Every once in a while, I get the urge to paint. Below are a couple of recent paintings… Continue reading
painting
The plight of the insomniac (a poem)
An ekphrastic poem, inspired by Peter Juvonen’s painting, Mexican Hat Dance.
Continue reading
Sensed, not seen (a poem)
An ekphrastic poem, inspired by Peter Knox’s painting, Erolla.
Continue reading
The lesser of two evils (a poem)
Every time I see somebody advocating voting for ‘the lesser of two evils’—especially when it is followed by a statement of helplessness—I get angry. Regardless of which candidate you like in this (or any other) election, the whole point of voting is to elect the best person for the job. If you think Candidate A is the best person, you vote for Candidate A. If you think it’s Candidate B, C, or D, you vote for that person. Or maybe you write in the name of someone you think is qualified, but is not otherwise on the ballot—that’s why that space is there.
Instead, what keeps happening is that people figuratively hold their noses and literally vote for Candidate A because Candidate A is not Candidate B. ‘The lesser of two evils is still less evil’, they say. Guess what? If that is the rationale, then evil has already won, even if Candidate A wins. And this keeps happening because The Establishment, let’s call them, have, through faulty logic and sheer repetition, convinced people that things cannot work any other way, that voting their conscience will result in the ‘more evil’ candidate winning—thereby ending democracy as we know it.
The problem with this is that we are not going to get the government we want if we keep compromising this way. It doesn’t work well in everyday life (I’m living proof of this)—so how can it work when it comes to voting?
My two bits: vote your conscience.
Continue reading
Untitled ekphrastic (a poem)
Written after seeing a painting of baby shoes on a pink background. Unfortunately, I know neither the title nor the name of the artist…
Continue reading
The ongoing back-and-forth of what to do with my life (a poem)
The week of reflection continues…
Continue reading
J.Y.M. Speaks (a poem)
The June 15th prompt in The Daily Poet: Day-By-Day Prompts For Your Writing Practice, by Kelli Russell Agodon & Martha Silano, is to write a poem in which “someone or something in a painting or a sculpture will be the speaker”. The only thing that came to mind that depicted “someone or something” that could be imagined to have a voice was Frank Auerbach’s Head of J.Y.M. II, which is the painting used for the cover art of Japan’s 1983 live LP, Oil On Canvas.