it’s moving day….

Hello….

The art collective that we’ve started now has its own website, and I’m moving this blog to the new address accordingly.  It’s WordPress as well, and I’m hoping to get an RSS feed going for anyone who might have that in place.  The new address is:

 http://ncfa.highandgrand.net/

Hope to see you there…..

jason m norwood

an apology….

for those who have been reading my work:

i have not abandoned this site…..the last month or so has been extremely busy and i haven’t had the chance to post much new material–however, i plan on getting my butt back in gear in the new year!

thank you,

jason

Eyewall

The winds of change
have spoken. Clouds
have passed over, revealing stars
that do not change, only revolve.

In the mind, a feeling
unsettled
disturbed. These can be positives.

Questions could be asked,
without resolve. Somewhere
there is a leap of faith not taken,
the path altering
like brief hallucinations,
impassable by moments,
and then stable.

It is disquieting
the sudden need to go outside,
to disembark, stabilize.
This can be a precipice,
being held back only by the heels
before going over.

In the mind’s eye
the storm has resided overhead
just at the edge of the land.Standing in the calm,
watching the eyewall
unmoving, threatening, offshore.

This change could be positive.
The unsettled feeling in the mind
the result of not knowing,

a place in the path
where all one can do is wait.

Absence of power

Actually, the compulsion left me
alone, close to nothing except midnight
and certain things isolate themselves,
project on bare walls.

The clock turned upside down,
useless after the power outage,
can’t be bothered to make up the time
(not fully awake).

I’ve travelled the same paths
more times than I can remember,

but the maps are redrawn without light,
with errors,
and I find myself wishing
for a single candle,
even though the power returned
and I can use the lights again

*

I’m not talking about anything so simple.
A lack of power in the circuit
or perhaps the lack of energy some days
waking up, I see night’s darkness
through the window anyway.

In daylight
there are too many people alive,
the traffic pushing down through soil,
through walls into this space.

Watching out the window
for signs of electricity, life,

my house, people in cars
confused, too used to the control
of main intersections, traffic lights.

It’s still too cold outside
to walk the distance.

*

(whatever the media names
myself and all the people around me
my age

it is traditional now
for our spaces to be dimly lit
if at all

the sense of objects half illuminated
and more foreign at the same time
distancing from the absence of/
abuse of power

drawn to the strangeness of something
once brightly lit
and now transformed

fumbling for a lighter) gasoline
( to infuse momentary reality
 to impose reality)
on it

*

the city without power, the newspaper headlines
cry out

prolonged exposure to darkness
lack of electricity

it goes on
the city declared a state of emergency

no electricity
becomes a crisis
the halting of all electro-mechancial
activity in the brain
a crisis

simple objects, not machinery
(a box, table, dresser drawers)

*

our hands
reaching out of our homes
into the street

conserving temperatures & fire
bring power back, we say
end this

without telephones
we visit each other
comparing the damages
exiting our homes in daylight
breathing energy back through our skin

the darkened windows

eyes

*

The days were recounted
without power to the clocks,
a feeling of suspension in time

and now believe they are lying to us.

Exit the odd numbers of people
believing that order has been restored,
the candle hasn’t burned itself out, after all.

The first thing we do
upon waking
is to look at the face of the clock
to ground us,
established in any framework
we can get our hands on.

Everything is powered now.
Everything is reacting to power.

Ignore this.
As if the framework (order)
depends on power.

The lack of it a private thing
not suited for this discussion
anyway.

Wind chiming lines

1

Let’s line up all these people
in the fields, these self-proclaimed
masters of ceremony
and strip them of their spiteful ranks,
planning the rituals for every tomorrow,
so much that we’ll follow them
into loud battles
and forget that there aren’t any

Here, there is no one left to care for our honours.
Behind us, they raise bloodless glasses of wine
and laughter, making toasts to the spoken lie,
a lie of omission written, subtle,
into the genetics of faces.

For now, I’ll take the shadows and dark
tunnels, recognizing that you
can’t see through a stone fence,
there are better things outside the mountain
they’ve buried me inside without warning.

*

I allow myself to awaken
sometimes, tired and faceless,
into the still life
spoken to me in a hidden poem,
the references of my own memory.

I could be there, walking beside you
in your foreign country, being taught the language
of the painted windows
of storefronts, like
mannequins with blank expressions,
asking “how are you?”*

Still, some instinct
keeps me waving across the great valley
of understanding
toward the other distant, undefined peak.
These sounds of voices being rammed into stone
and echoing back without warning.

