Alchimie Photographique

El Templo de Debod, Madrid

2009-08-05T05:56:00.001-04:00

El Templo de Debod, Madrid
Originally uploaded by dkeros

Lament

2009-04-07T01:02:00.002-04:00

Just like you emerge from dreams,
the moon’s pale reflection
dissolved through clouds, then
stretched across the ocean
stroking my shoulders
with her tender melt.

The tide’s swell has set
the reefs adrift like ghosts.
Darkness brightens them.
From the pier, a fisherman cast his net,
-expects the woven trellis returns filled
with vagrant stars, living quicksilver

pulled from the sea’s black throat-
In the dream, you sit on my bed
in a blurred white circle of silence
and as I approach to kiss you
your skin parts through my hands,
your lips disappear inside my mouth.

The fisherman with the cut-off jeans
spindles his net back in a sweep
and it comes up empty. From the pier,
I watch the moon’s wavering mantle
go swiftly through the dreamcatcher
just like it did this morning.

DQ 4/7/9

Evicted

2009-03-28T19:33:00.002-04:00

Here’s where I was before he met you,
before his reason for sunrise.

You shook his hand with flames
and said hello, with little regard for my home.

He didn’t hear a word about your zodiac sign
or about your theories on rebirth.

He only stared at your eyes, the night’s edge
and sang your name wavering in fog.

There’s never been music here before.
Here’s where I was before he met you:

I was living inside the dead man’s body
using his shawl of solitude to cover myself.

I was watching my limbs stretch inside
his wounds on the silver of the coffin.

So still they are, the dead, so spacious.
But no more, now that he’s met you.

DQ 3/28/09

Unsaid

2009-03-24T01:35:00.005-04:00

Unspoken and unread; a void that creates a face
for itself between lines, the language of Lazarus,
the language of the blind in the darkness of abandoned houses;
like finding meaning in alphabet soup, one word that changes
your life, there, in the broth of chicken,
in the unspoken space between soft letters and your face
all those syllables rising in smoke; each an enigma, an invitation,
a voice in Braille with the sting of firewater,
speaking to the thing that drives you.

Words spreading like flux, like zodiac charts
each a field of poppies trapped in stained glass,
acts of love dissected to symbols,
the ghosts of black letters making noise
in the cellar, the sound of light coming through
the window like consciousness, a dream,
a half light through the fractal structure of air.

Translucent letters, invisible graffiti on the walls of my city,
keep unspeaking in colors, in solitude like debris of war.

Calliope, my mother: whose breast I have fed from,
whisper your spell between lines,
speak the language of Lazarus: a poem.

DQ 3/23/09

Embers

2009-03-23T02:29:00.009-04:00

Here's what to do to build a lasting
campfire: Search the woods for tinder
at the last squeak of daylight.
Place the dry sticks above each other,
and flint strike the pile in multiple places.

Slowly add more tinder, and rouse
the slender flames until
they undulate proudly, rising elegant
like fierce birds of prey
seizing command of the sky.

A flint strike of passion spreads much the same.
Mouth to mouth in the summer evening
subject a mortal body to the abrasion
of yours, this friction will cause
a chain reaction, a series of chrome

bursts that overtake the winded
red flush of skin, until the immortal
halves break themselves from flesh,
rising fierce and elegant like birds
of prey seizing command of the sky.

3/22/09

Gems

2009-03-22T02:11:00.001-04:00

They call us by the wrong names
and we snicker at their ignorance.

When was the last time you stood
up when someone called for Pollux

while waiting at the doctors office?
And have you ever heard me

say: Hello, my name is
Castor, pleased to meet you.

Never.
Never.

I call you by your proper name
when I step out of the shower

and see you across the mirror.
You call me by my proper name

when my reflection rises in
the creek behind you house.

Can we blame them, these people
that name things… how could we?

They have never danced with diamond
bodies, hand in hand across the summer sky.

DQ 3/21/09

At Dinner

2009-03-20T01:49:00.002-04:00

Today a whale beached
itself above your tongue.
All the oceans and its
breaking waves
held against your cheek,
the blue machine and its
swaying garlands of algae,
alive with schools of fish
and mermaids showing off
their breasts, singing hymns
about Poseidon’s cobalt
kingdom with its white coral
towers and seashell dancehalls.

She means nothing to me, I said.
That’s when your lips gave way
to the flood, and I saw the eye
of the blue monster stare at me before
I knew the darkness of its mouth.

DQ 3/20/09

Ophelia

2009-03-17T09:13:00.000-04:00

Between ripples and foam
her face rose, hair filled with
lilacs and chicories.
Her eyes, the gray of angel
wings boiled into clouds,
which are the pillows of god.

I kissed the wet melody
that covered her mouth
until the notes hardened
on my lips, the way
unforgettable things become
solid to memory and blood.

And then, the creek slowly
faded and her with it,
as time reattached itself
to the mauve breath of dawn.
Did I really say I love you
before you washed away?

Always, after a dream of Ophelia,
I wonder who writes the script
of these perfect encounters.
Is it the dreamer or the dreamed?
It was not me. I would have
written a different ending.

DQ 3/17/09

David

2009-03-14T02:38:00.000-04:00

The first time I undressed
you spoke in syllables.

You said I looked like David
standing at the Accademia

wearing nothing but marble
like the moon.

You watched my body harden
then moved towards the window

and pulled the shade down.
I saw the first chaos

-the one that made the universe-
flash from your eyes as you walked by.

I never want you to see me again.
No. I want to remain the image

of the barefoot boy by the window
eternally burned in your pupils.

DQ 3/14/09

Seconds

2009-03-08T17:36:00.005-04:00

Seconds

You came to the beach looking for me
and found me stretched out by the shore
covered in moon. Then, you spread over me,
the contour of your body so familiar on mine.

The last time you slept on me - I was whole.
It was the night we knocked down
the plastic statue of the virgin Mary
from the nightstand while we wrestled,

nostrils flashing. Our bodies, zodiac charts
simply decoded by fast unmeasured breaths.
My skin dripped rain. Your voice a drumbeat.
Back then you never came home late.

Tonight, half buried in me, you ask forgiveness
praying the stars chart a path back to the room
where the virgin broke. The tide stammering
on the rocks, which slowly erode.

It is too late for us, my body is proof:
Sink your fingers in and try to hold me.
The sand beneath you, will pour from your fist,
each fine granule, a second swallowed by the hourglass.

DQ 3/8/9

Oblivion

2009-03-06T00:30:00.001-05:00

Even with eyes closed
I cannot find silence.
Yesterday’s sounds are
the menacing growl
of beasts in the distance.
And the inner crystal ball

that predicts the next day
only repeats the last hours
with the furious black
noise of angry bees vibrant
over the whisper of dawn
and the lark’s song.

I swallow saliva.
Silence betrays me.
Even in the solitary amplitude
of my eyelids, the thump slips
from my sleeve like
the ace of the sharp.

And then the sound of screeching tires.
And then the boy tossed through the air.

DQ 3/6/9

Yes

2009-03-04T20:49:00.001-05:00

We had, in the end,
only three letters to remember,
the affirmation of the moment
and how it unfurled
jubilant and brisk like morning
plummeting over itself from
your tongue like crashing waves
until it jackknifed in your throat
on the last halcyon breath
and your face became the face
of one who feels the gratifying
sting of the needle
do its numbing work.
Yes, I remember the word
and how it encircled the night
until you made memory out of it.

