Tumeyland

24 Hour Comic from 1989 – The World Seen Through Mr. Foster’s Glasses by Paul Tumey

2011-08-13T15:37:00.001-07:00

rain and tangled

2011-06-29T14:41:00.001-07:00

June 27, 2011

Acrylic and metallic dust on canvas. 17x20 inches.

When I Fall In Love Again (Note to Self)

2011-03-14T20:32:00.000-07:00

by Paul Tumey

Give her a break.

She’s probably as scared

as you are.

While you are in love

don’t forget

to ask who made that juniper bush

that grows

out of a canyon wall

like a baby

carried on its mother.

While you are falling

ignore the parachute

fly through the sky

watch the sun melting

stand on a desert dune and witness

the universe contract into nothingness

as it tends to do.

Notice the space

between the stars

the space

between you and her

that is what’s good.

You will find

the way she sleeps into you

like a rock hugged

by a waterfall

or a juniper bush

tucked

into a warm and safe place

Brings tears

big wet wonderful surging

that blur your vision.

Wipe them away

to water the plantings

And be ready to see their

tender green leaves unfolding

They need you to see them

Do not be afraid of the good moments with her.

If you don’t want to

you will not have to

let them come back and haunt you.

Hold this slowly dying candle to the window

when night is outside

and the dark is switched on

look with your eyes

see with your heart

the flame’s reflection

in the cold glass pane.

Twin flames dancing.

When the flames

see each other

through you

love will have found you

again.

-March 14, 2011

Napoleon In Rage (and the language that he used)

2010-06-07T11:32:00.000-07:00

June 5, 2010

I glanced a few times at this image, while painting it.

At some point, a memory of rendering a large pen-and-ink drawing based on this image when I was 15 or 16 came to me. I think it was shown in a county fair 4H art show. I remember it was matted and placed on a wall across from the prize goats.

On the album cover, his t-shirt prophetically shows a Triumph motorcycle. A couple of years later, he would wipe out on a Triumph, disappear from the public eye for a while, and re-invent himself. I am also shape-shifting... so perhaps that is why I painted this image.

However this is an artist rendering an image from 1965 in the year 2010... and so the final painting has some of his 2010 shape in it:

2010-05-28T10:03:00.000-07:00

A few scans from my notebooks.

A drawing made in an organically inebriated sun-induced haze on a Kaui beach in February, 2007. That's a weather-worn tree in the drawing, clinging to the beach... I identified very much with that tree.

Memphis Slim. Check out his comments on Blues In the Mississippi Night.

Waiting for a couple of Moons Over My Hammy plates at Denny's, my boy and I made up this comic strip.

Mollysongs

2010-05-07T10:31:00.000-07:00

Mollysongs

~ For Molly
B.1999 - D. May 6, 2010

Mollydog I called her
usually Molly and once in a while
damn dog!
She had some songs,
like 'Sweet Brown Dog,' which made her smile

Sweet brown dog of mine,
loves to be patted on her behind

and then there's

MOLLY:
Queen of all she sees,
Molly - Queen of the seven seas,
Emperess of the dog treat
Majesty of the light of the moon
Friend to many, enemy to no one
Comforter of my bruised heart
Maker of the snooze fart fog,
My Molly - My sweet dog.

Sometimes in the car
I'd sing to her Ohhhhhhhhh
there once was a dog named Molly
She was quite quite jolly
She loved sport but not folly thaaaaat
Molly!

Now I am singing the song of soul pressing mud grief missing her, and the song of
gratitude for her gifts -
the gift of showing I could be a father
the gift of saving me from abject, desparing lonliness
the gift of someone to care for when my son had to go away every week
the gift of walking me out into the world
the gift of how important others are
the gift of
her songs, sweet
sweet
Mollysongs.

Peon and Petunia - Comic Strip 1

2010-04-26T10:25:00.000-07:00

April 25, 2010

My Paintings - A Short Film

2010-03-26T14:10:00.001-07:00

Lovers In A Different House

2010-02-21T11:44:00.000-08:00

song lyrics by Paul Tumey

"Quiet," she said to me that night
"You must be a shadow in this dark house,
Or my father might wake and in his nightgown find us
And then we would be lovers in a different house
lovers in a different house
lovers in a different house."

I held my breath til my heart would burst
As we tiptoed the stairs to her room
Outside his door I heard her father in his sleep curse
He said, "Damn you all and to all I wish your doom
and to all I wish your doom
and to all I wish your doom."

From the candle she held in her hand her face reflected the flame
For her beauty there were no words in this world
Though we were in silence there was no shame
The look in her eyes was an arrow to my heart hurled
an arrow to my heart hurled
an arrow to my heart hurled.

The moonlight poured into her room and dripped down the walls
He bed lay in a corner, a mattress of straw
She laid down and shed her gown in a waterfall
She said, "Love me and silence me if I should call
silence me if I should call
silence me if I should call."

