by A.E. Bayne

A kite and a hopeless gesture,
too many trees to win today,
and no wind to carry the message.

Moon Tree

Someday this will all die down
And we'll find the rhythm of you and me
Is nothin' more than
a 2 2 beat

Let's make up a song
full of longing and lust
Dance down the road
Stir up the dust

Promise me when I fall down
You'll kiss my brow and make it right
Sew my gaping wounds up tight

Pick up my heart
blow off the dust
Sing me a song full of
hope, faith, and trust


That oak tree fell straight down
Right here in my yard
Pushed around by the storm

The full moon looks down
Have we been here before
In a red nightgown
Tip toe cross the floor

The mist is rollin round
The sirens sing a song of desire
While we dance through this fire

Back full of scars
Splinters in my heart
The rooster cries
Out of time out of dark

The crops have been cut down
The field now lays exposed
And now I can see the road

Sun's coming up
Everything is so clear
Our eyes adjust
Goodbye my dear

Someday this will all die down
And we'll find the rhythm of you and me
Is nothin' more than
a 2 2 beat

New song by Ruth, Emily, and Tim G

All Heart

All heart, you said you were all heart
Honest flesh and blood
A real man just for me
I believed everything you said

You said you were true
You said "It's only you"

Well your heart, stole my heart
then left it cold and alone
but my heart, my lonely heart
thought it had found a home

You said you loved me
You never loved me

Your heart, your hollow heart
It's just an empty shell
Like the one fell out of my gun
I'll see you in hell

You lied to me
You're dead to me

Oh my heart, it stopped my heart
When they carried you away
And my heart, my restless heart
Will never be the same

I'll always love you
With all my heart

On August...

By A.E. Bayne

It is the season of sticky watermelon juice
on the kitchen floor.
My sandals suck the linoleum on the trek to the sink.
This season is for random thoughts and altered memories,
when we compromise the reality of situations
in its humid physicality.
It is for sunlight pouring through a meandering gloom,
forcing its way toward the seared grass
where only weedy things thrive.
It is the season for losing keys and misplacing identities;
when insect rhythms match stereo sounds tone for tone,
and bore their way into my mind.
This season unnerves me
with its wasted hours not wasted on chores.
Too much time for thoughts of pulling weeds;
so I turn toward things to come and textures I can grasp.

Just Desserts

By A.E. Bayne

Desserts,
(a refuge!)
With vanilla ice cream,
(a fantasy.)

Chocolate Mousse
to spoon over aches served chilled with homemade whipped cream.

(My thin skin an)
Apple Crisp
served warm to would be tormentors.

Pecan Pie,
to coat my ego served warm to would be friends.

Key Lime Pie,
a high, served chilled with homemade whipped cream
over guilt and failed resolution.

Oatmeal-Honey Chocolate Chip Cookies,
a curative response served warm with would be mother-love.

Peanut Butter-Chocolate Silk Pie,
(my last resort,)
served chilled with homemade whipped cream over diminished self-esteem.

Computery Fun with Paintings July 08

Yet more paintings July 08

More paintings July -8

Paintings July 08

Beach Pics

A.E. Bayne




FollowMe

The Center of Things

A.E. Bayne



FollowMe

amo, amas, amat

By A.E. Bayne

How do you write about love from a hundred angles? What a task, for every side is different, but three years into this love affair and I still don’t have a grip on any solid surfaces. It eludes me, eludes us, and yet we hold onto each other, sliding over each surface testing their shapes.

I don’t want to say that he is my soul mate, because in this pragmatic stage of my life I feel I’ve grown far beyond the boundaries of pop culture terminology. There was a time when I would have screamed it from the dome of the Capitol, but no longer. No, he’s simply a man I can’t seem to shake; and perhaps I’m a woman he can’t quite rid himself of either. In that way, we are perfect for one another.

Years into this thing, we’ve tried dating, being “just friends”, casual sex (which was never very casual considering that we have a long history that winds its way backward to our adolescence), and even avoidance. The last never seems to take for very long. Now, we have skidded onto the next plane, love.

It’s an odd word, love, so symmetrically eloquent. Its “l” takes hold of you, forms in your mouth like a flickering kiss, then leads you into a deep throated, guttural “uh”, a sigh of satisfaction. The biting “v” flirts, top teeth touching bottom lip, until the word finally whispers away on a breathy “eh”, barely a whisper in the ear. The word hovers in the air with a sensual physicality. So to say that I love him, and he me, is a powerful development in this journey that we set upon in the parallel.

