Venus Ascending
Oil On Plywood
24" x 32"

Love rising from the darkness...

Gallery Out/Aut

An Art gallery in the most unlikely of places, among the bakeries, sports bars, and espresso cafes of Corso Italia of St. Clair West. In the former kurdish Centre below the side walk, the true Avant Garde remains hidden in more than our own subconscious minds. Run by an Artist, Ranko Pavic, from a coastal former Yugoslavian Adriatic country. He brings with him that Slavic artistic sensibility that cuts with razor precision. Last nights' opening of a group show that does not disappoint with vision reminders of Joseph Beuys and Frida Khalo, both political and sensual. Hanging film a smashed TV,a white board english lesson, and a collage Ol Glory all brings the avant garde into the here and now of failing empires and rising new ones.

Refusal

REFUSAL

Here I lie arms crossed in belligerent refusal on the couch potato chesterfield pft pft pft sound of the spout watering the garden out the screened window exhausted from the heat of the brick and mortar, hammers, saws and dust, wires and pipes building the house by day small cottage across the street strange pink, where did Ginsberg hide his marijuana? 2 flies walking on the sun flower without sutra, scepter, gray locomotive and greasy river, is it true - Kandahar explosions for Allah - Burroughs is not dead but conducting terrorism eating naked lunch on roof of Kasbah in Tangiers, still I lie arms crossed in belligerent refusal……………

On The Road 4

Thumb to the wind
squint at the horizon
Shadow of the crow

Superman

Superman

Hey Superman
your cape unfurled
Frayed around it's edges
tattered and torn

You need a shave

One eye squinting to see
No more tall buildings to leap
No more railing locomotives
Even Clark Kent
Has nothing to write
Greed is your kryptonite
Wall St. is walled

Gotham destroyed it's Goth

You need
A new bad guy
Ya killed the last guy
Blew him to shit

Your girl has lost her shine

Who's next
Iceland looks good
throwin ice at us

The Statue of bigotry has drowned

The Ramble

Ramble

thinking about all the music the tv we devour
sows at the trough of profit while war
bargained and waged boxers and the wwf
spewing threats and love to hate with words
running out of round mouths while birds
threatened by this shit and that fly in
swallowed by big round…wait there goes
another new car look at its sex big round firm
silicone and other stuff cured that’s what I am
and saved by some Jewish guy in Palestine
2000 years ago when I can’t even save myself
love to have that one not the small one I want
the big shiny one no not just one I want 2 just
like Pammie Andersons’- use to smoke - damn
cold but not as it use to be you see my big sex
on 4 wheels warmed the sky now the polar
bear’s got a tan………

Neither this or that, or here or there...

Karma

Like physics...act -react

Jean Louis (St. jack)

Jean Louis

The old hobo
Of buddhas gone
Into the winds
Goes the pain
The angelic
The solemn

The love of friends
Sustains the poets way
Hardened roads
To soft sands
To the gaze of memere

Return you
Saint of the pen and heart
Return you
To the strange cottage in Berkely

Seek solace
In the middle way
Bodhisatva of the road

Vengeance Ascending

Gabriel flies protective shotgun over innocence...as eternal darkness approaches...

The Village

THE VILLAGE

New York was still new, fresh, young even, in my eyes. Even the air seemed fresh. That was then, a different time, just arrived with art and lust in my eyes. Now I know better. This mad house has been home for 10 years, almost to the day, and everyone of them a new disease. All the inmates sick with creation.

The Village Hotel had been around since this place actually was a village. Some 90 years ago it was celebrated as the newest art deco place for the elite to hang their hats after an evening sitting in a palatial even more ornate theatre watching the latest outing of Sarah Bernhardt under the jewelled light of the theatres' grand chandelier. The Village and it's gaslit streets long gone, now as anonymous as any city blocks on this anthill. If you look hard enough you can see what it was, a lot of the buildings still there, but with fluorescent lit commercial signs tacked to their facades. The hotel being no exception. Even The curlycewed iron railings that festoon every floor, and the front entrance somehow seem invisible.

The sun tried to break through my studio window on the 11th floor of the Village Hotel. Decades of grime filtered it's rays allowing my waking to almost be a gentle experience. Sitting on the edge of my bed, squinted a stolen look at last nights' work, the canvas nailed on the far wall . Ya, so far well enough. Patti Smith's Horses CD box still sitting on the player. My studio was one of many full time residence rooms in the hotel. The others also occupied by artists of various veins, and some major eccentrics. I was fortunate as the studio I occupy now is quite large, use to be 2 suites, and was once occupied by a rather dubious local artist whose reputation as a bon vivant far exceeded his work. There is an essence in the many layers of peeling paint and wallpaper that endear me to this space. It makes me feel as though it is actually more a place to work than to hang my hat. Which is why I work and sleep here and little else. The ceiling shows signs of its' past elegance with ornate plaster mouldings where there use to hang light fixtures of that art deco period, now the owner in his typical fashion has installed fixtures from the local hardware. At some point in time this building was raped of all its' fixtures and knick knacks, all either not replaced or done as cheaply as possible. The walls and ceilings were all repainted, quite often over top of the old wallpaper. The windows, all original and very drafty. Hardwood floors, maple I think, stained with black streaks of age. I can imagine the door as once upon a time being wood with panels, but like anything else of value it's been stripped away and replaced by a flophouse flat steel door, and peep hole to discriminate and judge those who wish to enter. Makes me wonder sometimes how much dough was made by our illustrious owner in selling off everything from then. But then if this abodes' illustrious past had been maintained could it have become home to all the rogues who live here now? Probably not. The hallways as much as they have become as benignly anonymous as the rest of the new decor, it is oddly a place of community. The residents are wont to give impromptu exhibits of their works in its' narrow dimly lit environs. Often these little showings become like any gallery opening with booze and lotsa chat, and readings by many of the more literary inclined. Many writers and poets have lived here, some famous, but like most of us here we toil in relative obscurity. About fame, ya, we have had rock stars, poets , novelist, and the odd fashionistas amongst us. They too like the decor remain anonymous as they prefer to be. They can walk the halls, or hang out in the lobby, with no fear of being hounded, kind of sinking into the wallpaper with the rest of us.

...more to come