In the dawn her father woke and found her in my arms
In the afternoon I took her for my lawful spouse
It is the evening now and her father's shadow cannot harm
For we are lovers in a different house
lovers in a different house
lovers in a different house.

In my own experience, my lovers' fathers have almost always cast a shadow on our relationship, for better or worse. It is a part of the mystery of how we go on. I stayed home "sick" from work for an entire week in 1989 and wrote many songs and poems. This is one of them. There is a note on the sheet of paper on which I wrote this song about the chords: "D/F/Dm."

Paul Tumey Comics: SHADOWMAN 1983/1995/2010

2010-02-10T17:50:00.001-08:00

The first SHADOWMAN comic I made was inspired by Art Speigelman’s Prisoner On The Hell Planet. This is a graphic narrative in the Expressionism style, rendered in scratchboard.
Scratchboard is a heavy sheet of white paper covered with a black clay coating. To get the white lines, you have to scrape away the black part. So when you render in the way you normally would, you get an eerie negative image.
Using this form for comics was brilliant, and I wanted in! I played with the idea of darkness, shadows, and positive/negative parts of both visual and emotional realities.
Here’s my scratchboard comic, made in 1983:

Over the years, I’ve drawn several SHADOWMAN comics. I moved the style from scratchboard into into ink on paper which is a lot faster. I think of them more as comic book haikus. Here’s one that, by my best guess, was done in 1995:

And here is a SHADOWMAN comic I made today, Feb.10 2010.

Paul Tumey Comic Book: The Infernal Organ – a fable of hearts, kings, and full moons (1990)

2010-02-09T21:54:00.001-08:00

When I created this comic book, I wanted to make something that felt like the imaginary tales of Hans Christian Andersen. I was also inspired by the stream-of-consciousness stories that comic book master John Stanley created in the Little Lulu series .

My own story took a dark turn. It was all intuitive, the story was totally spontaneous. I have no idea why I put in such horrific imagery. It was the song in my heart that day.

This was my first comic book work after taking a 3,000 honeymoon bicycle ride with Susan. I remember feeling very focused and powerful.

Staying at a temporary home in the isolated hills of Pennsylvania and having no money, I only had a blue-ink ball point pen and a black felt-tip marker available to draw with. I figured it would make little difference when Xeroxed, and it didn’t… it printed out in even blacks. I made 25 copies of the little mini comic, of which I still have one. I don’t know where the other 24 are, but they were all mailed out to various friends and fellow comic book creators. I hope they still get read once in a while.

The pages below are scans of the original art, with some grays added by me on the computer.

Paul Tumey Comic Book: Goodbye to the Factory (1990)

2010-01-27T10:58:00.001-08:00

In 1990, I was living in Leominster, Massachusetts with Susan. We were soon to married. This was my two years of experiencing blue collar America. This comic book shares my experiences and feelings about working in a factory.

(Click on each image to enlarge and read)

Record Review: Paul Simon's Graceland Blows My Mind in 1986

2010-01-24T15:24:00.000-08:00

(Record Review)"Simon's Graceland: A Masterful Musical Meld
by Paul Christley Tumey
First Published: Capital City Magazine #24 (Nov, 1986)

Where were you when you first heard Paul Simon's Graceland?

It's one of those events where things are different ever after... especially if you were listening in the fall of 1986, when the record first entered the world. It was like nothing else we'd heard.

I was 24 and living with a 44-year old lovely lady. She procured a copy on a cassette tape and lent me her Walkman (remember those?). The music heralded both a new optimism and realism in my life as I matured into a freshly minted adult American.

(Click on the image at left to enlarge and read. )

It's my belief we become different people when we listen to some songs. Graceland's new sounds subtly made me into someone new. Part of that newness for me was becoming a published writer.

This article was one of my first published articles. My buddy Frank Young was the editor of a remarkable weekly magazine, Capitol City (Tallahassee if the capitol of Florida) and he bought some articles from me. I will always be grateful to Frank for making me a professional writer.

Although I've published a lot of record reviews since then, this is one of my favorites. For all the clumsy slightly overblown writing, I managed to get close, I think, to what listening to the music felt like. I was heavily inspired by what Greil Marcus had done with his landmark book on American music, Mystery Train. I think I at least conveyed the new experience the music held for the listener. The publisher invited me to a staff meeting one day and played a message on the office answering machine. It went something like this:

"I just read Paul Tumey's review of Graceland. I just want to say how great it is that you can get such quality writing in a free loal magazine. I'm going to go out right now (voice cracking) and buy the record!"

The record was only weeks old when this review was published, I was gratified to see it win a bunch of awards and become a critical and popular favorite. I guess today you could say it's a classic, a landmark record.

So much has changed since 1986... .and so much is the same. Personal computers, email, the Web, Obama... surely these are days of miracle and wonder. Politically, things in Africa shifted... but overall, the world feels much the same to me as it did back in 1986. Simon's compassion echoes to the recent earthquake in Haiti: "Somebody sing, somebody cry why, why, why?"

