March 16, 2021
Pilgrimage
Snow falls outside the hotel window,
floating carelessly through the air…
and I don’t care.
The town spreads out below me:
A sprawling red brick dream,
with white capped peaks beyond.
But I don’t respond.
Crushing boredom, grueling emptiness,
purifying alienation:
This is exactly what I came here for.
There is nothing more.
The snow brings silence with it,
sinking into the frozen darkness of a Sunday night.
On these tired, sour, leaden streets,
the bitter desolation is too much to take
for very long. I return to my station:
stretched out on a bed,
gazing at a distant mountain range
or staring at a faucet in a trance.
It’s not refreshing, it doesn’t seem strange
and seductive, as it appeared in advance.
Far from the City of Refuge,
with no practical scheme,
constantly ruing the latest version
of what might have been; emptying myself
into the emptiness, negotiating the rush,
as a pick-up truck plows through the slush;
and I resign myself to another night, another day,
serving out a sentence.
I told myself I’d stay.
Outsiders here are quickly identified:
they’re clean-shaven.
I observe the bartender’s warmth
with other customers.
Surrounded by laughter,
I watch the bubbles in my beer,
shooting from the bottom of the glass
to a rapidly nearing surface, evenly spaced,
like asteroids in a primitive video game,
and leave unthanked.
On the street a creature is drawn to me:
a vicious black dog, grudgingly restrained
by an unapologetic owner.
These excursions strike me now,
as they always strike me at this point,
as being selfish and pointless.
What am I doing here?
When will I learn?
Despite all the goodwill I brought with me,
the place gave me nothing in return.
June 25, 2019
Agents Of Misfortune
February 12, 2019
Beauty and Happiness
Beauty depresses me,
knowing that it’s temporary.
Positivity requires too much energy.
And even if I were happy,
I wouldn’t admit it,
for that would be an insult
to those who are not,
and those who pretend to be.
December 30, 2018
Is there Life after Art?
One more week. Emptyscapes Extended until 1/5/19.
Lora Schlesinger Gallery, Bergamot Station, 2525 Michigan Ave. B5b, Santa Monica CA 90404
May 28, 2016
The Solution
I recognize the ideal,
of what I’m ideally working towards,
but I’m incapable of realizing it.
So why not satisfy myself
with what I imagine
I’m capable of doing
rather than actually doing it?
That seems like a reasonable solution.
But isn’t that what I’ve been doing all along:
basking instead of striving;
recognizing what I’m capable of
and settling for less?
Which is actually a long process
of resigning oneself to failure:
basking in the glory of potential
and potential glory,
until potential is dead.
February 7, 2014
Time Unregained
At this point it would be impossible
to make up for all the lost time.
I might as well try to settle
for a serviceable desperation,
and strive, at least, for resignation:
the long hard process of resigning myself
to the choices I made
by not making a choice.
May 29, 2013
Earth
In the latest issue of Gesture magazine:
How dark and wide and wet it was:
pungent in the morning, with steam rising from it.
I held my nose over it, breathed in deeply
and gagged.
A hole, deeper than my love,
awaited you. A shallow hole,
nonetheless.
February 7, 2012
On The Road Again
A good humor man nurtures a roadside weed
With water from a Dixie Cup;
Street lights change superfluously in muggy stillness;
In a world of blinding blandness
A poisonous vacancy becomes beautiful.
December 11, 2011
Revelation
I realize now that nothing will ever strike me
with the force of revelation.
And that in itself is a revelation.
It’s not much of one,
but it will have to do.
John Tottenham 