Bill Orhmann was a self taught Montanan artist 1919-2014
Man, the Dishonest Animal Bill Ohrmann
Author Archives: Mitchell Pluto
Artist
The Star Forest of Our Hearts Luke Orsborne
The Star Forest of Our Hearts
Even as the ghosts of digitized nations
slip through concrete and copper corridors,
trained to an algorithm’s lace like fictions
as nerve impulses skittering through warring cityscapes of disinformation,
we build
refuge out of the star forest of our hearts,
solace from a mass marketed desolation
that sought to quantify our moments of laughter and candlelight
into profitable data points,
electronically devouring life’s contours
along the splintering edges of nuclear armed surveillance grids.
Having waded through the shoals of synthetic tides
typing keys like throwing bread
into the rippling data of our managed distortions,
we were one slip away from drowning
in the hypnosis of an artificially intelligent destabilization,
becoming choreographed gestures on fragmenting coasts of awareness,
dancing our collective death
in an unraveling climate
to simulated music of the living earth
whose authentic chords we had long abandoned.
Yet it was from within fertile spaces
illuminated by the horrors of a centuries-long breakdown,
in the growing fractures of our CGI psychosis,
now wind powered, mercilessly, with the cobalt hauled by children,
that with great effort
we freed ourselves
from the image of hunted monster
into which extinction’s machinery had imagined us,
and opened to an urgent focus
into the cascades of solar musings breathing through us
as the sun poured itself across space,
blooming into the capillaries of new leaves,
guiding damp morning stretches of budding silver grey
into an earth memory’s grassy rock strewn hill side,
feeding through our eyes
warm flowering canopies
in gardens of possibility and dream,
where somehow
beyond the twist of jacketed wire
glossy front cover fantasies, hollow promises of roadway freedom
and second notice anxieties,
beyond the dizzy banquet of urban lights
whose glare stole whole constellations from our nights,
beyond school bells that recalled gunfire,
and camouflaged men patrolling the streets,
we found ourselves, somehow
scattering the regenerative seeds of our collective heart’s forest,
watering translucent growth in the shimmer of galaxies
that together we yet cradle
in love’s fiery pulse.
Luke Orsborne graduated from William and Mary with a BS in Studio art in 2001. Informed by a long term practice of meditation and reflection, he continues to embrace his creative side in rural Montana, producing images and poetry as a kind of life line amidst the existential crises of our time. He also enjoys the tasty body of work derived from a collaborative process between sun, rain, and the soil of his garden. You can find a selection of his visual work on his Instagram page.
Instagram _lukeorsborne
Visions Enrique de Santiago
It had to be finished yesterday, like every day in 2021, creating. Because the reason for my existence is to navigate the wonderful.
Happy today and tomorrow for all, since according to the calendar of nature, each day should be celebrated loving it intensely.
Visions
Ending centuries of moonlight dimming
a dark fire travels the walls without knowing the foolishness of its orbit,
an empty smoke escapes from her womb that is the son of the empire,
leaving a rough trail of ancient scales,
and from that place new demolitions erupt to lower their faces when winter looms,
slowly the room is emptied leaving only undamaged strings that proclaim instantaneous blues,
because she admitted flowers in her womb,
and she came down the stairs with her bare legs,
while from her shadow the absolute gesture of death loomed,
hidden and unexpected
and emitted the song of the breeze of oblivion
in order to satisfy the gesture of a star bathed in failed zodiacs,
impertinent and uncertain attempts,
that were thrown to the cosmic confines beyond certainty.
Había que terminar ayer, al igual que cada día del 2021, creando. Porque la razón de mi existencia es navegar por lo maravilloso.
Feliz hoy y mañana para todos, ya que según el calendario de la naturaleza, cada día debe celebrarse amándolo intensamente.
