6/26/08

Simple Life

Somewhere there is a simple life and a world, 

Transparent, warm and joyful. . .


There at evening a neighbor talks with a girl

Across the fence, and only the bees can hear 

This most tender murmuring of all.

But we live ceremoniously and with difficulty 

And we observe the rites of our bitter meetings, 

When suddenly the reckless wind

Breaks off a sentence just begun --

But not for anything would we exchange this splendid 

Granite city of fame and calamity, 

The wide rivers of glistening ice, 

The sunless, gloomy gardens,

And, barely audible, the Muse's voice.

~Anna Akhmatova
June 23, 1915, St. Petersburg

Translated by Judith Hemschemeyer

6/23/08

Last Flight Out - 6/21/08


Last Flight Out - 6/21/08, originally uploaded by levari.

6/22/08

Generations - 4/04


Generations, originally uploaded by levari.

6/20/08

Dog Days Howl Early


Dog Days Howl Early, originally uploaded by levari.

6/19/08

Some Men

Boys playing at being men and men and their pride and men with their wars and so many men willing to die and men and their valleys staring up and men on their mountains all alone and boys playing at being men with no idea.

Men watching other men cry and swearing that's not them and men trying to sleep
and men not sure of what move to make next and men listening to their children sleep and men unable to turn out the light or turn up the heat and men in their old age trying to get out of the chair one more time.

Men who build nothing but their remembering.

Los Angeles - 5/1/06

6/16/08

Bringing Daddy His Beer - 12/07


Bringing Daddy His Beer - 12/07, originally uploaded by levari.

6/12/08

Navigarre Necesse Est. Vivere Non Necesse.

"To set sail is necessary. To live is not necessary."

~Inscription - Boston, MA

6/10/08

he knows something you don't - 4/08


Jonathan Bricklin - 4/08, originally uploaded by levari.

6/8/08

The Tight Rope Walker - 6/08


The Tight Rope Walker - 6/08, originally uploaded by levari.

6/6/08


Modigliani, originally uploaded by levari.

“What I am seeking is not the real and not the unreal but rather the unconscious, the mystery of the instinctive in the human race.”

~Modigliani

6/5/08

Dream (Bonnie and Clyde)

We were in that hotel
 by the ocean.
 
You and I in that bed
 in that hotel room; the world outside behind
 the curtains dipping in the late afternoon 
breeze.
You buzzed about 
with your things 
to do list, your book with 
all the places of interest, as if we could still pretend we had all the time in the world. 

I looked up at 
the tiled ceilings
 so high, 
the ancient frescoes 
faded
 and chipped so elegantly, you the countess of the crumbling villa of my mind.
 


And somehow we made it so it did not matter 
that they knew
 where we were. 

It did not matter 
that they were 
out to get 
us and 
we knew they would 
sooner rather 
than later. 

It did not matter 
that when they came for us 
it would be forever 
this time; we both knew we had put off the inevitable for as long as we could, passed through all the boundaries, our bodies together and apart, hand in hand hurdling head first through all the fears.

The doorbell chimed as the alarm rang out, and you, on cue, innocently went to unlock 
the door
 for the delivery men just as you once told me you would, for that was your destined role.



I called to you 
promising 
not to forget
 to make plans 
for our trip 
to the countryside, though we both knew there never would be one. 

But before I got up to shower, shave and accept our fate, 
I watched you 
and made myself 
remember
 what it was. No matter what happened now, as I watched you one last time, 
I swore 
that I would never 
forget 

what this room
 once was.

Then they burst through the door, guns drawn, murder and fire in the nozzles of their eyes.

Alone, I awaken calmly in my childhood bed (long ago converted into a guest room and office.) I'm not now an infant, there's no mystical return to innocence, the clean slate or tabula raza I've heard so much about. I'm just lying here in the bed I grew up in, me, who must now begin all over again knowing full well that there never really can be a beginning all over again for people like us...

Fort Washington, PA - 7/20/05

6/3/08

Can I Get An Encore? - 3/08


Encore - 3/08, originally uploaded by levari.

6/1/08

'Star Valley' On A Sunny Day

To give account to none, to be one's own
vassal and lord, to please oneself alone,
to bend neither one's neck, nor inner schemes,
nor conscience to obtain some things that
seems power but is a flunkey's coat...

~Pushkin