Prose from December 2015: Endings and Beginnings

Endings and beginnings haunt the chamber.
turning the fragments over, were they even ever interwoven?
you can make yourself believe through timidity and angst that they were
receding into the noiselessness now, and the empty halls remain.

Preludes and epilogues reveal the sender.
first night in this house when a plague of dreams beleaguered.
chief among the eidolons, a skeleton pharaoh unable -
to rise from his underground asylum
- impenetrable palisade; his immutable and sacrosanct enclosure.

Departures and arrivals in a river of mirrors.
tall windows in the top of the castle tower, i just had to unlatch them
frustration like sweat in the eye - stings, pulls at the edges with a tentacles grip,
the fingers slip and the psyche shifts.
white snakes with orange stripes before a river - uneasily in the tension
waiting for the crossing
gather the choices folded into dice - into a cup tossing.

Inceptions and cessations begin in the earth and wash into the ocean.
no place at the table anymore, get packing.
if you see, please keep space for a passing recondite like me
- but I no longer expect it; am I zachariah in the tree?
easter pants got muddy playing in the street, animal child free.
keeping the ears turned, still looking for the fading beat.

Initiations and eggresions dissolving the boundaries.
my nakedness no longer alarms me, be what is raw is much more easily.
jump the gateways with a childhood ease.
these eyes no longer belie what is revealed beneath every existence.
happening always now, all the moments in unison -
to be a breaker between the stratums, not all that it is cracked the corn
to be.

-E Tajchman Dec. 2015

In the Forest at Night

Sounds of the beat of the heart
echo in the branches of the trees.

Each step falls through the ground when imagining unincorporated breath.
wandering through the trees with and an endless black sea falling all around.

Furrowed brows and sweaty chins, fade and reappear
in the shadows of the old houses. Houses abandoned long ago,
seen through other eyeball's perceptions on nights
yet to come.

Remains of the shadow reside inside
all the old structures of our soul's ghost.
Spirit host, shifting ceaselessly in the hallways
where the future's mistakes are repeating.
the only light between the awe of night and the leaves,
are glowing eyes, . . or the mind's lies?

Twigs break, dry leaves crunch, across the creek,
 even when the feet underneath have taken root.

Faces have forgotten how to form in the heart's binding.
winding through the forest faster and ever further now.
spider webs broken spider skulls shaken; a fear has taken hold.

why is there a calm always born from the depths of chaos
as if graces seizes the spine, tingling rising into the crown.

Then the feet have a notion to feel the height's of the sky's midnight ocean
the slight smell of chill in the shifting wind already taking hold.

Beats of the heart pumps adrenaline through every vein in curling toes.
leaping forth into the sky as the ephemeral body arose.
fear shatters as the -
ancient soul drives the body now higher into the night's sky.

In the end,
no amount of skin drives the quaking heart any further.
knowing that no one ever even really heard her,
splinter.

Bare branched trees reflect hands taking root.
bare skin knuckles circumspect on the found finally
concrete.

Fragments of the Dream Teachers

constrained like in a dream running uphill with all willpower focused but barely moving.
Always afraid to face the darkness inside the trees at night,
barriers of unkowable inception rooted in so many old and new angles.
One time pushing through and feeling the body deeply in a dream.
It is now a twisting series of connected spires twisting, dancing, bouncing slowly as the tentacles of the mind flow,
unconstrained.
It moves differently that is why it could not be utilized before.
In a dream, sitting outside the area of incarnated time;
feeling the spires that you are, move. Swirling slowly and quickly, feeling their physicality; in the air,
am the air.
driving a car except the foot will not reach the pedal, barricades distracting and then
pushing through again the foot on the pedal the car moving across the barricade down the hill.
the will is strong, the soul moves with your mind now push it where it needs to go.
the whole thing becomes what is, dynamic synergy erupting in a slow focused apparition.
Ephemoral blood
in the fingertips, no longer having hips you felt the spires of smoke that are
who the energy is we become.

Awareness of Self

Born with confidence into the supposed seven hells.
Awareness of the shifting heart and the tolling of the bells.

Minutes can be years in the mind of squabbling urchins.
When so much is given, even then the limbs - needles and pins.    

Cage unheeded, invisible inside all the provided smiles of the chosen.
Always out-of-the way, always howling but still unseen; frozen.

A singular navigation through the waves of encompassing vitality.
Memory sits on the edge of worlds & words before, disillusion of duality.

