The Avenue, Hampden neighborhood, Baltimore

Outsider art is alive and well in Baltimore.  This construction, Nevermore, by Bryan Cunningham, is at Paradiso on 36th Street in the Hampden neighborhood.  If you need to have this—I know someone out there absolutely must — call the Paradiso at 410-243-1317 for price. They carry other great area artists wo may also be found in the American Visionary Art Museum (http://www.avam.org/)

Watching the Stars is by Chris-Roberts Antieau, a Michigan artist whose fabric paintings are also in the American Visionary Art Museum. This one may be found at the Paradiso also.

Willing to go to any lengths...are we?

Robert Desnos

I Have Dreamed of You so Much 

 by Robert Desnos

I have dreamed of you so much that you are no longer real.
Is there still time for me to reach your breathing body, 

to kiss your mouth and make your dear voice come alive again?
I have dreamed of you so much that my arms, 

grown used to being crossed on my chest as I hugged your shadow, 

would perhaps not bend to the shape of your body.
For faced with the real form of what has haunted me 

and governed me for so many days and years, 

I would surely become a shadow.
O scales of feeling.
I have dreamed of you so much that surely 

there is no more time for me to wake up.
I sleep on my feet prey to all the forms of life and love, 

and you, the only one who counts for me today, 

I can no more touch your face and lips than touch the lips and
face of some passerby.
I have dreamed of you so much,

have walked so much, talked so much, slept so much
with your phantom, that perhaps the only thing left

for me is to become a phantom among phantoms, 

a shadow a hundred times more shadow than the shadow the
moves and goes on moving, brightly, over the sundial of your life.

....

Desnos at Thereisienstadt concentration camp

Desnos was sent to Buchenwald and from there to other concentration camps. At Auschwitz, in May of 1944, the poet Andre Verdet, who was also a prisoner, saw Desnos standing in the rain in a crowd of men who were emaciated and dying of hunger. The crematoria were belching smoke, and the S.S. guards as they walked by would say, “You are all going to die.” Verdet saw Desnos going from one group to another. Taking a man by the arm, he would read the lines in his hand. Then, Verdet said, a miracle happened: Desnos spoke to the men of their future with such confidence that they forgot where they were and their faces lit up with hope.

Would we?

But Would He Do It Again Today?

I Love You Sweatheart by Thomas Lux

(and yes, the spelling is the point)

A man risked his life to write the words.
A man hung upside down (an idiot friend
holding his legs?) with spray paint
to write the words on a girder fifty feet above
a highway.  And his beloved,
the next morning driving to work...?
His words are not (meant to be) so unique.
Does she recognize his handwriting?
Did he hint to her at her doorstep the night before
of "something special, darling, tomorrow"?
And did he call her at work
expecting her to faint with delight
at his celebration of her, his passion, his risk?
She will know I love her now,
the world will know my love for her!
A man risked his life to write the world.
Love is like this at the bone, we hope, love
is like this, Sweatheart, all sore and dumb
and dangerous, ignited, blessed--always,
regardless, no exceptions,
always in blazing matters like these: blessed.