Sometimes, they arrive too late,
breathless at my front door,
the threshold in which minds change,
the first division
when two dreams refuse to join analogies.

In memory, our private truth fulfills itself
unheard.
Separated by dreams, we are still there,
laughing and conversing.

Strangely enough, you are still naïve
to anger and pain,
sometimes a learned thing.

*

The solid dead lines of an ultimatum.
Delayed laughter.
“Was it something I said?” you asked,
suddenly gentle.

Outside, the gale force winds gather strength.
They permeate sleep,
exposed fingers numb.
You had me believing it was winter.

“You have three days to resolve this,” you tell me,
defining the procedures,
writing them into my skin so
key elements won’t get lost to the resulting storm.

You freeze
as if unwilling to move,
to disturb the scenery,
deaf to my attempts to wake you.
I fail miserably and begin to pack for the journey.

You tell me I have only two days.

*

There is something in the air
that I find distasteful.
Poison inherent in the words, outside of the circle,
a feeling of anger.

Such as they are, they are not available
to the five senses, like an old book
containing a hidden message, a key.
Some things have no jurisdiction in logic,
the vacuum in which some of us exist,
or try to.

When we cross the border,
we recognize how much we miss
the power of being alive.

I wish to know why the sudden coldness
moves through this window into the mind,
a nameless creation existing
in tangible form.

It is not yet winter. I still see the glow
of the city in the distance
connections in the mind,
the unconscious book dusty with age,

the glow of the city
where I am not,
the glow of the city.

*

Prevarication of the image.
Fossilized blood buried in the stone,
fragments of time
scarring the surface of this mountain.

I spend more of my time
with hands in the earth,
the syntax of polarization,
between the bones of two skeletons.

Some bury themselves when they can no longer speak.
Everyone has their ancestors
of the earth
that they never knew existed.
Everyone knows
blood is sweeter than honey,
the bones traced as geological shapes,
fault lines over time.

Here
there are enough empty faces
to create a shoreline.
Our children build new castles
out of thin air
and pretend they live alone inside them,

what the remainder let slip through their fingers.

*

They are refusing the message
buried inside this mountain with me.
The radio signals, faded
pass through walls so I know these things exist,

my wind chimes hanging,
but never making a sound.
I have to pass my hand through them
to hear the music. I have been waiting
all these years
for a breath of wind
for me to breathe as well.

Ask me questions in code
and I will answer in code.
I move objects around the room,
making sure you will hear me
though I say nothing.

The dust lines form maps in this enclosure.

Those wind chimes have a use,
drawing lines on the floor, for the time
when I lose my breath,
a message to those with hands in the earth,
trying to find me.

I can see them coming by their fingers.

*

Obscure and mysterious,
the book on a table in an otherwise empty room,
deserted.

Reading it
I call to mind the flags of definition, a purpose,
something that reminds us of
the prophecies we created so long ago.

These sequences of thought
arrange themselves in lines,
leaving the barest traces of a language.
The message removed from the bottle,
disintegrating with time.

There is no intention to return.

*

Deserted turbulence.
Sand penetrates the skin.
Survival is the means
by which life is quiet and unassuming,

conveyed to the soul, something written
or spoken out loud and remembered.

*

August 11, 2019

“A long time ago, I was told the story of a group of people in black trenchcoats, coming the desert for answers to an enigma. Considering the mystery was a crime in some eyes. And we were up on the mountain slopes, watching those who did not know why they were watching anything. There was a silence of danger, the warnings falling on deaf ears. All of us, up on the barren hill, observing the futile accomplishments unfold before us, like the flowers forgotten by the desert. We didn’t see them with our eyes, and we looked away before it became obsession, forgetting who we were.”

*

Capable of perception by the sense of touch,
hands incapable of falsehood.

Stories composed on the skin by someone else,
faint memory begging recollection,
where they do not choose to be
and exist continuously at the same time,
a paradox frozen in time.

These are subtleties
the night creates,
translated into the tactile,
remaining in one place
for far too long

dives (surface of water)

A lake just below the hill,
where we were standing,
the two of us left below
the surface of the water,
breathing the enemy into our lungs.

Underwater (weightless)

*

What brings me back to this place
is the memory of the surreal
that accompanied me here,
visible appearances
of those not present.

This place contains permanent individuals
breathed into the rough walls like life.
Lightless shadows that created
solitary existence, this kind prison,
those who came with me on this journey
like apparitions, appearing in spaces in the dream.