DQ 3/4/9

Reencounter with Myself

2009-02-27T16:26:00.001-05:00

Past the third cup of coffee
the dream still clings to my skin
gutting my stomach like sacrifice.

There is a green bottle, six feet tall,
my name is on the label, and so is
my birth year, “Producto de Cuba, 1962”

Inside the bottle is the struggle.

The prisoner enclosed in the emerald
shape expands his shoulders,
(which look translucent)
and shifts his weight side to side until
the glass cocoon shatters and gives way
to a naked white body brandishing wings.

He picks glass shards out of his hair,
stands up, stretches like a predator
and takes flight. He never speaks to me,
watching from bed ungratefully surprised.

I am now on my fourth cup of coffee
unsure if I have seen my own birth or death.

DQ 2/27/09

ALCHETRY NOW AVAILABLE IN THE GROVE

2009-02-27T14:27:00.003-05:00

Alchetry is now available at:

The Bookstore in the Grove
2911 Grand Ave
Coconut Grove, FL 33133

Jasmine

2009-02-27T10:53:00.003-05:00

The most incredible thing
is that there are others like us.

Others, who see the kiss
the way the artist does,
gradually turning deep red,
strokes of a brush painting a rose.

who say seduction is like
the tide, the water’s delicate
and rhythmic triumph
over immovable rocks.

who define climax by how far
the palm frond arcs towards
the sky, seduced by the soft
spoken cadence of wind.

who sense the lover’s touch
gilded and warm as sunlight,
gentle as a sparrow landing
on a blade of grass.

There are others like us.

Sometimes, when I see a fire
in the distance, their faces rise
slow and elegant, like jasmine
incense from the pyre.

DQ 2/27/09

TEOTWAWKI

2009-02-22T12:48:00.000-05:00

Yes.
The day will come.

The moon’s cadaver
will plunge towards earth,
limp, featherless as Icarus,
and crush all our belongings
to less than dust.

Our photographs from Barcelona,
your short red dress, my gold
ring with the inscribed date,
atomized and indistinguishable
from everyone else’s things of worship.

Eons from now, on moonless nights,
insects in lab coats will reconstruct
our bones, set us in museums
in creepy poses, and theorize
about how and when
our prehistoric era came to end.

DQ 02/22/09

Dandelions

2009-01-23T23:09:00.005-05:00

All afternoon I watched
the air fill itself with
florets, a stagnant cloud
of whiteness awkwardly
suspended above the fields
floating towards the horizon.

Near the end, you seemed
the same to me. Your kiss
growing weaker across
the room, a stale quarantine
of windborne seeds
lacking the substance to
land anywhere near me.

All afternoon I watched
the fields with bitter sadness.
The florets of dandelions
-like all things that travel the wind-
sailing the un-destined path
towards the horizon.

DQ 1/23/09

Dream Tectonics

2008-12-30T15:43:00.002-05:00

The blaring sun becomes memory
on our skins, there is no horizon line
between sea and sky. How incredibly
fortunate we are to know the silence
of Zen in these hammocks.
You lean towards me, skim my chest
with a clasp of your hair until I fall asleep,
and here is where the whole
god-dammed thing changes.

I wake up in a strange room to the sound
of public radio, someone has brewed
coffee instead of tea, there are math books
stacked on a nightstand next to the window.
Outside, the streets demand their morning
fix of cars and shoes. A crowd at the
bus stop is blurred by rain.

Years have passed. I still
don’t know where the universe broke.
The champagne toast we planned for later
did not happen, neither did the twilight
horseback ride. Perhaps sleeps got cross-tied,
or a worker on cloud nine misplaced a file.
Perhaps there was a sudden shift
in the velvet black of dream-tectonics.
For all I know, a man I’ve never met
woke up under your clasp of hair from a dream
that by all rights, should have been mine.

DQ 12/30/08

Paperweight

2008-12-26T08:48:00.005-05:00

One of the items I cherish most
is a star shaped paperweight
made of brass and smeared with
that eternal moss which grows
on metal after enough years elapse.

Back when it shined like god's eyes
we lived in the apartment where
we kept the windows open
to save on the electric bill, and we used
the weight to hold down love notes on the desk.

I suppose it will outlive
most things I own: my books,
the car, my new home,
-even my own life-
due to its heavy simplicity.

Every now and then I lift it
to check if it weighs as much as I remember
and I look at the inscription you
engraved at the bottom of the metal star:
forever yours, your name, and date we met.

Then I confirm that for any
given volume, memories
are far heavier than brass.

DQ 12/26/08

Kneeling

2008-12-24T18:37:00.000-05:00

Slowly they rose from their knees,
heads hung wounded, hands holding
the dead wood of the pew in front.

The heavy man leading the service
read every possible sin from a book
and pointed towards the congregation

directing god about the gilded dome
to seek and punish those that had fallen.
A wicker basket in the shape of a nest

made its way from hand to hand
multiplying itself in green
like fish and loaves of bread.

Later that evening as I walked
through the woods I saw god
kneeling over a small bird

that had fallen from its nest
and I asked him if he had seen me
leave the service before it ended.

He kissed the bird, placed it back
in the nest and said: No, I did not see you.
I’ve never been to church.

DQ 12/24/08

To a Painting

2008-12-03T00:05:00.001-05:00

Between green swirls
of ocean where mermaids sleep
she glances towards me
-sunlit face turned in my direction-
with a stare I’ve dreamt of
old gray stones gathering
sun by the shore.
Even and deep
like footprints that have
made the earth quiver with
the weight of something
indestructible.
How foolish of me...
to think I could bear
stare at her in real life.

DQ 12/3/08

Still Life

2008-11-27T13:26:00.005-05:00

The alarm clock sits on the
nightstand by the bed
where you and I are sleeping.
Right above your head
our children sway in the swing

behind the old house. You watch
them through the kitchen window
with a jug of orange juice
in your hand and call them in
to do their school work.

My hand cuts through
the perfume of an unknown woman
laying in the bed of a hotel room
and I knock over an empty glass
as I reach for the alarm clock.

One minute before, the repelling dreams.
One minute after, the joined monotonous day.
How we have changed, and how alike we are.
Neither one of us wanting to get
up this morning.

DQ 11/26/08

After Qu Yuan

2008-11-10T23:22:00.006-05:00

Wood paddles whip the water in
a frenzy of orchestrated chaos,
the drum repeats the one-pointed beat
-the concentration of the devotee-
each arm a reflection of next, each lung
propelling the same breath, breathing
the mystical word that parts the sea,
each heart calling for the poet’s body
to be raised from the undertow
which is the only absolute we truly share.

The world waits by the shore, the ordered
rows of buildings, the four lane highways,
the paper pushers, the pale skins.
But they don’t exist here.
Here is the narrow floating temple,
the unrestrained prayer of the athlete
who cannot taste sea-salt from sweat
whose skin reflects the alizarin chant of noon.

The sunrays are in blossom, the drum repeats
the arrow pointed beat, the water churns again
in anger, and there, under the chaos of the blades,
a white-robed figure looks up from the deep.