As for musical influences, just listen to The Givers, a youthful amazing new group that owe a lot to Graceland. Go here and listen to their amazing 5-song EP and you may feel a trace of that initial excitement Graceland caused when it was it new. Sublime sounds that make you feel good and expansive.

From one Paul to another: Thanks, man.

My 2006 Summer Vacation: The Underworld

2010-01-19T22:03:00.000-08:00

There is more to the World than what first seems to be.

River Saint in Blue
(2006, Acrylic on canvas, small)

In 2005-6, my mother was slowly dying in her home in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Even though I was far away for most of this, in Seattle, Washington, I was very connected to what was happening to her. I had a trauma bond with her that went back to my birth and was nurtured throughout my childhood.

Because of this, I believe I was granted a temporary passage to a place we all go through at death and times of great suffering. She was halfway there for a long time, and that seemed to open up passage for me, as well.

I was surprised to discover there is a place underneath depression and sorrow. It is a place where all the waste goes. Fingernail clippings, lost hairs, killed minutes, shit, discarded objects, untaken opportunities, wasted rotting food. Some cultures have called this place The Underworld... or a world underneath ours.

Sometimes when I laid down, or when I meditated, or was held, or once in a crowd of people, I went to the Underworld. It was abrupt and weird, like a person in Wyoming suddenly transported to Paris, or the jungles of North Borneo in a heartbeat. I got so I could tell when I was going, because I felt tugging on my soul, like an undertow. It was especially strong at the base of my skull, in back. I would surrender to it, and blip... I'd be there. It was jarring and wonderful. I went to the Underworld seven times.

On my first trip there, I was merely in a large space that was mostly dark. It smelled very bad. I emptied my stomach, in fact. I sank to my knees in filth, decaying matter, and sewage. Then, it seemed to be a huge warehouse. So large it had it's own atmosphere. Very very dark and echoey. Then, I saw a figure coming to me. It was cloaked, with a hood. Sometimes the cloak opened and I saw the white bones of a rib cage. Behind the white ribs were ravens. I was terrified. The figure opened her cloak and a furious swarm of black birds poured out and attacked me. they tore my flesh, over and over. I collapsed by a river, as the swarms of birds ate all the flesh from my bones.

The Dark Being
(2006, paper mache and acrylic on canvas, medium)

On my next visit, I was back, and the shadowy figure was not as terrifying. In time, I understood the being had female energy. I began to communicate with it. She was very wise and answered so many questions for me. I am still learning from what she told me.

"Love like a sheet in the wind. Shape the wind, give it flowing form, but never trap it. "

In time I saw she was/is a benevolent figure, with great compassion. She was the essence of all the women in my life, and also of love itself.

I became more and more aware of the river. I saw a stone bench and that is where I would sit and wait for the Dark Being to come. I always knew she was approaching, because I could see the black birds flying in the distance, getting closer and closer. I also saw a stone bench across the river. It was bathed in golden light and I wanted very badly to cross the river to it.

I stepped into the River and the second I did, I suddenly became aware of millions of people all around me in the River, as far as my eyes could see in all directions. Everyone was trying to get across to the other side. Someone near me tripped and fell. I helped them up. I saw lots of people struggling. I began to escort people through the waters. they seemed very weak and I seemed very strong. I helped dozens onto the opposite bank. I understood I was not supposed to cross over yet.

The Underworld
(2006, acrylic on white door, large)

By my final visit I had come to see that most people pass through this place. But some linger, to help others cross the treacherous dark waters of the river. My dark mentor was one. I called her The River Saint.

Once, during this time, I was able to bring a friend down there with me. We did not speak to each other in this world while it was happening. Afterwards, we compared notes and had both experienced the same things, although I had understood the bones he was trying to pull up from the muddy muck were his dead brother's, and that he could not and should not disturb them. He had not known this.

Another time, I was allowed to bring something back. The River Saint told if I used it, it would bring me great fulfillment, If I neglected what I carried back, it would cause me great pain. I brought a sketchbook back.

My Mom passed over in November of 2006. My journeys ended, although for a time I could feel the River Saint's presence. Sometimes it seemed she was holding me. I can sometimes hear her voice in my mind in the dead of night. She is very creepy.

For a long time, I was reluctant to openly share this experience. I am still not sure if it is right for me to do so. I was also cautious about sounding off my rocker. But I have since discovered I am not so remarkable as I may think. Others have experienced similar journeys and there are hundreds upon hundreds of recorded accounts of The Underworld and River Saints (the Greeks called her Hecate). Shamans of all cultures have gone on visionquests to The Underworld (and the Upper World, which I have also seen once). The signs to the Underworld permeate our culture. Sometmes you can see in someone's eyes if they've been. I found a book, Losing A Parent: Passage to a New Way of Living by Alexandra Kennedy, in which a very similar set of circumstances and experiences to mine are recorded.

There is more to the World than is at first apparent.

