A small sketch of Roofus on the living room rug.
This is actually a crop of the complete sketch which includes a chair and table on the top edges.
I made this for our friend Lyman in Kentucky. Just a short study of the dog he loves.
Hopefully he'll enjoy it as much as I enjoyed making it.
Pete got a package in the mail.
A copy of an obscure Japanese
release by Tuck & Patti, a jazz duo
we've seen a number of times.
Anyway, the package was beautiful
and had these gorgeous Chinese stamps
(the package originated in Hong Kong).
It was begging to be sketched.
The CD was stunningly beautiful too.
I was at Cafe Sureia
and wanted to make
small sketch.
There are not too many plants, but there was a lovely pot of little white orchids.
Again, the first thought was sketching it and then adding the color.
It was my first sketch with the waterpen Frederick told me about.
I did a small sketch of Pete
last night and watercolored it.
That's him on the couch and Roofus asleep at his feet.
The most interesting thing about doing this piece was the afghan.
I started out thinking I'd just do the blue futon and ignore the afghan but the squares were just too interesting.
I sort of screwed it up on the left bottom half, but overall it makes the piece sort of pop.
Yuletide Sunday in Washington, DC by Dan Vera
Peter is asleep on the living room couch with the dog,
Billy Strayhorn's "Nutcracker" fills the room from the speakers,
And I am reading about our torturers in Iraq.
using music as a weapon of decibeled destruction.
A haunting flute is now wailing on Strayhorn's somber Arabian Dance.
Meanwhile a world away a soldier is stabbing a sound
into the eardrums of a detainee,
Who will become a forever enemy of the very sound of us.
Then I read the line that says our torture code calls
for exploiting the "Arab fear of dogs"
And remember the photograph of that Shepherd
making a detainee lose his bowels in terror.
And I look down at Roofus, part shepherd, asleep at his master's feet.
The thought of this creature of love and belonging, twisted
to strike out on command, turns me cold.
This torture is ours.
The torturers are ours.
The sounds they are making is ours.
They are the loudest parts in the soundtrack of this war
which has been silent to us for too long.
This lie of a war we unmistakably try to forget or ignore or dignify.
I sit still and feel my queer heart disgust with this turning
of beauty into ugliness, love into hatred.
And I think about Jesus and Gandhi and every other truth teller
that would call this for what it really is in this "season of peace."
====
This poem was partly inspired by this article by Moustafa Bayoumi in The Nation.
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20051226/bayoumi
Green Hat Poem
by Dan Verafor Michael (Aubie)
The hat you made me
Kept me warm at night.
It rode the crown of my head
Through five days of delirium flu sick.
It genuflected with the rest of my body
Each time I went through coughing fits.
Clothes bundled me,
Elixers salved me,
But your hat kept me warm.
© 2005 Dan Vera
Tiny Boat
by Dan Vera
Be loved.
Let us be a verb to one another.
Let us be feeling before we are words.
My language is a tiny boat
on the ocean of your love.
There is great sun.
There is infinite blue.
I am in love with what enfolds me with happiness.
Hallway Love
by Dan Vera
Perhaps the greatest sin is not paying attention,
or fearing the need to admit
you are lost in describing it.
I am overwhelmed by love.
I am humbled by the feeling of it.
And lacking the words to capture
what can never be caged,
I consign it to realm of ordinary wonder.
Like a priceless Monet hanging for years
in a school hallway in France.
“Its just a picture of flowers.”
“It has always hung there.”
Until it is revealed.
“We had no idea.”
This poem was written for a friend's baby who was born
around the time that Hurricane Katrina devasted New Orleans.
Gabriel's mother was born and raised in New Orleans.
It was subsequently published in The Washington Spark.
___
For Gabriel
by Dan Vera
The old ones only remembered they'd survived.
My father would introduce me as the child of Beulah,
the one who was taken to higher ground
to be born above the flooded counties of South Texas.
They would nod and murmer,
"Oh. Beulah."
I think of Gabriel
Newlyborn
Who is loved by his parents,
By his mother who grew up with the French Quarter
By his grandparents whose house lies near the levy that gave way
How are we to live when the water
rises all around us?
How are we to seek dry land?
Gabriel,
You will grow up to be remembered with a hurricane.
You will always remind the ones who remember
How the strong ones survived.
You will always remind us of the outrage
that came from a country long slumbering.
May you always have dry land to dance on.
May you always be embraced in this life by those you love.
May you grow to shimmy some day
To the music of Bourbon Street on a faraway New Orleans night.
© 2005 Dan Vera
Bamiyan - Bare rock, Bare wall
by Dan Vera
"Two years ago the Taliban seized from a rival faction the
remote Bamiyan valley, home to two colossal Buddha statues
carved into a sandstone cliff-face in the 2nd century AD.
A Taliban commander then blew up the head of the smaller
Buddha with explosives, and fired rockets at the groin and
dress of the larger Buddha. The attack damaged frescos
that had withstood an assault from Genghis Khan.
The commander later returned to dump two burning tires
on the larger Buddha's lip." - The Economist"Oh yeah, there was a mural here.
Its been gone awhile."
- kid on bicycle before an empty wall in Chicago's Humboldt Park___
Three faces chin high.
Bamiyan Buddhas
statues sacrilegiousBrick is better bare than beautiful?
Destroying all statues
to save the god who
"created in his own image?"If your God is the most high
why does he need defending from 1400 year
old silent statue, or 23 year old smash plan 21
pride mural on the apostolic church wall?Hope killers with Art fearing God
Gutless scared shitless
of powerful paint on neighborhood
Puerto Rican neighborhood wallsStaring at the empty wall
where once three babes in fetus
held three tiny fingers before three
tiny closed eyes, like Buddhist contemplation,
making the third eye sign
which is the cosmic eye,
which is neither left nor right, just vision.Imagining cavern of five story tall Buddha
statue sheer rock empty now, like the sockets
in the toothless mouth of your god who is
defenseless before beauty.I can only imagine a hell for you and your petrified believing:
God pulling your jaws apart and pouring
paint and justice down your throat for all eternity.And there is Buddha smile serenely
to be called deity
to be feared for smiling
to be silent rock
to be dust
to be Taliban hungry ghost foolish fear.
© 2001 Dan Vera