VISIONES
Acabando con siglos de oscurecimiento de luz lunar
un fuego oscuro recorre los muros sin saber de la necedad de su órbita,
escapa de su vientre un humo vacío que es hijo del imperio,
dejando un sendero áspero de escamas antiguas,
y desde ese lugar estallan nuevas demoliciones para bajar los rostros cuando acecha el invierno,
lentamente queda vacía la sala dejando sólo cuerdas indemnes que pregonan azules instantáneas,
porque ella admitía flores en su útero,
y bajaba las escaleras con sus piernas desnudas,
mientras desde su sombra asomaba el gesto absoluto de la muerte,
oculta e inesperada
y emitía el canto de la brisa del olvido
para así saciar el gesto de un astro bañado de zodiacos fallidos,
impertinentes e inciertas tentativas,
que fueron arrojadas a los confines cósmicos más allá de la certidumbre.
Enrique de Santiago
Born in Santiago, Chile (1961). Visual artist, poet, researcher, essayist, curator and cultural manager. He studied a Bachelor of Art at the University of Chile and at the Institute of Contemporary Art (Chile).
Since 1984, he has exhibited in individual and group exhibitions, counting to his credit around more than 100 exhibitions.
He has edited five books: Fragile Transits Under the Spirals in 2012, with La Polla Literaria; Elegía a las Magas and the book essay: El Regreso de las Magas, both with Editorial Varonas. In 2018 he edited La Cúspide Uránica with editorial Xaleshem and Dharma Comunicaciones, and Travel Bitácora with Editorial Opalina Cartonera.
He has participated in various poetry anthologies, both in Chile and abroad. He has collaborated in the newspaper La Nación with articles on new media art, and in magazines such as Derrame, Escaner Cultural and Labios Menores in Chile, Brumes Blondes in Holland, Adamar from Spain, Punto Seguido from Colombia, Sonámbula from Mexico, Agulha de Brazil, Incomunidade de Portugal, Styxus de Rep. Czech, Canibaal de Valencia, Spain, Materika de Costa Rica and other printed and digital publications.
The Pure Products of America Go Crazy and other poems by MacLean Gander
“The Pure Products of America Go Crazy…”
1.
What drives a man
bombing in Nashville
OD’ed on your toilet
That RV so cheap pathetic really—
When you get lonely you can always go downtown downtown
Does anyone need to know more about America
Than the name Anthony Quinn Warner
Or that our history is unknowable
Why not just say Elvis?
These mirrors and masquerades history books
“The tension between individual liberty and the social good has always been…
You can’t finish that sentence, can you?
But it was in Nashville, so of course places
What things happened in Nashville?
Electrons, really, a kind of skill
That has something to do with money
or control
Proud Boys v. Antifa this lust for violence Chaos grins says
Listen to the trees
Her hair glistens like oiled snakes
& you know darling all it takes
Is one slow kiss under the candlelight
And maybe you might lose your fright
And be the man you said you’d be
Trembling in shade under the apple tree
Said some words you nah know what they mean
Maybe you hoping you weren’t seen
But have to say boo it was like that we watching you
2.
The idea of nobility in human affairs still exists
And there is something to be said for the study of history and language
Whatever you resisted resisted you back
You carried an alarm clock
The idea that time does not exist a child’s dream
Ok say it true now baby say how it feel
You know if you don’t it won’t be real
Make your heart in rainbow slices
See the sunlight how nice is
Make this beat your own heartbeat
Tell me you don’t know the street
Tell you what you not understand
You blow your van up—you not a man
Outside the tent of the destruction
Of the greatest empire the world has known
We watching you
3.
What is the statute of limitations on lynching’s
And the mass graves
–you can find the bones if you look
Or in Nashville some human tissue
Ephraim and Henry Gizzard, 1872
Samuel Smith, 1924
he was fifteen
David Jones
Jo Reed
232 lynching’s in Tennessee
Human tissue debris from RV historic
District
inside CNN carnival
electrons warm
warp
smile a lie
Tennessee’s “greatest lynching carnival” was held in Memphis in May 1917 when Ell Person, the allegedly confessed ax-murderer of a sixteen-year-old white girl, was burned to death in the presence of fifteen thousand men, women, and little children.
4.
Tonight we must mourn anyone named Anthony Quinn Warner
No story to tell, no rhyme no reason no couplet indebted to any ideology
Just ample evidence of the meaninglessness of time
No babe its about how sad someone gets
He saved everyone with that loudspeaker
And you know those six cops were heroes
What point is there in talking about history
When you know you will die without seeing the end?