I could drift in this word
for days at a time
becoming trapped inside the rock,
my voice fading, turned to silence.
I remembered the wind chimes singing
welcoming the known and unknown
past my door,
sheltering me from the storms outside,

yet the sunlight now reflects off of the nearby lake,
through the window,
writing its shifting pattern on the walls.
I know who drowned there
and where the spirits went afterward,
dreams of apparitions.

(Incantations
for which I had no voice to repeat.
Tangible walls, translations)

Without warning
I find myself crossing the emptied deserts
like a drunken man,
the focus on the mountain just over the horizon,
a search to align delusion with truth.

*

Mornings
I cautiously consider
the outlines of remembered conversations.
Frameworks for personalities
always in conflict,
vague intricate designs, worn on the sleeve.

I’m still left in this haze.
My eyes struggle to reach the unexpected person
over the rim of a half-filled coffee cup.
Locked, then, in the back of our minds,
the silent rites were written down in a book.
I no longer own it.

It became something like a dream to me,
I turn toward home by instinct
and become caught in the confusion,
feeling I had to be elsewhere quickly

but that I still belonged here,
or somewhere very much like
this dusty, abandoned room,

recalling the processes
of inward pleasure.

2

It was the day before leaving.
I took great pains to ensure
that there is no way in or out
of this home,
making the sanctuary safe.

I’ve taken everything
except a book resting on the table.
The language of it was obscure,
very old, a history of greeting.

The wind was rising, the patterns on the wall
(reflections of sunlight
off the surface of the nearby water)
twisting and recreating themselves violently.

There were chimes on the front porch,
drowned out by the hollering storm.
Radio becomes a constant warning sign
so I know the storm exists, moving toward the mountain

I read the book offhand, waiting for the others to show.
I know that we have to go out
in this weather
but not precisely knowing why.

“There are some things
that just have to happen,”
I heard over the telephone.

*

Condition of existing permanently
Inside the mountain
my voice sacrificed, dimmed

Waking up in a cold sweat
remembering the dreams of voices
What lies beyond stone walls
this prison
undoing the passage of time

eyes refocusing
on the vaulted ceiling of the cavern

People synthesize themselves out of winter air
Out of blood
the evolution of cities

I did not ask for this
I did ask to sever my connections
with postcard pictures

perfect scenery
smiling couple

Sinking slowly down to the lake
near my home
We drink the water before it’s too late

falling asleep in a haze of blue

*

(The darkness consumes
like a double negative.

By memory
the boundaries are defined,
hands outstretched,
the sounds of touching echoes
off of opposite walls.

The roots of the trees
invade the privacy of the cell,
searching for water.
I have none to give.

My soul is exposed to the open air.

*

Soulless and bleeding
I’ll never find them,
diving as deep as I can
below the surface.

I know they could have survived
in some common air.

What is a person beyond the threshold,
keeping me company through the violent silence?
They blow gently on my wind chimes
to announce their arrival,
speaking in echoes, buried in stone.

They refuse my water,
but it is all I have left to offer.

They convey my messages to the outside,
mental whispers
falling on minds too closed to hear,
knowing the length of time I have been here,
needing to find the walls of my house, the place I remember,

visualize it in the darkness.

*

The wind chimes draw their lines
engraving sightless pictures
into the dusty stone floor.
They will be recognizable later
when they are exposed, exposing me.

These are the records of truth for someone else to find,
one chime speaks an altered language.

This is the source
by which I am still alive
and see these things.
I give over to what envelops me
and knowingly gives me safety.

I have been composing
the final schematic, these connections,
for in emptiness
there is much room for thinking.

*

Mornign over coffee. I lose my train of thought,
and you have to call me back
to the present.
I need to retain these things.

It’s been years, you say,
the book on the table, unreadable for
the forgotten language,
covered in a thin film of dusty enigma.

Then
I could not even open my eyes.
They had forgotten the procedures
of light
darkness consumed much of my memory
within invisible fires,
my companions showing me my own belongings,
alien to me,
my logic, my system disused.

Days, my friends. Days I sit at the edge
of the lake
and question their reality,
where mortal graves hide themselves,
keeping mystery in the darkness I left there.

(In the hazed distance, the mountains
fooled everyone, making you believe I was dead.
I was trapped in the shell
beyond those who made the journey with me.

I give over to the memory
and walk forward.)

3

One of these days
I expect to die laughing over all of this.
I do not expect to die any other way.