Consolation prizes no longer hold the heart in check.
Ears ringing reveals silence in the cave. Gold glimmers - a fleck.

Charcoal Self Portrait from Age 17, Poem July 2014

The self portrait below is me at age 17. Three aspects of self, with the shadow self grabbing from behind. This was a frustrating time for me, like many people. The poem is written and edited July 2014.

"Between The black ink shining as it dries, and the pink morning light fading from your eyes, between the dried root finally cracked and broken, and the hoots from the owl awoken. Between the dried paint on my fingers, and the feint whispers echoing in my soul that linger

A memory stirs of when a few strands of her auburn hair hung over her eyebrow. I hope she remembers to use all ideas from all moments. Seeking the shiners in her every where now.

Whole world optional alone rolls forward, from the breath of a clenched brow when the pharaoh hound returns the favor. The world and everything inside of it seen on the shelf yesterday. Every small moment glued to the walls carefully"

-Ed Tajchman

Charcoal Self Portrait age 17 by Ed Tajchman. 

In Secure Expressions

Bloody fingertips shaking feverishly, caressing a furrowed sweaty brow. Thick head filled with humid nightmares collecting in every crease in the bed-sheet. Pillow soaked on both sides, body drained and frozen cannot rise and face the new tide. No surprise what fears lurk in the empty chamber, not even pieces of the beating pulse that once reared their heads continually can be found.

Deceased phantoms facilitate unwilling progress. So happy to be in the sun now, so free to feel the wind in the face now. No disgrace on the bottom of those shoes, no matter how many piss-filled stone corners of a wasted and hungry world they travel. Whose to say the empty, scared, lonely, hollowed shell of a being he was now, was not a far cry from my ferocious childhood in the end besides.

Wandering and dreaming boy, lost control of his spell, became part of his own creation. Infestation of love misplaced, none to sustain my face now. Cold skin lingers all over my bones. And not for want of pushing all the buttons as carefully and in all the incandescent patterns as possible. Focused and facing all the swinging causeways that life has to offer. None can soften the blows that your own being becomes. Find it and own it. Take care of it.

-Ed Tajchman

Plains Contemplation

Wind fiercely brushes through hair and ears. I knew when the waves crashed gathering mine and your fears, all across the horizon when in the ocean. Subtle motions reveal flashes of reconnected memories. You realize on your knees, experiencing this moment from many points is possible. Joints crack, powerful intentions aggregate. Frozen stares dispersed fate and curses from angry lips when you know no one is hearing. Cannot find a clearing no matter where you ride. Release the reaction embrace quiet reflection, know this when the wind is strongest in your face.

You should be fearing these indiscriminate reactions.  Find a place for your anger to build a fire, clear the brush of your weak and inadvertent notions. You will gain no traction when you are in the deep end of the ocean, legs dangling no hope of sand below them only water for miles. Heart pounding lungs bursting fly up the hill, beat pumping in your heart, legs spinning sky rushing, watching like a hawk for any possible outcome. Coyote watches as you pass and follows behind. Bare skinned birds circle in case you give out. 

The House on 862 Mirror Street Speaks

Between the shadows cast from the ghosts of her eyes in my doorway,
And the sound of his worn-out shoes running all over the city to get back here.

A young man looks out of his bedroom window, into the gnarly haunted looking bushes.
Reminding him of how he felt inside, so twisted and broken but finally free in the night.

Awoken at long last, but finding himself in so many pieces; They started to, . . .
Fall into his stomach as the words from her lips, still in his mind; hit the ears.

Those will always be the ones that cut deepest, hit furthest, first.

Maybe always knowing it could be no other way, he fought against the tide.
It pulls you in and pushes you out, soon you look and shore is far away.

Stories of the way it could be should of ended long ago in his mind.
As the summer unwinds desperately trying ways to stop thinking.

Walking the streets, feet sinking ever further into the soul of his shoes.
Feel the beat of the street everyone downtown in the morning,

Holding their coffee like armor.

In the middle he kept shrinking, no riddle solved of his brain could help the cause.
No walk through any more city blocks would give his mind only the slightest pause.

Only praying to stop hearing the the sound of those words falling softly from her.
She was always a grey shade of pink, a soft shade of brown, and she left town.

