ManicDDaily

I am lucky enough to be taking “Bootcamp Drawing,” an online drawing course with Peter Hristoff, an artist and professor at School of Visual Arts.  Peter encourages those taking the class to expand their limits through quick and free drawing—you don’t have time to get intimidated or to step behind some artistic pose.  (Only the models, who are absolutely terrific, are posing!)  

It is a marvelous class.  Peter uses artifacts, wonderful models and prompts from poetry as objects of drawing. He offers a great deal of quiet inspiration and kind encouragement. 

In any case, here are a few of the drawings I’ve done in some of the recent zoom classes.  (One does a great many in each class, as they are done in time frames from 20 seconds to two minutes so. Note, however, that many quick drawings are rather randomly layered.) In any case, I’ll just post a few now, and maybe a few others in the future.

I hope they can encourage others to reach out—and take Peter Hristoff’s zoom classes at SVA! (He teaches Bootcamp Drawing, the Vigorous Figure, Inventory Drawing, A Metropolitan Museum Drawing class.)

Take care! 

(All rights—such as they are—reserved!)

Characterized As

We may be characterized as a couple,
but you are a tree and I am the breeze
that settles in its branches, the oh-so supple
breeze—I say this conscious of its cheez-
iness, and all the jokes arising from wind,
knowing too that usually when I nestle,
fold up in your crook of trunk and limb,
we tend to do the crossword puzzle.
Still, it’s not fair to call us simply a pair,
when you have been my hearth, and my hearth’s desire–
And I have been your—I don’t know—fresh air—
For sure, you could have sung without my lyre,
grown outside my ground, but once our wounds wrapped ‘round,
we were bound, we were bound, we were bound. 

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A sonnet for a Monday. Have a good day.

(The drawing and poem are mine; as always, all rights reserved.)

After the Injury/Nights

If only you could sleep
like a horse, standing. 

Though I guess your feet, then,
would have to be hooves,
and I don’t think I could sleep
next to four hooves.

But you cannot sleep standing, so,
as it is, you wake through the night, try to pace away
the pain, readjust the pillows and
the hard foam wedge, re-build
the pyramid. 

Because you also cannot sleep
lying down,
and so you swivel to the side of the bed, stand,
pace a little more—
I ask if I can do anything—
you say, no, you say it helps
to move. 

I ask again, later, is there anything
I can do—
you say no, again, later, that it helps
to move—

I ask again, later,
you say, no again, later—

So, it goes, these twists of fate and later
that end up shuffling in the night, trading pain
for exhaustion. 

Then, at last, you do sleep;
and now it’s your breath
that softly paces—
I listen, not asking
for anything more.

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Hello!  I’m sorry to be so out of touch!  Mishap has come my way, and I have had little time.  I hope all are well. 

P.S. The picture is mine.  I have a lot of drawings of horses, but they were none quite right, so I thought the hourglass was a bit more fitting.  Take care!

letting be

how do we let be?
let people like streams
take their courses.

let the rapids rush
and still
like the whites of eyes that flicker
and then resolve themselves
into dark pupils. 
But they are not
our pupils. 

how do we stay afloat
in our own little bark?
(by bark, I mean a boat.)

let it be full of good food, this boat—let us give loaves
not just to the fishes—
stick some songs in the aft, maybe squeeze in
a whole piano, smiles
for ballast—

do not forget to carry on the breath.
hold to that zephyr
like words that don’t need to be loosed
into the wind–
not everything needs
an explanation—

oh, let the breath just go
and then come again,
softly— 

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Here’s a little draft poem for December. Sorry to have been so absent. My good news is that I have three new children’s books on Amazon. The pic above is from one of them–Lightly Going Things. Also now available is Green Truck Here, and Bug Cars.

All rights reserved.

And good luck with the holiday season!

Thanks

When I think of thanks,
I think of you and I think too
of them—of her and her
and her and him—

And all that blue that is the opposite of sky—
that blue inside me that wails at times
like a saxophone in the night
(only it’s not just at night).

That hue that seems to blue my very bones,
to make even my joints lonely—
(How can a knee
be forlorn? How can an elbow feel
abandoned?
They are joints! Per se connected!)

But if, in that dejection,
I can think of thanks—even just the word—
my mind is lured to you, to them,
and all that is torn
is joined anew (roughly, but
enough)—
the knee bends, the arm extends—
and that inner blue becomes lent sky,
and everything shows itself
to be a part of everything else—
the trees, the stones, the tones
of that saxophone, even what feels so lone—sky inside
and out,
sky all about. 