This calm house
on the edge ofa lake,
for which exist many photographs,
some of them true.

You will find your home
without realizing it.
You know the moment
the sanctuary has been found.
Things and people disappear,
forgotten by the scenery;
We can never die by the execution of memory.
We are lined up, masters
in a true ceremony.
We watch the careful movements below.

It is possible to remain alone
and not be.

Still, who keeps me company so far away
from the travelled road,
you say you’d like to know the answers,
why are there three cups of coffee
on my table in the morning?

As you watch me
you know the answer
in my enigmatic smile, give a little sarcastic grin
in response, and

never speak of this again.

Exceprt from “Internal fires”

*

Dream that I am on an old bus, that I am the only one on this bus. It is night, driving along what appears to be a busy street although there aren’t any buildings. I am standing at the front, talking to the bus driver, who is a familiar person but I don’t have a name for him. I am standing there, silent, watching the scenery pass by, not wishing to disturb the driver’s concentration.

Large concrete pillars with street lamps are whipping by on both sides of the road. The bus approaches a busy, well lit intersection, and I realize the bus is about to hit one of the concrete pillars that holds up a traffic light. I brace myself, and the bus hits the pillar at high speed. The bus is wrecked, and I suddenly discover that my right arm won’t function, though I can bend it with my other hand. It doesn’t look or feel broken, but it wants to bend itself into a cramped position with the hand on the left side of my chest.

Suddenly I am on my way to the hospital, remembering the commotion at the scene of the accident. I learn that the bus driver died, and I couldn’t remember who he was.

*

I have never had an injured arm before in my life. Why, then, is this piece suddenly out of order, not functioning, why was I in an accident in the first place?

Amnesia is not necessarily the absence of memory, but simply the maps are misplaced, sudden shock and suddenly you get lost trying to find your way somewhere, the memory intact but refusing to show itself. Not the lack of recollection, where you feel pulled in, compelled to make everything work again and reclaim some measure of history for yourself.

Walking into the shadow, then, what exists as opposite to who everyone else sees, and still exists. And there, in the dream, I am trying to catch and contain it, the thing I still dislike.

Child garden

Landscape shifts
backward through time
as if to reclaim a vague memory.
The river still sings
of continuity and finality,
a lone constant
surrounded by the variable.

Sunlight drifts down on the light haze
of the first warm day of spring.
I have brought food and drink for the journey.

The old tree has kept its counsel
all of these years. The secrecy of ritual.
I take leaves from the tree
and melt runes into them;
strength, journey, joy, health, guidance;

I sit cross-legged at the riverbank, cast them
into the quickened waters. The distant city traffic
becomes an ambient whisper,
the world becomes alive again,
voices reaching out of the silence.

The years passing one by one,
saying
I hear you, I hear you.

I will continue this journey foward
through time. This is the path
to return to the backroad
that guides my footsteps here,
the song of the river
still welcoming me home.

[written April 2007]

magnetic words (4)

10 (1)

open glass
the silhouette shimmers
symbol of water that will ask
only your vivid question
I approach and I throw the balance out
a rigid monument too electric
you must observe every dream
like impressions of an abstract canvas

magnetic words (3)

 7 (1)

 excitement
blue breath drinking roses
, . ,
moss
earth’s experiment with green hair

3 (2)

language stalks
the petal of one rose,
a breath kissed pink
star/sweater a soft valentine
dawn broken into eyes

8 (1)

    say autumn
         see winter
believe you’re blind
but music will tip toe back again
love is a simple hope
life our yearning for trees

9 (1)

play night like a lost dog
deep champagne growl
hooked on trippin’ junk music
the day’s unstrung,
cats are dressed in suits
sucking up fake meds & free martini

9 (2)

               driving all night, lost
before the champagne      the yearning came after
play junk music on old turntables
day suits & dresses, smooth martinis
your meds didn’t make me deep
so I will free up some time today

Maintain radio silence

They are still creating spaces
impenetrable in your mind,

or have I found myself watching again?

This dialogue
is spoken too easily with the tongue,
so many fantasies created,
and communication is only one way.

Tired, the systems failure begins.
Failed to latch on to certain meanings,
buried within the obvious.
Double-entendre.

I see you out of the corner of my eye.
You have become white noise,
pushed into the background.

The ancient majesty of the information age.
Passive.
Starving for evidence
of something human, substantial.

The time when you cannot form the thought,
and it kills you.

[ written 1995, rewritten 2007 ]