This is the fifth painting on this one canvas. I often paint and paint, until the final product appears. There are 6 to 10 layers of paint, and about 20 hours of painting. “Octopus Garden” represents my love for my autistic partner David. He is the bird holding up the nest — of protection/home. I am holding his beak. There are many other symbols that have deep meaning. It also represents ‘as above so below’ and many other complex thoughts.
It was Bird Man’s Dream from a previous post. And before that Layered.
As Above, So Below. The painting can also be turned around. Above, what is sewn in the alternate plane of subconscious and intention is planted on the earth level. Below, aliens are admiring the universe with wonderment.
The Monster and Wise Man. From a distance the wise man is a woman, up close, you can see his ‘wise’ beard and ancient face. The Wise Man is healing the monster. The monster is also the wise man. There is the earthly plane between them. 99% of the time I do not know what I’m painting. I paint as a type of prayer, meditation, and therapy. I did not paint the face on the wise man or beard — it popped up when I was wiping the canvas with a wet towel. The sapsucker or woodpecker to the far left was also not intentional. The monster appeared on his own.
Bird Man and The Lady. I painted this over an old watercolor that had images of love. Atop the layers, on the left, is my honey, David. The Lady is protection, light, and represents my love and admiration. I was also contacted by a Facebook friend stating a baby bird she found. and tried to save, passed on right before I finished my painting. If you look to the far right, there is a little girl standing sideways facing the left (her sleeve is rose) and pointing to the left at a mushroom. Not intentional.
He helps me up the stairs with a gentle guiding hand.
He hurries to the room, when I call out his name, whatever room I’m in.
He comes home with surprises from the local bakery.
He wheels me through the airport and museum, even as he is uncomfortable with crowds and it hurts his arms.
He doesn’t complain.
When I say I am thinking about growing my hair out grey, he encourages it, and says he likes grey hair. When I say my hair is actually more white than grey, he says he prefers white.
When I put on a bit of makeup, he says I look nice but also look fine without it.
When I look down at my growing tummy, he says, “I like it.”
When we have a spat, he gives me space and then asks to come in, and then apologizes for his part–sometimes with handwritten letters.
He rubs my back and kisses my toes. He holds me close when I cry and have trouble falling asleep — from anxiety, pain, or fear.
He listens to my frequent nightmares, the ones from dreams and the ones from the past. He asks if I am drinking enough water, and then brings me water, in my preferred mug (the clean one that doesn’t smell bad), with water he has collected from the artesian well downtown.
He leaves his office room for ‘object permanence checks,’ as he knows if I can’t see it (him), sometimes I question if it (he) exists.
He never comments on my messy, unbrushed hair or mismatched clothes. He doesn’t readily point out when I’ve made a mistake or error . . . in words or judgment.
He finds my oddities and antics and misuse of words to be charming.
He doesn’t laugh at my ways or mock me, or shake his head in disapproval.
He gives me the space and freedom to be me.
He is proud of my efforts at home and beyond, and tells me so. He stops to look at me, I mean really look at me, and offers a kind, gentle smile.
He makes a point to tell me this is the happiest he has ever been in his life.
He doesn’t objectify me or compare me to other people.
He doesn’t offer ways I can improve myself.
He rides the waves of my hormonal outbursts.
He prays for patience and to love me the best way possible.
And he does.
He tells silly, off the wall jokes and riddles.
He dances with me in the bedroom to ‘Brown Eyed Girl,’ and sings out the lyrics in a bashful voice.
He takes me to doctor appointments.
He helps shop for groceries.
He stocks the car and attic with emergency supplies.
He lends his dress shoes to my eldest son for that important interview.
He is silent and full of grace in harder times.
He is resilient and full of spunk in lighter moments.
He has introduced a genre of movies and shows that add spice to our collection. We bird watch together from balcony chairs, the ones he bought cushions for.
He refills the birdbath and worries for our feathered friends, scolding the neighbor’s cat . . . to go some other place. He says he will do something, and then he does it. He speaks the truth.
Means what he says. Says what he means. He says he’d die for me.
His hugs are tight and warm. He is a gentle giant, and my steadfast cheerleader and protector.
He doesn’t say I’m beautiful. He shows me.
Here I stand, abandoned.
Abandoned by fear, by doubt, by destitute.
Here I stand, embraced.
Encapsulated by love, by love, by love.
Her shadow emerged from light’s bowing down.
And I kiss her, my merry dancing bride brought to life.
The stellar glance of knowing.
