I have several shows beginning and ending this month and we are hosting 3 house concerts as well. (
http://houseconcertsunlimited.com) Just picked up 3 pieces that won entry into the Gilcrease Impressionist show in it's satellite gallery downtown, delivered one to Living Arts' Oh Tulsa Show, Delivered one to OVAC for its 12x12, entered 3 pieces in the Illinois River Salon, and still painting for Scott's and my upcoming 2 person show, " In Tandem" which will be a show of paired poetry and paintings that will open on the first Friday of November. I think that show will be a really wonderful one. It has been a real interesting process as Scott writes mostly about people and feelings and inner life and I am a representational artist. We will both have to stretch on this one and that is a good thing for both of us.
Here is a sample poem that I will work from:
CECIL
Cecil keeps our
yard trim as a sailor’s beard-
not a blade of
grass out of place.
With a
surveyor’s eye he places poles along
the hedge row,
making Grandma’s
English Boxwoods
level as poured
cement,
stretching the
length of the drive.
He starts early
and works through, into the
heat of the day.
I am just a boy.
Cecil comes to
back door, hat in hand, like a child asking a favor of a man.
“Mr. Jo Eddie’s
grandson, you ‘spose I could have me some ‘freshment?”
I go under sink
where grandma keeps the
drink, pour
comfort from a bottle.
I place a capful
in a glass, fill the rest with water.
It turns the
color of rosin.
That’ll do, Mr.
Jo Eddie’s grandson, don’t need no ice.
He tips his
head, tosses the drink, and wipes
his mouth.
It is a litany
of motion.
Five drinks into
the day, his tools put away,
Cecil comes to
the door- a final drink to stay
the blues away.
I being home
alone,
Cecil points
with fingered bone
towards ivories
lined up in a row.
“Mr. Jo Eddie’s
grandson, I can make that
coffin sing.
Some folks they
scared a dyin’, but they ain’t got that rhythm thang.”
Cecil straddles
piano bench, with one leg north, the other east,
to work the
pedals, to keep the beat.
With both hands
poised on whitened keys,
his long black
fingers fill spaces,
make dark holes
in the music,
as he begins a
slow growl, a low moan.
“How…how…how…uh…uh…unh.
Gonna’ chase
those blues.
How…how…how…uh…uh…unh.
Gonna’ chase
those blues.”
Bowed over the
keys, eyes closed,
Cecil is there
in some sepia-toned place.
It seems with
every note, with every chord,
Cecil spills
more of himself between the keys,
as though the
music is drinking him one note
at a time.
With an ear bent
to the ivories, listening for the sound of suffering as it leaves his
fingertips;
Cecil’s hand
begins to jitter, and juke, and then to jive,
into some
boogie-woogie slide.
His huge black hands, like crows,
flap the width
of the piano,
as Cecil tosses back his head, enraptured.
I am just a boy
held in time.
Watching.
As Cecil’s
shoulders sway in time to the beat,
mouth open, he
eats.
Drinking notes,
swallowing chords,
half-digested
they come spilling forth,
crude and
primitive.
A truer sound.