The Insides of Oceans

The story was fluid like and at the same time completely different each new window into a world. People, mothers, sisters, brothers are different each time. Hard to tell how soon the shift happens, things would be completely different again except for one thread. I would focus on a frying pan for example and the whole thing shifts, like flying forward in a four dimensional square and then the colors come back in and the people are different around me. At first I could only notice one thread the same each time, then it was two or three threads that I could recognize or even weave myself. I've had dreams like this before but this is the first time I managed to get close to writing down, this is what I am doing right now.

The key is the phase shift while focusing on seeing as many common elements as you can in the next sequence even when everything shifts, people, rooms, situations everything within short spans. The common threads might even shift form but you still know their unique energy and can follow it. Like minutes or every 30 seconds, but sometimes maybe years or just an hour. Writing this I know I stumbled onto something. Overturned the underworld of dreams, found the child like knowing; the remembering of, a timeless way of seeing all the shifts of people's intentions. It all happens in the space of the now that we are all in each of those moments happening presently.

Always on the tip of the tongue are the fruit from the outstretched limbs of the waking mind's grasp, slipping between phases; deciding which place is more real. Feeling the dreams that come of other's emotions instantly on their face, you never even knew them, but they feel the same. In so many places and years you felt her hands, and her eyes felt the wounds inside your heart; though you never knew her.

When the heart turns be grateful that it is moving, follow it's lead no need to bleed needlessly dripping all over the floor, your thoughts, emotions revealed in all the small notions on the slight twist of the lips, eyebrow slips release the teeth the, tongue gets heavy, the sweat drips larger. More than happening when it comes on fully, shifting seamlessly in-between all the layers of every waking second when there is no way to measure days or hours truly. Sitting on the bench staring at my clouds of emotion that slowly shift inside and also in the sky. Deciding to no longer lie about a strong desire to love life in every way. Knowing the redemption is your own. Colliding into grace when you need the way it talks to you through a union of symbols in the moments of people around you now.

-Ed Tajchman

Spinning Shadows in Stillness Wait

Unclogged pathways resound infinitely in a short span. Large ringing circle of diagonal eights in the air float away collapsing, coaxing and stepping back around and into again, my eyes. Never forgot the sitting and spinning and then one quick message when I was sure they were overlapping into the frontal lobes adequately, a message; bring your people back to me, help them find their way to me. Then the skin folder over again. I knew the flesh of the spirit when it saw me and it was there.

Cesspools lay near crystal waters. Moonlight sings as the hawks slaughter. Red star sparkles so heavy on the horizon it begs the question why is the pain expanding. I cry out how can I be worthy to sing the praises of a shining deep blue that stirs echoes of the eyes I was before now, moving as your bass pounding heart sounds into and out of view again, like the waves. Crystallizing in toes creeping so delicately on the black pavement, where the branches used to break underfoot.

Wild animal remembers the pounding heart demanding. Energy of a delicate nature overwhelms the very muscles which uphold it. Standing dumbfounding and the ringing outstretched carefully, it knows a looming death hangs on no brow no more. No more down turned anger clasping gut wrench. Straight through the middle again, thinner then I can admit. Who can backtrack to the hole which I've committed.

Shines like a grace forgiven. Collapsed and broken shattered on the cement floor. Door to door grins for kick and shit spins. Crispy hotcakes don't look enticing to a happenstance leaf restorer, ladybug adorer, magnolia snorer. Give me more then that, don't you see me hear, don't you know I'm hear? Don't you know I love you? I've been here the whole time, sometimes knowing, sometimes screaming in a limitless black horizon knowing the spaces that are inside me are also outside me at the same time. I am in no time and no hurry into no unbending fury. Only my eyes and the new horizon calling. My field of play awaits. I choose to dance in rolling green light of every new spring and cling to the last leaf on the tree left from falls hallows.

-Ed Tajchman

Visions From the Shadow Self

Constantly rambling, barely murmuring, knowing every reflection's echo.
Cracks in the cement, cracks in a skull. Holes in the side of a ship gaining water.

The sky over the plains is as vast, and forever wide as the emptiness of the heart's chamber.
Do not ever be afraid to take what you want from yourself when you know better.

Red star sparkles in the dark blue sky, endless rolling hills ask why.
Wind howls across the ears pushing all in its way, what is it trying to say?

Prophecies seen when the dream which happens first, takes hold.
Ancients seize the bodies of brothers from this age I am told.

Time spent trying to please others leaves the face devoid of warmth.
Friends lie, fathers die, no one holds a breath for your face.

Building a dream alone a child never stopped stacking and wandered far.
Always lost, late, broken, and giving everything, still quaking in fear.

