Birds behind iron, bite

I don’t always play nice when I am put on your iron perch. I don’t like the straight lines or running out of sunlight anymore than I like following the lines set forth.

Like cobalt ink on thick paper and one drop of water, I bleed. I was never meant to be in one form nor was I meant to carry the pinkish rings around my wrists from your shackled chains.

I was meant to be on a throne, instead of this cage of your own accord. You believe I am niave, blinded by my emotions, but I am neither. My vision is acute and my walk is steady.

To light a match doesn’t mean I am playing anymore than it means I’ll get burned. I can feel my way through the dark by nothing but my finger tips. I know as much as can feel because some things don’t change.

Fuck your iron perches and all the mounting weight of significant knowledge you think I don’t possess. Fuck your inability to hear me without believing you aren’t in control.

The more you control, the less I feel right and the more I don’t feel right the less control I have.

Fuck all of that, I will bite. It’s a simple price to pay for your lack of understanding compromise.

You didn’t let me perch freely on your shoulder or sit quietly next to you. The iron is cold beneath my feet and turns my blood to a warm shade of icy demise.

Take this blanket of yours a fly.

Thank you for reading ♥️

Poetry of static

Ticking clock, running water, someone talking from another room , TV belting out babble of news, yet I hear none of it.

Instead, I hear the maddening thoughts in my head spiraling into static. They distract me from the outside world, stirring my insides like a jar of sleeping butterflies shook by the dirty hands of a toddler.

I am here, atleast my body is, yet my mind is far from here in place called Not. There isn’t much there except the growing weeds of discontent, heartache and anxiousness. There are trees of growing fear that reach high into the depths of the endless sky and a river of right or wrong that flows as swift as it does after the spring thaw.

Where do I go and from what place is there words to fill the spaces and quiet the blaring static that sounds so loudly that I want to run. I could try to run, I could attempt to fill my ears with noise, but it only stops the sickness in my belly for a brief moment.

Everything around me familiar, suddenly feels foreign and strange. My footing seems to be that of a drunken chicken as I muddle through the thick muck.

I try to find a steady place to rest but just when the world seems to still, it all falls down.

There is no reprieve for what it seems is fate, yet I am unsure of it either way. I try to open my mouth and make my voice heard, but nothing comes out except for a million moths, silencing my mind and heart.

I am silent because I have been silenced by the unending turmoil that comes with the victory of sound, and so I sit in my head. I sit among the static as if it were a juice filled wine, drunken on the distorting affects and helplessly, hopeless.

Broken tea cups and loose leaf pekoe

Staring into the deeply etched porcelain crack of a dainty little tea cup, I carefully follow the zig zagging line to the invasive chip perched just so perfectly on its edge.

I ponder if I might still drink from the cup, and I could, just so as I don’t forget the break and cut my mouth in the worst formidable way.

I examined the little tea cup, it was one of my favorites, and I loved it so with its warming colors. Once there had even been a void in the cupboard, but this little cup had filled the void in just the way that the emptiness before, wasn’t so painfully obvious.

It’s true, this one little cup wasn’t a part of a set, nor did it have the same likeness as all the others, but nevertheless, I believed it was stronger than it was. I even thought it would last for a very long time, if not possibly forever.

I realize now, I misjudged this little cup. I mistook it for fine China, whereas it was merely cheap porcelain, and, although it’s monetary value doesn’t change the fact that I loved it so, it simply is the product of its making.

I could most certainly glue the little fragmented piece of cup into the chipped break of the porcelain, but the break would always be there, reminding me that it wasn’t quite the cup I thought it to be.

I could equally push the little cup to the back of the cabinet, but what would that do for me, I have to wonder. I ask myself if it would only keep the space or would it find its way back to the front, being that it has none of the same elements as its cabinet mates?

I suppose stranger things are fiction and I have never doubted the power of the little train that could, but it must first want to be as the others before it can ever try to be. I think if it is without cause or desire then the little cup is nothing more than wasted space and although it fills a physical void, it can not change that the void still exists rather it sits in its space or not.

