Just tumbling through it all

I have so much to say and no place to formulate what it is I need to say…

Turning inward…

 

acrylic on canvas 12×12

 
Sometimes you find yourself facing inward. Is this an intuited act, an act of self-preservation? In art, often things spill out in the work that were never intended, but when you find yourself facing it, your only response is often, yes.

Return of sorts…

Just testing out WordPress again.

my goals for the new year

I want to think again of dangerous and noble things.
I want to be light and frolicsome.
I want to be improbable beautiful and afraid of nothing,
as though I had wings.

— Mary Oliver, from “Starlings in Winter”

…a recent acrylic painting.

Self portrait in February

morning prayer

morning prayer

new mexico experience

“In the magnificent fierce morning of New Mexico one sprang awake, a new part of the soul woke up suddenly, and the old world gave way to a new.”
-D H Lawrence-

Some words here and there…

Self-Likeness
Thoughts moving
in the shade of anticipation
halt at a reflecting glass

Caught unaware
by this new, old image
he grabs tools of cream colored paper
and pencils black

Drawing after drawing
furiously cross-hatching
lines desperate to find
what was so, once

Image unfamiliar
lying overworked
he grips eraser
pausing, to find a way back

-Pat Greenwell-
April 2008

Maui Regress
He stood; life transfixed. Paths going this way and that, but he stood
waiting,
one foot beyond childhood,
caught in some Jungian mess

Paled by a knowledge not sought
amidst a brilliant black
he watches with his Van Gogh eyes
an ocean becoming
and darkly doubling back

And he too, inside

Rhythmic with intention
amorphous, he moves
wanting to touch this god’s grace
he and ocean
needing to feel some
intimate space

Forgiven his separation
his unlawful guise
he leaves his sanctuary

Strains, and listens
to discover the constant place
where one can hear the sound (the roar)
that only stars should make

-Pat Greenwell-
September 2007

A Rant, Then Gone
They forgot to tell me you had died,
makes me wonder
what slipped their minds most, you or I
I guess just another flavor of death somehow
I would have been there to say good bye you know
but I can easily count the number of times we talked
not enough for a lifetime,
yours or mine

You recall when my father, your brother, died

You leaned with a hard heavy hand on my shoulder
imposing wisdom now forgotten or maybe
after your “at least he’s out of his pain”
I only noticed the birds yelling
I just couldn’t hear above all that
noise
when Mama died there you were again
me, older, wrapped in visible scars
you, just older
and this time you wanted a hug
that was awkward

Tall thin cowboy-like hat-cocked always quick with the wit
and smoking those damned Lucky Strikes
I guess the luck ran out when you got emphysema
I know that’s a damn fool thing to say now
bordering on mean
I feel mean with you dead and all but you lived to 82

I know less about your life than perhaps I should or could
You were in the War,
yeah that war
head of the local chapter of the American Legion forever
A tornado took your house in ‘74
and you threw a mean horseshoe
in a game where close counts

There were 13 siblings
you were the last boy
and now there’s just your two sisters
one in a nursing home and
it seems a family worn away by time

You were the only one we ever called “Uncle”
the rest we just called Joe, or Ernest or whatever
Did you even know that
why would you

-Pat Greenwell-
April 2008