Since I saw us all -- everyone -- in the River, I no longer fear strangers. Everyone is just trying to get across. Everyone wants the same fundamental things. I am no different from anyone else in this regard. I am connected now. I feel a kind of warmth and caring for everyone in general now. It is easy to be in the world. I miss going to the Underworld, and I miss the feeling of calm and peace the visions gave me.

New Painting; "Center"

2010-01-17T21:48:00.000-08:00

As I grow, I see ever more clearly that the essence of staying centered is to allow yourself to constantly shift and reconfigure.

This set of four square panels I painted in December of 2009 is designed to fit together in any orientation and sequence. The paint was applied on each panel using a different tool and technique, brush, rag, sponge, and fingers. The design was inspired by a cool toy I picked up at the Chicago Art Institute in 2008.

The word "Center" is written on one of the panels. Can you find it?

Here's three random configurations (click to make larger):

The Pretty Pony and the Lonely Window Washer

2010-01-16T19:55:00.000-08:00

A bedtime story
by Paul Christley Tumey (with help from Reid Christley Tumey)

Once upon a time there was a lonely window washer. Every morning he would set out with his buckets, wipers, ladders, ropes and pulleys. He washed the windows of short and tall buildings, the circle windows of brick mansions, the large plate glass show windows of department stores, and the stained glass windows of churches. He even kept the little square windows of his glasses gleaming and spotless.

He worked for a sourpuss named Mr. Doctor Professor President Commodore Octagus, who owned a company that cleaned everything. These titles were all self-bestowed, because Octagus felt he deserved to be looked up to, since he was such a successful businessman. Mr. Doctor Professor President Commodore Octagus was never satisfied with the lonely window washer's work. "Cleaner! Brighter! SPOT-less!" the Commodore would command. His voice, however, was squeaky and high, and he had two big tufts of wild hair that poked out from the side of his head, so he was not scary. Still, the lonely window washer worked very hard for him.

He felt lonely because every day he would gaze through the glass windows he cleaned and see cool people on the other side. He saw mothers, fathers, children, office workers, bakers, salespeople, and so on. He could never speak to any of them, because he was separated by the glass. Most them ignored him as if he were not even there.

He washed every window in town, except for the windows of his own home, an old cottage in the woods outside town. The windows were so dirty that not only could one scarcely see out of them, very little sunlight came into his house at all. He simply had no need of light in his home. He had lived there so long, he knew where everything was, and there was never anyone else around. He never had cause to say, "Hey look at this!" so he never needed to wash his own windows.

Until the day he saw the pretty pony.

It was an especially bright, shiny day. The lonely window washer, whose name, if it matters, was Kirby, happened to be washing the windows of the tallest building in town. It had taken him several days, and he was up the 1,678th floor. He worked from a little platform that was raised and lowered with ropes and pulleys that squeaked a little like Mr. Doctor Professor President Commodore Octagus.

As usual, he looked through the window, expecting to see a person or people not seeing him. What he saw through the window of the 1,678th floor surprised him so much that he just about fell off his platform. A horse! It was a regular office, with carpet desks, papers, and computers, and a horse! No people, just a magnificent reddish-brown pretty pony standing there.

And the pony was looking right at him! Kirby said "Hi!" before he could help himself, and then laughed to think he should know that he couldn't be heard through the thick glass. The pony nodded and whinnied to him. Kirby dropped his jaw and his wiper.

"Can you hear me?" He asked, hopefully.

The horse nodded and stamped, saying so much with soft brown eyes.

Because of the pony, Kirby felt excited and could hardly sleep that night. The next morning, he decided to make a Four-Part Plan to get the pretty pony. He got out large sheets of paper, rulers, compasses, protractors and lots of pencils and erasers. But, as he began to work at his kitchen table, he realized he needed more light to see his Four-Part Plan.

So Kirby found his buckets and wipers and in short order, the windows were spotless and gleaming. Sunlight came down into the rooms like waterfalls of happiness.

At work, the lonely window washer pulled himself back up to to the 1,678th floor and to his great relief, the horse was still there. He took out his Four-Part Plan from the back pocket of his window washer's coveralls, unfolded the large sheet and began to follow the steps:

STEP 1: Clean window again
STEP 2: Cut large hole in window
STEP 3: Invite pretty pony onto platform
STEP 4: Extra uniforms and hat

The lonely window washer had brought along two extra sets of white coveralls and a hat, which were the official uniform of all window washers. Once the pony was on his little window washer's platform, Kirby said "Now, be very careful up here. We're super high up and I wouldn't want you to fall off." Then he put the two extra uniforms and the hat onto the pony. From the ground, it looked like three men were on the window washing platform.

With Commodore-like squeaks, the platform slowly lowered to the street.

Just as he reached the ground, Mr. Doctor Professor President Commodore Octagus drove up in his squeaking black limo. "Kirby! SPOT-less!" he began to bark out his usual commands and then stopped. "Is that a... a.... horse?"Just then, one of two uniforms on the pony slipped and fell to the ground, exposing his muscular butt and long black tail, which swished excitedly.