Make an intention
It’s ok not to believe in anything, it is easier that way
Remember Anthony Quinn Warner
5.
What drives a man? Antaeus vs. Heracles says
God of the waters, goddess of earth I called to you
Choking on air, my monstrous soul
What were you doing in Libya, anyway?
We could have been brothers
Between us we could have destroyed the gods
The beauty of a suicide bombing that killed no one
The single-minded and purposeless effort like writing Finnegan’s Wake
Or climbing a cliff no one climbed before
Or making sure to leave on the stone “He lived a quiet, ordinary life”
You have no idea how much pain it costs me
To tell you this—you feel troubled by the broken windows
To me they are beautiful
There is nothing more beautiful than broken glass
Catching the flickering oranges and yellows
Of cars and buildings on fire
6.
The idea of meaninglessness
Captured in a single gesture
Make an intention taste the fire
He was designed for summer
The ways in which a human body can be destroyed
Are chronicled. You can’t look away—see it clearly
African American victims, both men and women, were regularly tortured with methods that included eye-gouging, cutting off of the ears and nose, and cutting off fingers and toes joint by joint for souvenirs.
Were you there? We are watching you tell the truth
Don’t look away
I met my darling on a dark street
We talked all night until dawn came
She said she’d love me if I paid the price
Give my skin up, let the sky fall
Keep a shotgun on the kitchen wall
Saying y’all Sicilian don’t be nice
You white boys all look the same
What you got, how your heart beat?
LED’s and Sunlight
Squirrels grow fat when you feed them seeds
Or an electronic barbie with a vicious smile
Like butterscotch razor blades and the ice
Where a blue-jay has joined the squirrel
Is melting slowly in the noon sunlight
So it can freeze again harder
But the plastic doll is tasty and satisfying–
That’s all they need–
Inside the mirror of ice the squirrel looks fat
Blue jays descend in a tight-knit gang now
Chickadees and slate juncos scatter
A cardinal watches from an apple limb
These natural hierarchies are comforting,
A small piece of obsidian in my mouth, sucking on it
LED lights shine all the time, even at 5AM
When juncos are wrapped in their fir trees
Not much illumination but the clowns still dance
And long trucks thrum on the daybreak avenue.
Kaleidoscope
If my anger is a kaleidoscope then tell me
What the shrapnel taught you, taste this black ice.
Inside the intermissions of an interminable drama
There is real blood on the stage. Bend low, taste it–
You’re my bitch tonight, follow my words,
A voice calling hopeless on a weekly phone call from prison—
I never picked up the phone, no one fucking makes bail
In this life, you know that–snakes in the hole—
Avoid them—make feathers in your hair
Somewhere close to edge—rock is scrawled in runes
We slant on dirt like raged farmers so starved for love
We can’t answer the most basic questions.
We have not read the stories yet. We won’t.
This late winter sunset filled with bone.
Beulah
Birds and so on, apple blossoms and knives,
Slime on the river stones, a trail of blood
Up trap-house stairs, no light in the sky,
Rain falling and the stream rising to flood—
Dawn sends artifacts like an oracle,
Some gibberish about nature and the human,
A bounty of coins from a failed empire
Like trying to spend Japanese pesos
From the WWII occupation
At the Firehouse in Manila
On a girl who would be nice to you
But just for a while—that money was fake.
My last doctor told me that I was “programmed to die”—
He said that. It was strange,
My body was fine but he wanted me to understand
I would inevitably die, so what did I believe in?
They called him Crazy Eddie
In the small-town practice he had,
And he put me through the course on miracles for free,
Reading the Bible and Bagavad Gita, the Secret Garden
And the Wizard of Oz, a sort of mad map
Of ways to think the soul persists beyond death,
That there is a larger reality we can’t see.
It didn’t work. I am just a reporter.
All I can do is say what I see, or what I remember.
Fifty years ago, in this same country place, I owned a horse.
I rode him bareback on the dirt roads,
Veering sometimes into an open mowing to ride full out,
Gliding over his galloping body like a sprite.
Once he shied and I flew off into the soft grass,
Stunned for a moment, breath knocked out.
I came to with wildflowers all around me.
Then I climbed back on and rode home
Solstice: Green River
One mourns at dawn, blue light on the snow,
Cracked windows locked against the cold.
