UPSTATE UPDATE

OUT W/DAD AND CHRIS





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DANEAL, MOM, ABEL










(c-section wound and tape)


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Portland Spring

I spent the afternoon watching petals playing confetti tricks, tumbling, teasing and chasing each other. To match Portland's exuberant spring I read Whitman. To temper Whitman's exuberance, I read Jack Spicer's ode to him. They've stayed on my shoulders, angel and devils both while the spring sends me happily restless, horny, and picture hungry all over the place.




I raised the camera hoping to catch the petals as they fell through the shadows of tree limbs. They fell, touched the sidewalk, then a wind moved down the street lifting them back up, high into the air. I felt an impossible reversal of time was happening. Maybe because it was my goal to freeze time, it seemed completely plausible for that instant that each petal would find the blossom it had fallen from.








Downtown at night. A Ferris Wheel stood by the river like a giant, heavy web. I could picture the spider that wove it –60's Japanese, all giggling rubber and shinning plastic eyes.I wanted to get close but police cars rolled along the street,shining spot lights into the empty fairgrounds.




I met friends and followed them into a dance club. A disco ball sent light shards into the air – a metallic inversion of the blossoms in the wind that afternoon. I watched the petals of light sail out from the spinning mirrors to coat and slide across the vain, lovely, dancing bodies.




In a velvety bar a young country band yodelled out tepid imitations. In another two old men stared at leather porn on an old TV. There are flowers on every table. In the neon and cathode light, they could have been real. One of the old men gave me a whiskey creased grin. "Hello, It's been ages..." he said, "Yes it has," I said, "since I've never met you before. " He smiled and turned back to the sling pounding on the screen. He looked at me once more, quickly, slyly. Both of us understood that neither would look again. I snapped a shot of the flowers –their fakery revealed by the flash. Spicer's poem whispered to me "the cocksuckers, Walt Whitman, were counting on you."