Without a word, Kirby jumped onto the pretty pony and said to him, "I hope you don't mind, but could I ask you for a lift home?" In answer, the pretty pony galloped down the busy city street. People stopped and stared. A nine-year old girl pointed, said, "Iwanthimdaddy!" and began to stamp her feet.

"Fired! Kirby, you're FIRED!" Octagus shouted after him, but it no longer mattered. Kirby was so happy. He and the pony ran down the city streets, through the neighborhoods and parks and out to the country. It was a glorious ride on a happy sunny day. It was the best time of the lonely window washer's life.

In time, Kirby and the pretty pony were at his home. "Well, this is it. I hope you like it," he said kind of shyly. The pony swished it's tail and walked in. Kirby felt enormously happy, as if his heart had grown larger.

The pretty pony and Kirby lived happily ever after.

By the way, so did Mr. Doctor Professor President Commodore Octagus, who took over Kirby's job and discovered that, being high, as window washing often required, people always looked up to him.

The end.

January 14, 2010/Seattle

Note: From time to time, I tell a bedtime story. Usually it's for Reid, but sometimes it has been for lovers. I never have any idea of what I'll say, but usually the story has a start, middle, end and makes some kind of weird sense. I have stopped being surprised by this. Thanks to my son for remembering the details of this story that my rusty mind had already lost, and for suggesting others.

Tumey's List

2010-01-12T21:08:00.001-08:00

by Paul Christley Tumey

Tonight, home from the gleaming
new shopping center, I am thinking of the poem
the one I didn't write
about that stand of trees
It would have been a lot better
than this, less artifice,
truer to a tree than to a tree missed
I would have said (I remember
walking home to your brown arms
late one night through them) the tall pinetops
were green chandeliers
The woods the most
haunted of mansions
where every night
the wind bands played to thousands of dancing
branches
I would have said
we were all millionaires

The trees are gone now
The few acres I would shortcut
to work through to be in the woods
before I was in the weeds
They saved me but I could not save them
I swear I saw hobbits
and leprechauns in the gathering dusk
And once I made love to you
in the moonlight your back against
the strong thighs of a magnolia
They saved me

The town started ten blocks away
a hundred years ago, so
it's a confound progress did not commence sooner
I think the stand was an asset
in the erect tent portfolio of a banker tacit
He must have sold it for money
I cannot see anything else to be gained

In the early days of the construction
the magnificent old trees
there through the wars, the yellow fever, the fires, more wars, they
fell to obscene destruction
it took so little time
cars prowling like guards
on the border roads struck the fleeing victims, the ones
who squeezed under wire fences
and ran for their lives
Here's Tumey's List:
a brown field rabbit
the dream of a boy sleeping
in the arms of mother and father,
a box
turtle, a turquiose
lizard, a packet
of love letters and a pregnant
opossum, some rats
and a part of me

I saw them all go
as the forest floor melted with no hesitation
into concrete lit with a halogen glow
and rooted family split into visitations

I wish I would have written beauty
instead of this sad commencement of grace
I miss walking through you,
the shadows and light of my heart's trace

This poem is too much like our new shopping center
Tonight I browsed in FROZEN FOODS
where once the sap-ended pine needles made a bed
for this lazy fool to dream
The squirrels would have loved
aisle seven, SNACKS AND NUTS
I think I see the stream running
through FRUITS AND VEGETABLES
It's beautiful, you would have laughed --

People don't understand

They are buying dinner and maybe lunch
and perhaps cookies for the kids
and the man weeping in CLEANING PRODUCTS
is a weirdo what is he doing? looks like
he's stretching to pick swaying summer wildflowers
that are out of reach

-1987/2010 - Tallahassee/Seattle

the first love poem in the world with a dentist

2010-01-11T10:22:00.000-08:00

by Paul Christley Tumey

- For Susan

Nova in my jaw.
Your cool fingers
once soothed the pains
in my boiling stomach -
a slight miracle of empathy
(I dare not call it love).
My cracked tooth
exploded in my jaw.
You could soothe, but you could not cure the flaw.

So you wait sweetly,
a Buddha with your book,
in the waiting room.

Eight hundred dollars
to save the tooth - ouch!
I wince at my sterile poverty.
Fifty to pull it.
"Pull it, Dr. Lamb" I say.
And be as gentle as your name.
And so I think (of anything but
drills and pliers) sunny meadows,
woolen creatures, fluffy
clouds, nitrous oxide animals
grazing, masticating, chopping
their chins dripping
with bits of broken grass.

Novacaine seconds tick by,
extracted from the hours of the days.
"You're doing fine." Beth tells me.
(I know her name is Beth
because she introduced herself
even though the Dr. didn't.)
Dr. Lamb wraps his hairy arm
around my head, here it comes
I hold the cry of fear
and he wrenches a part of me out,
and I think of you, waiting for me,
your long red hair, sad eyes, how your touch says so much more than your words--
and there's no pain anymore.

