Picture Notes

Messages on top of messages.

I wonder how much money it would cost New York City residents to clear all graffiti and messages off public and private spaces from about 10 feet down. It’s like Times Square has spilled into the rest of the city in it’s own way. It’s a colorful and rich world full non verbal messages that can be ignored or studied - depending on circumstances.

I think of the sounds that the young can hear and older people are deaf to and I wonder if visually there might be the same thing going on in reverse. I like the way everyone knows what a font and a point is, and what kerning and leading does and that 10 years ago only printers and art directors knew and cared about type faces and what they brought to the page. This may be the golden age of communications and female folk singers.

There is a new flash movie on Instantpictures.net - a collection of city scenes that aren’t in the tourist brochures or in the stock agencies.

Sometimes
they move in slow motion,
as I watch the images
fly through space
so slowly, just one at time.
They float along
like balloons, reflecting
into the soft blueness of earth
in transparency.

I try to pick just the interesting pictures,
conveying an attitude or an idea,
a story, or simplicity it’s self.

Subway train, New York City.

Just Warm Water

We’re water creatures
softly solid at 98.6,
and always wanting to
share our liquids
with others, to
feel the warmth.

It’s nice to be in Florida and be reminded of all the good times I’ve had here. I think it’s the perfect weather of April and the open sky and the sea that brings it all back. This photograph is a great example of what I like about Florida. It’s people experiencing a part of Florida they may never see, although this is an artificial environment created by scientists and elected officials and people who see Florida as a way to make a living. I’m in the heart of of the City of Tampa which has Tampa Bay stretching out 30 miles to south until it reaches the open Gulf of Mexico. Tampa Bay used to be so full of fish that those who saw the area suspected you could walk across Tampa Bay on the backs of the fish. This aquarium was created and the water being used here doesn’t come from Tampa Bay but off-shore, in the deep Gulf of Mexico. It’s all good though and I’m sure most visitors don’t bother to snorkel or dive to see a reef and the diverse life that’s hidden from view. And now they can experience another alien world and not get wet or tired.

More time
And now
The memory of my awakening
has even left me
and I flounder, beating my
body against
A white page, with a pen,
In a desperate attempt to
Find a place where my memory
returns

Live Line Fishing

downward spiraling
luminescent spinning
silkworm threads of monofiliment
floating to the depths,
panicking life with
shimmering waves of
oblique memories,

finally settling,
a pillar of connectedness
between heaven and hell,
air and water, life and
death, within memories
of time - a riotous thing
living in someone else’s
memory,
scraping the bottom
of the world with bait.

I was born in Florida and spent most of my life there. I recently went through my files and found a folder called “Fishing Poetry” and it contained things I’d written when I lived there and spent all my free time fishing. Too much time in the sun, you ask? I don’t know, I thought I’d post the ones I like here. It’s part of the previous post, “Candy in our Lives”.