DQ 11/10/08

Film Noir

2008-11-08T23:13:00.001-05:00

In those old detective stories there is
always a reporter in an overcoat
taking photographs of the chalk mark
that outlines where the body fell.
I imagine someone had to actually

straddle the dead and run the chalk
close –if not touching- the edge of the
contortioned shape, and I cant imagine
the feeling of nausea such a task
would bring about on the artist.

Our park. I went there today.
Someone had used a white chalk
to outline the shape of a heart
at the foot of the bench where
I said I no longer loved you.

DQ 11/08/08

Horse Feather

2008-11-07T12:01:00.003-05:00

This is a horse feather,
white, the calm of clouds.
I saw it fall from the sky
a slow dart from antiquity
swirling its habitual pattern.

Its vane gentle across my lips
its sturdy rachis could
pen a poem or two about
the process of kissing or
stammering ecstasies.

I wondered if the mythical animal
would part the evening sky
with its pale steady silence
turn its crimson eyes in my direction
and rapture
me on moon-hooves

over the matrix of skyscrapers
wearing nothing but its ribcage
between my legs.
Nothing is impossible.
I once loved like that.

DQ 11/7/08

Kisses I Remember

2008-10-13T08:58:00.001-04:00

My father kisses my mother on their 25th anniversary.
They stood behind the table
holding each other as they did
while they slept. Their faces pressed
together like dried flowers in a book.
Long ago, they bloomed.
April 1985

My last kiss.
I can still hear its echo disguised
as memory. One sound. Then
the void of all the years that followed.
Every kiss after that, hollow.
You asked me to leave her as you got dressed.
June 2001.

My best friend’s first kiss at Shenandoah Junior High.
Her face was covered by his,
I saw him release her hands
shortly after.
Girls are like that, they say
the opposite of what they mean.
January 1976.

A kiss I saw on TV
They bridged the gap toward
each other like magnets.
I wanted to be naked, like
they were. The lens closed in
on their moist lips just like I hoped it would.
March 1997.

A kiss from Judas
Every time we make love
I hear its sound, the kiss,
metallic like coins.
You ask me if I love you
and I say yes.
October 2008.

DQ 10.13.08

La Provençal

2008-10-04T11:59:00.003-04:00

No longer a fan of French cuisine
I avoid my favorite restaurant.
I wouldn't know if the outside

tables have been folded or replaced
or if they still serve the hot crepes
covered in béchamel sauce.

Last time I dined there, Albertine,
the waitress who always recommends
the salmon béarnaise, gave me

the wonderful news that you were
seeing someone new and had just
given birth to a lively baby boy.

Can you believe my arrogance?
...to ask if she had any idea
what you named the child?

DQ 10/4/8

Aubade

2008-09-25T14:38:00.008-04:00

What if we step outside this dream
and not return where we came from,
those ashen images that blur at dawn.

- Look, time has not touched you -
your hair still drapes in waves of indigo silk
and your eyes are still the shade of ancient woods.

You ask me to lay in your bed, to love you
in the room with the red walls again.
And me…restored to the body

of Apollo, the archer god,
the gold sun that woke you every morning
and kissed your bare feet.

Let's walk outside this dream before we vanish.
Don't be afraid, we will not fall.
There are no rules, no gravity in dreams

DQ 9/25/08

Burying

2008-09-25T14:36:00.001-04:00

When you knelt by the dirt road,
wedged your fingers in the cracks
and slowly dismembered
the earth’s old flesh
tearing roots to make
a grave, I wanted to warn you
about the useless effort.

Yesterday you sat naked
on my chest, wedged
your fingers deep inside
my ribs looking for the heart.
You found it, held it, read it
and asked about the name it had
engraved.

Here you are digging again, burying
our love...“the part that died” - you say.
Well I got news for you…
I buried one long ago,
and now its blood comes out
singing, yesterday you read
her name out loud.

DQ 9/25/08

Statue

2008-09-22T00:08:00.002-04:00

Statue

Lips sticky from pollen,
segments of mid-summer
colored heat. You stood
in foam and shells

with sea salt in your hair
shimmering petals
of blood red blossom, breasts
buoyant in the archaic air.

Last time I saw you,
you were made of stone
and stood there, armless, in the
ground floor of the Louvre.

How it must have trembled,
the hand with the chisel,
the first time you disrobed.

DQ 9/21/08

DQ 9/21/08

Raspberries and Cabernet

2008-09-12T10:08:00.006-04:00

Remember that evening
made of raspberries,
so much deep pink and ripe flesh,
we thought the air was wounded?

How we exhausted our bodies
carrying cups of Cabernet
across the bed, as our eyes
took snapshots of the mirror…

Later that night we used your
lipstick to paint stars across the mirror.
I saw your image arc towards
the sky before the supernova

fused the surface.
Here we are beneath the quicksilver.
Light years later, hotel maids still
attempt to wipe our bodies from the glass.

DQ 9/12/08

Meditation on the Iris.

2008-08-31T02:59:00.005-04:00

Through jade, the sun becomes
a prism of greens, some vivid
like absinthe, some blotched
like leaves awaiting autumn.

Lao Tzu says that words can never
convey the beauty of a tree;
to understand it, you must see it
with your own eyes.

- He makes me lie down
in green pastures
leads me beside still waters -
…and what about green tea?

the way it sparkles in my cup
as its warmth comes up to
touch my lips. My soul
is restored.

And this blade of grass I hold
between my fingers, so
delicate to touch, a phantom
limb of the whole earth.

Every thought is monochrome
or covered in mint,
endless and everywhere,
is the color of your eyes.

DQ 08/31/08

June 9th

2008-08-20T09:45:00.003-04:00

I watched the narrow hallway
come to an end where the desk stood.
I was prepared: lessons were fresh,
I had learned from failures, felt sorrow,
and faced sickness. I had even loved.

I heard a woman struggle with pain.

I sat on the black chair across the desk.
This was my moment for honesty.
Time to be assertive, answer quickly,
impress, succeed, and move on.
…and why not? I earned it.

I heard a woman shout with pain.

He walked to the desk, sat on the big chair
across from me, and asked a question
I had never heard before.
I froze, forgot everything I knew.
No answer…couldn’t even recall my name.

A woman released a cry of pain, then grunted
three times as if to gather strength.

Someone hit me.
I cry. I cry. I cry.
I am being handed to her.
She smiles and for the first time,
holds me to her breast.

DQ 08/19/08

Cygnus

2008-08-18T21:49:00.002-04:00

She woke me in a different room. Walls
painted red, small circles of pearlized light
reflected by strands of shells.
We said nothing. I saw her face for a moment, before

all seams of the universe neatly
converged between her thighs. Sweet succubus
pheromones crossing the silence in
kaleidoscopes of jasmine and lavender.

Zeus once turned into a swan to love a woman
and changed the fate of Troy.
Are there forces that use dreams
to satisfy their thirst for love, their need for company…

or is it maybe our needs that
wills them through the darkened conduit?
Perhaps my mother knew.
For now, back in my room, there is only the early morning scent
of jasmine and lavender still stirring inside me.

DQ 08/18/08

Coins

2008-08-17T03:02:00.000-04:00

The Cadillac driver
looks away and cringes.

Her body hung with icicles
like a slant roof
dripping freezing water
in the north pole.

