http://www.artnet.com/artwork/424892553/184986/david-storey-i-flier.html

This is the painting that I used for inspiration for my free verse poem and sonnet. It’s actually one of my uncle David’s paintings. Check it out…

Eccentricity is lime colored and shapely.

Bright blue calls to muted pink calls back to orange.

A sing-song of colors gone wrong.

Outline of my imagination restricting without restrictions.

An eye in the corner watches me watch it.

A flair of the grotesque, uneven breasts call attention

To themselves. Promiscuous like its form.

His pairings impair me.

I’m not grounded by them being there.

A sing-song of colors gone wrong call out.

Call me back to a time without any

Restrictions. The color of sauerkraut

Stains the background, a mustard tyranny.

His art is challenging like his person.

Unforgiving of mediocrity.

A flair of the grotesque calls attention.

To his lime-colored eccentricity.

Stop calling out when you should call back in.

What is it that you are trying to say?

Without your own thoughts, how do I begin?

To me, imposing meaning seems a sin. 

The sweater is raspberry red.

The sweater that was worn by a school teacher once.

The sweater that was worn by a man’s wife before.

The sweater is crocheted.

The sweater has holes.

The sweater shows skin.

The sweater has no buttons.

The sweater lies open.

The sweater is delicate.

The sweater that resembles a doily.

The sweater that has a history.

The sweater that was worn by a school teacher once.

The sweater that was worn by a man’s wife before.

The sweater that goes antiquing.

The sweater that smelled of sherry and cigar smoke.

The sweater that was worn to the court hearing.

The sweater that hates bating.

The sweater has been handed down.

The sweater that was sewn by three women.

The sweater that shielded freckled fair tone skin.

The sweater she had an affair in.

The sweater with the apple sauce stains.

The sweater that has predecessors.

The sweater that speaks in an ethereal voice.

The sweater that is incriminating.

The sweater that is self-conscious.

The sweater with a history.

The sweater with histories.

The sweater that was worn by a school teacher once.

The sweater that was worn by a man’s wife before.

I wear the sweater’s history.

The sweater that has been passed on.

The sweater I now call my own. 

He stood like a mountain

On top of the ledge.

His beard was snowy white

Airy wisps like cotton candy.

He placed his hand firm on my shoulder.

The heavy weight of this man could heal.

He always looked bigger in my dreams. 

“Selection”

Foster nothing but silence.

In May, a guarded advance.

Caught my lone imagination.

Nothing of mine secluded, contaminated,

A virus preserved in you.

A guardian soaked still

In core, sacred testimony

Compact in a consequence’s ill song

Shaped me entirely with ill sound

Delicate voice, with lasting force

Delicate man with handsome strength

Ill vision of mine, alluding

Sequestered, I am finished, secluded. 

“Scelte”

Se fossi nato cieco

e mai, lo sguardo avesse

colto la tua immagine;

nella mia cecità, comunque,

avrei preferito te.

A guardarmi sarebbe stato

il cuore, sacro testimone

capace a colorarmi il sogno

che m’attirava con il suono

della voce, con la forza

delle mani che hanno stretto

il viso mio, annullando

questa finta cecità.

Stone bottom shingles

Angular white confection

Set against the blue. 

There was a hill behind the house, the house we always rented with the bridge over the stairs to my room. The room with the pink curtain, the blow up cactus and a window that opened up to the expanse of the living room. She would come over the bridge and visit me, she always wanted to stay in that room. Out on the hill behind the house, she pranced around in her little blue polka-dotted dress, green wellies, and nothing else, she had refused underwear. Wisps of her unruly strawberry blond hair tied back, she was always ready to put on a show. It smelled of wet grass. Lifting up her dress, she revealed a bare bottom and her svelte little legs cut off mid-calf by her mud-splattered boots.

The surf worked me over and over again sucking in the salt water. He was bearded then and broad, he fished me out of the water. Lifting my wet body up by my underarms. Spitting and giggling, rubbing my eyes a bit, “Do it again!” He hurled me, like a light-weight javelin in a field competition, a javelin wearing a ruffly green onepiece and clear blue jelly sandals.

Her tan legs were shapely. She let me rub the scars on her knees when she put me to sleep at night. My small fingers grazed them, the raised seams, the pinker patches of skin. She would tell me stories about those scars. “Remember France,” she would say. She had come to France with the family one April. Running with the baguette sandwiches, she missed her step, the Nebraskan hit the cobble-stoned street with a hard smack. Blood dripped slowly spreading along the stones. Small cuts on her knees and palms were red, wet, and dirt filled.

His worn hands worked the apple over. Slicing and dicing with his Swiss knife. It was a procedure. Lopping off pieces of skin, manipulating the fleshy parts, detailing the figure and form. Watching him was sobering. His hands working. First, the eyes, then the nose and mouth, sometimes ears, he often added wrinkles for wear. And as the sculpted faces sat finished, the flesh of the apple would brown like they were aging, aging much like his own worn hands.

The establishment had a dingy feel. Stucco walls and muted hues of oranges and reds, like a true, rustic cantina. It was unlit and hot. Sweat saturated sundresses and linen dress shirts. They brought us sangria in clay pitchers, administering the blood red drink with a wooden spoon. The tapas, small and savory, were satiating. Outside the loud bleating of bustling city streets pulled back at us.

Flip flops are swift and his dirty toes saunter in them, flipping and flopping. Flip, flop in canyons deep crevasses in those dirty toes. He smells of cheap beer on the trolley to San Francisco’s rolling hilltops. At the tippy top of that hill she waits for him and his dirty toes. She’s humming a sweet song and strums the left side of her thigh. It itches. Beads of sweat drip down the nape of her neck. Her hair is bobbed like stonework, neatly but jagged. She’s tired. She worked the night shift at the diner. Butter and grease stench her clothes like a stain. Stains, she has those too. A little boy spilt his mother’s coffee on her apron, it looked like swelling rust on the crisp white of the utility-esque clothe. His hands sliver into hers when they meet. They wait together as he grabs his duffle bag. It’s packed with dirty clothes and his toothbrush. He tripped. Laughter sounded laughter.