Project XO XO by Night

PROJECT XO

XO by night

This night-strike installation

was almost like a mean prank

the medium could easily

be mistaken for actual hootch

XO (installation view)

impromptu lighting via

 the two matchbooks I ignited

22 April 2017

More Musings in the Marco Polo Zone

Curiosities along
7th, 8th, and 9th streets
my vicinity and environs


 1.

Large calligraphic scroll
in Chinatown library

Asian-theme branch

Old Oakland gallery windows
embracing immigration to
North American
Primitive humans landed in San Diego
130,000 years ago
everyone else is a newcomer




Mesoamerican




Levantine

Plenty of flesh-peddling
goes on

Flowers for sale
at the Friday Famer's Market

A lovely lady buys some

I see a lot of Crayola hair

I see a lot of Crayola hair
 these days
but her hair was perfect

 Today's an exhilarating
day in Spring
after so much chilly rain

Remembering David
a year later

 Ziggy went to

Sleepy Mountain



Vapor trails go by,
there's no one driving







Decorative objets d'arte
offered on Broadway sidewalk




2.






Along the seismic seam between

 Old Oakland, Chinatown

and the West Oakland Police State

This emporium is  a mere block

away from where I live

I buy stoneware plates there

replacements for the ones I break

By the time I took this shot

the young counter-guy squawked

It was just a diversion though

I really wanted to get a image

of their security camera matrix

Last time I was in, the guy was staring

at the empty store as if social media

Without a doubt

there are some lost souls

hereabouts

3.

Shall we go outside?

After dark?

This is the entrance to the courthouse

populated by overnight guests

who are in fact free to go

elsewhere

4.

The old martial drumbeat

is back in style,

Sadly I didn't claim this free LP

despite it's preservation

would have encumbered me as

I walked the paradoxical streets

April 2017

The Psychedelic Sunset

A burst of color before the darkness

Red earth flora



An artisan selling pipes

what's the nature of this

passing scene?

The psychedelic sun also rises

a trip room in broad daylight

 

I chatted up a kind fellow with some bud

we discussed entheogens and the like

my experience and study was extensive

and nostalgically long ago

 A t home I encountered

anew shower curtain

for Easter week

 An eerie contrast in light

when I went outside again

after supper

 

A cherished motif and subject

the antiquated walls of

Union Machine Works

Moving on but
you can't scare me

I'm sticking to the union



Repurposed metal works
at crespuscule

Approaching sundown

the evening train

thunders this way

Three spines with rib gages

inchoate faces

came toward me in the sky

 

Things rapidly

transformed

  the extra-planet effect

Shipside splendor

 

Some people look at the beauty

of a sunset sky

acknowledge it rationally

and want to go

Others of us stand transfixed

in an aesthetic state

brushstrokes of momentary color

 intimate immortality

Infrared flowers

in the most oblique light

calling me home

24 April 2017

Garden Cat

Buds are forthcoming roses

animals cop curious poses

So early in the Spring

Clouds dropped me off

on upper Grand Avenue

Piedmontese around here

 

To an native Yankee like myself

the world of flowers I encountered

on the West Coast is one

 of continual wonder

In California

the flora are in your face

Another green world

 

I am fond of passages

where no cars go

 

A girl with red hair

reads a book

under a canopy of green

Premature day for the roses

actually

 I found one bush in bloom

with ecstatically fragrant blossoms

But we are not here for the roses

Not sure it shows but...

I am very

very high

Well, well,

look who's here

Better not wake

my extra-sensory pal

He couldn't care less

Go all Edward Muybridge

on your turkey ass

We were expecting

the Easter Bunny

Despite over-population

on both sides

We are not allowed to eat them

I'll wager that they're as gamey

as an old pole cat

Looking kind of pre-historic

there, archaeopteryx

A mind-expanding

soul-growing

psychedelic biosphere

As if the doors of perception

were cleansed

As if the heart and soul

were opened

to the sky

Isabella

We are floating,

April 2017