The chisel of breath, against buried skin.
The emerging one, formed two.
Lightening shadow sparks in victorious rapture.
Stillness undone into solitude.
Envy bowing down to grace.
Laughing sticks, peering out over the valley of vines.
Inchworms soiling the ground in which they bleed.
Enough, enough, enough, the wise woman calls from the bounty.
Enough, my undone love.
Burry me with the masses.
Cast me aside.
Stomp on my chained heart.
Carve me with the pieces of him.
Just make the river dance stop.
Bring this ache to the caverned regions and rectify the cross in the making of my sacrifice.
Take what is yours, and feed me to the lion heart.
Take what is here, and lance the eyes I am from the corners of my logic.
Eradicate, separate, designate.
Do what is must, to remove the burden I carry.
Some ladened cauldron frothing with joy.
For I am not made to hold such passion.
I am not made to know this endless ribboned peace.
How it crosses the line.
How it marks me with swelling.
The light abiding within a fire set free.
Moving through skin as butter to sizzling pan.
Oozing its way through bubbling deliciousness.
I can taste me in your wanting.
Taste every aspect of humanity.
Feel my way through the scattered wilderness–thought upon thought, whirling in the twilight of dawn.
I am awoken twice-more.
Until morning dove sings me to sleep.
To the woven wolf centered in the start of me.
Formed before I breathed name.
Reformed before sound.
Can you not hear him?
My distant angel returned home.
Wrapped in the solitude no more.
Set free at the doorstep in which I laid my cherub gifts. Balanced at the opening.
Brought down from the starry sky to shatter this earthly maiden.
Crafted in the makings.
His hand, my hand.
His heart, my heart.
His coming, my spear-crested awakening.
In the break of slumber
Thine eyes open
To black-feathered beauty
Sunray’s preamble
Trickling through ebony dark
The first call
Before first call
Silence sings
And dawn song echoes
Treasured daylight
Brought forth
Ribbons waving
From etched beak
Melodic fragrance uplifts
The chasms of nature breathes
The prelude before note
Adrift in honeysuckle
Boundless sky
Floats
A gentle gratitude
A gracious yearning
A blossom heart blossomed
A surrender sweetly surrendered
The last step brought back
Slipped between sheets
Heart song bumping in the overlap
Broken and re-broken
To bring forth deepest yoke
Nibbling its way in drippings
Forging a path of glitter-gold
All shattered weeping wrung dry
Longing’s longing
Announced in the rising
His platter of lickings, good
Lapped up
With hungry eyes
With starved gratitude
Of last crow awoken
Carry forth the new dawn
will you write
on me
on my skin
felt-tipped words
of adoration
‘I love you’
around belly
‘I need you’
around hips
‘My one’
inching
down sides
of neck
‘My everything’
at the tip
of lips
Loneliness
Enchanted
She rises
Moving to his calling
Summoned: The cave
Of beginning
She rests there
In twilight of ages
Singing song
Her sunlight unmarred
A brilliant star
Set out for the multitude
Risen as morning
Dove to dawn
Victory
Summoned
He cradles
Swaying to her chasms
Soothing: The child
Of heavens
He comforts there
In folds of lace
Pronouncing name
His mane undone
A bold stallion
Cast out in the quietude
Bent as blue
Bird to morning
Dancers
Birthed
They enter
Pulsating to rhythm
Surrendered: The one
Of peace
All opens free
In belly of time
Eradicating emptiness
Their names erased
A united flame
Set out in holiness
Marked as blushed
Bride to groom
I am the well, beyond
Baseline, sparkling chasms
Encapsulated in teardrops
Fragmented rainbows that speak
On reflections of you
Heart split, chambers imprisoned
Beat, as one, no more
Hopes, cast away
In cherry-blossom-dancing sky
A brilliant blue, against
The blue of us
Pronounced missing
Such all-encompassing rigid agony
That centers bow at soul’s home
And with penetration, reminds: life
The living, the journey, the road
Leading back, onto what finds
Me, this charismatic pang
Dressed in cashmere softness
Pink again, as if promising
For resting place, of comfort gone
With echoes of when
Sings thee, a voice like rose-tinted silence
The knowing that existence is
Yet, still sleeps in growing light
Stretching vines, and forgetting beams
Not beneath, nor beyond
But in this one, who stands ravished
In deafening woe, highlighting self
With a fragrance, unknown
Some shimmering tastiness
Without taste, a tongue reaching to glimpse
If had eyes, to bleed out
This endless game named ache
In the substance of lost, I am
This that is forced surrender
Be that it may, carved
Inch, by breaking inch
Very made in light
Called upon, shattered
The dove wings circle
Enveloping rest, they whisper
Feel the wholeness of sacrifice
The glorious, intensified rupture
Birthing, new skin
Scales of stories in ebony caves
Crimson strokes rewind
The past, tale spinning tale
A comment set upon itself
The well below, existence
A deep reservoir for thy drinking
Who am I? But a shadow onto self, spun out of what was and what shall be. No more less than this moment, yet, substantially more. A dichotomy split, sorted into an effervescent substance in continual rotation: never still, never stagnant, and always all ways.