Odd, the conversation, and how the word has changed between us over these three years. I think I was the first to jump in with it two years ago, long after we had stopped our attempt at a traditional relationship. A quick “love ya” at the end of an email started it all, the “ya” giving it just enough jovial frivolity for it to pass under the radar, but just enough importance to let him know I was feeling more. Then, emboldened by his hearty replay of “love ya too”, I stepped further onto this slippery slope and told him one night, after hours of sex and laughter, “I love you.” I remember that I was so careful to keep my tone just earnest enough for it to seem unintimidating. Then, adding a support beam, he responded, “I love you too.”

So, for over a year now, through hot and cold periods, through dating other people and sharing feelings, he and I have continued to add planes to our relationship (which we do not call a relationship), built upon a growing sense of honesty, friendship, desire, and love. When this latest plane shifted into place, both of our worlds shook a bit. There was an accident, a typical prophylactic mishap, and I was certain I was pregnant. When it turned out that I was not, I called him and we talked for long hours about what it could have meant for us. Though it was terrifying, it also brought us together. He wanted to see me immediately, so we set a date for the weekend.

Yes, this most recent plane is a glossy one, one where he walks through my door and kisses me and time passes between us without notice. He holds me close and breathes “I love you” into my ear before I have even offered a hello. This surface is more transparent than the others, a window of sorts, yet I also fear that it is the most fragile and wont to cracking under to weight of what each of us wants.

I do wonder how many walls we will build together, and what type of structure this will be when we are through. I wonder if this latest design is the foundation, or rather a back door through which one of us will emerge one day and never look back.

Cit-escape

By A.E. Bayne

This city does not sleep.
A voice sends out a diatribe
on the other side of 6:15,
crazed life.
Here in a concrete tree house, glass and steel, block and metal,
(particulate life)
I face west out wide windows washed in dawn
brushing against stackable lives –
the vantage of a demi-god
seven heady floors above the ground
with a grand view from which to watch the inevitable race of time –
mosaic life,
a labyrinth teaming.
Through the night, a never-ending rhythm and clackery
below and above wake me on the hour,
orgasmic life persistently begging,
"Come, breathe with me."
All night, sheathed in sweat
as a fever of inconvenience swarms about,
I listen to the vibrant highs and lows
of the electric city below.

In Utero (more beginnings of a new song)

Not sure what order I want these in (or about the line "push comes to shove"). And I need a little refrain at the end of each verse; Then I can call it done and put it to a tune, which could change the whole thing all over again.

Being and nothing keeping me down
You're holding my hand, I hold you at arm's length
We'll go to town and have a few drinks
Talk all night 'bout our faded love
Howl at the new moon/push comes to shove

Someday this will all die down
and we'll find the rhythm of you and me
is nothing more than a ___ beat.
We'll make up a song full of longing and lust
dance down the road/stir up the dust

Promise me that when I fall down
you'll kiss my brow and make it right.
Sew my gaping wounds up tight
Pick up my heart and blow off the dust
Sing me a song full of hope, faith, and trust.

I had a dream where Sheena was a punk rocker
and I could do the Blitzkreig Bop. Joey Ramone,
you can be my boyfriend any day. Yeah, Yeah!

A Poem

A friend of mine wrote this poem in New York in 1963; I'd like to share it with you here. Please let me know your thoughts. It certainly resonated with me.

Decision

When I first wanted you
I baited and schemed
And lay in wait

Then our hands met
And I needed you
(When the thrill coursed through),
And I turned my head
And cursed myself and said
I didn't want you.

April 19th House Show w/Megan Jean and the KFB

rest of the pics are here

Landscapes

BIG Flowers

Flower Ptgs

Death of a Lawnman...A.E. Bayne

The searing heat beats down as it has for the past week and a half, melting the steering wheel slick and waxy so that my hands come away with hot pink marks striped across the palm. Damned if I didn’t forget to put the white t-shirt over it again. Me and my air conditioner curse. Ever since I can remember driving my own vehicle, I have never experienced the blissful summer respite of tooling around town in an air conditioned automobile to call my own. I’ll buy the car, get all the way around the calendar to the beginning of the hottest part of the summer, and the air will inevitably go kaput. Dampened, I roll down the windows, hoping for a cool breeze to develop as I drive through Virginia’s wet summer atmosphere, so thick with perspiration that she might well be a professional athlete.

