Five Roman Forum Poems One, Getting Lost The first taxi driver got lost He knew how to navigate Using Google Google knows where the Roman Forum is NOT Where the entrance is We hailed a second cab Two, Our Tour Guide’s Foot Our tour guide was on crutches Making the tour pace Deliberate and detailed She took her time Old stones are not in a hurry The path bumpy Our daughter with an injured foot Three, Partial Temples The Basilica of Amelia is little more than bits of conglomerate columns lined into rows Each a crumbling fruitcake on a stone plinth One stone a fruitcake in turtle form Four, Visual Comparison Lining fallen stones that had once been capitals into rows Takes me back to the Standing Stones at Carnac There is no relationship Only coincidence of order Carnac held not a roof but the sky Five, Locked Door The Temple of Romulus remains intact copper doors Green wi...

A Fantasy Piece with a Concrete Product The artist known as Jackson Pollock was born Paul J. Pollock. Jackson was his middle name. His first name, Paul, had no “punch”, while Jackson Pollock sounded unique. Jackson had a certain ring to it. I use his first name, Paul, for the title of a series of drawings I would have imagined Paul Jackson Pollock might have made, rather than the drawings and sketches he actually put in his sketchbooks and onto sheets of white paper. Pollock's early drawings depicted ubiquitous things and fragments of nondescript stuff, sometimes they represented objects and recognizable forms, but even when Pollock created biomorphic sketches and imaginary inventions he seemed to be "driving with one foot on the brake". In no case do we see evidence of the full-body dance we witness when he flung liquid paint onto canvas. There is nothing fluid about the drawings. This is logical as liquid paint and ink may flow, but...