Roxane Beth Jonhson
Architect
After Utzon
Here is a path of stones. An interchange of wood beams allows
for variation in movement. Cracks can be filled with longing or cement.
If you want me to paint the walls a color more rich, then we must study
the birds. A ceiling fan can be black or chrome, depending on the skin scent
of a single orange. In other words, you can decide to build or tear down
based on the sound of a boat crawling a shipyard or the length of a child’s
ear.
Wonder about the walls and chimney, how they will both fall down in fire.
To build a row of iris beds you must wait for wind and refuse to be rushed.
A window numbered with fog is best for clarity. Here is the best idea I have
for a garden: a rake in your left hand and you under a pointillist sky.
Here are my building plans for your approval: the house is gone already.
The Yucatan is what we are really after. Ruins are so wonderful, why
worry?
Portrait of Monk
You break down melody into edible petals. Jetsam-flotsam,
bend a cord & pull it tight, wrap it around the yellow years. An
organ’s splintered drawl calls from small church meetings you
played in as a kid. All your pianos preen and stride, children
dressed like extinct flying-things with wind flinting their wings.
Tick-tock, the clock says now you were maybe not so sane,
nerves raw from knuckles-knocking on your bolted tongue.
Well, yes. There’s a snake in every Eden, in each greener grass.
You flicker tones & notes like how birds go peck, peck, peck.
Portrait of Dizzy Gillespie
And then you led some unpopular bands. Disliked like drizzle.
You stood in puddles. Your trumpet bell went bent at an angle.
Was there rust? And then you married once and for all. One,
two, three. Stop time and a ricochet sound. You, so uneventfully.
Music weighs nothing. But more about that later.
Practice time now. Now staccato and pitch. Now squawk, now
alligator snap. Now, care less and not at all what people say. Pay
attention: what looks like a pond may be the sea.