Hidden treasures discovered while digging through Frank Moore's huge archives.

Tag: Skin Passion (page 2 of 3)

Falling Into Skin

by Frank Moore, Thursday, January 10, 2002

Lying here together
Just holding each other
Small, warm,
Smelling each other
Breathing each other in
Breathing life in
Breathing everything in
Taking everything into our bodies
Our body
Breathing life,
All life in, deeply
To our core,
Then breathing pleasure out,
All warmed up,
Breathing warm pleasure
In all life everywhere,
Watering life,
Growing stronger, freer
With every deep breath
Taking EVERYTHING in
Transforming transmuting everything
Into our rose-skin reality
Falling falling falling
Masks falling away
Who we pictured ourselves
Falling away
Just surrender into each other,
Into egoless self within us combined,
Without fear
Trusting the core within us
Falling
Skin melting
Nerve-endings pull us in
From within
Rich blood rushes in,
Washing us from within,
Tides within between us
Rocking rubbing on each other
In the sea of skin
Everywhere surrounding us,
Enveloping us
You lay here, me in your mouth
Not going anywhere
Just slight movement
To keep arouse pleasure alive
Beyond time
Before separation,
Before birth and death
A calm excitement
Of being together
Being within,
Not being between

There is a draining,
A releasing of surface tension
Skin pales
As everything flows deeper
To the core
Everything gets slower,
Warm cool
Beats melt together
Warm wax colors flow in veins
We get too small,
We become invisible
Rubbing rocking me
From your belly button
Downward
In between
Moist
Absorbing everything
Into our grooved smallness
Into the life code of change
Where we play
Unseen, unknown
Rocking small, pale
Falling
Without fear
Into the cool tickling grass
Sinking into cool slippery mud
Getting dirty
Falling,
Following the roots
Downward into cracks
In hard cold rocks
Breaking them open
Revealing hidden meanings
Breaking through to underground ocean
Of dark invisible matter,
Warm satin which seeks out
All space,
Seeks out all skin,
Becoming/enfolding our body
Filling everything
So small
That we plunge into the molten core,
Into subatomic center beyond space
Into solar explosion deep
in the universal everywhere
breathing spiraling warm change
in and out deeply
as we lie here
smelling the sweet sweat
of our very human bodies

“Linda and Frank”, digital painting, 2008 by Frank Moore

From the book, Skin Passion: poems and paintings by Frank Moore.

Family Friendly Poetry Reading

by Frank Moore, Saturday, April 06, 2002


A family friendly poetry reading?
Really?
Do you mean like READERS’ DIGEST?
MMMM…
I suppose some poets would go along with it…
The kind in READERS’ DIGEST
The kind who don’t see
Don’t mind
The command
For “self” censorship
Tucked neatly in the warmly caramel apple
Phrase
Of FAMILY FRIENDLY
There ain’t no “self” censorship
You are censoring art,
Words,
Intensity,
Truths,
The Audience
Down into nice mellow
Fascism

I suppose some are willing to accept this….
The kind who don’t question
Questions like
Which family?
It definitely ain’t my family
Not any of the expanding rings
Of my family
In fact
It is down right hostile
To my human tribal family
Which teaches our kids
How to use words
To communicate with all kinds of people
In all kinds of contexts
Openly
Deeply
Freely
Exploring all life
With a passionate honesty,
Sitting together
In the yummy smelling kitchen
Of Life
Sitting together
Around the tribal fires
Generations sitting together
Passing the talking stick around
Telling their stories
Revealing their desires and fears,
Wisdom and folly
Exploring myths…
Listening and telling
Into the center of respect and acceptance…
All the family listening
All tell
In their own ways…
Silly little sister
Wise grandma
Hot angry brother
Mother finding new words
Dad listening to family voices…
All beyond taboos
In this sacred ritual of telling.

