Tens IV-VIII
IV
To write like a mad one
One must write every day
Day in and day out
Out of sheer desire
Desire with no object
Objects are overrated
Over the long haul
Hauling ashes is normal
Naturally everything has been piling up
Up in the air and out to sea
V
Just before rehearsal
Charged up on anticipation
The host musician prepares the way
Plugs in the devices
Makes sure everything works
Perfection is always out of reach
But the effort to get there
Leads to something else
Unanticipated conglomerate of the group setting
Alive in the moment
VI
Those white dots floating randomly about
Under a steel-gray sky
Heavy with impending rain
Turn out to be seagulls wheeling offshore
Then wham! It hits, a sudden shower
Mixed pinpoints of rain and hail
Smash rooftops, play timpani
Against windows, bear down on
The street, now here, now gone
The story of a life in miniature
VII
The space between days
The day the earth stood still
Watching football on TV
Night of the living dead
The space between life and death
Between words and things
The spaces between people
Things to do on Mars
Language, thought, and reality
The spaces between peoples
VIII
A new day dawns in all its brightness
My dream a tube stop in London town
Up in the morning and off to school
The school of hard knocks
That knock your socks off
You are caught red handed
Attending to something or other
The main thing escapes your notice
Because it is always on
The life force building up steam
Kit Robinson
Kit Robinson is a Bay Area poet, writer, and musician. He is the author of two dozen collections of poetry, including Quarantina (Lavender Ink, 2022), Thought Balloon (Roof, 2019), Leaves of Class (Chax, 2017), Marine Layer (BlazeVOX, 2015), and The Messianic Trees: Selected Poems, 1976-2003 (Adventures in Poetry, 2009). Robinson’s essays on poetics, art, travel, and music, as well as video and audio recordings of his recent readings and interviews, may be found at his website: www.kitrobinson.net. His papers are collected at The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley. He lives in Berkeley and plays Cuban tres guitar in the charanga band Calle Ocho.
Travis MacDonald
Travis MacDonald is an artist and musician based in Melbourne. His deliberately understated works often feature a subdued palette and subjects that bridge the mundane to the absurd. They offer an idiosyncratic take on the more traditional genres of figuration and landscape painting. He draws upon his interest in art history, music and world events to present a memory: blurred, twisted and suggestive of a greater narrative, merging the personal and the universal.
Travis MacDonald was born in Bunnythorpe, New Zealand and currently lives and works in Melbourne. He completed a Bachelor of Fine Art at the Victorian College of the Arts in 2011 and has been exhibiting since 2009. He has been awarded the Gary Grossbard Drawing Prize and the Lionel Gell Foundation Drawing Scholarship. His work was featured in the 2018 Melbourne Art Fair and in 2016, MacDonald’s work was exhibited in Painting. More Painting at Australian Centre for Contemporary Art, Melbourne. He held his first solo exhibition at Niagara Galleries in December 2016.