The Bookish Turkey

Scholarly fowl. Feathered, sober mishap.
Picking through our proud galleries, pausing to fluff your ruffled barbs,
and smooth your waddle with a rude and hearty claw.
If you are not dazzling, handsome and elegant you are.
A dignified, sturdy local bird, worthy of regard.

Rodin Shaw Cole © 2010

Death and Licorice

Anger and great disappointment meet like sweet vermouth and Kentucky straight bourbon, a sobering drink. No evil waits for us in the dark savoring our failures, no saints celebrating our victories, and the man in Rome is an ordinary house fly, nothing remarkable. Death and laurels, death and black ribbons. We sit together, but quite alone, on a bench chewing licorice in our shade gardens, each of us longing for a community to embrace us before we pass into the unknown, quite alone. Quite quite.

Pigments

Charcoal & Bone black, lead white, yellow ocher, and umber. Painting my space spare, hanging only a Dutch Master.

One, Eames Management Chair
One, Athos table
One, Moooie Smoke Chandelier & Tizio Table Lamp.

I would spend my hours studying my collections in the beauty of natural light, resting my eyes in the soft shadows. This palette soothes my restless soul.

~Rodin Shaw Cole © 2009

Poison

O bliss is for the mind that does not think. My tortured soul finds no peace in it's studies. Education often amplifies that which drives me mad.

I pass my time with godlessness, exploring the alluring twinkle of darkness, not finding Satan in the shadows.

Who be the observer? What animates my flesh and bones, and what also occupies mine own space?

O the cliche of life, cursed consciousness , and the poisonous prick of knowledge.

~ Rodin Shaw Cole © 2009

The Wasp

parasitica, meganomiidae
paper-pulp & brood bearing larvae
petiole, polistinae
antennae & crabronidae
ovipositor, aculeata
ocellus & ampulicida

~ Rodin Shaw Cole © 2009

Insomnia

Wendy was bored with the novelty of having everything she'd always wanted. Under the spell of a lingering melancholy she wandered barefoot across the lawn and down to her little tea house by the sea. There, savoring a last cup, she listened to the song of a fog horn sounding into the darkness before ultimately leaping to her watery grave.

~ Rodin Shaw Cole © 2009

The Trick

He paused, taking a moment to observe an early portrait of two men (one with his arm around the other), a lithograph of the human skeletal system, and on the mantle next to a pair of scissors was what appeared to be a collection of doll heads suspended from a series of strings. However, the most curious thing of all was the box of prosthetic eyes that he found while prying through this stranger's medicine cabinet.

~Rodin Shaw Cole © 2009