From Art We Cannot Wander

From art we cannot wander.

Away from art we cannot dwell.
I dance, I draw, I write,
I carve, I sculpt, I knit, I sew --
       all in wonders' spell.

I share, I hide, I put myself asunder,
For though there is no art without me,
nor  no art without us all.
We are art. We create the wonder
       each within our narrow selves.

But with our selves together
the infinite is spoken, drawn, and shared as art, as experience,
as elusive, loving, mysterious
       as  amongst ourselves.

Vane Lashua, 2017

In a Cemetery Comes

In a cemetery comes
the revelation that when I die
I am to be buried in the soil
in a shroud of my own making
to rot back to the inevitable wonder
that I am who I am.

Vane Lashua

May 7, 2006

Lock It Up!

Lock it up!

There is no one more powerful than thee,

For regardless how you exit or explain

Unless you put lights out and lock up with a key,

Art work, yours or others’ shared, may not remain.

Wicked Phantoms, Cats, or Lion Kings

May leave you Something Rotten in your dreams;

J. Whitcomb Riley will rhyme other horrid things

Unless you lock, front and back, “along the seams.”

It’s our shared treasure after all,

This wonder, our galleried WVArtsA Hall.

 A 45-minute challenge
Composed for the doors of 
Whitewater Valley Arts Association

Poor Me (always working)

Ideas, yes, but working poems built on thoughts like these
often lead to revelations, meant to enlighten, not to please

(c'mon, dude, of course your sucking loneliness wants acknowledgement.
"not to please", ha! but still to churn, not to enter the establishment,
to help to realize the source of missing clatter
sifting through our poor brain, reflecting sleepless chatter
reflecting innocence but just the same
depth perceived from what I acknowledge is a shallow shame.
Poor me. They, they, the others always over-gifted by we, have got it all
and, now, poor me, I haven't -- or have I? -- yet collected attention -- here I am, after all --
that I, poor me, have to bear and bear and get nothing back
but words, attacks, seeming endless empty hangers on a rack.)

Downtown

I sit in the shade at a dark counter behind the glass,
eating my biscotti, sipping the dark, French roast
while drinking in the morning's entertainment out on the street.

Passersby are downtowners or touring or both;
some smoking on break or waiting for the play to begin
or beginning to play sidewalk music for sympathy or fee;
or sitting cross-legged with homeless sign and jar or not.
Walkers on a phone or and/or purple hair, tight braids,
cornrows, shaved mohawk or just brushed straight up,
low-hanging jeans falling off or threatening,
maybe a tie and skinny suit, pant or skirted,
crawling about with the crew at noon.

Baseball hats cocked on sideways, always more interesting
than backwards, cover inquisitive minds, bent on friends or girls
or hatless, just bent to laugh and explore, like me.

Here come the tie-less, open collared
point-shiny brown-shod or too-spike heeled,
conference-necklaced laughs and wondering
I suppose, like me, where desire will lead tonight.

RORRIM

He looks back at me,
reflects my order
to stop smiling and
not to stop because of him.
He asks to try a frown, to look into his eyes,
to wonder whether he is just the man he wants to be.
A movement here, ... and there, his eyes become
unresistable and wonder spreads from there.
Is this a simple morning or is it unbecome --
to see this wonder being whose attraction resists no one?

Cars, Trucks and Rebel Flags

I think that I shall never see
more ignorance, rediculosity,
combined in Nazi-like complicity
than Rebel colors, flags, license-plated Rams 'n' F3fifticee.
.