I climbed
A poet's
Tree last night
To wrap myself in it's
Leaves and pretended the branches
Were your arms.
I don't mind the splinters it gives
Me because unlike the ones you give me
I can
Pull them out.
And as much as I would have like to
Take a pocket knife and carve lines
Couplets, haiku's, limricks, sonnets...
lines into the brown bark and pretend it
Was your skin, or my skin.
I couldnt.
I can't do much of anything now a days
Maybe I am just a morning glory
lost withing a tangle
of vines.
Wednesday, October 12, 2011
Poem written and performed by Skim Skima
I’m catching gazes that aim to catch gays.
Your eyes.
You ask me why I choose to look how I look.
My answer is the same question, back to you.
Homosexual. Put yourself in my shoes.
Gay bitch. I bet you can’t even imagine what I’ve been through.
How damaged I am, because of you.
It’s true I wanna love who I love.
And more honest I am. The more you wanna mess me up.
You said, my judgment day will come.
Well it did. Day after day. Gay.
Night after night. Dike.
You think being gay was a choice in my life?
Who would really choose to face this kind of hate?
They way they say it, you’d think I was Satan.
Don’t you see? Your hypocrisy is so blatant.
Stop complaining others are racist when you’re doing the same thing in my face.
Your eyes attack my faith. Faggot
And give me shame I can’t seem to erase
So I ask god to save a mess like me, but leave me blind
because I hate what I see.
Faggot. Silence I mask it.
Faggot. Everybody laughing.
Faggot. While I’m standing here
Disgusted that I can still feel disgusting.
No wonder I am so not trusting.
Look at me. And look at this world I am in.
And look at me again.
I know what exactly most of you see.
So let the names begin.
Cuz I guess I must trust my pain so much.
Enough to let it come inside me. Again and again.
And I must love the connection it brings from my heart to yours.
But I would never love the ways it burns.
I got a lot to learn. But some things I was born to teach.
Close your eyes and feel how deep I can reach.
Your eyes.
You ask me why I choose to look how I look.
My answer is the same question, back to you.
Homosexual. Put yourself in my shoes.
Gay bitch. I bet you can’t even imagine what I’ve been through.
How damaged I am, because of you.
It’s true I wanna love who I love.
And more honest I am. The more you wanna mess me up.
You said, my judgment day will come.
Well it did. Day after day. Gay.
Night after night. Dike.
You think being gay was a choice in my life?
Who would really choose to face this kind of hate?
They way they say it, you’d think I was Satan.
Don’t you see? Your hypocrisy is so blatant.
Stop complaining others are racist when you’re doing the same thing in my face.
Your eyes attack my faith. Faggot
And give me shame I can’t seem to erase
So I ask god to save a mess like me, but leave me blind
because I hate what I see.
Faggot. Silence I mask it.
Faggot. Everybody laughing.
Faggot. While I’m standing here
Disgusted that I can still feel disgusting.
No wonder I am so not trusting.
Look at me. And look at this world I am in.
And look at me again.
I know what exactly most of you see.
So let the names begin.
Cuz I guess I must trust my pain so much.
Enough to let it come inside me. Again and again.
And I must love the connection it brings from my heart to yours.
But I would never love the ways it burns.
I got a lot to learn. But some things I was born to teach.
Close your eyes and feel how deep I can reach.
Sunday, October 9, 2011
Why I secretly hate mirrors
I really feel strange every time I look into a mirror. I forget that I have a form, and I get used to thinking of myself as the "thinker", and not the objectively viewed person. It's hard to get a definite view of yourself when you know everything, and know just how complex you are.
The mirror shows 'you', plain and simple, you might think of it as viewing your purest form (although that couldn't be more wrong). I am shocked at the sight of 'me' I don't recognize myself, even if I have only looked away for a second. I am staring at a stranger. I know that it is not a good representation of me, but mirrors remain a way to force your physical reality upon you.
The mirror shows 'you', plain and simple, you might think of it as viewing your purest form (although that couldn't be more wrong). I am shocked at the sight of 'me' I don't recognize myself, even if I have only looked away for a second. I am staring at a stranger. I know that it is not a good representation of me, but mirrors remain a way to force your physical reality upon you.
Stream of conscienceless, the making of grief point
The Making of Grief Point
The journey starts late...
Six weeks into the making of Grief Point...
First off is May Day, the song in honor of May 1st and the workers.
Can you still be against the strike that only strikes for more pay?
By ‘you,’ in this instance, I mean ‘me.’
There is a certain kind of person to whom things come with great facility.
