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Aftermath

I am unsure
Everything has changed.
If you question my response to the current,
So do I.

Is this transition, or is it the aftermath?

I follow;
a fact I have been disregarding for years.

I attempt

but I don't know how hard I try.

I listen to a silent heart break.

I hear things

but I can't recognize them.

Regardless of my desperate search
for a truth in love,

I have my family, whom I take for granted. They are love, surely.

But how many people is enough?
How many loves is enough?
How many different kinds of love are enough?

And why are there variations?

Oh I don't know,
and if everyone in this selfish 'generation'

claims

their own
then we have some new, refreshing , terrifying breakthrough.

The First Summer

It’s hard.

Yes, I know,
Thank you
Sir.

Anyone else outside of ourselves
climb and wind
up smooth stone
magically

reaching another platform.

No solidity.

I was brushing into
"in love"
Again.

But aren’t we all
just a little silly.

Having our glitches, our obsessions,
our failures and our families.

I can only speak for myself,
In this time
especially.

We communicate,
but we all misinterpret.

Perhaps thats love,
an end to miscommunication.

Oh I have no idea.

I would have called it defeat
in months before,
in years;

the absence of understanding.

I’m beginning to lean,
without belief or intuition or logic,

tipping into an explanation
that has no explanation.

Injury

I can only see you in full color
your fat assed syllables dying
in the straight faced air
with the wild aromas

gin and peppermint

chapped lips
in the rearview mirror

robbing the world
of its daydream

perverted memories
of beatified cold sores

heavy
and too soon

they yield

to my ankles

crooked and hung
meaty out the back door

Later I know

the minature borders
drawn deep into the femur

a fractured continent

lit

Dick Cheney or Chuck Chaplin

At some point last Tuesday
Kris returned from the Dead

then two days later
went back.

He stuck around long enough to recall his former area code
to push the buttons, talk into the receiver
and leave a message on his home machine
announcing the finalists for Halloween 2012.

There was also something
about a check for last month's rent

an apology
and promise

legitimized with the news
of a Subway around the corner

interviewing applicants
for part-time positions
for third and second shifts
for the summer or forever

New Work

Wallet

Storefront

Study for Storefront

Landscape


Photo for Landscape

Eyes on the Street

This is the proposal for a permanent public project I am working on this summer at College Court, which is an apartment complex for the elderly run by the Milwaukee Housing Authority. Any feedback/criticism you guys might have would be great, as the piece is subject to change from the proposal as I begin constructing the benches.

Eyes on the Street
a proposal by James Pederson

Introduction: A book by urban theorist Jane Jacobs entitled The Death and Life of Great American Cities, discusses the idea of “stoop sitting” and how it insures that there are always “eyes on the street”. This phenomenon is a critical component of the self-regulating urban street. According to Jacobs, when people spend significant amounts of time sitting on the stoops or in the front yards of their buildings, they not only enhance the sense of human presence and community in a neighborhood, but also insure that attention is paid to the conditions and activities of the neighborhood streets and sidewalks. These vital conduits between the various residential and commercial buildings and the people who occupy them make up a neighborhood. The benefits of this can include better awareness of the need for street repair, crime deterrence, and an overall awareness of changes and developments within a community.

Concept Statement: In talking with Bill Goodrum, I was very interested when I was told about how much time residents spend sitting outside the front entrance on lawn chairs watching the neighborhood during the warmer months. Bill described how there is space in the back area of College Court, yet most residents seem to prefer the front specifically. He also mentioned that even during the colder months many people like to sit by the windows and just watch what is going on outside. It seemed to me that there must be something about observing the activities of the neighborhood surrounding College Court that interested the residents.

In light of what Jacobs has to say, I see the residents who spend time sitting out front as doing something much more than simply passing the time. They are keeping an eye on things; and it is happening naturally without the need for some sort of organized effort. I truly believe this has a real social value. It seems fitting then, that it would be useful to the residents for me to create something that would facilitate the activity of street-watching more substantially than the lawn chairs they currently use. Additionally, I wanted something that would create a relationship between the street and the residents who are seated and watching it. It is also my hope that the
benches will catch the interest of passers-by, and they might take note of the residents sitting outside, as well as College Court and its presence in the community as well.

I am proposing to build three benches designed to to be placed underneath the awning adjacent to the main entrance, in the spot which usually has the plastic lawn chairs. Each bench will respond to the Highland Boulevard street-scape which it is facing by depicting a mirrored-image of what occupants of the benches would be seeing across the street. This will be accomplished through a combination of sculptural relief and painting directly on the bench. Each of the nine buildings across the street will be recreated as a sculpture/armrest, and the space in between each building will be depicted in paintings on the backs of each chair.

Front View

Side View

Installation View

we are not what we were.

Nightmares

I’m too serious of a lier

to be taken seriously.

I don’t understand,

and that’s a confession.

