Invitation

“The sun was in my eyes,” she said. To me one day, but all I heard was music. I wonder if she knew that everywhere she looked got brighter, sort of like turning on a light in a different room. Progressively, space by space, the whole house became too bright to look at, and I found myself overflowing with passion for who she is, and who I might become if she looked at me long enough. She never noticed this effect her gaze has, or my desire for her to really see me; and sometimes I wonder if she has yet. Perhaps someday the whole world will go blind from looking at the brightness she leaves in her wake.

Three days after the accident the blood was still on the pavement. They had tried to clean it off, but it never seemed to clean up properly, It stank, and we all avoided that patch of sidewalk. Then one day after a heavy rain it was suddenly gone as if it were never there at all, but we still never stepped on that spot.

The Church Basement

Once when I was a teenager a man took me into the dirty basement at the church, under the rickety open backed stairs. He put his hands on my head and chest, and prayed for me to be filled with the Holy Spirit. He was talking in tongues and quoting the book of Acts, and praying for God to grant me the gift of tongues. Time went by, and nothing was happening. I was expecting spiritual fireworks, or butterflies or something, but all I felt was uncomfortable and sweaty. I felt so guilty that the Holy Spirit wasn’t moving in me that I started making weird noises like people do when the talk in tongues. Once I started, the man stopped praying and started encouraging me to continue, promising that it would get easier with time and practice, and that I was now communicating directly with God. I went upstairs to the lobby where the service was getting out and continued ‘praying’.

The man was right, it did become easier over time, and after a while I even tricked myself into believing it was 'real'. I never knew if anyone suspected that I was just faking it the whole time. It didn’t occur to me until much later in life that they were all just faking it too.

The Empty Room (Series of 3)

Thinking I had the house to myself, I relaxed in the recliner and closed my eyes.

2

But when I glanced up into the mirror, I saw that this was not the case at all. The girl just stood there silently.

3

When I looked back she was gone. Guess I was alone the whole time.

My Life

Here is my life,
I’ll make her my wife.
I’ll bake her some bread,
“I love you,” she said.
She takes my hand,
As we lay in the sand.
And listen all night
While the gulls take flight
Through the dark air
As the stars shine up there.
I do love her so
And I won’t let her go
I’ll cling and I’ll cleave
Let her do as she please,
And I’ll rhyme really nice
Like Ian Felice.
Here is my wife,
I’ll make her my life.

For Mandy

We were hoping it would dry up all morning, but when we walked out for the rehearsal the hotel windows were covered in raindrops. Her mother always told her it's good luck to get married on a rainy day.

I never believed it, but maybe now I do.

Still she longed for someone who could want her as much as she wants them. She lays awake at night lamenting a connection missed, or an awkward glance gone awry, and wishing she had someone to touch her in the ways she needs. Instead, she touches herself, and fantasizes about sharing her bed with anybody at all. She sucks on lips and pulls hair in her imagination as her fingers move across nobody, and touch nothing. But in her mind her lover is there caressing her equally, hand on her back, entering her slowly, she cries out with pleasure and loneliness.

Girl Who Loved A Tree (6 parts)

There was a girl who loved a tree.
She wore her heart for him to see.
All year she waited for the time
When to his arms she could up climb.

2

His finger leaves made fine caress,
And for his touch she gave none less
Than everything she ever had,
In bated breath and true love clad.

3

She held his hand, and he awoke
Upon her touch, and with her stroke.
But soft his grasp, it left a mark
Upon her skin which turned to bark!

4

She cried, “My love you are so strong,
But now my skin, it feels all wrong!”
And with great pain her joints went stiff;
Once-supple skin that hardened quick.

5

The girl grew bark, and leaves, and roots,
The tree grew legs, began to move.
And then with lips anew he spoke,
The first words since he had awoke:

6

“For all these years, I could not see
Why any girl would love a tree.
But here we are, and now you’re stuck,
Until with love you find some luck.”

We used to be so close. We used to fall sleep inside each other. Now we are 25 million miles removed whilst in the same apartment. We are so close and so far apart, I will do the dishes, and you take out the trash and we won’t touch each other because the gulf is too wide.

It seems like 25 million years since we made each other smile.

Out of Love

Out of Love

I tried bleach, I tried sandpaper,
I used forks and knives
And dental instruments,
To clean the taste of you from my tongue.

I scraped, raw and bloody
My hands, on the blacktop,
On rocks, and on the sidewalk,
To rub the feel of your skin off my palms.

I drank and smoked,
And invited the ghosts of the past
To haunt me for a day and a night
So I could erase your phantom smile from my brain.

So I guess I have to accept
That after failure upon failure
To remove you from me
The only choice left is to accept you.

In my dream I used my last breath to tell my child how proud I am of her.

The air was so cold but the sun was so warm. On another day she could have been comfortable.

She was so warm and others were so cold. In another life she could have been happy.