No one speaks the language of a soul no matter where he speaks it.
Crying such a deep tremor inside knowing it reaches the farthest depths.

Be careful if and who you wait for, intentions hold a myriad of reflections.
More powerful alone in a mind or in a crowd, what you see and selected.

-Ed Tajchman

Ancient Goddess Ode

In the ocean of a mind's lifetime dwelt the memory of how the light in her eyes caused a frost to melt. Revealing the heart of one who fought so hard to be true so long ago. It was not that light in those eyes, it was the possibility that dwelt within.

In an unthinkably dark forest. Lost in the woods in winter to find a quiet, if cold and dark paradise, waiting in stillness. Embrace Morena's cold touch on my cheek, see her beauty and be in awe of it, as she comes to me, smiling and powerful.

-Ed Tajchman

The Cat, Coyote, and the Frogs

Calibrated curiosity found three ways to skin the cat. Around here meticulous tin-men still look for feelings as on-lookers stand pat. Handing out rays of shifting colors, lifted gaze fixed upon overlapping textures in all ages of the mind's dwelling. Torn pages define the telling signs, reminded in each word falling between the lines. Rusted bird watches the ants crawl into the dirt, as I scrawled into the cement until it hurt. Knuckles bloody knees muddy, head rising, surprising how much is left, all out of breath as the carafe comes to the lips.

The hills closed in on the coyote as darkness fell over the pink and orange sky. Wandering the same paths, smelling feint glimpses of females dodging his scent until it suits them, avoiding all the regular foes, same mud on his ever tightening toes, same empty belly rumbling as he stumbles into his den. A new form of quickness will humble his prey, he must fight to stay alive in this world. Rings of light consume the imagination's concentration, forcing focus on everything outside of himself.

Captivated onlookers gasped at the dancing five fingered frogs, robs your soul as you walk away the coiled mind avoids your hind sight. Like on a kite soaring in the sky the focused attention creeps into your skull through vibrations mulling in your own thoughts. Are they your thoughts now? Or does the membrane of the fascinated amphibians deliberate corralling stare more then dare you to stand and feel more from them?

-Ed Tajchman

The Form and the Formless Interwoven

Two birds bounced in the bushes while singing.
Undo the reasons it will not stop stinging.

Pining at a moon after smoldering sky with lightning.
Lining Silver in the reflection of the cocoon tightening.

All this time building and refusing to splurge
Walls closing in, and it's impossible to emerge

Constantly rambling barely murmuring, the middle of the inside is not all it is cracked up to be. Cracks in the cement, cracks in mounted skulls.  What it is to be true has changed. False bravado from antiquated notions disconnected my mind from a source. The map I should of had coming in, was clouded by guided misperceptions. Found that glowing effervescence again and begged to never lose that ringing inside, echos of universal love opening in my eye.

Corporeal memories wander empty mansions.
Seal the grinning fate of the future's phantoms.

Unbroken ground reserved for ambitious intentions.
Spoken truth is only a wish of oversold interventions.

Holes in the side of the ship are leaking water.
Rolls of stinging sweat in my eyes, it gets hotter.

Wandering as the black night consumes all light.
Squandering endless moments, which way looks right?

It goes and it stays away a while, sometimes. Thoughts grow dark despite the best intentions and most pure of routines. Take back the ocean inside the skull, don't lose a grip on believing in the work. Never lost faith in it, or, . . . never had a vision? A Cruel thing to say when you know it is not true, but equally cruel to wait with a begging open heart, arms shaking, exhausted from reaching. To see it and not bend completely to it's will leaves one still. Too pure carries you far outside the bounds of where you are now, too thin and I float away. Capture it in just the right way in quiet moments; and through mud and shit when you need to.

- Ed Tajchman

The Epic 300th Post of Ed Tajchman's Art Journal: Modern Art Quotes

I have been writing in this space for about the last 7 years of my life, and this is the 300th post of Modern Art Quotes; my art journal. It started as me, sharing my casual observations about the creative process using art history and quotes from artists as inspiration. It then evolved into an examination of my own thoughts about my approaches to my creative process. It became a place where I could stop and think about what I was trying to say with my art, and why.  It is now a place where I share my prose and recent artwork.

In the last 7 years it is clear to me, especially when seen through the lens of this blog, how far I have come in how I express myself in my art and in my writings. For example the artwork shared here of mine in the last 30 posts or so is by far some of if not the best artwork I have done in my life. The me who started this blog 7 years ago would not have known how to do some of the paintings that I am doing now, he would of been inspired at seeing the work.