I don’t really know what to make of this
Hostile FAMILY FRIENDLY…
Ok,
I do.
This is making poetry,
All art,
Into a hallmark lapdog
Of the brainwashing “socialization”
Of little lily and billy
Reinforcing SCHOOL/CHURCH/CORPORATE shallow
Dogma,
Using us poets
To be the shallow virus dogma carriers,
Thinking
FAMILY FRIENDLY can ever be
Anything but enforced shallow reality
On everyone

Sure,
When I read at schools
I play by THE RULES
Not because of the kids

But to get into the brainwashing camps
To slip the kids
A subversive potion of
Words/ideas/images

But shoot me
If I ever read at a FAMILY/KIDS FRIENDLY POETRY READING…
No…
Shoot the fascist’s parents!

Think fast!
A loving couple lovingly f…

In your head,
What did you hear for F?

Did I just cross the line?

Hope so!


“Innocent”, oil on canvas, 36” x 36”, 1981 by Frank Moore
“Trixie”, oil on canvas, 36” x 36”, 1979 by Frank Moore
“Superman”, oil on canvas, 35” x 68”, 1976

From the book, Skin Passion: Poems and Paintings by Frank Moore.

Just Between Us

by Frank Moore, Wednesday, December 12, 2001

We enter the magic cave
Of play and healing,
Shedding our fiction characters
We use outside,
Ego masks, skin tight,
Limiting….limiting the expanding.
Those masks will change
When we put them back on,
Softening to fit our new bodies, new faces…
Later.

Here we are
More than ourselves
More of ourself
Expanding
Expanding into one another
Rubbing skin
Friction of pleasure
Falling into the in-between
Surrender to the falling
Out of time and space,
Surrendering into discomfort
Of strangeness which contains
A strange comfort of remembering
The body and soul

Falling into the in-between,
Surrendering into the trance
Pleasure friction of creation
Rubbing dead skin into each other,
Aroused and excited,
Going into each other,
Taking each other in,
There is no THE OTHER,
No IN-BETWEEN.
Breathing each other deeply,
Smelling and tasting,
Licking and kissing,
Prickly state of inter-penetration,
Nerves connected
In the skin,
Melt bodies together,
Removes the lies of separation,
Hearts beat together strong relax,
Rich red blood flows deep.

We rock calm deep contained within each other
Within the combined body
Deep pleasure flows over us
Washing from deep within.

We have been here before,
Being contained within everything,
Enveloping everything within.
Lying extended within our combined body,
Combined self/soul,
relaxed, enjoying being within,
Sucking aroused pleasure up
As a tide of change,
Enjoying being with each other
Without going anywhere,
Being enough.

The tide,
the laugh
Giggle, sobbing
Pleasure
Leave our body reality
Trance of inter-dependence,
Inter-penetration,
Holy healing play dance,
And flows inward into the whole cosmos,
Changing everything,
Changing healing unseen, unknown

We leave the cave
With each other inside…
And our masks expand and soften.


“Kittee”, digital painting, 1999 by Frank Moore

CREATIVITY IS LIKE SHITTING

By Frank Moore, May 31, 2005

Creativity is like shitting.
Most people do it.
Everyone needs to do it….
More or less regularly.
Every shit is different.
There is nothing like a good shit!
Some people obsess on their shitting!
Some obsess on their own shit;
Others obsess on others’ shit,
Even buying it!
I just enjoy a good shit!
Oh shit,
I’ll let you in on a secret…
I play with shit!
Creativity is just playing.


“Toni”, by Frank Moore, digital painting, 2011

BOUNDARIES KILL

by Frank Moore, January 29, 2002

Boundaries, borders
Are lies of power
They keep people in
They keep people out
They ain’t really there
Only in the sight
Of guard guns and dogs
The lines just ain’t there
You can just keep on walking
Toward me,
Into me

You could keep on walking
Except for their bullets of fear
Define and maintain your boundaries,
They tell us!

That keeps us weak and isolated
That keeps me from you,
Boxed up, bottled up
That keeps the wrong people out
Us protected in abstractions
That keeps our human spirit divided
Keeps Life separate from us
Keeps us warring, scared, hating
Keeps you from me
Keeps us hungry, thirsty, cold
Just owning
Instead of living deep and free.