A man in a lawn service vehicle flashes past in my peripheral vision, holding what appears to be a gun to his head. I’m fairly sure, after a second thought, that it was only an innocuous cell phone propped lazily to his ear. But then I get to thinking, what if it really was a gun? What would have made this man decide to off himself at an exit ramp to Route 3 just outside of Fredericksburg, Virginia, during mid-day? Things like this happen every day. I’ve read about them, but I certainly haven’t ever been witness.

So what would push this average Jeff, Jim, or Jerry to blow his brains across the exit ramp? I suppose any number of things could take a person to that place. Life these days can get fairly dark and one tragic news story, one more tax hike, one misplaced phrase on the other end of the cell phone might be the difference between life and the coroner’s table. Hell, if the heat doesn’t let up soon, I might be right there with him.

As it happens, I’m no stranger to death’s enchantments. So easy does it seem, when times are truly difficult, to believe that drawing that line and jumping over it will solve all the problems. That’s a pretty promise death makes: the struggle gone, free to be me, la-dee-fucking-dah. And who knows if it’s the truth or not? Faith would tell us that death, for those who behave themselves in the earthly realm, will bring us closer to some kind of contentment. It doesn’t really matter which flavor is your favorite; ultimately, most traditional religions teach that you become something other than what you are right now - be it earth, wind, or ice cream.

In the end, who really understands what anyone, let alone this solitary lawnman, is going through? Maybe his wife just left him; or maybe he’s been stealing money from the petty cash fund at work and someone is blackmailing him. Maybe it’s something more heartbreaking and unforgivable, and death seems like a good resolution for the New Year. I want to tell him to keep the faith, brother, but there’s no stopping now that I’m a mile down the road and the light in front of me is good to go.

....'cause even her bad love is pretty damn good.

The 12 Steps for Compulsive Email Checkers

by Janelle Kennedy

Step 1: Admitted we were powerless over email - that our inboxes had become unmanageable.

Step 2: Came to believe that pressing refresh over and over and over and over does not make emails appear magically in our inbox.

Step 3: Made a decision to turn off our computers and actually talk to a real person.

Step 3.2: Naaah - that would be silly.

Step 4: Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of our various mail accounts (including the one we use only to register for porn sites).

Step 5: Admitted to God, to ourselves, and on our blogs the exact nature of our wrongs.

Step 5.2: Joined an on-line support group to help us.

Step 6: Were entirely ready to have the support group solve all our problems.

Step 7: Humbly asked the anonymous faces behind their computer screens to remove our shortcomings.

Step 8: Waited for their replies.

Step 9: Waited more; pressed refresh just once because we are not certain our internet connection is working just right.

Step 10: Continued to press refresh because you know they are there and are just making you wait because it is all a big game to them.

Step 11: Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our mental connection to them because hitting refresh just isn't working and neither is the Whiskey!

Step 12: Admitted we were powerless over email - that our inboxes had become unmanageable

A Love Poem

by A.E. Bayne

Would the sky move more to your shape
if I looked upon it with the reverence I give to you in my heart?
If I were to give the pool a bow,
a genuflection of faith,
would it breath ripples to form your exquisite face?
Would a strand of hair blown through the wind
become the last thought that you gave to me,
or I to you;
or would it snake away, moving just beyond my fingertips?
Tonight I am listening,
as a shell to an ear sounds slick licking my eardrum,
hearing it speak your name.

Flowers

Paintings About Light

More paintings and a photograph

Blossoms

A.E. Bayne

Paper thin skin reeds the bend
of your waist

line licking the bareness of thought apart parts.
My echoless night-heart blooms cherry

blossoms budding conspicuous drops of honey
from vicious suckling flower stamens.
Plop and a

drop spills life from the opening of my eyes.

Your breath was just a wispered song Monday, October 08, 2007



through every dream

of someone breathless for so long

Did it to you seem?



Realise

When I forget my self-taught grace

In my eyes

You can catch the fear

through my face



Play host

in your soul's abode

And let me see your treasures

But don't leave me all alone

Until my security you've measured.



One love in a place unfound

One a few states down

One that knows not the sound

My head makes

When my heart goes round



Just a little rose

With a little love in heart

So very sweet.

I suppose

Without a hope for a start



So easy to accept

a flower without mention

Of a future set

in the pain

Of heartache tension


-Marie

Morning

The warm breath of morning barely rustles the curtains
Another day already heavy with burdens
Not known, like stones in my heart
That scratch against each other, sparking
Chain reactions of emotional despair.

