invierno

here in winter

you can feel the sleep
you can smell the sleep
you can taste the cold
slowly soaking through the bindings that attach you to the fold

and the evening inhaling warmth from the land
and from the trees that once bore fruit
 and from anything that dares remain in her blue, blue, dusty room

on the horizon where green boughs once drooped with the weight of an eggplant dusk
now stand stark stick figure bark-encrusted markers of the past and future
and even with numbed face and fingers
you can feel a stirring only waiting
sense the sleeping bulb wrapped in a soil fist of inbetween
curled up tight in the dark and dreaming in the deep
one day to breathe again
soon to rise up from sleep 

–

it is very important for an artist to keep an unflinching eye on her or his weaknesses
and failings
even when not spoken aloud and
not to dwell
not to reserve a place in hell
(after all, we are all imperfect and ugly in the wrong or right light)
but if a person in general is always in danger of rationalizing or overlooking their own faults
then an artist is especially endowed to create an alternate world in which to live
and so he or she must be careful to mind the boundary line

important for an artist to keep an unflinching eye on weaknesses
to learn the lessons that would make a soul grow
to see the truths that must populate the work if it is to be “art” 
that is—
if you are to be saying anything important or worthwhile
it should not be in the service only of propping up the stories we tell ourselves to survive and stay “sane”

if it is to be more than just escape (though there is a valid argument for escape being all the justification “art” might need) your work must be in the service of revealing, speaking one of a few things (or perhaps some/all of them):

injustice being aided or carried out

horrors being perpetrated, overlooked

beauty to be absorbed

pitfalls to beware

ethereal ideas deserving flesh/important abstraction given form

ideas/essence/people that ought be kept alive/remembered

truth

and how can you tell the truth if you cannot look at it? how can you understand human frailty and then, evil, and finally the forgiveness and the redemption that pulses at the inner sanctum of every cell if you are imagining you are made of entirely benign molecules and motion? how can you see the eternal if you cannot squarely look at the now?

watch your fangs and mind your elbows
nursing all night on summerplump vine tomatoes
and careful not to spill too much gasoline in the stream
lighting fires for your sparkling (day)dream 

there is a garden you must tend
always and in every season
even if it is in secret
or for a time hidden by snow