I return to you,
you now forty pages richer from your book,
like a returning soldier,
proud and exhausted.
Instead of a purple heart,
I have a purple, stitched gum,
swollen and sore.
I wanted to write you love.
Instead I'm writing a tooth extraction,
a horrible, frightening subject.
The love is sometimes
horrible and frightening to me
though I wish it weren't.
But you suffered with me then,
and I am yours now.
I will suffer with you,
soothe your novas, and
sit with you through -
we will suffer more, but we shall laugh
we will open our mouths wide, drink in joy
and the love will be a new kind of nova for me.

- April 3, 1988 / Tallahassee, Florida

You should know there are other love poems about this woman, who I married. This was the first poem to her, though. I think I was trying to express that I was seeing something new... a sense of a true life-partner to walk through the ups and downs with. For myself, a person's beauty and gifts can be be admired and even sampled, but when they stand with another through hard times the potential is suddenly there for mating. My prediction at the end of the poem came true. We cared for each other for over a decade. Then it ended. But that's another story.

The Student of Love, Failing

2010-01-07T09:17:00.001-08:00

by Paul Christley Tumey

- For Helise

I know somebody
who would swear on a
stack of holy books as high as the corn gets
they loved me.

She loves the products of me,
she harvests me.

Two librarians,
with many good books
have the same books
and complimentary books.
We shyly make a present
of library cards
and call it friendship.

But in the basements
there are lonely, estranged
card players
who are waiting
for the game to start well
at least there's a will to gamble.

And sensitive lonely forests
are torn down
to accommodate these
ridiculous libraries with
their secret basements.
We still shudder
when shriveled
corn stalk turns up.

- Tallahassee, 1983
The second of three poems inspired by a lovely, but largely unavailable young woman I knew my last year in college. The scholarly trappings of this poem were reflections of our college lives, surrounded by books.

The First Moth Hunter

2010-01-06T21:09:00.000-08:00

by Paul Christley Tumey

The moths hide in the tall grass
They wait there to be last
One moth would not hurt a man
Nor ten thousand that can only flutter
against cheeks and streets

The hunter and his shotgun
and ten thousand shotgun shells
gets every one of them that hide in the tall grass
Gone ten thousand and that can only mean
Meanness is not arbitrary.

- Seattle, 1998

HAN NEE MULLS

2010-01-06T21:05:00.000-08:00

by Paul Christley Tumey

I once stepped out
into the mushy forest,
I once did.
Everything is without logic.
The Han Nee Mulls
touched all around
and spoke:
"Put on this fur and
these feathers,
Change your diet,
and we'll all be
that much better."
Grizzlydigs! If only
I could. The fur fit
and I could live with
the sneezing and tickling -
"Take your eyes
away from the front.
Change your diet
and the manner of your hunt."
Yak! I stopped looking front
and that was quite a change,
But see the point?
My diet, I could not change.

Goodbye to the little Han Nee Mulls
scampering away
playing and laughing.
If my world ends --
It certainly won't be their fault.
I know we'll always be kin
For I hear the growling within.

Leominster,Massachusetts - 1986

Sketchbook Drawings 1

2010-01-05T11:21:00.000-08:00

The State of Things

2010-01-04T08:23:00.000-08:00

by Paul Christley Tumey

We throw our lives together in a messy way

Like panic at sea, confusion with life-lines

Grope: find my hand

It's there,

Holding down my highway line

Dividing devotion and despair

But in a messy, messy way

- Tallahassee, 1983

Without Time, Epiphany 1993

2010-01-03T18:21:00.000-08:00

by Paul Christley Tumey

"History is what we are trying to escape from into dream."
- Terrance McKenna

The tequila blast of the psilocybin-tantra-scream meltdowned my time-time. Joni upmelted from the merge. Unplugged me from her socket. I ripped, lost, rippled, you know? Yeah. You know. Don't make a movie out of it. She wiped the gelly with her panties and my prong gleamed like new, with time, like quark sparks in holo. "Here sport, still hot." I shivered and put my prong back in my backneck sheath. We had cooldown stretching wires on Iliat's new rack. They said "pong," and "ping." It was tequila.

We are upon each other found and not yet found but found enough. I say things about the electrons in my prong with my tongue in her ear. My backneck sheath rubs and I feel the first fizz of thirsty neurons rolling down the coaster. Nonreaction. Watches dead ahead, dead. Joni,Joni,Jonijoin me. What about yesterday, I ask her. "What about yesterday? I never think about the past. The past has no meaning in a solid-state, interiorized hologragraphic object embedded in a hyperdimensional matrix that is eternal. Eternity has no beginning, noofwad." It's 1957. It's 1964. It's all put away. She's right. I'm finding someone without a prong and I'm gonna prong the unpronged taker. Illiat says "Yeah that's good flash." Later, after ten tequilas, ten bands, he strokes my backneck sheath and it feels good. It always does. I kiss him on the mouth, without tongue. Wait for him to slip his inbetween my teeth and I vise down. Scars there. He knows better, the dirty, merging... he says nothing.

