Some sad non-fiction
The day was beautiful, warm and breezy. The fall sunlight shone golden and today we marched for the last time for my uncle. The firemen paced beside us in rows with the bright whiteness of their hats reflecting against the stain covered pavement. On we walked up the hill to the red brick church. A group of kinglets flew over and a chickadee called. The wind rustled the few remaining leaves on the trees, catching some and tossing them delicately to the ground. All dressed in black as your casket was carried in front of us on an old 1920's firetruck. Solemn salute to my dear uncle, who was laid to rest today on all Hallows Eve. The world has lost quite a man, quick with a laugh, always ready to fix my car, or just be there to help out. A sad week, such a sad, sad day. Little quiet sorrows grow quick this week.

Unknown Bird

Out of the dry days
through the dusty leaves
far across the valley
those few notes never
heard here before

one fluted phrase
floating over its
wandering secret
all at once wells up
somewhere else

and is gone before it
goes on fallen into
its own echo leaving
a hollow through the air
that is dry as before

where is it from
hardly anyone
seems to have noticed it
so far but who now
would have been listening

it is not native here
that may be the one
thing we are sure of
it came from somewhere
else perhaps alone

so keeps on calling for
no one who is here
hoping to be heard
by another of its own
unlikely origin

trying once more the same few
notes that began the song
of an oriole last heard
years ago in another
existence there

it goes again tell
no one it is here
foreign as we are
who are filling the days
with a sound of our own

By: W.S. Merwin

I reach for you under my hands but you are not there
my back is heavy with all of this weight
as you look at me and I am endless
today is just a moment
when death stops in to come calling
I cannot lift my head
To spend another week on this routine of emptiness
when I ask who will catch me as I fall?

work anyway, paint anyway

more fiction.

Oh my clueless heart searching for some small measure of hope.
She was beauty, so young and fresh with wide blue eyes.
I took her hand and hated her youth
I squandered mine so easily on baggy clothes and feminism.
He danced around us watching as we spoke.
Draw my eyes down, along the edges of your jaw and to the flat plane of your cheek.
I place a pencil on my lips in echo of my longing
lips curling tenderly over it as we speak

She will not write this to you
or crave the soft brush of your fingers
as I give you a hundred colored honeycombs
In my new city will you sit
your back winged among the mass
surrounded by a thousand reflections?
throw them in the air and let them land
colored non pointed stars fluttering falling
all of the colors I find dancing in your eyes
as they fall on me

-by the Corby

Go get her hawk

the hawk

There is a story about rabbits I have been told. It is about how a rabbit yelled and yelled, "Oh hawk do not eat me, please. Do not eat me!" so loud that the hawk heard it and decided to eat it. So today I am stuck on what happened earlier on my hike. I found a rabbit in my path laying prone on her side. Her mouth was covered with saliva and her eyes were clouded and dry. Her body contracted over and over as if she were desperate to get away from me. The motions of her running was punctuated by her rhythmic screams. It was horrible and has haunted me all day. I could not help her. I was afraid to touch her for fear of zoonotic diseases and she was beyond any treatments. It was hard to leave her to her death but it felt like it was more merciful then carrying her off to a vets office. In this case I hoped that a hawk would hear her. The hawk would end her suffering and would not contract her sickness. Ironically a little later a hawk hunted over me and I watched him eat and catch mice. So it haunts me that sound and struggle and I worry over it, wanting to find meaning in it. It was really horrible and heartbreaking to see. Sometimes I want to close my eyes and my heart, actually lately I want to do that allot.

woven

Of course it is not easy to go one's road. Because of our education we continually get off our track, but the fight is a good one and there is joy in it if there is any success at all. After all, the goal is not making art. It is living a life. Those who live their lives will leave the stuff that is really art. Art is a result. It is a trace of those who have led their lives.

Robert Henri -The Art Spirit

-Sometimes we have to take the risks or else our story ends and nothing is gained from living it.

plod, plod, plod, plod...
Here I am in my studio trying to get this drawing right for the painting it will become. It seems to elude me this evening. There is a mass of rubber bits stained with charcoal around my easle from all of the frustrated work that is not getting done, even though I am toiling at it. These ones are tricker paintings taking some sweet time even to be lines of charcoal dust on canvas. They do not even have the form of paint yet. They have to be perfect first, the right sweep of a hand or a wing in relation to the other parts. Both of them are large and composed of other pieces. I always have hope for them when they begin but I want the feel of complete satisfaction with the drawing. It comes as a rush when I look at them and all of the parts fit. Until then I erase, rework, resize, redraw and push until they fall into place. It has to be right now or I will fight it the entire way. I am not afraid to erase even an almost completed drawing if it just isn't the way it should be. Many hours of work gone in a few moments and more shreds of lines below my feet as I work.

Some fiction perhaps...

So a hypothetical woman walks in. She has a terrible crush on hypothetical man and walked into a room of people where he was. She was not sure what he was thinking, some days she was optimistic about her chances, other days she knew there were to many insurmountable obstacles and it was an impossibility. She knew she was being foolish but still she made sure she looked good anyway. He stood behind her as she sat down. She loved when he did that. She could sense his warmth behind her and smell him. There was something about the hypothetical man that made her senses more clear. She looked up at him and could feel herself staring at his face. Her eyes wandered over him and desire flooded her. Then she became self-conscious as if he could see desire clearly on her face and would be horrified. Her fear made her move away so that she could breathe again. Her heart was hammering in her chest, her neck flushed bright red. She could not look at his face and feel so strongly. As she busied herself, she wondered on how his lips would taste, what his hands would feel like on her, and how wonderful it would feel to run her fingers over his skin. She could not look at him, even as he sat behind her. She made way feeling him again, so close. She found she was always doing the opposite of what she wanted. Running away when she wanted so badly to stay, remaining silent when she wanted to tell him everything, and not looking into his eyes because he would then know everything.

oh but I am a fighter

after García Lorca

Once I wasn’t always so plain.