Another day to do enough to keep my mind busy
Busy to ward off the inevitable thoughts
That conjure some, any other, life
Away from the moments between the seconds

Clocks are the cruel reminders of never-ending time
Time that used to be filled with yearning for my love
To still my evidence of need
In the ultimate self-inflicted pain, that love is gone
Excised with a cold-blooded knife

The curtains quietly slide back into place on the
Windowsill and I wonder if today is the last day I will rise.

Gone

The clock by my bed
Counts out the minutes
The hours and the days
Since you’ve been by my side

Days past are marked
Scratched into the wall
Tracking the time
You’ve been away

Where’s the warm touch
The loving embrace
The tender kiss
You promised me?

Each day I wake
And think today
You’ll come back to me
Another X on the wall
…another tick of the clock

Where’s the warm touch
The loving embrace
The tender kiss
You promised me?

The Melting

The words you sang to me
Echoed to the core of my soul
Traveled along its lonely walls
Adorned with the art of heartache and want
And found their way to my frozen heart

A protective cocoon of ice
Was my only defense against love’s pain
Your knock took me by surprise
I was afraid to open the door, but
I released the chains and let you in

Ice crystals melted into living water
My ailing spirit drank its fill
Gazing into your eyes, I touched you
And fell into the depths of a
Complete and passionate longing

The cleansing blood of our love
Washes now through my veins
My true heart unearthed, warm, alive
Alive again with the naked desire
And heat of your love, my love, our love

For My Sweet Baby Girl

My love
A tear falls
Lost in fearful woods
No light to shine
On thoughts so dark

My love
I thought my love
Could make you whole
But only the light and dark
Can make a soul …my love

Memory

I’ve forgotten
The taste of your kiss
The touch of your hand
The sound of your voice

I’ve forgotten them all.
Please don’t remind me.

I’ve forgotten
The magic in your smile
The intensity of your eyes
The teasing of your tongue

I’ve forgotten them all.
Please don’t remind me.

I’ve forgotten
The warmth of your touch
The weight of your body
The scent of you on my skin

I’ve forgotten them all.
So don’t come near
Don’t whisper in my ear

Please don’t.

Remind me.

First they took away my Santy Claus

Then they took away my toys

Next it was my Jesus

And then came the boys



Now I want something new to believe in

What is there beyond the stars

What is just beneath my skin



Modesty

Honstly

I'm poised to run

Once you've given me

Direction

the Mayor of Claiborne's

These are also unfinished and unformed - basically just a bunch of ideas - and have been sitting in my box of lyrics for quite a while.

You can probably guess who this is about. This song was inspired after a meeting with "his royal highness" at Claibornes, to talk about...yikes - I've forgotten what we were talking about! Regardless, it was a power struggle, it was me standing up for something - I do remember that - and it was exhausting.

---

The Mayor of Claiborne's
is served steak and wine
Lording over his corner
Waiting for her for some time

And the Baron of the Bistro
Sleeps on a cot down in the back
Holds court every Tuesday
... he's keeping track

All the wine he can drink
All the ? he can handle
Beautiful paintings, leather seats, $50 candles
Bragging rights,....., 20 pillows for his head
Names to drop, ....., tank of oxygen by his bed

The queen is looking for her melancholy
He's home serving it tea with coffee
Scheming and dreaming up what she deserves
Consequence is a bitch .............

At my worst

I'm a way for some

to color my spirit

to a one dimention numb



at my worst

i'm a spur of the moment

for a separation of thoughts that hint



me at my worst

when I need an escape

from the race

from my mistakes

against the world



They're at their worst

when they use my escape

as a doorway to distraction

for their mistakes

We're at our worst

when we escape

and the world

becomes its worst

by us.


-Marie

Barn Trippin'

By A.E. Bayne

In a barn upstate
the Technicolor bus demands, "Further!"
Motionless and confined by time,
yet timeless.
Bold paint splattered
like a Pollock original,
with years of hay mold and rat prints
and dust fairies fallen dead
upon its promises of freedom's ecstasies.
Sunlight through the mud-caked window
threatens to stir them to life,
but none respire in the even solitude.
A merry bus, overhauled,
its silence ever more profound.

"Creation Story"...Sun...A.E. Bayne

Sun readied himself to color the day,
as morning shadows wrestled with sinuous, yawning beasts,
all awaiting his royal pageant.

"Creation Story"...Rainbow...A.E. Bayne

Rainbow reached from earth to sky
and back to earth she fell.
She spread her coat of peacock colors
and hues began to spill like smooth oils from a genie's bottle.