My prong is clean. The night is a good day. You come walking down by the buildings. Why? You aren't part, not integral like me. You're just another exit. This way out like the time before. You don't hav a face, taker, I do. I had to do it that way, it was the darkshadows of my dreams. My dreams are a gang. I'm a member. You can't take me away from that, take me take me take me take that all you operate. Dirty merging takers. Unpronged takers. You come walking down by the buildings calling out for me. "I don't live in the past!" I shout you dirty merging taker. My shadow is me. Erraughttthpppttuuioyrept! You say when I throw you from the place of ten bands. Hundred feet down. Hope you crack the concrete. If you don't I'll come down and slam your head until you do. I like the sounds of the snapping wires better. Takes more time, when you find time, and then you feel it. Things look pretty upchanged from there, you relocate before you splatter, dude? Yeah, you deserve it.

Thing is, you didn't split into the dark and the light. You didn't die. Thing is you didn't die. You stood up and laughed at me, shouted at me and when Iliat came up from behind before I could warn you just laughed harder at the blade in your thigh. I'm gonna be in combat-med someday too, just like you. You just laughed. That's why I love you. "That was pretty good, little brother. Never been thrown off a five-story building by a six-year old before," you said. I come down, hand-over-hand to impress. My teeth are like yours. That's why I love you my older brother. Maybe tomorrow Joni will ax that time thing.

- Leominster, Massachusetts 1989

This is my cyberpunk story. It was never published. Never submitted. Ironically, shortly after I wrote this story I joined the Cambridge Science Fiction Writer's Workshop and spent several years learning the craft of writing publishable science fiction. I think I never showed it because I was a little ashamed at this taboo-shredding blast from my sub-conscious. Now, at 47, I have both more dignity and less inhibitions.

I did make a recording of it (lost) with my friend Tracey Thomas playing cool spooky electronic music in the background. Tracey was a big influence on this story, by exposing me to the writings of Terrance McKenna and Wired magazine.

Later, I would play it for myself with my guitar as though it were one huge long song. I like the way the sentences don't make sense in a conscious level, but seem to have an internal, if unknowable dream logic. In this way, the writing reminds me a little of some of the passages one finds in the Old Testament that have details and concerns that the people in the ancient culture could understand, but which are obscured by time to people in the 21st century.

When I first started writing, I wrote stories like this. Not cyber or violent, but like clouds from the sky in someone's dream. Very sensitive back then to language. I want to get back to that.

Fragment Found Inscribed on Tabasco Sauce Bottle Dug Up Underneath the Collapsed Mirage Hotel in Las Vegas, Nevada

2010-01-03T13:00:00.000-08:00

by Paul Christley Tumey

When the rays of the rising sun
Have shorn the spires of Shangrila
And when the shadows of the seventh son
Have thrice crossed every angle out
Then, children, the time to dream
Will have passed this night land.

- Boston, 1987

The Story So Far

2010-01-02T12:22:00.000-08:00

by Paul Christley Tumey
For Susan
December 18, 1989
Leominster, Massachusetts

So here I sit
desk and chair
light and typewriter
the quiet meditative sigh
of the forced-air heater
the sleet coming harder
against the window outside
while I sit
thinking about the story so far
in terms of tapestries and rivers --

The story so far.
my exile in stolen Polynesia
in the land of Tusitala and Cook --
Gaugin and the exiled London
and how my own exile was paltry
barely a concession to the salty
distance I wedged between myself
and what I was exiled from
The story so far --
the volcano adventure
with Adagio and Casey
that left my thighs bloody
and bruised like mangoes
after long importation
(I can still taste the double scotch
in the Wakiki bar after to
quell our shaking)

Our story thus far --
The return of the native son
and the year of isolation with
a suffering drink-fighting mother
and the suffering drinking father. The epic
of the Thirteen Days in the
hospital with wailing black
Baptist families camped out in
the waiting room (I was as
anguished and tortured as they)
while waiting waiting waiting
for delicately grafted veins
to attach to her heart, my
mother's.

The story so far,
the circular fall back into
the land of seven hills, Apalachee land
haunted by red, fresh, and congress man
and the quest for a voice
in the midst of shouters, vainly
profaning the waters of my refuge --
the nest of a brokenold
house and the embracing of
token love and the many
quiet walks in the old city cemetary.
The epic loss of it all
in the French Quarter, gone from Florida to Lousiana
on New Year's Eve -- death in birth,
cycles in cycles, our story so
far as I sit here
smelling the burning dust drifting
away from the heating vents,
feeling my skin drying as the
gas heat keeps the prehistoric chill
at bay for another night, ignoring my
cramped pretzel muscles and the
clamping thuds echoing in my head
a souvenir of the factory job.