I was strewn feathers on a cross

of dune, an expanse of ocean

at my feet, garlands of gulls.

Sirens and gulls. They couldn’t tame you.

You know as well as they: to be

a dove is to bear the falcon

at your breast, your nights, your seas.

My fear is simple, heart-faced

above a flare of etchings, a lineage

in letters, my sudden stare. It’s you.

It’s you! sang the heart upon its mantel

pelvis. Blush of my breath, catch

by Lorna Dee Cervantes-Love of my Flesh, Living Death

Sometimes reality just plain stinks. For a bit I could dream of it, hold it as a means to try to excel. I would create so many scenarios, wonderful and full of freedom. Of course I knew that reality would come back and take hold, but there was a secret part of me that held onto hope. It does now in a strange way but it is a bittersweet sort of hope. One that everyday feels more and more like an illusion and all of those things I thought I saw were not colored the way I believed them to be. The unexpected part is the sadness and pain of it. I hadn't expected it to hurt quite as much as it does. There is something to the loss of it that marks the end of some possibility that is just not easy to let go of. I know, in the hours with nothing that it is my own little illusion and it is not shared. The disappointment of the inevitable has broken my self-esteem. I wish I were so many other things (thinner, prettier, smarter, more able to be worth all of the risks I was willing to take)...So in that sense bloggers I have lost my desire to say anything here. I have nothing more to add other then I hate the real tonight, I want so badly to dream again even though it is a reckless course. It was the eyes and the hands, magnificent, but I accept that I will remain silent on the edges with the hope I hold failing me a bit more each day. My heart furiously rebels.

Now let us sport us while we may,
And now, like amorous birds of prey,
Rather at once our time devour
Than languish in his slow-chapt power.
Let us roll all our strength and all
Our sweetness up into one ball,
And tear our pleasures with rough strife
Thorough the iron gates of life:
Thus, though we cannot make our sun
Stand still, yet we will make him run.

To His Coy Mistress -by Andrew Marvell

What do we leave, living like a nest
of surly birds, alive, among the thickets
or static, perched on the frigid cliffs?
So then, if living was nothing more than anticipating
the earth, this soil and its harshness,
deliver me, my love, from not doing my duty, and help me
return to my place beneath the hungry earth.

We asked the ocean for its rose,
its open star, its bitter contact,
and to the overburdened, to the fellow human being, to the wounded
we gave the freedom gathered in the wind.
It's late now. Perhaps

it was only a long day the color of honey and blue,
perhaps only a night, like the eyelid
of a grave look that encompassed
the measure of the sea that surrounded us,
and in this territory we found only a kiss,
only ungraspable love that will remain here
wandering among the sea form and the roots.

Pablo Neruda -an excerpt Love for This Book

The back of me

"Sing to me," she said. "That would be valiant, to raise your voice in this dark, lonely place, and it will be useful as well. Sing to me, sing loudly- drown out my dreams, keep me from remembering whatever wants me to remember it. Sing to me, my lord prince, if it pleases you. It may not seem a hero's task, but I would be glad of it."

-The Last Unicorn Peter S. Beagle

The board bridge I crossed

The show went very well, despite the complete lack of publicity. Many of the people I invited were there and it was an enjoyable evening, that is pretty much it in a nutshell. I am not sure if it was worth the stress and work, but it is hanging now. Tomorrow I am taking the day off and spending time with my family, I think it will help work things out. Everyone else can wait for the work I owe them. My new paintings call me, I can see their forms taking shape ready to be born. They will have a greater life than the others.

I should be giddy with anticipation on the eve of my first ever solo show. Instead I am faced with crushing disappointment, the gallery director assured me that they would take care of the press for it and it is not listed in any of the local papers at all. I should have done it myself and I now know better. It is the general people suck factor that I always forget will come into play.
Have a lovely evening.

I hung my show today and should right now be feeling a sense of great accomplishment. I did for a while, felt the glow of pride, that I have done this thing. It is my very first solo show in a tiny little venue but I have 10 paintings and they look good. It is a milestone for me.

For tonight I feel poetry so I will post some since I found a little time and someone told me to take 40 minutes for myself this week. A reward for all of my work and to fight the temptation of getting sucked into the vortex of the work of the future.

The Opening

I knew this was coming
as the young boys
in their black and white
shout out to the evening air
I clasp her small hand
to keep from falling
they are our future
and I am already past.

One boy looks out
from the window
we pass by
my head low
I look up once
and remember such days
of endless promise.

Only the young do not know this
their bodies not fixed
on an axis
behind me a purple sleeved jailer
walks on
our procession endless
direction less.

My heart left already
on the soft smile your face held
it will not be returning.

It bounded on her
white deer memories
the way our eyes met
and my eagle talons heavy
wanted prey
but the sun set behind us
glowing the windows.

My heart left already
on the last light
of new year's hope filled day
our darkness endless
direction less.

-By the Corbyhawk herself