my work nor property, I found it posted here by Carlos R.)
