Traditionally it works this way: The artist paints a picture. The art dealer shows it to a collector. Collector buys it and pays the dealer. The dealer gives a portion to the artist. The artist pays bills, which include studio rent. The dealer has bills to pay as well. The collector wakes up early each morning and smiles at the new framed artifact hanging in a hallway between the bedroom and bath. It works that way in fairy tales, the showing and sale of the artwork enable the artist to keep painting. It also gives the artist some emotional validation and an outlet for sharing his talent. What person doesn’t wish to share the fruits of his or her labors? It’s only natural we want others to taste, to read, to touch, to hear, to see, to appreciate what we do or make or create. “Come listen to this…”. It is human to want others to appreciate your work. But frankly, it can be a pain in the ass to stop working, when it is working that fills your spirit, just so others can take a peek...

Folding Laundry In Rome Perhaps they were songbirds squabbling outside in the trees They seem not to notice that the sun engulfs them and warms their feathers They squawk in spite of an absence of the dark and spitting clouds that until yesterday had plagued my short Roman Holiday These birds should be rejoicing, singing hosannas Instead, they peck at each other and I stand inside folding laundry before it wrinkles. Brautigan’s Laundry A dirty shirt rinsed in whiskey and put into a hot drier, then forgotten; coming out still dirty, smelling of booze, and more wrinkled than ever. I had entered Richard Brautigan's houses, cabins, hotel rooms, apartments and not only gone through his filthy laundry, but tried it all on, piece by piece Writing is laundry (is this a poem within a poem?) When all the shirts have been washed, dried, and hung. After the socks cleaned and matched put into drawe...

That Old Shipwreck Scene Neither that rainstorm in the middle of the night Nor the brilliant sunlit day changes a thing The castaways are doomed Those well-fed victims clinging to a black raft Mounted on the wall in the Louvre Will float adrift forever waving at that distant ship Never to be rescued Yet never to eat nor starve And I say well fed because these are models Parisians with full bellies and not those Who at the moment depicted Had neither nibble nor sip for two weeks Always in torment much like a frozen ball Of worms or tangled marionettes smeared with tar Painted with bitumen a fake paint And their tipsy raft is lost upon choppy water Meringue on lemon pie not yet cut into wedges Never placed on the table with fork and cup of tea Just a raft of people who have perpetually Lost their boat and are fated to float till the end of time Last night’s rain will not quench their thirst None of the thousands who walk through the gallery May p...

The Fabrication of Nothing: The Erased de Kooning Drawing On a cool morning, with a touch of winter in the air, it can make us smile to see evidence of our own breath. It surprises us when we see our own breath made visible. We take air for granted, we don’t have to see it. Some art is like air. Robert Rauschenberg’s white on white paintings and his “Erased de Kooning Drawing” are artworks we don’t need to see to understand. The concept satisfies our minds, well enough to bypass our eyes. The weight of these artworks is not physical, but completely conceptual. Yet, they do exist as objects. Robert Rauschenberg painstakingly erased a Willelm deKooning drawing, producing the infamous “Erased deKooning Drawing”, of 1953. One action obliterated another act, creating while destroying, making while undoing. It was as bold as it was blasphemous. The “Erased de Kooning Drawing” is known mainly to artists and modernists. Amongst this group it is legendary. However, few a...