~ fall 2oo8 ~
issue #11

IMAGES

steve hammond

WORDS

archives: hyacinth bean

photospews
unsent letter to mars
glowing summer nights
pastels

barnswallow - © hyacinth bean

photospews

daisies	There are those days... days when daisy chains and incense and lovers are all tangled up in my hair. Days when i can't see straight and i don't mind. Days when i stare at the ceiling and it is a good thing, and nights when i am blind with dreams.

wire fairy	Let me pluck yr antennae from yr skull. Let me see what you would conjure if you lacked skin, teeth, a shapely form, and were made only of string and wire. Who believes in you now? Only me. Only the nightshades and dreamers of green forest glens and the world at large.

night vision	There is a piano we cannot see here. As if i ever owned a piano... wait... I did own a piano. Let's start again. There is a desk below this window, i had a computer on it and a cat that sat on the monitor staring at the unseen layer of reality that only cats can see. That may be her shadow there. That may be the sun setting against the undulating horizon on the other side. That may be a smallish moon smiling in at all of us.

© hyacinth bean

unsent letter to mars

It’s been a long week – what would you like me to tell you? That I’ve been sad – that it’s time to move on, that I’ve decided to join the nunnery … that I have contemplated death? I have had enough of lost loves, of non-committal loves, of ambivalent loves, I want a re-awakening, an interest – endurance, someone who will take care of me; want me - weirdness and all. All I’ve ever really wanted, actually – an amazement that is lasting – I have faith this can happen – I have faith.

The moon is a crescent – I have been reading – I have been absent – I should be writing, should be imagining great new lives – new adventures – but then I am checked – let known that it’s not normal for a girl to think this way – and I am restless.

Alone at the moment with my ancestors, the voodoo stares, the guilt, the drain of energy I had forgotten – I don’t want to feel their loss – the negative energy – the self sacrificing – the deprecation of so many generations – the punishment of their god. I have an uncomfortableness, and I would like to be done with it. Done.

It has been a long bad week; can I still call you?

© hyacinth bean

glowing summer nights

It's evening, the sun just setting, and the moon a thin crescent smiles out over the magnolia tree in the back yard. Slowly the lightning bugs climb to the grass tips and silently lift into the dark air blinking into existence one by one creating a whole galaxy under the tree limbs. The robins are waiting. I watched them gathering on the lawn earlier, thinking it was a bird family reunion perhaps. Then I watched what looked like a bizarre herd of dancers as they leaptdivedpouncedfluttered to catch the night green morsels in their hard little mouths. Did their insides glow now, I wondered, would it be like an x-ray? Their bones shining through the flesh and feathers, a flash of nuclear green droppings on my car window in the morning? A robin running down the gravel of the driveway, did a doublejumpdip to catch the one almost getting away - gets it – and flies up over the fence, beak glowing, into the magnolia just under the mouth of the moon… munching.

© hyacinth bean

pastels

birdwatching

forest bones

garden pavilion

the warhola holly hike

kathyfish iii

"Pastels. I like the mess they make. I often try to create with too many different kinds of media, then i get a bit of everything, and I'm all over the place with a bit of jewelry here and a pen and ink there, an acrylic, a marker watercolor collage, poetry and so many other things jumping out of my head... Guess that is why I don't have a "body" of work... but i always come back to pastels. And now, now I present you with this collection of pastels on paper and hope you will consider this wee batch of leaves as a likely enough 'body of work to keep me alive for a ling time' ... (I think Mark Twain said that). Or you can always smoke 'em," she whispered and smiled.

Hyacinth Bean is a multimedia artist existing in a place that only she knows. Send emails here: hellohyacinth@yahoo.com.