They say this is the noise that gets made as my life is lived.
So be it.
But don’t feel the need to record it.
For a second I thought this meant that they were not interested in history, but that’s wrong.
Wrong, wrong.
A bad reading of the situation.
The right reading is that I just don’t understand it.
At all.
Grief Point, and May Day by extension, suffers from the same old shit:
A potential complete ignorance of ambiance, real ambiance, in that
can you really construct it, every last bit of it,
and just let the listener feel its effects?
And is this the right treatment?
Always the same question.
In this case, I would maybe say yes, just because it forces form onto the thing.
"Thing" is a bunch of words to melodies, and the words sung in a handful of ways.
Between J and D, of course, the same old war rages;
one into a tight and perfect digital palace, but super true to the genre,
the other wanting to throw in actual sounds, mix it up, humanize.
It's cool how for my part, this sleight of hand,
the trick of making something confounding and great and potentially horrible, drawn up from air...
all this is no longer of any interest.
In fact, even seeing things in this light depresses me.
And so I often come home at night depressed by what we have done, what we are doing.
It's good, it means I've changed.
I have lost interest in music. It is horrible.
I should only make things I understand.
I should only make things I know how to construct, however imperfect.
It's not even like dictating to someone; it's less than that.
May Day itself is pretty cool, I have to admit.
It condemns the world at such an easy pace.
I intend to tell it to you... it’s like happy shooting rockets,
a disgusting description of anything, to be sure.
I think the world does not like me grim; it likes me melancholic but not miserable.
English on the Mediterranean, which is oddly enough, some of the worst people there is.
At some point when it is made, I will explain this record word-for-word, swear to God...
When I know if that is good or bad, I’ll know what is good and what is bad.
The answer to the making of Grief Point is picnic baskets filled with blood.
Too rich, nothing at stake.
If "blank" had to write lyrics for his songs, they would be cumbersome, pale blocks, like his riffs, but pale.
So instead, he went out and found a wailer, too stupid to commit to a single thing.
I assume not lighting up at the sight of your mother is a sign of madness in an infant.
Pattena, no name for a baby...
you were first born before they threw you from the bridge.
Wagner wrestles his dogs to the floor.
Such a beautiful scene for some.
They write plays, don't perform them.
The message from the critical reception of Dreams was quite clear:
We will not be listening to you any further.
Of course, some tension is created;
Cosmonaut in a breadline, etc.
I watched a pig devour the classics just to get to you.
The barge endlessly circling, your mind finds out.
It is done.
The journey starts late...
Six weeks into the making of Grief Point...
First off is May Day, the song in honor of May 1st and the workers.
Can you still be against the strike that only strikes for more pay?
By ‘you,’ in this instance, I mean ‘me.’
There is a certain kind of person to whom things come with great facility.
They say this is the noise that gets made as my life is lived.
So be it.
But don’t feel the need to record it.
For a second I thought this meant that they were not interested in history, but that’s wrong.
Wrong, wrong.
A bad reading of the situation.
The right reading is that I just don’t understand it.
At all.
Grief Point, and May Day by extension, suffers from the same old shit:
A potential complete ignorance of ambiance, real ambiance, in that
can you really construct it, every last bit of it,
and just let the listener feel its effects?
And is this the right treatment?
Always the same question.
In this case, I would maybe say yes, just because it forces form onto the thing.
"Thing" is a bunch of words to melodies, and the words sung in a handful of ways.
Between J and D, of course, the same old war rages;
one into a tight and perfect digital palace, but super true to the genre,
the other wanting to throw in actual sounds, mix it up, humanize.
It's cool how for my part, this sleight of hand,
the trick of making something confounding and great and potentially horrible, drawn up from air...
all this is no longer of any interest.
In fact, even seeing things in this light depresses me.
And so I often come home at night depressed by what we have done, what we are doing.
It's good, it means I've changed.
I have lost interest in music. It is horrible.
I should only make things I understand.
I should only make things I know how to construct, however imperfect.
It's not even like dictating to someone; it's less than that.
May Day itself is pretty cool, I have to admit.
It condemns the world at such an easy pace.
I intend to tell it to you... it’s like happy shooting rockets,
a disgusting description of anything, to be sure.
I think the world does not like me grim; it likes me melancholic but not miserable.
English on the Mediterranean, which is oddly enough, some of the worst people there is.
At some point when it is made, I will explain this record word-for-word, swear to God...
When I know if that is good or bad, I’ll know what is good and what is bad.
