Philip received his Masters’s Degree in Psychology from Simon Fraser University, Vancouver, Canada. He has published four books of poetry, Mirror Images and Shards of Glass, Dark Images at Sea, I Never Finished Loving You, and Falls from Grace, Favor, and High Places. His fifth, Forever Was Never On My Mind, will be out Summer of 2023. Two novels, Caught Between (Which is also a 24 episodes Radio Drama Podcast https://wprnpublicradio.com/caught-between-teaser/)  and Art and Mystery: The Missing Poe Manuscript. His next novel, an erotic thriller, Far From Here, will be out Fall of 2023. One play, The Apparition. His current project is collaborating with a British photographer, a French artist, and an American graphic artist to produce a coffee table book with the theme of feminine beauty. Philip also has a column in the quarterly magazine Per Niente. He enjoys all things artistic.

Fragments of Long-Lost Conversations

Introduction

Though I may be from my past,
                     I am the most recent me. 
           Brooding and restless,
                    seeing
                                 the future as 
                                        a corridor of strange cries.
With every breath I take, serpents stir.
          Knitting needles take the place of ideas.
                    They create evolving constellations.
          There is a central vision, then a scream, devolving into a bloody uprising. 
Tragedies occur, and I search the debris. 
          My mind dwells on fragments of long-lost conversations.
One thought alters the next; thinking becomes puzzling.
Whips smack the flesh; self-discovery is never painless.

                     Blurred by tears,
           I remain possessed
by nightmares spilling from blurred daydreams.
I swirl in self-expression, keeping the doubters and their influences at a distance.
                           The claws of transformation dig deep into my soul; they search
              for impressionistic melodic notes to strike at the exact moment necessary.
                                                    The direction changes.
                                        I am swept into a projection of myself.

                                              Alight and entering
                        with inexplicable swiftness, I appear to meet myself,
                                and all those identities that never reflected
                                                     to myself,
                                                         and
                                become pieces of dreams never dreamt.
                                                      There, 
                                  I am over there, and there, and here.
                                              I am what I have
                                                thought I was,
                                               while thinking
                                                      about
                                       the thoughts I have of me. 

First Phase

When I find the precise words needed to express what my heart proposes, light emanates from my wounds, and healing begins. Regarding distances, the corridors in mind give way to bastions of masterpieces; those creative statements of clarity and excellence share the sole purpose of evoking what the questionless have suppressed. The accords where Henri Rousseau’s Lion innocently roams Van Gogh’s Starry Night while Beethoven plays his Moonlight Sonata, and Gauguin finds a place along with Poe to discard their restlessness.

If only saints have visions, then I have clarity.

Second Phase

The lake is calm; mottled mallard ducks float freely, some in pairs, and some have single males following them. Moms lead a small cadre of ducklings around the blue water. I toss them seeds and small berries. Sometimes, I find a number at my patio door resting on the damp grass in the morning. My Shih Tzu is indifferent to them. He neither barks nor chases. He watches from under the gardenia bushes, sniffing the moist air with his small black nose.

I must give back to the winds the secrets I can never reveal. Disguises will be needed, and I have chosen to be myself. Scars will lose their stories as brushstrokes exhale the most fragile of colors. The cold will keep me at bay, and the warmth of forgiving myself will joust with the sanity of my futurist thoughts. I can’t discern my value. I can conceive dialogues with women I have loved and the devils they chastised after leaving me.

I rest on a white wicker recliner; I lay comfortably, and the ducks, now relaxed, remain in the shade under palm trees. My dog finds a spot under my chair to keep him from the warming sun. I live in Florida. Is live the correct word?                                                                                              After all that went before, crashed.                                                                                                      Florida is where I found myself- not that the crashing has subsided.

I gush with anticipation and defy fate’s persistence to crowd my conscious efforts to journey within my psyche. I have the key, but grasping reality is as elusive as cracking wisps emanating from a fire fueled by moments in passing.

Two gray squirrels usually appear; they silently climb down a large palm tree, always alert for other animals. Then, cautiously, they dash to the area under the orange hibiscus bushes, gathering the assorted nuts I left for them. Finally, they give each other vocal and bodily signals to communicate.

From somewhere to my right, I hear the television, the news, the endless news, the supposed news shouts at me. Why does it want me to know what they think they know? I am not unread. I am not uneducated, but I am uninterested.

I encounter the unexpected beneath the graves of distinction. As I delve deeper, I become more abstract. It is unexplained fundamentally different, and my understanding is, in many ways, contrary to the meaning being proposed. I scream I need to escape from the voices that convert slogans into processes and ignorance into gold. They watch me weep when I learn that abundance means slicing precisely at the neck and laughing as the head drops into the trash bin.