"Creation Story"...Moon...A.E. Bayne

Moon slowly cloaked her brightly swollen belly
and bid her star children a fond farewell.
They hung in space like glistening netherworld fairies
folding in upon themselves until the next night's shining adventure.

Procrastination...A.E. Bayne

Medusa...A.E. Bayne

Drawers and Space

By A.E. Bayne

The drawers that you keep
within cabinets, dressers, bureaus, and buffets;
amid card tables, nightstands, and silver chests,
are corpses stained, polished with names of what they once were:
cherry, oak, pine, walnut, maple.

Yours is a wood-scented home,
a copse furnished with behemoths
filling noses and rooms with equal oppressiveness.
Their drawers encase the minutia of sentiment, personalities, and permanence.
Beliefs are buried in the sheer pages of family bibles,
under long-grayed photographs,
tossed with paper clips and rubber bands,
and folded between t-shirts and undergarments.
Thoughts, plans, desires, banalities are captured in tight, dark repositories,
their smooth surfaces glazed with circumstances untold.

Closed, crushed, stuffed, precisely set into drawers.

Grab handle or knob, yank wide the cavernous hollows.
Fling them open and explore.
Shake out your secrets, those things that are frozen in space.
Truth extrapolated.

Untitled

By A.E. Bayne

Your decisive marks grip me for a glimpse of you.
Finding those things you left at inconsequential moments,
thoughts in mid-sentence.
What were you thinking when you picked up the pen to write the note?
What were you going to buy with that last dollar you carried?
A lifeline to the material, the physical?
What were you dreaming when you were dying?
Sometimes I see you in my words.

Reflections on "The Persistence of Memory"

By A.E. Bayne

A fine and frivolous fantasy is time,
Which whips around the glass, boldly sublime.
Ignoring all protesting, the milieu
Fights any wageless war that might ensue.
Never ebbing, like a sentient wave,
Another fickle lunar escapade.
Its steady hands ever blindly gripping
Undiscovered threads frail from the ripping.

Before the Dark Days Settle

By A.E. Bayne

Beyond the half-shade of the autumn wood,
a silver dollar sun weaves a drunkard's dance.
The air breathes through us
clearing hot humid thoughts,
and sets 'round, all smoky logs and ash leaves.
Jackets zipped to the chin,
hoods clasped tight around ears,
we trudge through the vocal foliage.
Cracking and snapping, great arthritic bones
forest speak.
Before the dark days settle,
before the great Earth slumbers,
walk with me down the mountain
until the dull moon is a wavering wedge.
Hold me with your tongue
that forms the most of my desire,
I seek your linguistic touch.

Angel

Wisdom's been your freedom

With demons clipping at your wings

You gently pray for them

Knowing what more peace can bring



Pure's eye

Do you know that

Beauty love's you

Strongly do you shade me

from all of my threatening foes



Angel

Do you know that you are all life

and I am life survived

and death never touches yours

For the Truth is on your side



Lover

Innocence must mean trust

And you will never loathe

For who could ever leave

Where this ideal love resides



Angel

I can love you

Like no other one ever has

I pray you will let me

Pray, let me hope and have love


-Marie

kind of an exquisite corpse

Ok, let's have some fun. I mean some more fun. I can't seem to get this song finished or even formed in a song-like structure. Add to my lyrics, cut, paste, whatever. Nothing is precious. Let's make the first GP Salon song!

This is about a guy that handed me a pamphlet at the polls the last time I voted. He was talking up whoever his candidate was and I looked up into his eyes and he was beautiful and his eyes were the palest blue. And he was a Republican. And then I went and voted and never saw him again. I'm so stupid. So, this is a song about this guy's eyes. I totally wanted to marry him.

-Emily

---

She was on her way to make up her mind
Looked up and met his eye
Lost her breath
In that pale blue
She could see everything
Could he see it too?

Who sent him here?
Why can't she breathe?
She could see every possibility.
In the pale blue so bright
There was the rest of her life

In that black night the future was laid out
The road clearly lit
The horizon in his eyes
Is all she can see

One look at him
Takes her over the line
The light in his smile
Brings her right to his side

I'm in the game

He is like a fire. I get too close and I get burned. I stay too far away and miss his warmth.

Consume me and take me away

burn me until I am nothing

because I can't take another day

in this cold, cold world

I'm not sure I even want you

as much as I want to pass through you

will you let me inside

that I may escape the pain

of living without you

-Marie

Paintings, Paintings 3

Painting, paintings, paintings 2