Even so, she fights the solid flesh
turns to the radio, and thinks:
Let’s not make eye contact.
A few more steps he’ll go away.
Maybe the next guy
can help the homeless drunk.

The same look
again and again
behind every windshield.

They turn aside, check the dashboard gauges,
re-check the radio the station
and go on driving stiff,
without making eye contact.
Maybe the next guy…
each one is thinking.

They treat me as a disease.

What have I done, except
make a bet with my son
that I can give away a jar
of coins in half an hour.

All they have to do is take a handful.
Maybe the next guy…

Tomorrow my son will have twice as much
of the left-overs.

DQ
8/17/08

Palms at Fairchild

2008-06-22T20:47:00.000-04:00

The People's Dock at Deering

2008-06-21T17:35:00.002-04:00

Raising the Dead

2008-06-15T13:25:00.002-04:00

Eve

2008-05-30T21:22:00.002-04:00

The Creation of Adam

2008-05-30T20:28:00.002-04:00

Adam and Eve

2008-05-27T18:29:00.001-04:00

DQs Book

2008-05-26T02:21:00.007-04:00

ALCHETRY

Orchids

2008-05-26T01:51:00.002-04:00

Horse

2008-05-26T01:19:00.002-04:00

The Magic City

2008-05-14T20:38:00.000-04:00

Palm Trees Infrared

2008-04-04T00:13:00.000-04:00

The Other Wish

2008-02-28T18:04:00.003-05:00

Not the one shaped
like a dust covered footprint.

Not the one folded back,
hem of the garment I call body.

Not the one
that repeats itself with breath.

This is the other wish.

One kiss.

DQ 02/28/08

Statue of a Lion at the New York Library

2007-11-16T12:34:00.001-05:00

There are pigeon droppings
on my mane, but it doesn’t matter.
Nothing matters when you are
encased in stone. A day
or a thousand years are the same.

I cannot hear the city,
only the everlasting sound
of the ocean trapped in a hollow conch.

Before my fur was rock
it was the orange of chaos.
My gold eye, the fate
of wilder beasts, and my tongue
a sponge for lapping blood.

It is over, our time together.
Photographs dismembered,
plates broken like gazelles.

Another pigeon lands on my head.
I prefer this.
I prefer this to the steel bars
of your jealousy, and your fear
of being struck by fate.

DQ 11/16/07

The Crucifixion

2007-11-16T12:32:00.000-05:00

Had I known where it led
I would have chosen a different
path. Not that I had a choice

to have my arms secured
to opposite sides of my chest
by nails, or feet immobilized

to a wooden plank by another,
while my head was free to turn
to either side. My wife on one.

You on the other. My mother
kneeling in front, taking pictures
of all us singing happily around

the birthday cake. Someone said:
“There is your mother”
I suppose the spear is next.

DQ 11/9/07

Time Travel

2007-10-30T05:58:00.000-04:00

The past is all around us.
It travels from earth, outwards
to space in a ripple.

Do you remember yesterday
when you laughed at my joke?
Look at your laughter, making

its way past the moon now.
And the summer when your
mother died? Look there…

-those are your sobs-
They are almost out
of the sun’s reach by now.

And there, by that star.
Those are your
first cries as a newborn.

I looked beyond that thinking
I’d find God, but all I saw
was your mother’s laughter.

DQ 10/29/07

The Lazarus Journey

2007-10-22T06:00:00.001-04:00

“And he came forth, feet and hands bound
with bands, and face covered in cloth.”

1. In hospice rooms, they weep
before they cross the threshold.

2. At the pound, all dogs on death
row have streaks under their eyes.

3. In my garden, flower buds
sprout with little droplets of dew.

4. In birthing rooms,
newborns cry at birth.

What are tears
if not proof that

this circle of life thing is
really lonely on the other side.

DQ 10/21/07

Equestrian Women

2007-10-20T00:30:00.000-04:00

I am not exactly sure when
they traded places.
The supplanter, the displaced,
the daughters of Isaac.
It happened sometime before
the alarm clock rang. Sometime
between the tap on the shoulder
and the straddle of the hip.

There is usually a cautionary word
between one runner and the next
to warn about the exchange of the baton.

But not this time. There was no warning,
no approaching footsteps by one,
no reaching back by the other.
No halt of the race to exchange jockeys.

It was you that bounced
on my hips in the darkness
but someone else’s name that I called out.

DQ 10/19/07

When Knees Touch

2007-10-11T01:02:00.001-04:00

Before making contact,
the invisible lightning arc sizzles
across inches.

And Jesus said, "Who touched me?"

When have you felt ether
fall from you like reflex?

Out of your skin
and into the flesh and space of another
like gravity

bound at each end by a string
with fish hooks politely forcing
a minimum distance

crackling and white
the baited touch of a woman’s skin

and after that, the stare of Eve
and after that, the sweet smell of apple
and after that, the fate of all my fathers.

DQ 10/11/07

Untitled

2007-10-07T22:29:00.000-04:00

That afternoon the wind
turned trees to bone,
cut my face with leaves.
Every butterfly became a sail

and I became a prophet,
predicting it would topple
a dream house built from clouds.
Butterflies have returned since.

My face has healed.
The wind replaced the space
my body filled, and pushed
my half the sky along with yours.

DQ 10/07/07

Revisiting Ravens

2007-08-03T00:55:00.000-04:00

“Deep into the darkness peering, long I stood there wondering fearing.
Doubting, dreaming dreams no mortal ever dared to dream before”
- Edgar Allan Poe -

No longer silent, ravens
chase a piece of bread
on the sand, black on white
like octaves on the keyboard.

In my yard, ants scatter
at the mist of bug spray,
mimicking ravens fleeing
from a thrown rock.

An ink blot splattered
on a letter tossed aside.
A raven lying on the road
victim of a passing car.

At the coffee shop, a woman
points at the menu flaunting
a diamond surrounded by onyx stones,
a small raven’s nest on her finger.

I remember the first time
we made love on January 29th
a raven, colored like dreams,
landed on the hotel’s window.

I have never seen a better metaphor.

The Last time I Cross-Dressed

2007-07-30T18:24:00.000-04:00

My mother sewed three makeshift
worm shaped duffle bags out of a sail’s
canvas the day after three men in
uniform walked away from the front door
of the old Spanish house in Havana
my family owned for over a century.
They came on the very night my father
dreamt they would. They carried our permit
to leave the country. They said we were scum,
said we betrayed “Fidel” and the revolution.

A week later my parents scrambled
to buy coats in the black market because
there are no department stores or winter in Cuba,
and Madrid (or any exile for that matter)
is always cold during winter.
All they could find that would fit
a six year old boy was the coat
of a ten year old Russian girl
who died in Havana as a result
of mosquito induced meningitis.

A month later, I walked through the airport
wearing an oversized dead girl’s coat
with big square buttons, and carried
my belongings in a worm shaped canvas bag
branded with a blue partial race number on one side.
They confiscated my mother’s
wedding ring, and said that a six year old
boy dressed as a dead ten year old Russian
girl from the Moscow sailing team,
should not be traveling wearing
his grandfather’s gold crucifix.

That was the last time I cross-dressed
and also the last time I filled a sail
with something else other than wind.

