When A Cat Goes Out

He’d patrol the doorway waiting

To make his break

Or he’d scratch around the threshold 

As if he could dig himself out

All he knew was out was where

He wanted to be

When the opportunity

Was right he’d bolt

When he went out that last time

Looking for whatever he craved

Then attempted to return

There was no there

There anymore

No familiar...

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painting: Janice Lee Porter

photo credit: Bill Cottman 

 He Likes His Point Of View

Adamas is known to be oppositional and augmentative

Agreeing with other points of view

Seem bland when there’s no definitive position

                         And perspective shifts like tsunami sands

Astigmatized visions rule this world and

Mark

Every tale of triumph with disgrace and in...

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She sashays like she knows something

Like she knows nothing

About how things got this way

Like nothing has anything to do

With everything

She feels objectified by

Life

Which made her this way

And neglected by whoever should have cared 

Unsatisfied

Unappreciated

She’s got those walking blues

Like walking pneumonia

Contagious

She spreads ...

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Tongue Swallow

This thang do me like

I don’t belong

This thang hang around

Like weather fronts and stall

Above me making it snow

Rain and storm

Making rivers

Lakes and seas rise up and rebel

Against land and everything

And everybody on it

This thang like climate change

Got so many names

We can’t point a finger at it

And identify it well enough

To get he...

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photo credit Bill Cottman

Heliograph (for Sun Ra)

Earth found choices are few

                  When Earth isn’t home

Distortions are reflections of sadness

                  What sounds like chaos is fresh beginnings

Somewhere in collages of sound is un-imposed order

                           Organic beauty

Freedom between naiveté and ancient wisdom

Heliocentric realit...

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photo credit: Tara Gupta 

 The oldest tree alive is called Methuselah

And we might assume its longevity  

Is the result of optimal conditions

But this tree lives at an elevation

Of 10,000 feet on a mountainside

The soil it clings to is not dirt

But dolomite

A limestone substrate

Rock like with few nutrients

The ancient tree gets moisture

Not from rain    ...

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Other’s Worlds

Weird whispers cross datelines

Fine lines of immortal volition

A history of where blues were born

Whirlwinds bound de man up

Chain de man down

Willie wiggles then he falls

Willie wobbles and falls regular

As daylight

Like pain of uncured sickness

Like relentless winds

 Wild whistles of whiskey wills

Tell secrets that cloak resolutions

Eerie ech...

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By Way Of Introduction

 …And how do we continue

A conversation between ourselves

And the world

Tween fact and fiction

Truth up against mendacity

Imagination confronting knowledge

I wish I could say I’m all ears 

But I’d be lying 

I’m mostly mouth

I hear what I know

News takes longer to land

Settle

Let’s talk about this

Without anxiety

Pressure or cliché...

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photo credit: Maury Landsman

Reclaimed Names

A running epigraph of names

Cumulus

We fictionalize ourselves to actualize ourselves

Isabella Baumfree became Sojourner Truth        

Ras Taf(f)ari Makonnen became Emperor Haile Sellassie        

Ernesto Guevara de la Serna became Che Guevara        

Dairies can’t hold secrets any better

Than siblings or friends but

We writ...

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calligraphy by: Kel C Ann Johnston 

http://cargocollective.com/officeofjohnston

"It is forgetfulness that makes life possible.” Romare Bearden 

 Cliché

We escape dogma

Cannons

Textbook realities

Founding father visions

Museums

Zoos

Prisons

And plantations that hold stories

Made from brutal his-stories like

Drapetomaniacs

Forgetting captivity

Commodifica...

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photo credit: Bill Cottman 

Until It Sounds Like Jazz

Nihilism compromises jazz

Bloodstream and fault lines

Trap us in layers of inherited attitudes

And ancient expectations

Dynasties of dubious repute

Align with catastrophe

Darkness

Ugliness

And the struggles of oppressed peoples

The rapping of the Earth

And too many beautiful blunders to count

My life is pr...

