kellan_the_tabby: My face, reflected in a round mirror I'm holding up; the rest of the image is the side of my head, hair shorn short. (Default)
in reponse to this lovely bit on Terri Windling's blog; here is a bit of what I was replying to:

"Art slips through, and us with it -- slips past the border police and the currency controls, to talk as we've always wanted to, about matters of the spirit and the heart, to imagine a world not dominated by numbers, to find in colors and poetry and sand an equivalence to our deepest feelings, a language for who we are." -- Jeanette Winterson, published in The World Split Open


Art Slips Through

there are always cracks
no matter how high the wall,
how strong the barricades,
no matter how carefully written
the unjust laws, how many
faceless soldiers they find
to enforce their brutish rule
(the soldiers are not faceless,
the blockades always leak;
we always find a way)

art slips through.
graffiti'd words on an underpass,
spoken word in a underground cafe,
scrap paper woodblock printed
or run off on an old ditto machine
(remember the smell?
those things last forever
it's a good thing;
we use what we have)

art slips through
secrets coded in woven fabric
a call to resist in the words of a song
a new way of looking at the world
in stories told by the old
(never think that revolution
is only the province of the young
we come in all sizes, all ages)

art slips through,
through the gaps in the canon stories,
the only ones that are authorized,
that only the authorized may tell;
through the quiet between the songs,
the only ones allowed to be played
on the only radio station
that's allowed to broadcast
(good thing we had
that pirate radio station
back then,
it was good practice)

art slips through.
there are always gaps,
always cracks.
there's always an underpass
nobody's watching,
always a soldier
(not faceless at all)
who'll let that whistled tune
slip by,
always a place
you can leave your stack
of scrap paper,
hand printed zines,
where they will be found
by those who need to read
the things we are writing.
there is always a way.
kellan_the_tabby: My face, reflected in a round mirror I'm holding up; the rest of the image is the side of my head, hair shorn short. (Default)
Ever tried to catch
a butterfly? It's a tricky thing;
so light, the least breeze or breath
wafts it away, up, down,
over there, where has it
gone, I see it! There! Perhaps
it will land, on a flower, on your hand,
on the page, to settle there;
perhaps it will float off,
caught in the least breeze,
the too-quickly taken breath.
But wait a moment, wait two,
perhaps the breeze will bring it round again.

old poem

Mar. 15th, 2017 06:30 pm
kellan_the_tabby: My face, reflected in a round mirror I'm holding up; the rest of the image is the side of my head, hair shorn short. (Default)
Something I wrote a while ago & posted elsewhere, figured I'd stick it here at least for archival purposes.



living in the cracks

cracks, crevices, spaces in between
art from trash
things others don’t want
‘but there is beauty here — ‘
beauty, yes, but
things are hard; do not romanticise this

it is hard, painful, ugly
i do not fit
i must bend + contort
myself small
to fit

i do not fit
kellan_the_tabby: My face, reflected in a round mirror I'm holding up; the rest of the image is the side of my head, hair shorn short. (Default)
2017-01-03 20.18.40

it's finished
you set down your pen
hit save & then close
tuck the pliers away

you are hollowed
echoing, empty, exhausted
you exhale
one long, shuddering breath
the well has run dry

you despair

numb
you see the chaos you've left:
inksplotches across crumpled paper scraps
(you'll gather those for the woodstove; good kindling)
scattered scraps of copper
(the junkyard will pay for those,
or sometimes -- they know you --
offer in trade an oddly-shaped piece,
something they haven't melted down yet)

hollowed
with nothing left, you clean
(it's cold this morning,
perhaps it would be wise to start a fire)
(here is that scrap, what does it
remind you of, when you hold it just right,
perhaps it is a bird)

empty
you rest
gazing out the window
the fire warms you as
you tumble the copper scrap over & over
between your fingers
the birds flock to the feeder
chattering the latest gossip
(the guys at the junkyard
as eager to tell the latest
as any goodwife over the back fence)

it reminds you of a story ...

of a bird ...

you dip into the well ...

it brims.

June 2025

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