DQ 7/20/07

Rarely used (or failed) poetry forms

2007-07-30T18:21:00.000-04:00

1. Falsonneta
The Falsonneta consists of anything else other than three quatrains and a couplet. The usual rhyme scheme is a-a-a-a, a-a-a-a, a-a-a-a, a-a and recited in an artificially high voice such as a shriek. In addition, Falsonnetas are written in amoebic pentameter, meaning that there are mostly 10 small single cell syllables per line, and that every other single cell syllable naturally divides.

2. Pantouhmmm…
The pantouhmmm… is composed of a series of quatrains whose lines are forgotten once spoken; the second and fourth lines of each stanza cannot be repeated as the first and third lines have been forgotten by this point.
Since there is no real structure to this form, this pattern continues for any number of stanzas, similar to a political address.

3. Balladiarrhetic
A balladiarrhetic is told or written in the form of a story, usually composed in a hurry in a public restroom. Any story form may be told as a balladiarrhetic, such as historical accounts of how pants were stained or rhetoric for ineffective pheromones. It usually has foreshortened, alternating four stress lines and simple repeating colic accents, often with a refrain.

4. Prosethetic
Prosethetic writing is usually adopted for the description of non-facts or the discussion of fake events incorporated in free flowing speech. Thus, it may be used for corporate newsletters, political speeches, tele-evangelists, love letters, debtor's notes, or famous quotes. This form is often erroneously credited to the signing of casts, or to the unusual fetish of writing free-flowing poetry on fake limbs or strap-ons.

DQ 7/28/7

Three Rings

2007-07-18T22:50:00.000-04:00

For five years I filled a light green
three ring binder with poems about you.
Each sheet chronologically archived
and dressed in clear plastic covers
to avoid the paper from being stained,
or damaged, or wounded by the bite
of the three hole punching machine.
Poems describing stares, kisses,
and the taste of sweat. An anthology
of lovemaking told in color and scents.
Poems about your hair and your breasts
and your thighs and how each of them
felt on my skin. Poems about fire and
dark nights filled with moon and stars.
It took five minutes on a night like that
to set the light green binder on fire.
Only the metal rings remained,
all three equally black and welded shut
small symbols of dead lovers moving on.

DQ 7/18/07

The Sky is Dark Orange

2007-07-12T23:36:00.000-04:00

The sky is dark orange,
the grass is red violet.
I walk my bicycle
with square wheels.

Blood is blue green,
my skin is light blue.
I stand awake
on my bed all day.

Oranges are dark blue.
Blueberries are yellow orange.
I have forgotten you
and I no longer love you.

DQ 7/12/7

Prayers

2007-07-12T08:59:00.000-04:00

The waters of Biscayne Bay turn darker blue
with every inch of sea displaced by shoulder
with every stroke of paddle dug deep into the wave,
each breath breathing the pride of ancient sailors
who charged to sea by mere wonder of what
lies beyond the threshold where the water falls to the abyss.
A quest of man and 14 feet of durable plastic that will end
right back where it started, on the roof rack of the old jeep
five blocks away from home right before dinner.
But for now there are hours between dinner and horizon,
there is distance between horizon and dream, and there is me
between the dream and the reality of the jeep’s roof rack.
For now there is no asphalt, no work, no money
or street lights, no red x pin-pointing my location.
For now there is only motion of arm and wave
only the traveler’s pleasure of an unknown destination
only effort and sweat, only one breath with every stroke,
chest rising and falling like the tide and the rain
and the woman giving birth, and the meditation of the Buddha.
For now, there is a man canonized without a rosary or nails
a visionary saint without papal decree or Vatican council,
a threshold seeker displacing water and salt by shoulder,
sitting in a 14 foot cathedral made of durable plastic.
For now there is me in awe before the teal vastness of god
a small moon on the liquid ring of a distant planet.

Red Giant

2007-07-10T00:54:00.000-04:00

They say in future eons the sun
will enter its red giant phase as
hydrogen fuel in its core is depleted.

They say the sun will swell
large enough to overcome
the orbits of all the inner planets.

Earth's water will boil and
everyone will call god’s name
before being consumed by fire.

I remember you came like that
one night in September,
and it seems to me that

dying while screaming engulfed
in the luminous swell of the fire’s
combustion won’t be so bad.

DQ 7/10/07

STICKS

2007-07-09T16:18:00.001-04:00

A poem is friction between two sticks
the by-product of rubbing poet and subject.

Example

Stick two: Me
Born on the feast of Vesta, goddess
of the hearth, patron of torrent and rush.
Lava, combustion, and lust.

Stick one: You
Female. Long hair, preferably dark.
Breast size unimportant but firm.
Ass not flat. Likes to kiss.

Poem:
Hips imitate the hammering of molten metal
heads tilt back, mouths shaped like howling.
Smoke rises from the flesh pyre.

DQ 7/8/7

Point of Arrival

2007-07-01T20:34:00.001-04:00

When I arrived at the side of your bed
like an answered prayer, you asked me
where I’d been all night and I said
“keep your eyes closed”

so you could not see the wooden
wings attached to my wrists.
We spoke about the magnetizing force
of moon and the failing path of sunlight.

I reminded you of how light we were
the years we spent naked
and how suntanned your body was
from the fire that used to be my stare.

We spoke of the heated color of blood
and the sudden vertigo induced by lust.
Every dream has two sides
Yours, calling my name in sleep

mine, waiting for the dream call
attached to the cross of your voice
like a Daliesque St. John hovering
above the Catalonian shoreline.

DQ 7/1/7

Rings

2007-06-23T12:03:00.000-04:00

Entrance.
There is silence in the concentric circles of tree
stumps. No leaves rustling, no branches creaking.
The light colored rings indicate a spring season.
The dark colored rings, the absence of spring.
At the center, a dark spot marks the day
the seed was buried. It mirrors a planet.

Journey.
There is movement in the thin ocean layer
of rocks. A floating desert carousel chiseled in air.
The light colored rings are the bedrock grave
of a companion moon. The dark colored rings,
the absence of moon. In the center, a mass that invented
itself when the universe formed. It mirrors a ghost.

Exit.
Fluid statue. Ripple. No fingers moving, no legs walking.
The light colored rings in the slice of a ghost
mark times it was loved as flesh.
There are dark rings for every time it was yelled at,
laughed at, cheated, beaten, tortured, or raped.
There is no center. Only the green scent of seedpods.

Five twists and a black hole.

2007-06-12T17:36:00.001-04:00

There will not be a Dr. King.
His re-incarnation was pronounced dead at
an Atlanta hospital, the victim of a gun shot.

There will not be a next Krishna.
He was one of eight killed by an explosion
at a Indian house near the Pakistani border.

There will not a 15th Dalai Lama.
The small child was shot dead by
Chinese troops while fleeing Tibet.

There will be no second coming,
The boy was killed by a car bomb while
walking to school in Bethlehem.

There will not be another white Rhino.
Poachers shot the last two,
killing one and wounding the other.

…and you?...Where the fuck were you?
Laying in bed watching the news?
The globe turns its face and looks away.

DQ 6/12/07

Spleen and Ideal- The Movie

2007-05-31T22:26:00.000-04:00

(Poem by DQ, Movie by Hector)

A Woman Always Wins

2007-05-22T22:56:00.000-04:00

Six hundred ninety six
is really the sum of
Sappho, Plath and I.
Elizabeth: instead of
loving thee
count the ways
you come tonight.
Maya, watch us
Yin Yang the mirror
in half.