The answer to the making of Grief Point is picnic baskets filled with blood.
Too rich, nothing at stake.
If "blank" had to write lyrics for his songs, they would be cumbersome, pale blocks, like his riffs, but pale.
So instead, he went out and found a wailer, too stupid to commit to a single thing.
I assume not lighting up at the sight of your mother is a sign of madness in an infant.
Pattena, no name for a baby...
you were first born before they threw you from the bridge.
Wagner wrestles his dogs to the floor.
Such a beautiful scene for some.
They write plays, don't perform them.
The message from the critical reception of Dreams was quite clear:
We will not be listening to you any further.
Of course, some tension is created;
Cosmonaut in a breadline, etc.
I watched a pig devour the classics just to get to you.
The barge endlessly circling, your mind finds out.
It is done.
Wednesday, October 5, 2011
ArtPrize Cathedral Square Review
September 28, 2011
ArtPrize Cathedral Square Review
A community not so far away;
Cathedral Square
By: me
ArtPrize has the tendency to bring out the child in all people, whether they are an actual 8 years old or 60 doesn’t make a difference. Art for the sake of art is hard to come by and usually with an event of ArtPrize size there is no keeping out the under appreciators who cannot see the beauty in a non-traditional piece or place.
A question that comes up a lot for first time Artprize goers is, ‘Where in the world are we supposed to start?” With art to see everywhere it is easy to get sweep away in the spectacle of it all and miss the smaller more majestic places. One such place is The Roman Catholic Diocese of Grand Rapids' Cathedral Square. Cathedral Square participated last year in ArtPrize but just as an outside venue, but that changed this year. Cathedral Square transformed itself into a land of art by accepting the position of being one of the seven exhibition sight center where people could go resister and vote.
But what makes Cathedral Square the best place to begin is the site being one of a few places that offers free-parking. The square itself is not easy to miss thanks to a 24ft. steel sculpture name “Whirling Dervish.”-Ruth Migdal-Brown is the artist responsible for the 7,000-pund piece and says the bright red giant monument represents movement and dance. Inside there are 24 pieces of art, in the gardens and, the Healer Plaza supplying the venue with a total of 32 pieces. However there are sums of 35 artists, for Cathedral Square features collaborative art as well. The Square is the right amount of distance away from the heart of downtown to have a calming and warming aura that escapes the other venues, but still manages to attract enough people to withhold a reassuring sense of community.
When asked to give a small statement about Cathedral Square Center and ArtPrize, the sites curator Ron Pederson, a professor of art at Aquinas College and also an ArtPrize artist himself said in a previous MLive story “We wanted work that would encourage contemplation, that would allow the viewer to understand something of the artist's spirit and something of the spirit of the community within which she or he is working.”
ArtPrize Cathedral Square Review
A community not so far away;
Cathedral Square
By: me
ArtPrize has the tendency to bring out the child in all people, whether they are an actual 8 years old or 60 doesn’t make a difference. Art for the sake of art is hard to come by and usually with an event of ArtPrize size there is no keeping out the under appreciators who cannot see the beauty in a non-traditional piece or place.
A question that comes up a lot for first time Artprize goers is, ‘Where in the world are we supposed to start?” With art to see everywhere it is easy to get sweep away in the spectacle of it all and miss the smaller more majestic places. One such place is The Roman Catholic Diocese of Grand Rapids' Cathedral Square. Cathedral Square participated last year in ArtPrize but just as an outside venue, but that changed this year. Cathedral Square transformed itself into a land of art by accepting the position of being one of the seven exhibition sight center where people could go resister and vote.
But what makes Cathedral Square the best place to begin is the site being one of a few places that offers free-parking. The square itself is not easy to miss thanks to a 24ft. steel sculpture name “Whirling Dervish.”-Ruth Migdal-Brown is the artist responsible for the 7,000-pund piece and says the bright red giant monument represents movement and dance. Inside there are 24 pieces of art, in the gardens and, the Healer Plaza supplying the venue with a total of 32 pieces. However there are sums of 35 artists, for Cathedral Square features collaborative art as well. The Square is the right amount of distance away from the heart of downtown to have a calming and warming aura that escapes the other venues, but still manages to attract enough people to withhold a reassuring sense of community.
When asked to give a small statement about Cathedral Square Center and ArtPrize, the sites curator Ron Pederson, a professor of art at Aquinas College and also an ArtPrize artist himself said in a previous MLive story “We wanted work that would encourage contemplation, that would allow the viewer to understand something of the artist's spirit and something of the spirit of the community within which she or he is working.”