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art credit: Jennifer Davis

“I have seen it play out in my own life; the deliciousness of the pain of desire, and the slow decay of flowers, dying because I tried to bring that beauty into my house. Love is wild, and must remain in the wild lands of soul, and heart, and holiness. Does that mean my greatest loves are to remain un-crossable distances from me?” Elizabeth Dwyer

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Photo credit: Paul Wenzel  

Present Tense

We are constantly

In conversations

You live inside me

We talk about our impatience

With realities that don’t compromise

With our ideas of places

We want to live

So I’ve built a sacred icon

Carved into cedar

With a torch and metal tip rod

The surface was first stained

And after the drawing was completed

I varnished ...

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Snafus

by J. Otis Powell!

Something went wrong

The hourglass leaked sands

Of disasters re-mastered

Leaked cannons of obsolete protocol 

Into the vacuum air of regrets

Shifting truth drained

Into songs we wish we’d never heard

Of lost cheer 

Of our own undoing

We grieve what was dear

But must learn to let go

Time passes and we wonder

...

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Esmond Edwards – photography

Spell On Me

by J. Otis Powell!

Words sit

On pages echoing

Your voice

And mine

What we’ve said already

Could flood a valley

Fill sand washes

To overflowing  

And make ground swells

Shifting reality

Mudding assumptions 

In ways that change 

Earth as we know it

Tear trails and scar tissue

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Esoteric

by J. Otis Powell (with interrobang) 

She stands with bare feet 

On a marble bathroom floor

The temperature outside has not yet

Reached up to the predicted low for today

These days she keeps mostly to herself

No one else can bear it

These cold solitary dawns

When she thinks of love

She is confronted with the clumsiness 

Of language in her head saying too m...

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Half In Shadow

Adamas had spent his career managing chaos. He traveled from the red clay South to the milkweed Midwest because Aquanetta invited him and his life in Birmingham Alabama was killing him. He was bored with public television and Birmingham, uninterested in grandchildren, tired of X-wives, X-girlfriends and advice from doctors who wanted to manage his entire existence. A change will ...

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photo credit: Bill Cottman

Bloodstream

There were no sardines

Until captured fish were labeled that

Entrapment / dismemberment

Gets embedded in knowledge

ImproviXation is necessary

Because rote of daily living

Is institutional

Acting as samurai



Often affords escape from

Captivity and sardine cans

Courage is culture

Memory of struggle lives in blood

Duend...

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Speaking In Tongues 

Elvin Jones told Trane

“That thing sounds like an oboe

When you play it”

The more I listen to John Coltrane

Play soprano saxophone

The more I realize Elvin was right

Drums sounded like thunder lighting
And truth clashing against prevarications
When Elvin played 
He smoked on black and white film
Steam escaped his body 
As if he was on fire inside
H...

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photo credit Teresa Boardman 

I'm playing dark history. It's beyond black. I'm dealing with the dark things of the cosmos. The dark things are the unknown things. I'm dealing with the dark spirit of all nations, the part of them they know nothing about. What I'm dealing with is so vast and great that it can't be called the truth. It's above the truth. I'm dealing with the potential of people. I...

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photo credit: L. Lee Grismer

Camouflage (for Alexs D. Pate)

To disappear is magic

To reappear revenge

She said you couldn’t

Make it

(Without her)

And you not only made it

You came back eating sushi

What kind of Negro eats dat 

Rumor has it you don’t dream

Don’t need to

Or don’t remember

Don’t admit 

You lose control enou...

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Photo Credit: 

Wishful Thinking

 by J. Otis Powell!

Silent wisdom arrested 

My tongue

So I said nothing

Until something you said

Reminded me of what

I forget most days

Inspiration comes

Of a sullen

And when it’s gone

We’re changed

Dear Dawn

Time has lengthened

In...

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Maturation

I used to think of you as water

Rushing 
on your way to

Some wet function

Salt water

A composted organism

Then I reckoned you as air – free and meandering

I’ve yet to see you rooted anywhere

Your roots reach upside down for sky

And particles of cosmic funk

You are acrylic music making your way

Without drying – dancing your story without ink

You’d phon...

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