What The Lines Do

Whenever you read, consider what the lines do to you.

Some lines are crisp.

To the point.

Perfect.

Tight.

And then there are some lines that drag too many heavy words along the entire disinterested width of the page and can only bore to death the eye and the ear and the mind, and sometimes even the soul if one is not careful.

Some lines roll easily along in soothing open vowel sounds.

Others work the mouth into a froth of cumbersome clumsy stumbling consonant-awkwardness.

One line can begin rather slowly, then quickly ramp up an energetic and explosive ka-POW!

Another bangs out its racket in the first half, then relaxes, then breathes more heavily, and then...finally...snores.

Some are unfortunate, rural, morbid, dull-sounding, vulgar lines, which lull, rob, and ruin.

But at last, there are those lines that shine and sparkle with their bright smiling sounds, like wide happy eyes splashing out the daylight's very brilliance.

And it's all on purpose.

Notice?

It Started In Kindergarten

It started in kindergarten
And now I yell at trees.

I still feel my hand
A quarter of its current size
Clenched around two pennies
With their tiny dates
No later than nineteen-sixty-eight.

I can yet smell the sweaty copper in my palms,
Palms that could only reach away
Half the distance
They now enjoy from my twice-grown and whiskered face.

Everyday I traded two shiny cents for one waxy carton.
So blue and so white.
I feel my throat gulping the cold thick milk.
The carton's torn paper spout tickled my lips.
I breathed hard between swallows.

That oatmeal cookie that took two fists to hold?
I liked how it chewed.
I remember how it chewed.
I feel it on teeth that have since been lost.
Rumor has it a fairy had taken them.

And look!
Red Orange Yellow Green Blue Purple Brown Black.
Eight fat crayons in a box, always in their order.
Big as clumsy branches, waxy in my palms.
Thicker than my own fingers.
I still smell the crayons, too,
And see bits of their wax in my fingernails
From trying to peel the paper off.
(My tongue poking out made the job easier.)

Red became the shortest.

How do I hold these?
There is a correct way, and too many incorrect ways.

So began my awkward love affair with color.
I'm still in love.
And it's still awkward.
I yell at autumn trees,
Red and yellow,
When I drive past.
I don't know what else to do.
I can't contain myself.

Even today I had no idea what to do
When some random color made eye contact with me.

Every Word Is Loaded

Every word is loaded.
Charged through an ancestry of use.
Insufficient comforting dangerous hand-me-downs.
They belong to no one,
Belong to everyone.

Mouth-filling. (Feel them there?)
Brain-spilling. (Your mind just flooded mine in a whisper!)

By breath or spirit (same thing!)
They move between our souls on freeways hastily,
Or cautious as on tightropes.
Two, three at a time.
I love you. Three.

Every word is a toy.
Play.
Pick it up, twist it apart, see how it works.
Roll it around and crash it into things, boys.

Every word a picture, but blurry.
See?
Inked black or thought in gray.
Even spoken.

And broken?
So are we.

So we borrow them.
(We do not own them!)
Hear me.
We just take our turn--
And add our use to their sum.
And hand them down, further.

It is our duty.

Every word is loaded.

Tortuga Brown

I just got back from an island in the Caribbean where I was vacationing.

My favorite moment of the trip was catching a sea turtle, lifting it out of the water, and for the first time in my life seeing the color brown as a beautiful color.

Why did it take so many years to notice?

Brown is no longer neutral, dull, boring. It is now a color, thanks to a random encounter with a sea turtle.

And I am changed.

A Single Carrot

"The day is coming when a single carrot, freshly observed, will set off a revolution." Paul Cezanne

Only an artist could make that comment and be convinced to his core of the truth found in it. Being a creative person means noticing everything, like a single carrot, and conjuring from it a thousand beauties. "Freshly observed" means using new eyes, seeing connections, following unapologetically where your thumping heart takes you when it notices something un-carrot about a carrot.

It is then that you change.

Then imagine, if a carrot can change you, what of those who begin to notice you? Will they also be changed?

There is a densely packed revolution stuffed into every carrot, ready to change the world.

If you're bored with a carrot, it's not the carrot's fault.

Purple Came To Life

I have a painting in my house that I bought from an artist friend about three years ago. I often move it to new locations around the house, on purpose, so that I can admire it in different contexts. This one makes me smile all the time, while standing close and scrutinizing the textures, the brush strokes, and the beautiful accidents. The details astound me.

But the colors are what make me ache--my visceral reaction to beauty. I have a touch of insanity when I look at very colorful things--gardens and paintings in particular.

And I have known this painting for three years. Yet today, for some reason…why have I never noticed these purples? I have stared at this painting for hours, and only today…

The purple came to life.

It’s a whole new painting--like I am seeing it for the first time. And I can’t not see the purples now.

In my head, I hear my college roommate Bart’s voice, from twenty years ago, imitating his favorite lines from a movie we had just finished watching.

“I think it pisses God off when you walk by the color purple in a field and don't notice it.”

Part of a conversation between two sisters in a field of flowers:

Shug: More than anything God love admiration.

Celie: You saying God is vain?

Shug: No, not vain, just wanting to share a good thing. I think it pisses God off when you walk by the color purple in a field and don't notice it.


Celie: You saying it just wanna be loved like it say in the Bible?

Shug: Yeah, Celie. Everything wanna be loved. Us sing, and dance, and holla, just wanting to be loved. Look at them trees. Notice how the trees do everything people do to get attention... except walk. Oh, yeah, this field feels like singing!

Well today, the purple came to life. And I noticed.