How would you
know which poet
I like?
Here is the winner:
read my pants
in Braille.

DQ 05/22/07

DECONSTRUCTIONS- the show

2007-05-14T17:39:00.000-04:00

click here to listen to.....DECONSTRUCTIONS

The Sun

2007-05-06T23:52:00.000-04:00

The title and first line of this poem are borrowed from a poem by Charles Baudelaire.

The Sun

Along the old slums where
the ruined shutters hang
a grouper exits a window
swallows a whole yellowtail
swims towards the next building.

Below the kill, a garland of algae
hangs on a barnacled street sign,
a school of sardines gathers above
the walk-don’t walk pedestrian sign
at the corner of the four lane street.

The sun shines above the waters.
It feels like summer. Year round
the mermaids lay eggs while
archeologists mermen dive kitchen
drawers seeking small tridents.

We could never agree on much
you and I. Even when mother
was ill, we argued over her health.
You said it was car sickness
I said it was years of smoking.

The doctor said it was heat stroke
the politician said she was fine
the priest said it was incest
kept blabbering the rhetoric
of how long ago they climbed

the ark two by two, and fled higher.
Even while we watched the news
we could not agree on how to keep
the polar ice caps frozen.
Now it doesn’t matter.

Even the rainbow has fled.

DQ 5/6/7

The Honk Kong Dragon Boat Race 2007

2007-05-06T23:45:00.000-04:00

It is always amazing to see the underdog boxer rise from a nine count, always exciting to see the cinderella team give the champion a run for the trophy, to see the phoenix rise from the ashes and fly. My favorite quote comes to mind, “The man in the arena” by Theodore Roosevelt:

“It’s not the critic who counts, not the one who points out how the strong man stumbled or how the doer of deeds might have done better. The credit belongs to the man in the arena, whose face is marred with sweat, dust and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes short again and again, who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, and spends himself in a worthy cause;

who if he wins, knows the triumphs of high achievement; and who if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat.”

This past Saturday I had the opportunity to live that dream few ever experience in real life, I got the chance to be that man in the arena along with 15 other computer geeks, paper pushers, husbands, wives and kids. We are now part of those who dare greatly with sweat and salt and the grimace of high achievement on our faces; we tasted that glory Roosevelt describes when our dragon boat rowing team gave professional rowing teams that travel the country (one from as far as L.A.) a fighting run for the trophy.

We trained for 6 weeks instead of year round. The whole team never actually practiced together due to work schedules, travel, kid’s soccer games, spelling bees, and birthdays. They laughed at us at the starting line, because we lacked a proper uniform, matching life vests, and carbon fiber paddles. They looked at us as easy prey, and when the air horn rang, we rowed our hearts out, and drove home two trophies. We just did what we do at work everyday which is: come together as a team, rise in the face of adversity, restore power after the storm, bring a city back to life after a hurricane, run nuclear plants, write emails, push paper, be safe and responsible, take care of our families.

I am proud of my “Electric Dragon” shipmates, our 13 year old drummer, and our steersman and voice Harry, who coached us during practices and races.

I’ll never forget his words: Ten on Three! Ten on Three!

DQ (fourth row)

Poet

2007-04-27T18:43:00.001-04:00

To your words I am glass.
Across the clear solid
their blazing power approaches.
Penetrate without shatter.
Verbal x-rays, a testament
to your vision, which must be solar.

The cadaver of a young swimmer
is how you say floating.
A whisper buried in ice
is how you say forever.
The coals of the sky
is how you say clouds.

I would like your ink stained
handprint left on my surface.
A smudged aperture to the chest
where you words are stored.
A visible meditation to verify
your existence from here.

In your own words
through the glass, this is me
when your sun comes through:
The cadaver of a young swimmer
in the coals of the sky
a whisper buried in ice.

DQ 4/27/07

While We Wait for Mae

2007-04-26T18:47:00.001-04:00

Lava in a dress, culprit of brimstone,
everything beyond the tip of your
eyelash burns. Make your body shake
from the shoulders down in
sinusoidal liquid smoke. Shimmy.

Where does the sun set?
Not here.
We're not like
those who fear the slow
pressure cooking of your gaze.

Where does the sun set?
Not here. We're not crouching
behind a faux stage.
We do not crave
sleep, or vaudeville,

or the bodice of spring.
We look to the solstice
and wilder things
in the direction of the set.
Sexsette.

Where does the sun set?
Not here, not exactly.
We came upstairs to see
the dazzling tulips one last
time but got lost in your dress.

A thousand suns were
sewn in the rosewood
mold of a guitar.

EN/DQ 4/25/07
(a collaboration between Edward Nudelman and DQ)

Celeste

2007-04-17T23:08:00.001-04:00

“I am haunted by Azure, Azure, Azure, Azure”
S. Mallarme

Serene splendor of the wind,
the scent of lavender is overwhelming

Slow machine of perpetual mantra,
the sea is overwhelming.

Silent dome of everness,
the sky is overwhelming.

There! in the azure…
a living poem floats among petals
of seaweed. It must be Ophelia.
No. It is someone else.

I have come face to face
with Venus’ shimmer
reflected on the ocean’s swell.
Her eyes are overwhelming.

DQ 04/15/07

Ars Poetica

2007-04-08T21:54:00.000-04:00

“A poem should not mean, but be.”
Archibald MacLeish

The chime exhumes a single note.
It is your voice.

A nightingale sings in bird
speak. My ears squint, I sing.

Ghosts touch each other unaware.
Eyes and words do the same.

Every night dreams are sacrificed
to the sun. The moon is proof.

Two images collected in a puddle.
Mine above. Yours below
a pale shadow buried in mud.
In my eyes, a tinge I never saw before.

DQ 4/8/7

Miami Dragon Boat Race

2007-04-07T17:41:00.000-04:00

The Miami Dragon Boat race will be held on May 5th on the beautiful waters of Brickell Key.

Come see team Ouroboros win again.

Miami Dragon Boat race

Today's practice was all out race pace. All along a dolphin swam next to out boat.

I am sore. I love this city.

Nepenthe II

2007-04-05T16:51:00.000-04:00

Eternity is the immortal
soul-kiss of your body
pressed upon my hand

aphrodisiac whisper
residue of rainbow, perfumed
hue between my fingers.

Tomorrow I’ll question whether
the scent is yours or mine,
forget the world for a moment or two.

Right now, there are chimes
and bells strung on this
tightrope that binds us

this fragrant silk web
pathway of angels
colored ripened rose.

DQ 04/5/07

Spleen and Ideal

2007-04-02T15:59:00.002-04:00

“You know him, reader, this delicate monster, my likeness, my brother!”-
Charles Baudelaire

1. Spleen (the setup)
Poetry is routine words. Everyday words
turned from solid to tunnel. A small infection
of possibilities. A list of fragmented thoughts.
A linguistic experiment that offers nothing
more than a transcending sound, something like
“cellar door", which some say is beautiful.

2. Poem (the turn)
Poetry is a black box. A domestic routine
turned dream passage, perpetual moonshade.

Here is the transformation:

Eyes follow a flock of dreams.
Syllables from the zodiac’s carousel spiral
downward. Fossilized sounds fall from sky,
into the poet’s machine and are assembled
into word funnel clouds on paper. Read on.