And the greatest story
embraced me... and your red
sun splashed lips breathed newness
into me and I see the cycles in the bay
expanding to the shoreline so far in the distance.
The vast journey in an overstuffed
automobile burdened with microwave and
panicked cat. My story so far became also your story so far,
the endless series of slips and near
plummets as bills blew in, jobs
crumbled like dried dung in our
hopeful grasp, and our optimism of twentysomethings
eroded into our early maturity. And the
shadows on the waters for a time after
the preganacy was nulled, only to
lift in the rippling of a summer
sunrise that sparked with rainshowers
of friendships and adventures. And now,
the great story of winter has manifested
itself in sugary mounds outside the doors,
crests and valleys on the streets, and
we can look no further... the story
is caught up.

So here I sit, back aching from work,
skin drying from heat, eyes tearing
from the work of heat, or the heat
of heart, and my heart is filled with love for you,
and ears full of your
soft movements in the adjacent room as
you leave me alone so tenderly --
to let me write.

Deep Snow

2010-01-01T22:17:00.000-08:00

A song in standard tuning by Paul Christley Tumey

(First verse)
G Em           Bm
John Prine walked in deep snow

G Em                   Bm
On time mail delivery to people we know.

G                      Em                     A                                  D
   He saw.......a lonely senior...... John Prine was sent.... a song.......

            G                             A
from the vi---brating air -- called "Hello In There"

Em             G            Bm
John Prine walked in deep snow

(Fingerpick break)

(Second chorus)

D                         G
Was there a blizzard in your heart?

D                         G
Were things fall - ing apart?

D                       G
Did you have nowhere to go?

D                                 Bm
Were you walking through deep snow?

(verse two)

G              Em             Bm
Lou Reed dreamed in deep sleep

G               Em                     Bm
Deep sleep forget about her until you meet

G                               Em
He spread........ his arms to fly

A                                  D                                     G
Lou Reed was sent --- a song --- from across the Great Divide

             A
Called "Walk on the Wild Side"

Em           G              Bm
Lou Reed dreams in deep sleep

(Fingerpick break)

(Second chorus)

D                         G

There was a blizzard in my heart

D                                   G

Man, it was really coming down hard

D                  G

Now I have nowhere to go

D                                            Bm

I'm no longer walking through deep snow

(repeat 1st verse)

(Third chorus)

(Fingerpick break)

(Chorus)

D                         G

Is there a blizzard in your heart?

D                                   G

Do things seem to be fall - ing apart?

D                            G

You need to find nowhere to be

D                                          Bm

I think you're waking through deep sleep

- Seattle, November 2009 - From a dream

Louisiana Boy

2010-01-01T21:55:00.000-08:00

The catawbas croaked till morn
When we go in fishing?
Percy's asleep on his steering column horn
Dreaming, searching, not thinking and wishing

I stepped on a nail barefoot
But I had to hurry up
I worked the yard as hard as I could
If I was late Percy would have pups

He held up his charm of magic
But would never let me see it
When the sun sets it is tragic
All the catawbas go into a croaking fit

When we go in fishing today?
Truck ain't broke down or nothing
All the catawbas have pillars for bait
But Percy got drunk and started cussing

It was late afternoon so I went normal
Tried to keep tangent from the things I saw
This time the sun did it formal
I guess it felt like dressing up for no reason at all

- Boston, 1990

Constantly Being

2010-01-01T21:42:00.000-08:00

A stick fell of me
It stuck in the ground
became a tree

A leaf fell of a book
Proved well
Memories need loving

Ten things I willed
To my past self
I am graceful in the rain

A word fell to my fingertip
I put it to my ear
Whispers my secret music

A splendid breath arose
To become rain-heavy cloud
And to breathe me out

- Seattle, 2010

My New Son in the Morning

2010-01-01T11:46:00.000-08:00

by Paul Christley Tumey

Last night your mama
dreamed about you.
You're only three months old
but she could see
your whole life in front of you.

Welcome home son
We'll have a lot of fun
I'm your Daddy
You made me

Last night your mama
dreamed about you.
Your hair had come in
and your eyes had turned.
You could use your hands
and your heart had learned.

Last night
your mama
dreamed about you.

- For Reid, 2000

The Song of the Train

2010-01-01T11:24:00.000-08:00

by Paul Christley Tumey

As I lie next to you,
the train comes.
Though I have lain with them open
since the owl last asked his question
and it is now time for the robin to report.
I close my eyes
to see better the train.

I see it on the horizon,
separating earth from sky,
sex from sex with a steel line
as thick as the tension in my spine
as I lie next to you.

I see pistons and fulcrums
steam and smoke
and I know that's my heart
pounding like a sledgehammer,
and smoke the light in my eyes
that see only the train on the horizon.

I am the train,
and I no longer lie next to you.
As you sleep on into the hot night,
my slotted wheels hug the silver track
and I sigh from relief with new purpose and direction
as urgent as the pounding of pistons and fulcrums.

The train calls
and the house shivers.
The engine and the cars clank on by
like slaves in a chain.
And you awaken and though the night
is so hot you find my warmth
and hold me close. I am the train.

And the train leaves,
sleep comes over me at last.
A part of me will always be on the silver track
and part resting in your holding arms,
and through my sleep I hear it strong
the song of the train.

- Summer 1986, Tallahassee, Florida