Triage

Triage

Losing a lover is like
losing a limb
or a necessary organ;
take whatever drugs you want
to ease the pain,
it still hurts like hell
in the morning
alone.

Taking a new lover is like
another transplant:
the dose of anti-rejection drugs you need
just grows and grows.
And as the skin thickens
it takes a harder push
each time
for the needle’s point to pierce your cover;
and each drop of blood seems redder
and more precious
than the last
until you decide
at last
that the payoff is not worth the pain
and you consign that part
of you
to an oblivion
that is not complete
to a decision that is not whole-hearted
to a diagnosis that hurts
like a lover leaving.

Wall With Window

“Wall With Window”

Street Art 1

Southern Comfort

It was a slam bam thank you ma’am kind of night.
“It’s alright,” she said with a slight frisson of uncertainty perhaps
as she unwraps and taps the money-box on the dresser.
He pays to caress her, to possess her as she bumps and grinds
and too quickly finds the kind of passion paid for.
He wants more before he’ll leave: sixteen and still hard.
But she’s on guard, body barred against free love.
Push came to shove.  Above his pleas she screamed and screamed
until the apartment teemed with neighbours and passers-by
who wondered why this nigger came by and by to be in a white girl’s room.

It’s a warm, hormone-rushing, mosquito-swarming kind of night.
Fox-fire bright, passions tightly wound and sprung.
No brass bells are rung, no masses sung, but masses gather to enjoy
the black boy toy with the last of his time on a slippery slope
as the hempen rope grips and gropes for his hopeless neck.

For Remembrance Day, On Seeing A Photograph

You were young men in the Guards
treading water in wretched trenches
swinging kitbags and rifles and broad silly grins

so young
that two billion volumes single-spaced wouldn’t be enough
to list all of life’s treasures
you haven’t experienced yet
and still you would die
right then
right there
doing right
or so you thought
as you lay where
no-one could tell where
mud ended and blood began

three and four generations removed,
we lay wreathes for your wraiths
on a hollow day in November
while the parades and the poppies
hallucinate
an annual landscape of memory

profound today, gone tomorrow

and for three or four days the flowers fade
and the greenery browns at your memorials
and then the work crews come

young men and women with guarded futures
treading water at minimum wage
swinging brooms and shovels and black plastic bags

and when the work trucks leave
your memory has turned once again
to cold undecorated stone
and nothing can ever change
the fact
that you died before you started living.

Who’s Reading What?

I was looking at this site’s statistics this morning.  I  wasn’t surprised to see that coverage of Lucian Freud over the last year has drawn most views — by many thousands:  he is a popular and controversial painter.

What did surprise me, though, was how popular the Les Sapeurs du Congo post has been.   They are a truly fascinating social phenomenon.

Other posts that appear in the top half dozen include my image of “54 Stories of Old Ireland” (no idea where this is coming from), and the post on a pizza machine!

Na Pali Coast

Fleet In Fog

Wave 2

Signature

“Signature” (2009), acrylics on canvas, 20″ x 16″

New Store

After experimenting with Etsy as a store for my artworks, I have decided to move on. I have selected RedBubble, and my store is here.

The great advantage of RedBubble is that they allow me to offer a significantly wider range of products, from postcards to posters, at a range of prices. They take care of the printing and the shipping.

Please give the store a look. I have quite a few items already posted and I am preparing a lot more.

Back From Travel

Just back from almost a month in Europe.   We cruised from Spain to Italy and France, before driving around England (and a bit of Wales).  I’ll have more to say about all that in the next few days.

I’ll also be posting some of the images I collected during the trip — the first ten or so can already be found at http://www.pbase.com/jak_king/europe_2009.

As we sailed into Naples early one morning, we were offered this gift of sunrise at Mount Vesuvius:

The Business of Art

There has been a recent change in the blogroll (over on the right —>).  I have added a “Jak’s Store To Buy Prints” link which goes to my brand new shop at http://jakking.etsy.com.

I have a few photographs and art prints there right now, and I’ll add more as I can.  If I can work out the shipping, I’ll also put up some paintings.

Hope you enjoy them!

Highway

“Highway“  (2009), digital print, 18″ x 12“

Streamers

“Streamers” (2009), PPT to TIFF, 36″ x 24″

Slope

“Slope” (2009), PPT to TIFF, 36″ x 24″

Shape 1×4

“Shape 1x4″  (2009),  PPT to TIFF, 36″ x 24″

(More) Colour Studies

“Red Blue Yellow” (2009), PPT to TIFF, 36″ x 24″

“Blue Yellow Red” (2009), PPT to TFF, 36″ x 24″

Colour Studies

“Blue Red Green White” (2009), PPT to TIFF, 36″ x 24″

“Green Blue Yellow“  (2009), PPT to TIFF, 36″ x 24″

Puerto Vallerta: Sunset

“Puerto Vallerta: Sunset” (2009), acrylics on canvas, 36″x24″