The Scarlet Life*

Sometimes it feels like I feel you; drowning in the weight of all the lies I've told. All the many painful wires braided into this thing of ours-theirs-that once was such a puddle to dance upon.
Out there, in all the many nights that are frozen production stills on a click-clack projector repeat. So many that I've had-so many more that have stung.

And I'm just Hester Pryne.
__I've been met again and again in the middle of a wet, darkened street, with anyone, with tales spinning 'round my wrists

...and sometimes the lights are all GREEN at once-and I STOP,

and look suddenly either way-

and then I tempt.

I tempt the fabric on sparkling coals of gravel - like the grunged up existence of the woman; of a Communion girl - now a grandmother in lines-lies, and wrinkles of exotic "war wounds".
__Reaching far....to touch the forest branches Hester pushes aside; reaching high into the falling rain-the falling ache, in a cobblestone kinda city....as Nana's beads swing around my neck and I go chilly-wet into the space between the yellow lanes on bare feet and tiptoes.
Long, long hair swinging into the rain and sticking further into soft white cotton, my soft white skin....
Ah, ha ha. BEWARE you see, as you watch me-"don't fall too hard you see"-and I only smiled that time...

Cause then it goes on -

until maybe we hate some others,

and a bench below the trees and the southern roof; where life was whatever words were made-

folded cracked leaves of stories told in the after embrace.....after we've dug and kissed into each other's skin-

sitting so calm, and resting so sweet in the sensations only seconds past...that will soon be lives and legs and weeks past.

Funny how that is.
Funny how it may be.
Funny how it moves, how we move-when we move together.
Dig on how the heart swells THEN-when it pretends-swells more maybe than it ever can. Does it ever swell?

I hate ending. It's all but past almost, though I've been m~o~t~i~o~n~s from gone; boarding the plane-in my heart, my hands-for so very long.

yes, All the taint-the things possessed; they become tombstones. And that's when (oh it aches uneasy) when the skin itself becomes a eulogy of everything "once was"

...all the so many times-over boiling of insides-we can talk forever more within.

Scratch the scratch-

and burn into your own memory (sweet memory) another reminiscence of the SMOG....

"I was young, I was young, But it's all done - Take it away..."

Ah, that's how we'll do it when we leave- -
because there's HOME I feel (is it called swelling?) in my heart here.

The greatest.

Oh the "so much love", that truly does exist-and we all do feel it-when this group, it comes together.

And every starving character comes to rest within their soul as they roar and race into the excitement of potential and companionship.

These wildly character faces, painted now within photographs of a passing paradise

...the great bounding, saucy, exposition of our journeys to any spots all over.

And all over afterwards my smiles will carry the ones once made there, and my own boiling roaring monster inside will rest, maybe, one day - calmed with a once wild romping time.

-So that's how we'll do it when we leave-
we'll walk so sad into such a funky sun-
and then we'll turn you see, because it looks poetic, and then it's done.
And then it's done.
And we'll run then-
into the funky sun, and grin so wide, and maybe chuckle-when we go.

Daily headphones: Billy Joel's "Only the Good Die Young", and Smokey Robinson's "Tears of a Clown"

Video Break #7

Below are two videos worth a look!

The first a truly interesting and lingering video animation, the second the wonderful piece by artist William Kentrdige "Felix in Exile"; a piece on the African apartheid done surprisingly by filming STILLS of charcoal drawings drawn and re-drawn thousands of times over on one paper/pages.

Poe Toaster 2010, 1st hand account

As we set out last night in a juggled mess of new volumed voices, and bundles of clothing; cheeks ever so slightly burned of whiskey, and the ground ever so slightly gave out on us......but none of us predicted that we'd make national and local news by daybreak. [PICTURES below]

[[[Edgar Allen Poe is a beloved figure in Baltimorean history; born in Richmond, VA, the brilliant writer lived and saw various places throughout his macabre 40 years, but spent half his life in VA and half in a quintessential townhouse in Baltimore. Four days prior to his death in the hospital, Poe was found eerily delirious, ranting, and discarded in the grub of the street outside tavern "Gunner's Hall". [more info]........a final chapter to a "most stormy life" ("Alone" by Poe).]]]

_____To fellow locals that dive into the murky abyss of literary mysteries and Baltimore traditions....the event is an elegant and darkly ephemeral tribute to this man. This man who even in eternal rest, cannot rest.

It is an opportunity to experience the growth of the city; from nighttime to dawn, and each passing character that appears.

From onlookers made of artisans and historians, to street dwellers and beggars, it feels as if the brick and cobble SWELL-thick as cognac-into a viscous you can drink up entirely.

It is Baltimore of a century worth of torment and creation, a century worth of this brown dicy place a few loyal artist have called home enough........well, home enough to exist in it.

_____So my loyal friends and I hollered and climbed, shook and shivered, watched and recited, and laughed and laughed...

It's insanity I told them, that will take hold as the cold turns to sore

and the whole body locks against itself to brace for the dawn, yet twitches and races

in such a way that you feel days could be lived without rest.

....<>We met a couple sweetly huddled in the crevace of the corner of the gate; the girl furiously writing intangible sentences in a tiny notebook before hiding it, repeatedly, into the abyss of her furred coat.

....<><>There was the impeccably dapper, deep-Southern man, who as we drove away near 6:30 am, stood alone still staring into the darkness of the off-lit graveyard. Slicked back hair and a so-smooth black peacoat, he seemed to only tolerate our bunch, until-he seemed to smile so jolly and feel so welcomed.

.....<><>Then there was the devoutly drunken guy, who swayed on the pavement in his laps up and down Greene, when he'd suddenly compose himself--and then- in a flourish-dig out a beautiful "Complete Works" from his layers--and shove it excitedly into someone hands to "read, read!", or "hold! hold!" (also credited with taking the group shot after Jeff departed)

And there were so many characters brushing at our ankles, the ones that we huddled against (new and old, 
"You all look so cute from up there" 
Jeff Jerome told us after asking how we were dealing with the conditions), 
and all the distant dreary ones in the emptied lurking streets surrounding, and in all the words of Poe from which we read......and passed along.....a love for such a man....

Of course if you've paid attention to today's news-after 60 years-the Poe Toaster did NOT show up at all this year.

[link1 link2 link3].

Another mystery yes, but quite a heartache for our little group of pilgrims...

"Those who dream by day are cognizant of many things which escape those who dream only at night." ~Edgar Allen Poe

"Then-in my childhood-in the dawn of a most stormy life-was drawn from ev'ry depth of good and ill-the mystery which bind me still...From the thunder and the storm-and the cloud that took the form (when the rest of heaven was blue) of a demon in my view-" ~Edgar Allen Poe, poem "Alone"