What can one say? I’ve always marveled
At time’s bleak nature, scored now by ice
Coating still-green grass and the dirt road,
And while the landscape is winter-barren
The ghosts that inhabit this place are partying
In liquid light of the fireplace, rafters shaking,
That tune from 1939 going round and round.
One year we visited where the girl witches were hanged,
A christmas sojourn to Salem. There was no cause for celebration.
There were addicts on the sidestreet. A grey smudge
Lay like a quilt on the bay. Gulls swooped and screamed.
This year ghosts scratch graffiti on the frost.
Solstice: Songbirds
This austere December sunlight on thin snow
Today’s ghetto, shards of grass pocking through frost,
The light slanted so deep against the high windows
It might as well be sunset, that yard-arm passed
At dawn, ice glazed on the water glass,
No sound on roads, just winter’s vacant heart.
In this season, December’s full moon Cold Moon—
A couple of weeks to wait for the Wolf Moon,
The spirit I long to inhabit my body.
Cold moon says look at the light, weep, and sing
Songs of joy since you have no choice,
Play that violin in the concentration camp of your body.
Inside the churning of dreams and lost time
A spirit made of ice and hot chocolate
Says drop those seeds from your hand. Songbirds will follow.
Solstice
So this the day you meet the dead—you knew
It would come, ice in your hair and tangled wires,
And while you said you have no fear you knew
That you were afraid. The wood is made of ghosts.
Inside the enchantment of the cold moon
You searched a way to speak to them, the ghosts
Inside the wood walls where heat depends on burning.
But the full moon’s a motorcycle and the wind
Against your face as you ride into the sky
Won’t let language free except you are screaming
How much I love you at the sweet savage spirits
That cling like wraiths to the dark leather of your soul.
When the full dark comes you walk to the graveyard,
Touch the cold stone with your hands, then go home again.
Solstice: Meteor Shower
At five AM shooting star flowers on black,
Flaring without explanation, just quick
And lovely, the way all things are, and this frost
Glitters like answering stars in porch-light,
Dead leaves shining like gems.
My arms are filled with wood
But I still look around, how quiet the night is,
How constellations have not changed
Since I was a child and soon light will start
These skeletons of trees green again,
The dead grass needing mowing.
Nothing is permanent, or temporary, but something else
That we have no language for except
The stars fall from sky they remind us
Some things are beautiful, the way we dance
In sky, dancing for free—no one takes coins home
From this game, we play stacked odds,
Dancing until dawn finally comes
With an unusually beautiful shade of blue
That like everything else has no name.
written by MacLean Gander© 2021
MacLean Gander grew up in Manhattan, where he attended the Collegiate School before studying at Harvard, where he received an A.B. in English and American Literature and Languages, cum laude. He was the Hoyt Fellow in creative writing at Boston University in 1981, where he took his Master’s in Creative Writing (Poetry).
In the 1980s he worked for several years as a researcher, writer, and reporter for Newsweek’s international edition in New York, and then spent two years in the Philippines covering the 1985 elections and 1986 “People’s Revolution” as a freelancer accredited to The Nation. After returning from Manila, he decided to relocate in Vermont and change his career path, taking a faculty position at Landmark College. In 1988, he was appointed English department chair, a position he held for nine years. In 1997 he was appointed Vice President of Academic Affairs and Dean of the College, a position he held for 11 years, a period of rapid growth and change for the college. During this time he earned an Ed.D. in Educational Leadership and Change from Fielding Graduate University. As Vice President for External Affairs and Strategic Planning from 2008 – 2009 he led and participated in the College’s consulting initiatives with the Kipp Charter Schools, The Prince Salman Center for Learning Disabilities Research in Riyadh, and with several other organizations and groups.
After returning to the faculty in 2009, MacLean held appointments in the writing department and then in the Core Education Program, teaching courses in composition, creative writing, journalism, and education. He currently holds an appointment in the Professional Studies program, where he teaches courses in journalism, leadership, and narrative nonfiction. He also donates his time as an investigative reporter for The Commons, Windham County’s nonprofit independent newsweekly, a role in which he is able to engage journalism and business students in internships and in doing reporting in real-world contexts. He lives in Brattleboro, Vermont, with his wife, the poet and artist Shanta Lee Gander.