I am reading “The Antichrist” again. Nietzsche fascinates me. Authors that make me think interest me, especially philosophers. Though I enjoy good mysteries and well-written poems, I also appreciate writers who love language and apply it like a great painter who uses color and contrast.

I want to shout out to my neighbor to pick up a book; you will never trap reality listening to salespeople on TV, and everyone on TV is selling. Reason must be in touch with objective truth. I love paraphrasing intellectuals while drinking cold beer.On my own, I bathe in the silence at the end of all phrases concerning human weakness. It is deafening, louder than stillness, more significant than what the present unfolds. While I hunt for something worth believing, thoughts collide with impressions, and impressions overpower sensations. A precipice appears, with a thousand shattered eternities below. The earth shakes, but I balance the corruptness with rhythmic anticipation. I jump, bounce, and alter conviction into a force artists can use to hold the extraordinary at length from the logical. 

Third Phase

More skittish than the squirrels is Hazel, a rabbit named after the main character in “Watership Down.” Hazel has no regular schedule; he comes around every three weeks or so. When I see him, I zip into the house for small carrots and nuts. I place them in the grassy corridor between my home and my neighbor’s. There are bushes and greenery for him to hide and hop. Hazel always seems to be on the move, for he never consumes the food I leave out for him. But all the food has disappeared by morning light. 

From a pit so foul that nothing can prosper, the persuasion of emotions is explained by definitions of differing moods dissolving. I toss away my masks and let my inner self come through the tentativeness of diminishment. I comprehend that I am brief. That only I can influence myself. Remoteness becomes the enemy and, hereafter, a greeting from candy cane tricksters.

My dog, Maxx, has been called a Zen dog. He rarely barks unless he feels the need to tell me he would like to venture outside or inside, but I must accompany him. I have never seen him chase another animal. Instead, he makes himself a comfortable spot on the soft grass and searches the land and seascape, his nose leading his head to move from side to side.

A long way from Africa, the beautiful Egyptian goose decides to roost under a nearby palm tree. She must be a female wanting to get away from the blustering of the males, who are usually honking, neck stretching, and displaying their feathers in remarkable ways. These geese have gained respect from the locals because they seem to be at the center when all the bird groups gather.

Large, slow-moving poison toads appear, but Maxx pays them no mind. The toads have no significance to him. Eventually, the toads vanish, and Maxx’s eyes seem to fix and, like me, ponder. I know he must filter out the droning of the television news. Why is it still called news? It is arrogant entertainment, assuaging the egos of those who choose to be conversant on what they want to hear.

My mind crushed by the weight of its will to defy shapes within tattered definitions, stampedes from the literal into the symbolic. This gives life to a creative nuance that must nourish itself. Sounds and fragrances define the line of a colorful horizon. There I am, chasing you. My hand grasps your leg, we stumble, and I fall on top of you. Mindlessness becomes nakedness; our eyes savor the destiny we are creating. Being one befits us, not sex but a mysterious orchestration forms– tongues and fingers find it difficult to linger; they must move, probe, and taste. Satie’s Gymnopédies frames our aura, and images we have of ourselves meld as we step from dreams into each other’s remembrances.

A year ago, a green iguana appeared. I noticed the animal stayed stationary for long periods, usually claiming a spot several houses down on the bank of the lake. When the iguana did move, he was quick and fleeting. They are not attractive creatures. I learned iguanas possess sharp serrated teeth and can grow to over five feet long. There are three now that call this area home. Two are green, and one is pale blue-gray. I know they are herbivores but do occasionally eat small animals, so ducklings are in danger. If Maxx were to show his disdain and attack the iguanas for ducks, squirrels, or bunnies being on their menu, he could become critically ill.

All that I thought about thinking unlaces and slithers through layers of pure color, pure tones, pure marble, and as I fly like all artists who step beyond madness, I can only express myself by exploiting the language of emotion. When self-hatred jostles ahead, I remove all the non-essentials, leaving corners of coherence, isolating all fury that condemnation cannot asphyxiate. Please take my hand, I say to myself if I am myself. Do I recognize me as me? If not, Maxx always does. 

I am familiar with the tiny, finger-sized geckos; their colors vary from green to black. I don’t mind them at all; they go about their business, darting around for food or mates. They invisibly roam inside the house but can be seen rushing around the patio. They like to hide below things. Sometimes, I find a dead gecko next to an inside window. It saddens me. Many things sadden me these days.

The news is irritating, and I wish my neighbor would tame the noise. Why do news people shout? They inaccurately moralize and believe they are on the same plan as preachers—another set of rescuers of few and takers of plenty. How foolish. Anyone with intelligence knows that observation is the highest form of prayer. I am paraphrasing Leonardo Di Vinci, and it is never incorrect to follow his lead.

