flipping
flipping through
Patrick Heron’s paintings
on my phone
I think:
perhaps these aren’t for me
before I slap myself
across the face of my mind
and remember:
I haven’t seen them yet
/ / /
6 May 2025
Charlottesville VA
Jason Crane Posts
I’m reading Amy Sillman’s essay “On Color” in her book Faux Pas. Despite my issues with seeing color, the essay is drawing me in, largely in the way it opens a door to the tactile world of paint selection, something I was unaware of.
I have a strong desire to lead a more “artistic” life, although I’m not totally sure what that means. Before I started to write this, my initial thought was that it means a life very different from the one I have now. In the next moment, though, I identified my tendency toward all change being radical, and tried instead to push past that first reaction to instead see that art is close at hand.
I’m already a poet. I’m learning to sketch. I have fairly easy access to museums. I could make music. I could create the poetry album I’ve been meaning to work on. In short, I am already living an artistic life, and I have the means at my disposal to deepen that practice if I choose to. The readiness is all, as Hamlet said.
My copy (top) of Amy Sillman’s sketch (bottom) accompanying her essay “On Color.”
Leave a CommentAvoid The Area
police activity at the Rotunda:
problem or solution?
the phone buzzes
avoid the area
Jefferson’s roads have too many cars
he didn’t see this coming
too busy … you know
avoid the area
a softening of the heart
a lowering of walls
advice over the phone:
avoid the area
later we learn
someone shot himself
in the dark on the campus lawn
avoid the area
sell yourself short
sell yourself cheap
just sell yourself
avoid the area
don’t ask questions
don’t speak up
don’t make waves
avoid the area
/ / /
5/5/25
Charlottesville VA
The Man I Was(n’t)
I’m not the man I was
or the man I pretended to be
I’ve shed that skin
stepped into the new glory of self
I was given a mouse’s moniker
standing by the bus one afternoon
my first glimpse of a world
beyond the walls of expectation
later still, one strap down,
triangle pendant flashing,
I danced to Erasure and felt
a gate open in my chest
it closed again
but not forever
/ / /
1 May 2025
Charlottesville VA
POND LEHOCKY
I love the way you type your PIN
like it only works if you attack your phone
as if the screen knows you want in
but it would prefer you to leave it alone
perhaps it’s trying to save your brain
from Bezos and Musk and all their goons
maybe it knows they’re such a drain
it would rather you just watch cartoons
I like the sides of you that I have seen
on adventures or around the house
right up until you break your screen
I’m glad I get to be your mouse
/ / /
29 April 2025
Charlottesville VA
close
every encounter is a mixture
of delight and regret
I’m pushing the big rock
up a steep hill
am I strong enough to let go?
will it roll over me?
my headphones block the sound of the train
as it carries me fa(r)ther away
past a hundred rectangles
divided into a thousand rectangles
I turn on Coltrane, sit back
watch the blurry trees
/ / /
19 April 2025
Washington D.C.
all aboard
a train is a good place
to write a poem
even a train that hasn’t left yet
is full of possibility
a train puts me at ease
no traffic, no tolls
no need to navigate
just ride the rails
until you get to your station
it’s a terrible metaphor for life
but my favorite way to travel
/ / /
19 April 2025
Charlottesville VA
mayflies
mayflies dead on the streets of Selma
mayflies dead on the Edmund Pettus Bridge
David and I are there to remember
to pay our respects, to see
but everywhere we look
the streets and sidewalks are covered
with drifts of mayfly carcasses
heaps of translucent white wings
uncountable numbers of corpses
we try not to step on them
it’s all but impossible
we walk with a sickening crunch
across that weighty bridge
emerging on the other side
two white people unscathed
on a field of the dead
/ / /
18 April 2025
Charlottesville VA
this place is nowhere
I have learned nothing
about this place
I know the route from home to work
from home to Wegmans
from home to downtown
when my partner drives back
to their other place
I don’t know which direction they go
most days I seem to be floating
like Fenchurch in the Adams book
never quite touching the ground
today someone from afar
told me I’m flourishing
my sister says my life is stable
my kids, well, I’m never sure about them
but me? I’m here but not here
like a main street façade
built for a movie
it looks real if you don’t get too close
don’t peek around the back
don’t see the beams
propping up the illusion
I’m a dusty western town
tumbleweeds blowing through
a short hop from the highway
that goes everywhere and nowhere
/ / /
17 April 2025
Charlottesville VA
abracadabra
no matter how many times I hear
the magic trick that was Art Tatum
I can never figure out how he did it
how his mind leapt as if he’d never
heard of the law of gravity
how his fingers found all those keys
with no eyes to guide them
how he took songs everybody knew
and blasted them into a million
glittering jewels of sound
he had an arm up each sleeve
with miraculous hands at the ends
here I sit, mouth open in wonder
grateful just to listen
/ / /
14 April 2025
Charlottesville VA
Black Saint Billy Harper is wailing 40-something years ago in some other city but tonight he’s filling the air in our bedroom in Charlottesville because earlier today at Melody supreme his record was on the wall and I remembered that time I interviewed him and his voice was so rich and resonant that it put mine to shame and that was already so long ago that I recall only impressions (not the Coltrane tune) and wow! this band is killing.
five decades
collapsed in an instant
black metaltail hummingbird
/ / /
12 April 2025
Charlottesville VA
Dishwasher At The Barricades
I made the mistake
of listening to headlines
while I washed the dishes tonight.
I’d been proud of myself
for washing them
rather than just getting into bed.
By the time I finished
I was enraged,
my heart pounding in my chest.
The antithesis of meditation.
It’s the Frodo Baggins of it all:
living through times
I’d have rather avoided,
chest full of a heart
that can’t look away.
I’m too cowardly for the big things.
I let my bosses silence me.
I hide behind the age-old fear
of getting yelled at.
I’m not a Willem van Spronsen.
Not an Alexander Berkman.
My hands shake
as I rinse the last glass,
set it rim-side-down
on the pile of clean dishes
in the drying rack.
I turn off the podcast
so I can write this poem.
/ / /
4/7/25
Charlottesville VA
In this post I talked about how I’ve recently taken up sketching, after believing for the better part of five decades that I couldn’t draw at all. Here are a few more recent sketches from this new and exciting adventure.
dawn chorus
we’ve sung for them
for a thousand years
but they’ve never
learned the words
/ / /
5 April 2025
Charlottesville VA
I’ve always said that I want to be an elderly person without having to live the part of life that leads up to it. Well, I’m 51 now, and so it seems like if I make it to “elderly,” I’m going to be doing it the old fashioned way. But it’s not going to be like I hoped. I don’t often think about what my life will actually look like when I’m old, because I have no savings and I’m not depending on any social safety net to keep me afloat. As far as I can tell, my options are to work till I die, or to work till I can’t then move back into a vehicle and use any Social Security that I might get just to eat, or to throw myself on the mercy of one of my sons. I guess the other option is to die in the Water Wars, but that one is harder to plan for. America!
Leave a Comment