Living Underground

Since I was given the choice of calling you back or sinking through the floor and disappearing, I chose the latter. I opened the trapdoor in the ground and climbed down the ladder inside. It was cold at first, but the further I climbed, the warmer it got. I saw strange and wondrous things, worm and beetle, strata and fossil, dirt and mineral.

When I got to the bottom I slept there for a while, under the dirt, and made friends with the spirits that haunted my dreams. When I awoke you were there, sitting beside me. You said, “Call me back sometime,” and climbed back up. But my phone had really bad reception, being under the ground as it was, and I couldn’t.

Living underground is nice sometimes. I think I'll stay here.

The sky is so blue, and I miss you.

The hardest thing about saying goodbye is knowing that in a week I will stuff her back in that place in the back of my mind and not take her out until I see her again, and then have to deal with falling in love and saying goodbye all over again the next time.

Now, I am home, and away from her again. Heartsick, I see her face every time I close my eyes. I almost wish I had told her how I feel back when we were young, and I had the chance to do something about it. At least, then, she would know.

Primroses

My mother’s mother was a gardener. She raised and crossbred primroses amongst other flowers and plants, in a double greenhouse attached to her house. I was always enamored with the delicate primrose, but too embarrassed to say so. I always hoped she would give me one. She never did, and now she is long dead, the property has sold, the greenhouses are torn down, and the old dairy barn burned a couple years ago.

These are not primroses and they have nothing to do with my grandmother, but growing plants always makes me think of her.

The Crash

The Crash
In the moments before the crash I saw the face of my unborn daughter. It was somewhat shocking, because I had not known the baby was a girl until that very moment. And it wasn’t so much a physical face I saw, but more of an idea of what her face could look like, or would look like someday, looming out of my unconscious (imagination) like some kind of developing photograph, becoming more vague and indistinct the longer I thought about it. My presence was there in the hospital maternity ward with my wife, as she struggled and fought, waging war with the life she was making, as I waged war with the life I was losing where I lay on road. With my last breath I saw my baby girl born, and kissed her good morning.

I stood at the window and watched her walk until she reached the lilac bush and disappeared from sight. As the last bit of her red skirt slipped around the corner I realized something special and important had left my life. She said, "I feel like we will just run into each other sometime.” I find this hard to believe. I know she's gone and I'll never see her again, and now I write with a heavy heart of what could've been if my life were different.

My Child

In my dream I used my last breath to tell my beloved child how proud I am of her.

1

I Head cage myself within myself. All my life I had been taught that I was beautiful and special, perfectly and wonderfully made, that the world was out to hurt me and destroyed me.

Eventually I learned to be afraid of anyone who didn't go to my own church

2

And so I withdrew, and remain sequestered inside myself. Unloving, and untrusting, and yet confused and not really understanding why I had this conceited view of the world. Slowly I began to simmer, then boil, and then erupt, but the bars of the invented cage were unyielding, and I had been taught to be ashamed of my feelings. Instead I locked them tighter inside than ever. I was ready to explode with guilt.

3

Universes expanded and exploded inside me, lives were conceived and ended while I remained imprisoned inside the cage created by prayer and fear. I never realized how easy it would have been to simply step aside and set myself free.

Learning To Swear (series of 3)

This is the traffic light at I-890 and Broadway in Schenectady, New York, near my father’s former house, and it is the longest, most frustrating light ever made. We drove through it frequently.

2

When the light took too long to change my father would blow his horn at it. This always baffled me: What did he think would happen? As a child on this site is where I learned to swear such baffling curses like, “bastardly sonofabitch,” “lying weaseley rat” and, “goddamn dirty bastard.” He used these same phrases when talking about my mother. It was confusing.

3

My father is not a patient man, never has been, but he did sometimes have a jug of wine on the floor of the car near his feet.

I learned a lot more things in the car. How to hold a grudge, how to dodge a fist in the front seat, how to hate women. I have worked hard to unlearn these things over the years, but I still like to swear.

The Woods Spirit (Series of 6)

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5

6

If you could read my mind you might find that everything I do, I do to make you mine.

If I knew you could read my mind you might find I think of you all the time.

When my cousin got married her new husband got blindingly drunk and fell through the cake. It was a total disaster. He laid there passed out, covered in cake, while the groomsmen tried to carry him bodily from the room. Jess spent the rest of the reception dancing alone and crying, knowing that a new, distressing chapter of her life had just begun.

The next day Max didn’t remember anything after the limo ride to the church, and couldn’t understand how he got the bruises on his side falling into the table. He didn’t even know he was married. Jess still cries a lot.

An Easy Exit

Last night I dreamed I was dying of cancer. At first I was sad and afraid of saying goodbye to everyone, but by the time I awoke, I remember feeling releived.

Jon Scheer, 2004

This is one of the first portraits I ever made. It is of my friend Jon. At the time I thought it would be just a different looking portrait for the class critique. I didn't know he would be dead in a few short years.

Had I known I would have made a lot more pictures of him.