MacLean Gander, My Father at 92
My Father at 92
There is so much you don’t know about
After being dead for fifteen years.
This virus is terrible—it has deranged the world.
We won’t know for a while how that will work out.
The civil rights thing is interesting now—
Overt racism is as bad as it has ever been,
But some of it gets videotaped
And some bad cops have been convicted.
You’ve been dead so long you don’t even know
That the wars that started when you first got sick
Went on for years after your death.
We just left Afghanistan a few weeks ago—
It was was as bad as Saigon, 1975, maybe worse.
I’m glad you did not have to see that shit, it was bad.
And the whole climate change thing is crazy—
It’s real now and your grand-kids face it.
I’ll be dead, too, before things get truly bad.
I’m glad you do not have to know these things.
Tonight I feel your spirit in the wood
Of this house you built for your children.
It feels so good to me that you are innocent
Of any knowledge of what happened after you died.
If there is anything beyond history then now
You must inhabit that place,
And at least you are beyond pain.
Those last four years were rough.
There are things I would love to ask you,
And I would love to tell you about the life I have lived
Since you died—it has been hard and beautiful.
But I know you are beyond that now.
There was a fox in the meadow today,
And I have good wood—the fire is fierce
On the hearth you built. The house is warm,
And you look good for 92, your ashes rest
Where I can find them in Carpenter Cemetery,
And I always could talk to you.
Written by MacLean Gander © December 28, 2021
MacLean Gander grew up in Manhattan, where he attended the Collegiate School before studying at Harvard, where he received an A.B. in English and American Literature and Languages, cum laude. He was the Hoyt Fellow in creative writing at Boston University in 1981, where he took his Master’s in Creative Writing (Poetry).
In the 1980s he worked for several years as a researcher, writer, and reporter for Newsweek’s international edition in New York, and then spent two years in the Philippines covering the 1985 elections and 1986 “People’s Revolution” as a freelancer accredited to The Nation. After returning from Manila, he decided to relocate in Vermont and change his career path, taking a faculty position at Landmark College. In 1988, he was appointed English department chair, a position he held for nine years. In 1997 he was appointed Vice President of Academic Affairs and Dean of the College, a position he held for 11 years, a period of rapid growth and change for the college. During this time he earned an Ed.D. in Educational Leadership and Change from Fielding Graduate University. As Vice President for External Affairs and Strategic Planning from 2008 – 2009 he led and participated in the College’s consulting initiatives with the Kipp Charter Schools, The Prince Salman Center for Learning Disabilities Research in Riyadh, and with several other organizations and groups.
After returning to the faculty in 2009, MacLean held appointments in the writing department and then in the Core Education Program, teaching courses in composition, creative writing, journalism, and education. He currently holds an appointment in the Professional Studies program, where he teaches courses in journalism, leadership, and narrative nonfiction. He also donates his time as an investigative reporter for The Commons, Windham County’s nonprofit independent newsweekly, a role in which he is able to engage journalism and business students in internships and in doing reporting in real-world contexts. He lives in Brattleboro, Vermont, with his wife, the poet and artist Shanta Lee Gander.
Morphing Whimsy with Richard Gessner
Reading Richard Gessner’s book The Conduit and Other Visionary Tales of Morphing Whimsy was like drawing a tarot card out of a magical deck. Reading it triggered a rare recollection of sensations into a neural pattern of synesthesia. These infrequent and unusual bits of writing guides the reader into a dream time, a metamorphosis that operates in harmony while under the influence of an autoscopic hallucination. An illusion of observing selves. There is a hypnagogic arrangement that dissolves once you fully notice your in a dream but with Gessner’s work the afterimage stays for a long visit. It doesn’t evaporate. I enjoy the metaphorical compounds in Gessner’s visual work, it’s an erotic and tantric iconography. Gessner builds a unique mythology. His graphic representation of aquatic fantasies are arranged in the formula of deep unexposed thought waves, waves we glide on in abbreviated gestures.
Richard Gessner is a Left-handed, self taught Visionary writer and artist. In the visual work he often packs dense interconnected imagery into tight spaces.