Who am I? I ask the shadow self, her dismal silhouette parading across my very wall of being. Laughing, she is, at my disillusionment, my want to harvest her and dismiss. Her gaze upon my soul like rapture to the flame. She is the fire-thrower. She is the one that sets licorice sticks of black to suck. The flavor rich and poignant. My flavor, same.
Who am I? The merriment in me ceases to exist, and I succumb to the suffering of all, the misery layered over in thickness upon the glass of sight. I am this light and I am this flame, and I am still this oxygen that breathes life. I am the darkness behind the eternal sunrise and the evening that calls the rest to sleep. What is this peril bedded deep within the seed of self that calls out for justice and rings into my ears evermore? The silence deafening, and the agony extreme, as twilight returns.
Who am I? Alone they preach, a quickening to my fear, alone and in destitute; spread out in such extremes, as I. I wander into the valley of substance, casually displayed for the mighty ones, so named, and reach into the hollowed part, pulling out what can only be the sunrise. Oh, how it thusly burns and scorches the messenger garbed in guise. This one claimed me, delicately spread as melting yellow upon the bread of hope. How I merge into the being of naught, and find only the answer of lost.
Who am I? To smell the sweetness of your face, where you once were, standing at my threshold, the touch of you the answer to my lost dreams. How you moved, the land excavated, dug out, floating in an ocean without sea, the waters dripping dry, remnants of space, a holding ground for the memory of what was and is to come.
Who am I? I plead with the echo of being for your return, cradling love in the divinity named home, housed in the outer region of heart, the causeways glowing of riches and overflowing with the love of you. I walk here, amongst the glistening gold, no value found in the monetary summons, no answers given in the temple of man. I walk alone, angled in the wind of morrow, touching down to the sparkles of yesteryear, mourning, and re-mourning the time of your coming.
Who am I? But lost to this way, wishing upon a thousand fallen stars to rekindle the light within and make way to claim this shining child.
II. He
Rest in me, sweet one, my dreamscape reborn, my answer returned. Rest in me and bring forth the pleasantries encumbered in the wake of your storm.
How I miss you beyond the capacity to feel, beyond emotion, beyond reality. How I miss you as the blind man misses sight, once pierced and broken down, in that last corner state of misery, when all hope is lost; before the return of goodness perches in his heart, the light returned: burst open.
How I miss you, even as I know not why. Your presence lingering, interwoven through my mind, your scent the chambers themselves, over-flowing and releasing latch after latch; every door inside this dwelling space deemed I, flung free, dispersed, with an endlessness unknown to man.
How I miss you, and work my way to freedom, a prisoner locked in the moment of now, wanting to surpass the day and return forward to the time of your gathering, to press against your flesh and feel you within, for my light to penetrate your very skin and leave you intoxicated in the delight of us.
How I miss you, as I sit upon my bedside counting the endless tears that water the sheets of discovery, where you once rested your weary state, reminded by the starlit whisper of my thoughts that you are loved everlasting. Where I touched down and swarmed in your eyes, as morrow beget morrow, dancing into endless days of pleasure-making.
How I miss you, a tortured soul left as one, the hollowed place of me, severed, the half dispersed and set out upon a distant river of causation. My one, my traveling one, ever more distant than the last starlight that beckons. Cometh again and again, I plead, from a cavernous calling that is neither seen nor revealed from depths the of dwelling, where the truth lives and heaven is reborn with sound.
How I miss you, I cannot express, for the words pour empty in their lacking, mocking with the misery of here. For we are beyond this stage, hand-in-hand somewhere in a land we cannot see or recollect, but only recall with every fiber of our living. I dance there, with you, under the moon of moons, the absence of light, in the bearings of our upbringing.
For we are the glowing chamber of reason turned love; we are the flame; we are the sun. And I bleed into you my entire self.
Belly of a Star 