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Here’s kind of a draft poem that has been on my mind. Of course, it is an adult poem, and the drawing is a children’s drawing–an illustration from my picture book Lightly Going Things, but I liked the ebullience of the pic. (And of course the elephants!) That picture book is soon to be available on Amazon, with others of mine.

Awake in the Moonlight

I wake in the moonlight, things to do,
they mainly consist of missing you—
you who we were when we were young,
I who we were when we were one. 

We could be one with three or four,
children clinging to the core,
arms around, stories read,
squeezed into a squishy bed. 

We’re not a single memory,
but shifting slides of clarity—
now, I’m the child, now I’m the mother,
now I’m the gathered, now, the lover. 

I go outside to see the moon,
bright bowl of a no-handled spoon—
You cannot hold it, but still can taste
the orbit’s grace, the shine, the trace.

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Kind of a ditty for today! Just to be clear, about past year rather than any particular person! Mainly I was thinking of my kids when young, and my grandmothers, whom I hope to emulate.

This is an old drawing—a bit too witchy for the poem, but the one that most fit that I could find!  

Stay well!  And thanks to all who got out to vote. 

Eclipse

So many miracles.
The moon, pre-dawn, a soft red ball smiling
with shine
We held each other earlier.
I did not actually hurt my back
in yesterday’s fall.
Someone has carved or eaten a filigree of life
in a rim of wood
that lays upon the driveway; its mosaic playing
with the tracks of tires.

There is a fire within each of us, you can see it
in the eyes.
Infants have it in abundance,
so serious as they contemplate
a first sweet potato, or hug a kid,
meaning a baby goat, at some small farm,
and the little goat, somehow grasping that it is another baby
who has grasped it,
doesn’t (seemingly) complain, at least,
doesn’t bite—
all of this completely true.

And now the sky is pale
with not-yet-blue, 
and our dark horizon has shine
all over it, a whole dome
of shine.
How does the world manage it?  

“Humility” a word that comes to mind, a lesson
for the day, a shine to strive for.  But how
do you strive for humility?
Maybe just
take note. 

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A sort of poem for this morning, the last full lunar eclipse until 2025.   Also, election day in the U.S.  Do vote.  So much is on the line—women’s rights, human rights, voting rights, environmental protection. 

Not Only About Chili

“But you love chili,” she moaned.
But his lips pressed tightly against it,
even after she had liquified it to a coral slop—
and, no, it was not because
she’d liquified it
to a coral slop. 

We tried all the old favorites—
apple sauce, tomato soup, rye toast
with a poached egg,
whatever flavors of Ensure
were stacked
against the wall, the chocolate
Boost,

foods that were like old tunes, melodies he knew.
But he would not sing along, could not,
his body on its own fork
in the long road of disease.

He had a gravely voice, even when young.
I think of the froggy who went a’courting
in a big blue book
when I was little; the green frog
outlined in black, a little tied sack
at his back, a sack on a stick. 

She did not say, “but you love me,” instead of “chili”
or “tomato soup” or “applesauce.”

But that was a given; he said it all the time, how he loved her.
Even as he died, he said it.

The body won’t always do
what we want,
won’t live until the other’s
ready to go,
won’t/can’t swallow.

Have you ever seen a bird hold hands
as it flies? Two birds?
Of course not. 

But hands I have seen—hands joined
and spread
like wings—

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Very much a draft poem, but I like it; hope you do too.  (All rights reserved as always.)

Vote vote vote.  Women’s rights are on the ballot; women’s rights and human rights. 

It was a rather lovely place! I’m not sure why the cars wore hats though, as it was pretty warm. Hope you are getting some breaks.

Before Dawn

how did it get so cold—the darkness feels
absolute, but it’s only dark enough
to let the stars and moon both shine.

It’s not a matter of darkness anyway
but clarity, the sky clear enough for pinpoints, clear enough
for the blue arc of the moon
to be seen in its small bright bowl.

Clear enough that I can make out the imagined paths between stars,
the sketch of constellations whose names I’ve never been able to learn—
but not so clear that I can see the stone steps right
at my feet.

I bend to hold a concrete slab at their sides,
then crouch down the stairs, a sideways crab, determined
to get a broader view, and so glad, now
as I write this, that I don’t always care how I look
in this so beautiful world,
that I don’t somehow mind
the awkwardness of age, the steps one takes
to hold on, the steps one
is given, all those strange
blessings.

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Happy Friday!  The above drawing does not really go so well with this poem, but I like it!  It was done in a wonderful drawing class, Inventory Drawing, with Peter Hristoff of School of Visual Arts.  Sadly, the class is concluded now, but I urge you to check out SVA offerings in Continuing Ed (and other Ed) in future semesters as Peter will likely offer the class again. 

As always, all rights reserved.