My ideas are almost

almost always

about love.

Burn your tongue,

you don’t even know what that means.

Child, she wishes under her breath

to a portrait.

She sees someone unfamiliar;

A catapulted story

sent over a bridge that’s

loosing it’s sacred foundations.

I dream about burnt nun’s

resulted from a war.

I am identifying bodies.

They are all so small

and still dressed in ashy nightgowns.

The smell is repulsive.

And the sight is

honest;

In all it’s disgusting truth.

Stages

I have no idea if I will be blamed for this.

My mother died last August, two weeks before my 19th birthday.

Does that have anything to do with it, nothing at all,

Or does that hold everything.

I have become

I don’t want to discuss that.

I don’t write often enough anymore.

I have nothing to write about.

They would disagree.

How could a community, a You, have a response to these

personal statements.

Is it weak writing?

What is weakness?

Is it breaking up with your girlfriend

or boyfriend or lying to your parents,

who you love or is it failing at your dreams

or is it not getting

just what you expected, what you craved.

Craving, desire,

tell me it is not selfish, tell me it is survival.

I am as confused as I have ever been,

trapped in a very short spiral

that ends in

found this on the internet

Good Riddance, My Friend

It's raining like the dickens outside

It is enough to make me cry like that

time, well, I guess all the times,

you kept your boob brain

in a jar

And it was scary,

The lightening was disney and where is walt?

And it is scary, 

The lightening is realer than it ever has been

I'm worried about my windows,

Should they be crying like this?

Oh Dear Gog,

I meant you, Dear God,

my mouth is full of spit and tears dear god,

Is this what you meant dear god by suffuring dear gog?

It is okay dear god, I'm getting over the rain now dear god,

It is now background noise dear god,

How long did it take for you to get used to it

Dear God?

Amen

I've been thinking,

I have been thinking,

when I finish the book you gave me,

I know I'll throw it in the gutter, 

and you might just find it

while you smoke on my stoop

I'll be watching, 

In my midnight stupor

while you raise your right hand

taking an oath of tweedle dee 

tweedle dum,

then next weekend,

you will someday surrender your body

like you suck your thumb

like somebody's buoy bobbing gently 

So now 

I will write this God Damned paper

And God dammed it I will make this 

college experience the best gog damned time

of my life

and then tonight 

before bed 

I will lay quite still

I breath in and exhale

little thoughts about tomorrow

and the next day

(Again, I'm sorry 

I'm sorry, I'm sorry you can

have any exorbitantly priced luxury you choose

and disregard the cost

It is not my concern right now) and more rap lyrics

- not my own words

So a few days, weeks, months, years from now

Again, we drive to Wendy's 

where again you'll only get fries

and I know you like that

because when I look at you

I am your dopey door knocker

I am your bent bristle brush

I am the last thing you breath on

before you shut your eyes

and sleep

sleep

sleep

a long sleep

sleeeeeeeeeeeeeep

Frozen in Waiting

Standing at the bus stop like stone guardians

Too cold to look up, too bored to shiver.

Resisting the urge to glance down the street, for

It will not change Time.

Parents' peers exit parking structures and,

Keenly aware that it is Friday Night,

Walk casually to bars and restaurants

Rarely paying attention to these grave keepers of the corner.

Hooded cement faces,

Absorbing all the mundane excitements

Doomed to a fate of waiting forever

Because it just went by like two minutes ago.

Nothing but time...

Now, who are these ladies with amazing legs?!

Invading the crosswalk and turning the head of at least one statue

They march briskly in heels and

Shiver at the stronghold door

Until some boyfriend lets them in.

Unfinished thought

I can’t get over the lies

they run now

in my river as salmon,

against my natural stream.

But I’m just a river lying to the ocean.

And I will come clean with salt ridden wounds

eventually.

Not today.

Today I sell bouquets on the curb,

presenting blue, red, lavender, pink

in plastic buckets.

I count, I choose, I pick, I occasionally

dare to be indifferent.

But they sit.

Please buy.

The cost is still in question.

What are they worth?

What are you worth?

The sun is behaving

behind clouds,

I take a seat on

an overturned bucket.

Suddenly realizing

these silly plants I have for sale

are my soul.

Are in my veins and my arteries,

pumping vital green juice back to my

contradiction heart.

I tell my customers

Drink them, drown in them or simply say

“No Thank you, Miss.”

I will always ask why

but the passer

will only wonder

what kind of saleswoman asks so many damn questions.

At this point, I often step away,

allowing for theft.

Just to leave them,myself, unattended.

Except from Heaven #1

a blackbox recorder
would've remembered us better

I see

the chewed off head
of a babysitter

the stars and the stripes

and our laughter
struck across the neighborhood

***
During the Lord's Prayer
Irene would take smoke breaks

Grace and I stood alone
in the quiet of the rectory

watching crows
fly into the glass

****