“I am a left-handed, self taught Artist. I pack dense, interconnected imagery into small spaces. I have an ongoing epic series of the Surf Goddess and the Strongmann that evokes a timeless world of iconic Man & Woman acting out romantic flirtatious dances with the mercurial forces of nature.”
Surf Goddesses, Strongmenn, Sirens, Vixens and other Burlesqueness
The Strongmann is semiaquatic, cerulean blue, with flipper feet and king crab like arms and hands, expressing the raw forces of the instinctual Freudian Id. He shifts from heroic to rapacious, from crude to chivalrous in a moment’s notice. Sometimes he’s an alpha at the top of the food chain, only to be usurped by rubber ducks or Sirens he romantically courts in the waves of an endless sea.
4 a.m. Drawings
Female Nudes
The Fool
A fool, fat sluggish and smug, was turned into a bowling ball by a gang of husky drooling village idiots.
With pontifical glee, the fool had waddled onto the idiots’ grassy flatland turf, making the fateful mistake of underestimating their strength and ability.
The fool felt superior to the idiots, and feared not the clumsy thrusts of their silly toy swords slicing off his blubbery arms and legs becoming an instant set of bowling pins…
Read more from the online journal of arts and letters Sein und Werden
Gessner’s speculative fantasy fiction has been published in literary magazines since the 1980’s. He clarifies his drawings and paintings do not illustrate his stories.
The Conduit and Other Visionary Tales of Morphing Whimsy Paperback
The Conduit and Other Visionary Tales of Morphing Whimsy Audible
Space Cat
we Interrupt the regularly scheduled program
to bring you this important message
this wireless emergency alert has scanned and detected globular lightning behaving like intelligent light
expect winds to reach the speed of a dream
prepare for half past tension to relief
watch the clock turn into a ball
all conspiracy and plans swept clear
empty and full
total memory forgiven
expanding free as time overflows
following through cells and selves
without a body
to this star door
that small bond of love I forgot
the cat did not forget about me
written by Mitchell Pluto© December 11, 2021
Space Cat
we Interrupt the regularly scheduled program
to bring you this important message
this wireless emergency alert has scanned and detected globular lightning behaving like intelligent light
expect winds to reach the speed of a dream
prepare for half past tension to relief
watch the clock turn into a ball
all conspiracy and plans swept clear
empty and full
total memory forgiven
expanding free as time over flows
following through cells and selves
without a body
to this star door
that small bond of love I forgot
the cat did not forget about me
written by Mitchell Pluto© December 11, 2021
Beyond the Bone
it is a super kind of role
rotating archetypes
where
number equals avatar
all four won once
if you want to get elemental
around the table
occurring at intervals
periodically
snap shot to
photogrammetry
a kinetic map
perception transfer
interface fidelity
contemplation points
an evidence board
but folded into
an icosahedron
edges linked by fiber optics
on invisible lines
as best they could trace
those
dice face are channels
those
dice face are mirrors
refraction may be
tubes of light
or if you prefer day stream
an almost calendar
in one lapidary being
an extraterrestrial of triangles
predeterminer and all
lets play
rotated and rolled
hyperstition is now
but also then
all ways
crossroads
a mobile hot spot
every time
is space
echolocation
our deep unknown ability
leads to where
wear leads
to dissolve dice
and sincerely know
the icosahedron remains spinning
all over time
an everlasting pattern
a rapidly occurring gem
from
the house of invention
written by Mitchell Pluto© December 11, 2021
WHILE, before the end of Aquarius. Poem and Vision by Enrique de Santiago
WHILE
Before the end of Aquarius
the pale shell will come off
Of the petty masts that hold me persistently
to the acid days that I have left and that push me to leave
meanwhile the tears of a burning salamander fall
as the universe cools
while the creator’s belly accelerates
while the verb contracts
to give birth to the next big bang
that brings its reincarnated flame
in a kind of divine reset to understand us better
since in this past centuries it only brought us a great question
that spits out my insignificant and forgotten life
towards another portal that returns me
To embrace the warm name of our unfinished love.
But between the hollow that leaves the universe without answers
nest the bonds of the flesh that impede the…
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Mitchell Pluto 