3. Ideal (the illusion)
Here is the magic. It starts with a dream titled
“Bridge”, my senses assemble between your thighs,
which offer a cloud ride to where psychedelic fractals
connect the midpoints of the triangle’s sides.
Slit pattern and pink shades consume my face.
The illusion of words consumes the reader.
The scent of burnt flesh consumes the world.

DQ 4/2/7

2007-04-01T09:30:00.000-04:00

Read my VisualDNA™ Get your own VisualDNA™

Keepsake

2007-03-23T19:35:00.000-04:00

I keep a small pebble
in a shoe box labeled “last kiss”.
The box sits on a shelf in my closet
among scrapbooks and dust.

There is one less rock traveling
the sky. I saw it blister the riverbed,
a scarlet trail hissing behind it
before being extinguished

by the water’s numbing lips, which
through slow years of contact
polish the scarabs and birds of
hieroglyphics into unsaid words.

The last time we met
you blew a kiss into your hand
and threw it out of the car window
towards where I stood.

It went in my mouth and
rolled down my throat like moonshine.
A small seed of your ghost blistering
somewhere inside me, a scarlet trail

of incense hymns to Lazarus.
Here it is after years of coughing
in a shoe box labeled “last kiss”.
The whole universe is in there.

DQ 03/23/07

The Eigth Ecstasy

2007-03-13T22:33:00.000-04:00

She is finally done.

The Seventh Ecstasy

2007-03-06T22:34:00.000-05:00

(click on image to see bigger)
Today I did the necklace...After that I got bored and stopped. I think I got one more sitting with St Theresa and we're done with each other.

Multimedia in Canvas

2007-03-03T20:16:00.000-05:00

I work on small sections at a time.
Crayons scribbles in a corner.
Round face stick figures smiling,
some of which have faded.
I weaved shoe laces and sewed
buttons on it, some which tore,
or fell where the canvas weakened.
Small little lies repaired, pasting colored
patches from other paintings on the rip.
I also pasted post-it notes in random
places. Some with names written
in pencil, some in ink.
Post-it notes fall. They stick to my shoe.
I drag them when I walk by, loose
them in the piss of public restrooms,
loose them in dog shit while I walk the dog.
In the center, oils, Alizarin crimsons,
Indian reds are tediously mixed. They
join with no line of demarcation.
They streak like blood spill, the
color of her lips.

One day I’ll complete the piece.
I’ll see it from behind held up to the light,
and forget where to find the artist’s signature.

DQ 3/3/7

The Beautiful

2007-03-02T08:41:00.000-05:00

Woman standing by the podium
shirt rolled under your breasts
exposed belly stretched
an inch from birth.

You strike the lump
in the uterus with
fists and rage until you
become a living body bag.

You squat over the recycling bin
and drop another child.
God shed His grace on thee
and crown thy good with brotherhood

from sea to shining sea.
There he is returning home in uniform
with your flag over his casket
resting in the ancient silence of the womb.

DQ 03/01/07

Music

2007-02-27T23:43:00.001-05:00

My body moves aquatic.
My body shaped liked Satan’s tail.
My body crosses Beale Street.
My body outside its flesh walls.

Patrick Henry said it
Give me liberty or give me death.
Strike your palm and thumb
on the Conga’s leather.

My body is a whore’s legs.
My body’s current ionizes air.
My body is not ashamed.
My body can fly.

A bird transposed
his wings on my back.
My body is a weightless note
chasing the sun’s arc.

DQ 02/27/07

Woman offering Coffee

2007-02-26T18:13:00.000-05:00

The moon’s layers peeled
one by one reveal the small
sugar cube at the eternal place.
Arrows of fire skin point
where thighs come together,
where flesh changes tone
in color, gravity and scent.
Scent that undulates the air,
weaves itself a half spoken
smoky sentence, and places
a drunken fabric over eyes
no passing sun or reason
could ever penetrate.
The caramel pull stretches me.
No one returns from where
the sea falls to the abyss.
A red light inside warns:
Primal mode only. But no
one watches the control desk.
Just a cup of coffee she said…
and here she is rooted in my
tongue. Nothing will ever
move us again, not even
the smell of fresh coffee.

DQ 02/26/07

Tattoo

2007-02-23T10:26:00.001-05:00

“You shall not make any cuts in your body
for the dead nor make any tattoo marks on
yourselves: I am the Lord.” Leviticus 19:28

I have a tattoo of a woman’s name.
It makes a written halo over her head.
Her head rests on her hands.
Her hands make a cradle, palms down.
Her hair runs past her elbows.
Her elbows rest on her knees.
Her knees partially cover her breasts.
Her ankles are crossed
not covering much, and her
feet disappear under a pillow
she is using to keep them warm.
It’s a very nice tattoo.

Now listen Peter…
spare me the canon bullshit.
Your written regulations
only mention the body.

DQ 2/23/07

Window by the Writing Desk

2007-02-22T21:24:00.001-05:00

Through this window
poems gently drifted,
lovestaining paper
with the fresh morning
toffee color of your eyes,
and perfectly describing
pyramids of lovemaking
and the aftermath grave
silences we made embalmed
in the scent of our opposite skins.
Years later you are still
my sweetest dream
and I watch , by this window,
the rain distort the world
as it writes lines across the glass.
I force words on paper
and watch them fade within
scattered dark blotches.
Paper stains the same
with tears and rain.

DQ 02/22/07

The significance of Ecstasy

2007-02-21T23:35:00.000-05:00

Three definitions from Wikipedia- which are really all the same

1. Ecstasy (from the Greek έκστασις, to be outside oneself) is a category of altered states of consciousness or trancelike states in which an individual transcends ordinary consciousness and as a result has a heightened capacity for exceptional thought, intense concentration on a specific task, extraordinary physical abilities or intense emotional experience. This heightened capacity is typically accompanied by diminished awareness of some other matters. For instance, if one is concentrating on a physical task, then one might cease to be aware of any intellectual thoughts. On the other hand, making a spirit journey in an ecstatic trance involves the cessation of voluntary bodily movement. Subjective perception of time, space and/or self may strongly change or disappear during ecstasy.

2. A religious ecstasy is an altered state of consciousness characterized by greatly reduced external awareness and expanded interior mental and spiritual awareness which is frequently accompanied by visions and emotional/intuitive (and sometimes physical) euphoria. Although the experience is usually brief in physical time, there are records of such experiences lasting several days or even more, and of recurring experiences of ecstasy during one's lifetime. Subjective perception of time, space and/or self may strongly change or disappear during ecstasy.
The adjective "religious" means that the experience occurs in connection with religious activities or is interpreted in context of a religion. Religious ecstasy can be distinguished from spirit possession and hypnosis in that ecstasy is not accompanied by a loss of interior consciousness or will on the part of the subject experiencing it. Rather, the person experiencing ecstasy notices a dramatic heightening of awareness of the spiritual, and a total concentration of the will on it. If the ecstatic state comes about slowly, the subject may notice changes in his or her physiological responses. But, once brought into complete ecstasy, there is ordinarily no or very little external awareness of the physical state of the subject or the surroundings. Some external awareness remains in a partial religious ecstasy. Intense fear may accompany the initial stage of being drawn into ecstasy. Different religious teachings distinguish and describe several stages or forms of ecstasy.

