A Poem (And A Photograph)

Waiting

New York, like my heart, is desolate since you left
and the presence of yesterday remains encrusted
to the lining of my lungs.

You’re not here and I can’t think of much else
or find solace in the corners bent on hiding
the face of hope from my face.

I cant stand being inside this skin
you’ve not caressed in an eternity of loss.
I’ve tried escaping through the surface cracks.

Waiting is a foreign game I never learned to play
and yet, waiting seems to be the only way to get
to where love patiently awaits.

When I Look At Manhattan. . .

From a work in progress currently titled From Mountain Road to Easy Street, a brief passage:

I walked towards my neighborhood up the Fourteenth Street Viaduct, its steep angle rising towards Union City matching the increasing elevating effect the pot had on my mood, as I walked on. When I reached the traffic light at the top of the bridge I turned around to look at the island of Manhattan below me, the live version of a black and white photograph from the nineteen fifties, taken around the time I was born, pressed into my memory. The skyline had grown new skyscrapers since I had arrived, like the newer trees in a jungle, they had sprouted, changing the outline but the basic premise remained. She was lit up from the edge of the water to the highest penthouse, permanently awake, as alluring still as the first time I had seen her. On this night, my existence, with all of the unconquerable problems it owned, was dwarfed by the magnitude of the man-made landscape before me. . .

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I took the photos of the New York skyline on the slideshow above over the last few years. These are just a few of the hundreds of images I’ve taken since arriving in Hudson County, New Jersey, in 1970. It’s impossible to ignore the view when you’re on this side of the Hudson. To some of us who, as kids, imagined living here, it’s the physical manifestation of dreams realized.

World Photography Day

was yesterday, August 19th. I read about it on Flickr. The folks there suggested taking a photo on this day and sharing it with the tag worldphotographyday. I missed the big extravaganza. So this morning I checked my phone—which is the only way I take photos these days—and found only one from yesterday. I titled it “Going Places. It All Adds Up.” I heard the voice of David Lee Roth when I was thinking of a title, but I wanted to keep it classy.

So this is my official entry. I hope to do better next year.

To find out more about World Photography Day visit their page. The Flickr collection is here.

A Poem (And A Photograph) From My Traveling Daughter

Untitled

I kiss the wrinkles on your forehead

Hold your big hands as I cross the bridge at dusk

The skin of the sky is pink like your face when illuminated only

By lamplight

I wish. I wish. I wish

You back

Nothing happened in the cathedral

Nothing happened on the square

Except that I crossed over you and your bones

Grandfather before and grandfather then

You leave only one widow and she sits by the window in the airplane with a book

I don’t want to remember you as ashes in river water

But there you are, everywhere I look

–Sherisse Alvarez

Texters: A Photo Essay by Joe Holmes

Texters, originally uploaded by joe holmes on Flickr. H/T Kottke

A Poem (and a Photograph)

Here’s Where I Am

After forty years on the road,
I am coming home to you,
my angel queen.

Ahead I see your castle-home
on top of the world
sitting in front of the perfect dawning of the sun–
daily hopes arising out of the blue
coral depths of your pupils.

My steps guided by an ancient calling
–like sirens in the mist–
a song I’ve heard
rustling through your hair
while kissing your skin.

A scent of satisfaction
inundates the road I walk
and sooth these lungs
you helped me fathom.
The road has opened up considerably
and I notice, for the first time,
the flowers that rise up
to touch the butterflies
suspended in mid-air
coloring each side.

There are lights
on all your windows
as I turn the last corner of the road.

I cross the garden
you fertilized with patient years;
I see the open door
and I walk into
this holy space and the warmth
of your internal fire
envelopes my tired bones
making them new again.
I am reborn as I cross the door,
I become a new man with your embrace and
holding hands we walk
up the last few steps.

Rejoicing in the welcome
you extend, I bring
my soul, may hands and my joys
to our bed. To sleep,
finally, to sleep in you, next to you
as you sleep in a womb of your creation.

Our home in God, blessed
by the children we’ll create
out of the gentle collisions of our cells
in the afternoon of the first day
that precedes the eternity
love is.

I’ve come home,
darling, I am home.
Home to run through
every room, open all the windows
and let life in.

I bring life with me
after a whole life of not knowing
life
until you showed me all I missed.

All of life I missed you–now I know
as I arrive home I bring the truth
in the inner linings of my eyes
and under my fingertips.

From under an arched window
high in our tower
we look at the new world
that spreads to the horizon all around
a world of possibilities
where the sun and the moon
dance around
the million stars that light heaven’s way.

I am home. Finally arrived
to meet your eyes. Home
made of stone, clay and the rituals
that made possible the history of the world
from beginning to today.

I am home,
home at last

here’s where I am

Image: Landscape viewed from the New Bridge, Puente Nuevo, in Ronda, Malaga province, Andalusia, Spain.
Photograph by: Carl Curman
Date: 1878
Format: Cyanotype

A Poem (and a Photograph)

Sober Truths — for Viola

Today I open darkness
each hour when I write
the divine wet poems
your virgin skin of me demands.
Soulmate of mine,
I present these sober truths
lit by candlelight
in the middle of our day
–the middle point of strength,
where most energy resides.

The sober truth of you, thirty-five
springs of roaming butterflies
mother of Matthew, saint
full of sin, hope of humanity
and of me. My past and future
lover, my friend.

As the mist descends
over a skyline of possibilities
not yet discerned, you stand in front,
soft and colorful, embracing life,
my second painting, my first love,
my angel in the early morning light.