There have been a few key triggers involved in the growth of my style and themes. Traveling abroad to 2 different continents, meeting and working with many artists from around the world, challenging myself to do things that seem daunting. And more recently a decision to go back to school, starting with studying mythology, which has already helped shape how I want to tell stories. Hopefully in another 7 years I can look back at the current me and think the same thing, that I have gotten so much better. The more important thing for me especially is how much work I am doing now. It is a lot, at least compared to the earlier me. My goal is to continue to increase my rate of production.

I like the fact that I have this written record to accompany my work. Part of the reason one of my favorite painters is famous today, Vincent Van Gogh, is because he had about 700 letters he had written (many to his brother Theo) that talked about his life, his work, and his thoughts. Paired with the paintings it is quite a magnificent body of work, especially given the fact that he did it all in about the span of 10 years.

So, . . .  in the tradition of the earliest posts of this blog I will share part of one of my favorite letters of his. Words I have heard over and over again in my head since first reading it about 20 years ago when I was 16 years old.

"What a pity painting costs so much! This week I had fewer worries than other weeks, so I let myself go. I shall have spent the 100-fr. note in a single week, but at the end of this week I'll have my four pictures, and even if I add the cost of all the paint I have used, the week will not have been sheer waste. I have got up very early every day, I have had a good dinner and supper, and so I have been able to work hard and long without feeling myself weaken. But there, we live in days when there is no demand for what we are making, not only does it not sell, but as you see in Gauguin's case, when you want to borrow on the pictures, you can't get anything, even if it is a trifling sum and the work, important. And that is why we are the prey of every happening. And I am afraid that it will hardly change in our lifetime. But if we are preparing richer lives for the painters who will follow in our footsteps, it will be something.

 But life is short, and shorter still, the number of years you feel bold enough to face everything.

And in the end it is to be feared that as soon as the new painting is appreciated, the painters will go soft."

                                       -letter from Vincent Van Gogh to his brother Theo, August 1888

The 2nd to last stanza has always been my favorite, (But life is short, . . .) It sometimes runs often through my head, especially when I force myself to go into my workspace and paint when I do not want to. I have to remind myself how precious the time to paint is. I have to remember how short life is, and how much there is that I still want to say. I constantly feel like I have just begun to make art. I wrote earlier of how continual growth is part of the goal of my art, or well in my life in general. The more time every day I can spend making my art the better, and the more I can fill in the puzzle of this mosaic I am building. My entry into the grand scheme of life in this crazy universe.

Speaking of entries in my mosaic, here is my most recently completed acrylic painting: Octopus Man in a Sea of Sound. It is on canvas and is in the size of 26 x 38 inches (66 x 96cm). As stated in my last blog entry a lot of my paintings from the past couple years are slowly telling a larger story. This guy is one of the characters in that story. You can see a keyhole on his throat, which may indicate he needs a certain condition to be met before he can reveal the information he has been receiving. There are sound waves with symbols all around him. His lungs are like the branches of a tree and his legs are the roots or octopus legs. There is either a sound-wave running through his middle or he is in the ocean.

Octopus Man in a Sea of Sound  by Ed Tajchman. © all rights reserved.

 I will end this epic 300th post with one of my own recent works of prose. I have been writing prolifically recently, which has been very cathartic for me. 

Between This Head and Yours

Imagined expectations only reveal facets of the conceiver. Work hard to put on others a direct observation. Grabbing pens unconsciously wherever you go because magic is possible to emerge from them. Becoming a guardian of magic's emergence, he didn't sign up anywhere, just showed up every day alone.

Between The black ink shining as it dries, and the pink morning light fading from your eyes, between the dried root finally cracked and broken, and the hoots from the owl awoken. Between the dried paint on my fingers, and the feint whispers echoing in my soul that linger.

Jumping through hoops, not getting caught in loops, walking and eying others watching you a bit too long. Hide your eyes and hum a song, want to get where you are going no one else can come along. Twist and dodge the blows that life that throws. Just keep going and push it through, who cares if you forget how to be true. How to trust who when the chips fall, cookies crumbling. Cannot feel the thirst when the cold overwhelms.