Perhaps greif is the best way to fill an empty space than to replace it with something of an imposter, faking it’s way into my mind, daring me to think it was just as grand as the Prince Albert’s it resides next to. Perhaps, I should have accepted the empty space, and then, maybe.. Just maybe, it would bring the one that had been stolen back to it’s place.

However, it is also fair to understand that the stolen cup, long gone now, shall never return as it was just as the chipped cup will never be as it was either.

I don’t think I have the heart to toss the little cup just yet, it is true that I love it, but I don’t think I’ll mend it either. Instead, I will wait.

If it so chooses to wish hard upon a star, then it might find out what wish was granted to a little wooden boy who wished to be real. Perhaps the little cup will wish for the same thing, but I know that it mostly will think a star is too far to wish on.

It is with great sadness as I return the little cup to its place on the shelf, but even with that sadness I will give it the chance to prove its worth, because even broken things can be fixed with desirable worth if they want to be.

Thank you for reading ♥️

The Southern Oracle

Sixth painting from the series Southern Oracle
Oil on panel 24×36
Mandi Mk Fowler

I don’t exactly like to divulge the reasons or meaning behind a series or specific painting. In my opinion, I find it crippling to the viewer and diminishing to the work.

Several years ago I attended a concert for one of my most beloved female artists. I had listened, cherished and held close the lyrics close as if they were written specifically for me. I carried these musical treasures as if they had the ability to save me from every monster in the closet. It had been a long journey from the time I was 15 all the way to my 30s. In those years that music was exceptionally powerful and in some ways spiritual to me, because it was those words so eloquently written and sang with beautifully chilling vibration that literally held me through some very difficult years.

I felt this strange closeness to it, a connection. I was beyond excited to actually go see her live, let alone have some kind of deeply enlightening experience.

It definitely was, but not exactly in the way I hoped for. You see, it went wrong when she decided to explain every song she ever wrote, why and what she was going through. In those moments, it was like she had just belted me in the face while belching out everything I ever thought about those lyrical chords was all bunk.

Nothing, and I mean nothing was at all what I had believed it to be or mean. In one swift move she had completely ruined this savior I had clung to, this understanding kinship and spiritual meaning.

I learned then, that although it was interesting to know, I wished she had kept that to herself. The music was only subjective when I didn’t know anything other than what the universe wanted to say through it.

I was so upset that for awhile I put her music away and let everything she babbled about mull out of my brain. It took some time before I returned to it but when I did there were still a few songs that she had out right obliterated. I couldn’t hear anything other than her marriage dissolving or a stalking fan. Which I can assure you was never anything I heard when I had found refuge and solace in those albums.

Therefore, I choose to keep my deepest emotions, thoughts and secrets about my series or even individual paintings to myself for the sheer fact that if there is something hidden in them that’s meant just for you then I wouldn’t want to diminish that by telling you anything that might taint that view.

I have never wanted to paint anything that was merely static or white noise for a wall. In fact, I have strived hard to paint things I felt were moving or powerful. Some viewers might not experience that but they wouldn’t choose it because it matched a great set of French curtains or some HGTV make over. I wanted to create something that would speak without anyone saying a word.

I wanted them and hope they elicit a secret to be told only to you, the viewer and that somehow it has a bigger meaning than even the viewer would want to share.

Art should be loved with great conviction so that it never bores or tires. It should always speak to you.

If it doesn’t, then it’s just wall filler.

Sometimes, I like to share my direction but after that it’s up to the viewer to decide, and, I find that more prophetic than a set of tarot cards and a mystic reader.

The only thing anyone really needs to know is that every painting, no matter the subject matter, size or media has a piece of me in it.

Usually, it’s the tiniest of details, or hidden symbolism that no one knows but me, but nevertheless they are there. In some ways, I have often thought they took on a life of their own. They occasionally feel as if they breath in when I turn my back and I know without a shadow of a doubt that late at night, after the lights have been turned down I hear them talking amongst each other as if they are bestest of friends.

I suppose in some ways, they are.

Thank you for reading. ♥️