3. Ecstasy is used in philosophy usually to mean outside-of-itself. One's consciousness, for example, is not self-enclosed, one can be conscious of an Other person, who falls well outside of one's own self. In a sense, consciousness is usually, "outside of itself," in that its object (what it thinks about, or perceives) is not itself.
Another example of the use of the term "ecstasy", is that one can be "outside of oneself," with time; In temporalizing, each of the following: the past (the 'having-been'), the future (the 'not-yet') and the present (the 'making-present') are the "outside of itself" of each other. In fact, our being-in-the-world is usually focused toward some person, task or the past. Telling someone to "remain in the present," could then be self-contradictory, if the present only emerged as the "outside itself" of future projections (possibilities) and past facts (our throwness).

The significance of arrows

2007-02-21T18:54:00.000-05:00

“Beside me on the left appeared an angel in bodily form . . . He was not tall but short, and very beautiful; and his face was so aflame that he appeared to be one of the highest ranks of angels, who seem to be all on fire . . . In his hands I saw a great golden spear, and at the iron tip there appeared to be a point of fire. This he plunged into my heart several times so that it penetrated my entrails. When he pulled it out I felt that he took them with it, and left me utterly consumed by the great love of God. The pain was so severe that it made me utter several moans. The sweetness caused by this intense pain is so extreme that one can not possibly wish it to cease, nor is one's soul content with anything but God. This is not a physical but a spiritual pain, though the body has some share in it -- even a considerable share.”

The Sixth Ecstasy

2007-02-20T23:43:00.000-05:00

Click on the picture if you want to see her bigger.

Today I finished the arrow, and did a second coat of hair, concentrating on the hair's highlights and shadows. I still need to do the necklace and sign the work. I hope to get back to poetry once she is done. I can not seem to be able to muster up my muse to do anything else but this.

The Fifth Ecstasy

2007-02-13T23:15:00.000-05:00

Today I worked more on the face shadows and painted the first coat of hair. I also darkened some of the leaves and fixed the teeth.

Laundry list of things left:

Paint the arrow. (Top left)
finish the hair.
finish the lips (add shades on right side).
do one more coat of skin.
fix the pointy part of the forehead by the hair. (left side)
fix the hair to make the boob look normal. (right boob engorged with ecstasy)
paint necklace w/tripple goddess pendant.

ACTUAL QUOTE BY ST. THERESA PERTAINING TO THE ECSTASY:

"I saw in his hand a long spear of gold, and at the iron's point there seemed to be a little fire. He appeared to me to be thrusting it at times into my heart, and to pierce my very entrails; when he drew it out, he seemed to draw them out also, and to leave me all on fire with a great love of God. The pain was so great, that it made me moan; and yet so surpassing was the sweetness of this excessive pain, that I could not wish to be rid of it. The soul is satisfied now with nothing less than God. The pain is not bodily, but spiritual; though the body has its share in it. It is a caressing of love so sweet which now takes place between the soul and God, that I pray God of His goodness to make him experience it who may think that I am lying."

The Fourth Ecstasy

2007-02-06T22:42:00.000-05:00

Eyes, Lips, and second coat of skin. Fixed the nose and nostril. Click on her to see a bigger pic.

Stone Maker

2007-02-04T18:19:00.000-05:00

Acrobats practicing balance
turn to obelisks at the threshold
of your gaze. Stonehenge.

Insects crawling by
the riverbed solidify as
as you kneel to drink. Pebbles.

Music notes fall from air,
petrify and shatter
as you walk by. Dust.

Here in my mirror, you tame
the indigo mane of snake hair
with both hands. Stone maker.

I would believe the myth
if it wasn’t for the fact
that you are bouncing

on the liquid that use
to be my hips as I
melt beneath you.

The Third Ecstasy

2007-01-30T22:38:00.000-05:00

She is still wet on the canvas. That's what all those shiny spots are.

Missing stars of the Confederate flag

2007-01-24T00:01:00.000-05:00

High on the top shelf of my closet
along with scrapbooks and yearbooks
is my father’s helmet. Six stars remain
on the confederate flag sticker weathered
by rain. I remember staring at all the stars
for days on our way to Naples beach.

I was eleven years old and Nixon was
president. I sat on a small cushion bolted
to the back fender of his Harley Davidson.
We rode within the rumble of mufflers,
long beards and flashes of chrome.
His friends called me “Clickie”.

They knew my father as “Click”.
That was the sound his camera made
when he snapped pictures of motorcycles,
bonfires, drunken men and naked women.
They called me that on the day they
knocked at our door with the helmet.

Part of the sticker was missing.
They never mentioned his real name,
they said his pictures were legends.
I held the scratched up helmet by the strap
as my father did, and locked the door.
That was the last click they heard.

DQ 01/21/07

The Second Ecstasy

2007-01-23T22:59:00.000-05:00

The Ecstasy of St. Theresa

Okay- I've decided the top flower needs to be more yellow, and the leaves that droop over the triangle are going to compete with the arrow (which is not there yet) for the viewers attention. Therefore the droopy leaves are going away. The other leaves need to be darker.

I should have done a study for this painting but I knew it by heart. Leave it to me to forget.

A year ago I had it all in my head. Today I stumble and stutter. I am growing old.

New Painting on the Easel

2007-01-16T23:28:00.000-05:00

"The Ecstasy of St. Theresa"

An Index of Hours

2007-01-05T19:29:00.000-05:00

The graceful hours. Ether.
Slow motion acrobats
tongues tethered
above each other.
Small predators.
Slender mountain mints
in ghost white linen.

The adoration hours. Smolder
Scarlet striped tigers
gorging in yin-yang.
Repeat my name. Fever
Repeat my name. Fervor
Spotted jewelweeds
in fire brick red.

The petrified hours. Terrain
Stonehenge embrace.
Lovers chiseled in marble
one sleepless
unmovable kiss.
Evening primroses
in goldenrod khaki.

The moving hours. Maritime
Nirvana cocktail
inside you
the tide beats the seawall
bedposts speaking lace.
Venus looking glasses
in aquamarine turquoise.

DQ 01/06/07

Why we Fall

2007-01-02T00:34:00.000-05:00

1.
Five stories he fell, fighting
gravity like a bird statue chiseled
from granite, slapping the air below
the scaffold while urging wings to
come alive until the last second
when the asphalt nest became stained.

2.
He never wanted his feet
to touch the tangle of aquatic ivy,
or find out what type of fish
seabirds dive for. His face was
a desperate shade of blue,
when he drifted on the beach.

3.
The flame, domesticated candle
scented in the flavor of vanilla
sandalwood, first devoured the curtains,
then the entire building while she slept.
She wanted to be buried beneath flowers,
not cremated in room four of the hourly motel.

4.
There is no free will when falling in love.
I could not fly out of it if I had wings.
I could not save myself from drowning in it.
And when my heart reddens with passion,
I could not deny its walls from melting in the fire.
Maybe every time we love, we die a little.

DQ 1/2/7

The 06 King Mango Strut

2007-01-01T13:31:00.000-05:00

Click here for Pictures of this year's Strut

Click here to watch the Strut on CBS4