-Ed Tajchman

Running Deep in Still Waters

Low rumbling resonates unrelenting in the relinquished afternoon's last gateway to the way in. Mis-interpreted spray painted messages, on doorways in dreams have meant one thing then another. One way or a thousand depending how you turn it agains the moments of my life.  So loud the sound of your own breathing walking into the sun deceiving yourself into endless corridors, sifting through encrypted puzzles woven through a city's walls.

Belonging to another's face even as the doves cooed constantly above. The echoes of the water streaming showed the way through the tempered core. Tying ropes to swing your hopes on caused cracked lips to carry a wavering tune. Soon to find the pounding comes much quicker each time you let the fear grow too long. Cavalier salutations considered carefully amidst rusty red cave walls. Weary travelers counted the last gathered stones stacked in the sand.

Distance between the ocean of his mind and others perceived notions is immeasurable. rolling out fragments, falling from the tongue in slurs and stutters. Who we are and who we imagine ourselves to be counted carefully in unknowable outcomes. All the interweaving ways of her majesty realized through observation, attempted in expression. Still waters running so deep he didn't know what he had building until he stepped outside his walls.

-Ed Tajchman

Dark Lullabies

Even the most thorough peremptory acquisitions failed to inform the animal laying bloody on the highway of it's eventual fate. Fancy wingtips get muddy when he stomped as he chomped at the bit. Curiously overflowing causeways seemed to fit the decision to flee. Who can see how long until the mind is free of lights with zig-zagging rings of lavender zooming in and out. Out and about legs still feel stout, despite slipping up all the hills carefully.

Unchurned thoughts stew inside of a moonlit lutanist's furrowed brow. Projecting pathways across a myriad of anemic eyeballs even as the sockets squealed like sacrificed pigs. Grumbling murmurs ringing in the chamber. echoes of overused legs consume the hallways but a glimmer is raised. Convinced to stay, new strings attach to the soul like muscles sticking to a bone.

Lullaby liquefied the laborious child. Mild storm when the fever broke, always a joke, do not know when to stop. An expanding ripple tangles feet in the blackness consuming the minutes as if infinite inclinations of the body dissolve. Clinging thoughts cause snarls in every pause of breath, frantic notions are unknowable areas of nightmare beings. No one there to fill the void but the twisting coils un-collapsed always past all ways knowing it is just better to release fully into it. There are no walls to become.

-Ed Tajchman

Full Moon February Tribute

Drinking the full moon in, alone in the frosted February air; she shines through waves of cascading clouds escalating outward. Nostrils ring of the now frozen summer's death, a caged-in spring hangs in the distance. Empty remnants of evoked emotions hang like ghosts. The full circle light shines with her beauty on my face, as I attempt to feel the beginning. Breath out a comfort in peaceful knowing of the natural world spinning in levels infinitely outward.

-Ed Tajchman

Painting and Poem by Ed Tajchman

This is a painting of mine from 2013. I call it Man Falling Deliberately in a Dream. It is based on a lucid dream I had once where I jumped off a cliff in full confidence that I could stop halfway down if I wanted to, and did. A very powerful feeling is evoked in lucid dreams, I like it. Following it is a poem of mine.

Man Falling Deliberately in a Dream by Ed Tajchman. Acrylic on canvas 2013.

  
Soul is Another Word for Dreaming
 
Lost in the never ending valleys and hills is where It found me when my heart was still.

The light singing inside those Eyes, shining amidst the shadows.

They silently and subtly released the binding that held my wings tied.

If I said I knew what it felt like to fly before now, I lied.

Small Woven Moments

Left three of my own devices on the forgotten steps of a red-tiled and arched doorway. A few strands of her auburn hair hung over her eyebrow, she should remember to use all ideas from all moments. Seeking the shiners in every where. Whole world optional rolls from the breath of a clenched brow when the pharaoh hound returns the favor. The world and everything inside of it seen on the shelf yesterday. Every small moment glued to the walls carefully. Portals in a starship.

Bicycle racing the train with a crane in the sky. The sun sets orange and purple pouring out. Old man storing every detail of his face as he passes. Time drips like molasses and the wind cried as the dog sighed. Knees on the gravel as strangers travel into view as if on cue. Quickly slinking into the forest an imagined chorus hushed behind him.

Cartwheels rolling down the windowsill fill your eyes with every unknown insect on housebroken flowers. Hours spent climbing towers when the icy rays found their phase upon leather fingertips. Mind flips the switch when it is too much to take to stay awake, eyeballs stabbing. Spiderwebs stacked in the coroners office, emerald green lantern shining from a foreigner.

-Ed Tajchman