Pentimento

Careful consideration shows

traces of underdrawing.

Off-center.  Awkward.

Seed pearl tears dot the canvas.

Then a change of mind: 

brushed over with another venue.

Layers of new whitewash

show the transparency of my skin.

I look taller.  Three-dimensional.

Someone stands close behind.

There are curtainless windows.
Plenty of blue, because it is now.

tk/October 2014


R.A.D. Stainforth enjoys a glass and reads my poem...

Join Magpie Tales creative writing group.

Self-portrait by Vivian Maier 

self-portrait

i carry your heart with me(i carry it in

my heart)i am never without it(anywhere

i go you go,my dear;and whatever is done

by only me is your doing,my darling)

                                                      i fear

no fate(for you are my fate,my sweet)i want

no world(for beautiful you are my world,my true)

and it’s you are whatever a moon has always meant

and whatever a sun will always sing is you

here is the deepest secret nobody knows

(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud

and the sky of the sky of a tree called life;which grows

higher than soul can hope or mind can hide)

and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart

i carry your heart(i carry it in my heart)

e e cummings

earliest photographic self-portrait

Robert Cornelius, self-portrait, Philadelphia, 1839, facing front, arms crossed. 
Inscription on backing: The first light-picture ever taken. 1839.

One of the first photographs made in the United States, this quarter-plate daguerreotype, taken in the yard of the Cornelius family's lamp-making business in Philadelphia, is said to be the earliest photographic portrait of a person.

He's hot. Very hot.  

I do a lot of staring...

Walker Evans, self-portrait, 1927

Stare, pry, listen, eavesdrop. 
Die knowing something. 
You are not here long. 

― Walker Evans