Here is some iPhone portraiture from recent travels around and about Huntington and Charleston WV. people and scenes that struck the eye of one or the other of my Muses, a cantankerous posse who sometimes pay attention and sometimes are gone for months, if not years, at a time.
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VIDEO/POEM: “A Dream of Perfect Motion”
I've spent years collecting footage of trains rumbling through West Virginia's hills, dales & valleys. I also scribble poems that play on Buddhist allusions. And there's this electronic music maestro I know named Lucas the Flow, who composes ethereal tunes. Mix them together and this is what you get ...
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PHOTO/ESSAY: It’s no longer a mall thing
Heading to the local mall used to be one of the social highlights of the week even ten years ago, much less 20. A recent visit to the Town Center Mall in West Virginia's capital city reveals how much the idea of the mall has faded.
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VIDEO/ARCHIVE: Miss Francis’ First Birthday Party
As she approached her 77th birthday in the year 2018, Frances Buzzard has never once in her life had a big birthday party. That was all about to change for the Belle Elementary School custodian one afternoon in Belle WV.
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ONE PHOTO: A Horny Encounter
Do auspicious omens from a deer encounter extend to the semi-suburbs? I have zilch expertise in gauging their racks, but this 2-, 3- or 4-point young buck showed up recently in my backyard, which butts up against a narrow spit of woods. I got a closer look at him last night upon returning home from an outing ...
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POEM: “Welcome to the Past”
It is lovely here, this place you call the past, / but which is my present. We meet in the middle, / upon this bridge of words ...
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MUSIC: “And we’ll all go together …”
What to keep an eye upon come what may on the political scene and in our lives: beauty. A one-minute harmonically converged reminder ...
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POEM: “8 Foot Notes from a Dancer’s Diary”
We prance across the floor & close / the space. Until I see your back to me, those hips, an intoxicating / whiff of shampoo, the outline of your lips, an accidental touch, / matched rhythms, yes, our bodies talking on a wavelength our / minds cannot access ...
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VIDEO: ‘Nathan Brings the Light’
When a father steps into and then down from the pulpit as his son brings the light and then snuffs it out at the end of a church service, watch for the moment of grace between father and son ..
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A Sampler of Short Poems & Epigrams for an Autumn Day
Sometimes, you gotta go short, instead of long. A sampling of short poems and epigrams in advance of an autumnal reading amid the West Virginia trees.
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GALLERY: Up close with the black and the white of things
A small thing, an unconventional view or a dry-as-bone chainlink fence might be just as much an aesthetic encounter with beauty as the theatrical sunset, a tea-rose in all its glory, or a fetching face.
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MUSIC VIDEO: “Dragon Ramble” by Douglas Eye and The Scribblers
To finesse and regulate some troubled energy, I fire up a jacked-up classical guitar, get the Garageband Foundry roaring, and hunker down. The result is "Dragon Ramble" by Douglas Eye and The Scribblers.
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EPIGRAMS & EXCERPTS: It’s an altar boy thing
Let's not talk about the moon anymore, but instead Solzhenitsyn's idea of 'political horror,' how to write a 'sorta memoir,' and breaking up with Twitter until the perp walk.
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POEM: The Religion of Want
How hard it is to dream, / to dream well. Besieged by / wants, missing what’s not / there. Wanting what we / cannot have, or could, at a / high cost of misery ...
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ONE PHOTO: All we are saying is give boats a chance
At first, I thought the sign said: "PLEASE WAKE YOUR MIND." Wait, no. It was a message of Buddhist boatfulness, instead.
