50 paintings before i turn 50

Original paintings with partnered poetry: #31-40

This is my way of celebrating my fiftieth birthday: 50 paintings and poems that I will create before I turn 50.

I don’t think of my writings as “poetry” as much as I think of them as songs or music. Ever since I can remember, I hear rhythm and rhyme in my head. Every poem IS a painting, and every painting IS a poem. Sometimes a poem will come first, then the picture; at other times, a picture and then the poem. The thing that frees me and also teaches me is that art has no rules.

#27-32: light series

All we have to do is play
From now until December
Maybe to the last of May
Then sleep until September
All a teacher has to do
Is tease a floating ember
Start a fire, maybe two,
Hope for some surrender,
Welcome all, and hope they stay
And learn to be a member
What will students take away
And what will they remember?

 

#33: dare

A day can spin around
And sound
Like traffic on a street
And out goes all its light
When night
Serves silence as a treat
I sit to draw or write
And might
Succeed in something new
A picture or a song
I long
To bring to life for you
A body and a mind
Designed
To jump in space and fly
It’s often, still, I seem
To dream
Of how it felt to try

#34: surface

Saturday,
A rainfall,
And I’m writing
Sudden inspiration to compose
An empty canvas also feels inviting
Tubes of greens and blues and indigos

Might not be a qualified composer
I don’t know the theory of a song
Always makes me feel a little closer
Closer to a place where I belong

Wild as any mind can get at midnight
Sitting with some feelings on the floor
Throw them up and let them catch the moonlight
Pour how much I love you out a door

Lock away a feeling on a canvas
Try and paint a picture of my song
Hide a little secret on an axis
Art is nothing right but never wrong

Another night will come around and find me
I’ll pretend to understand the stars
While I scratch the itches that remind me
I don’t know a thing about the scars

I know I’m the only one I’m fighting
I can never put a pen away
You’re the one I think about when writing Painting when I don’t know what to say

blue dancer fading away
colorful aura surrounding a woman and start
 

#35: bob aura

Irish blue
Piano twister
I see your heart
So well my sister
You’re a sky
And galaxy girl
Laugh and twirl
As you are
I am far
From being light
As strong as your star
And I, some Other
Paper knife
You’re the one
Who saved my life
You know how
To hold the dark
Your worth
You’re the earth
Triangle roof
Will someone ever see
I’m proof?
I’m sometimes nothing
Finding free
Don’t forget
I made you pee
That sidewalk
Spilling all that laughter
And still, years after,
You don’t know
How much your glow
I turn the knob
And Boom Boom, Bob
Gone such starkness
You always help me
Love my darkness
Take away my mask and glove
Pull me to fluorescent love
And I’m alive
Safe and in
Oh Irish twin
I will Boy George catch you
When you fall
Anytime, Forever, All
Lipton sweet tea waterfalls
Chocolate peanut butter balls

#36: dig

This is as far as it goes
Here, where the thinking
Gets stuck, I suppose
Then fall the labels
And nobody grows
We chose….
We chose….
Claiming our intellect rose

This is as far as it goes
Someone’s decision you do not oppose
Cannot be moved as if all of it froze
It snows…
It snows…
Forcing some places to close

Wisdom that nobody knows
Underneath piles of incredible snows
Only with Hearts will the people expose
Oh, those…
Yes, those…
Things meant to open, not close

black and white painting of a wind-swept girl
gray misty sun and clouds over water
 

#37: grays

All the way from June to late September
Clouds are never thick enough to rain
Even in October and November
Sun is out and people don’t complain

Haven’t felt the change from hot to colder,
Seen the people freeze and never bend
Living here, I’m changing, getting older
Finding that it’s hard to make a friend

Ask me why I’m sad in any season,
Rain is not the answer that I give
I’m not sure the weather is the reason
What if it’s the saddest place to live?

Look at me and armor up for battle
Tell me I’m an easy one to leave
Melancholy grays in this Seattle
Never match the weather’s soft reprieve

#38: declaration

Clouds above some water
Blue green hurricanes
Diamonds in a mirror
Magic it contains
We The Corporation
Manufacture chains
Radio the races
Organize the lanes
Save you from the artists
Simplify your pains
Pixelate your stories
Suffocate your brains
Govern politicians
Polish their campaigns
We destroy your bodies
Money in your veins
Sell you conversations
Dance on your remains
We the corporation
Creed of all domains
Socialize our losses
Privatize our gains

colored clouds reflecting on water
colorful tree with red leaves and yellow leaves
 

#39: ÁRBOL DE LA VIDA

Years, as if they’re bought and sold,
Come and go with hot and cold
Days long gone are stories told
After growing sevenfold
Limit what a week can hold
Weeks, then months, these years unfold
Stand like older trees, controlled
Magic Mountain Marigold
Yellow Trumpet, Ginkgo old
Honey Locust, heavy, bold
I always leave such trees extolled
Body calm, my heart consoled

#40: all we have

What stings the most since you’ve been gone is more than our alliance
It’s all the simple seconds you and I would sit in silence
Or picking up a something
That you needed from a store
Hugging when we said goodbye
And always wanting more
Time I miss the most with you,
If broken in components,
It’s never ink on calendars
It’s ordinary moments

blue couple embracing
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