I understand the turmoil and what “nothing” means now. How smart of you to leave nothing in my holster. Nothing can hold more ammunition than any weapon. Nothing is the goal we should all try to attain. It is no snake; it is what the snake craves after swallowing Brutus and Judas. Nothing is the richness of vulnerability. The flesh revealed is ass, crotch, chest, face, and brains but not the mind because the mind is a meticulous diminishment, a phantom void of conviction, therefore, the greatest of all assassins.

I’ve come to respect birds, Anhinga, Snail Kites, Ibis, Blue Jay, Wood Stork, Grackle, Blue Heron, Egrets, and many others that appear during the day. The lesser and medium-sized birds recognize when they see Maxx somebody will be sharing food, so they sing, tweet, twitter, cheep, chirp, and anxiously anticipate their meal. 

Soon, my “flock” surrounds the area between the patio and the lake. The Fête Galante begins. The larger birds that fish also find their way to us. They know I will toss food, crackers, and bread, sometimes pasta, to the ducks in the water. Crumbs drop from the duck’s bills; fish gather beneath, waiting to catch fallen morsels. That is when the hunting birds strike and spear the fish swimming at the shoreline. Birds are intelligent animals. I like their sounds and their sense of trust. It is better to watch, listen, and learn from them than stare at ludicrous bobbing heads on television with their unappealing mouths, seeking to leave their dropping into your mind.

I wrap myself in barbed wire and align my thoughts with heightening distractions evolving from the monotony of not becoming who I want to be. My ego objects to my accomplishments. And a peculiar apparition that I have concocted has taken possession of my ideas, leaving me to reflect on yesterday’s yet-to-come. I supremely love to orchestrate thinking; it gives substance to the essence of being, and art is what dreamers do. I am a thinker, artist, and dreamer, which means I am always in pain because I cannot always grasp what I fashion.

Titian thought art is color, light, and sensuality. Haydn meant to please. In contrast, Bacon, the artist, wanted to express anguish and futility, so how can I breathe imaginative life into cleverness ribbons and produce literate notions? Beethoven wanted to impress, and as an unknown poet, I am in suspension between art and life. In other words, I am death desiring meaning for my crime of not being. But I can’t scream; I cannot cheer. Hence, why not a life of single-minded crime? Crime being the reevaluation of the vanishing point of convention, which most artists have openly embraced. So I will hand you the scalpel, carefully cut open my chest, and allow access to my heart. Should we expect the Serpent, Eve, or both?

Fourth Phase

There used to be a white wicker chair next to the lounger. She used to sit there, mainly in the early evenings. We had met briefly once at a party many years before our meeting by coincidence at a party again. As a slivered moon appeared one evening, she said, “You ought to have approached me that night, all those years ago when we were young. I would have left with you. We could have traveled west, and my kids would have been our children. I would have studied art, and you would have gotten your doctorate.”

I said, “I wasn’t responsible back then and not very trustworthy.”

Her face broke into a broad, warm smile as she said, “You would have been both because I would have made you happy.”

“Made me happy,” no one ever said that to me. Like no other color can be red, I felt fate, faith, and art come together, and all the stains of my life became slight blemishes. A mythical feel centered on me and an experiential realism consumed me. Optimism became art itself. I ceased to have any disorder of imagination, for it had jelled into redemption.

 I read somewhere every truth starts with a fantasy. Months later, sitting on that same chair at twilight, she told me she had met someone. That they were in the same business, with plenty in common, she handed me her glass, all the vodka gone, and sympathetically said, “I never loved you.”

Finally, my absurdity is realized. I am an image of myself disappearing as moments tilt into what can never become. Stained-glass love affairs appear to be light-sensitive and fragile to wind gusts. I am. That is all. The removal of me from myself into words has now become an obsession.

When I take Maxx out at night before we retire, the ducks cling to the shore and seem to be on guard of what awaits in the darkness. The toads are out in mass croaking. The larger birds walk the waterline, ready to strike. I hear the call of birds in the distance—a raucous honk or two from the Egyptian Goose. I have no idea where the squirrels and iguanas are. I know not where Hazel’s warren is, but I hope they are all safe.  

Final Phase

                                                                    My passion attacks itself, molten, never content with   
                                                what is crucial but awed with the colors of dwindling self-images.
                                                            I blend with downpours, seeping into tributaries of worlds                     
                                               mesmerized by languages never heard. 
                            I am called from dreams, besieged by questions I can only answer at dawn,    
                  but I am asleep then.