Skin is not a border
Skin is a sea flowing everywhere
Touching, feeling, unlimited,
Breathing deeply
Giving, taking as one
Experiencing, feeding as one
A thick rich soup
Which can’t be canned or bottled

Healthy skin is thick and flexible
Healthy breath is deep and lusty
Our healthy body does not need
Limiting power,
Doesn’t need to hold in,
To hold back,
To die from not dancing,
Not risking,
Not feeling pain, joy, pleasure
Deeply
Just dying slowly
Within the tight shallow
Owning MY SPACE

And they laugh in the gun towers!

“Scape”, digital painting by Frank Moore, 1998

I HATE NICE PEOPLE

by Frank Moore, Thursday, April 11, 2002

i get worried if my words and images fit through veins clogged with fatty taboos of polite appropriate of comfortability.

i get worried…is the art that small that it fits through that pinhole of a hole…so small that nudes on the walls, words on telephone poles, any shift in the social power structure threatens the very reality fabric.

i’m too proud to admit the art poetry is that small. so my art becomes a 
roto-rooting balloon covered in razors tipped in draino acid, pushing pressuring uncomfortable unsocial grinding against the grain until the killer fatty clots of taboos burst out the other end and go down the drain like trouble.

i don’t really go after the hitlers, the mccarthys, the helms, or their 
brown shirts.

they are just limp-dicked power-junkies with swiss-cheese egos, each hole filled with inferiority. they are just moons with no power light of themselves, just reflecting fear.

no, i go after the nice people who never asked where the trains were going, boxcars filled with people. didn’t have to. only suspected, only heard rumors…after all, the general is a friend. never said, excuse me, i am a jew too, arab too, a jap too, a gay too, i’ve negro blood running in my body, aids too. i’m a commie who took home movies of our nude kids. so better put me on that train too. better put us all on that train. there ain’t no train big enough!

i go after the nice people who keep going to work after seeing their friends missing, after hearing rumors of blacklist and blackball. must write something about that subject to THE TIMES. he used to be such a pleasant fellow…but now he is a whining paranoid…not a sort to have to tea. he is like a wet messy fart. not in my backyard!

yes, i go after nice people. but my time in the belljar is about over. so i’ll leave you with this. what is happening in your backyard is what really matters. so be sure to weed!

“Seated Nude”, oil on canvas, 36” x 36”, 1981 by Frank Moore

Season of hidden hope

a radio musical

November 23, 1993

1

Walking along
cold dark homeless
roads
clogged with ice fears,
my only friend
is the wind
chilling my bones
into longing
and lost
and beyond…
into a cynical loneliness.

Herding my sheep,
looking in windows
of unattainable desires,
looking at presents
useless
because
I don’t have anyone to give them to,

looking into the past
soft colored warm homes
that are no longer mine.

Everyone has left,
everyone is gone.

Even the sun has left
long ago,
long before the manger.

And the sun
will not come back
ever
again.
This is the season
of dark depression
and fragile suicide.

Yes,
I know
I can always bum up
the $29.95
to buy
the plastic hope and faith
at 7 Eleven
and pretend
it is my wonderful life
playing
in the video store’s window.

But instead
I wrap myself
in a jaded pretense
of dry ice isolation
of not caring,
and drinking
the stale
but warm wine of regrets.


2

The birth
of new hope
has always been hidden within
the long cold
winter darkness.

Huddled together,
clinging to our tribal warmth
as our only protection
against dying
into the scary
black
unknown,

we always have been blind
to the evergreen
hope of life.

It has always been
the first time
the sun
and easy hope
have gone away.

So we always think
they will never
come again.

The evergreen hope
has been hidden
away
in the womb
of the humble
and in children’s dreams.

The forces of greys
have always overheard
the possibility
of the hidden hope…
have always searched
for it
to pervert it
into human isolation…
or,
failing that,
to kill it
for all time.

But the forces of power
always overlook
the hidden human hope
rocking
in the baby’s cradle.

As power
goes on a desperate killing,
chopping
hacking
gorging,
eating
the old world up……
we huddle together
in the silent night
upon the hill,
rocking together
in our tribal body warmth.

The shaman,
the holy woman,
the medicine man
have always shifted
our attention away
from the dark
cold
outward
fear,
have always shifted
our gaze
to the guiding light
of new birth…
at first
in the stars,
then in the roaring
tribal fire
which pulled
all human feelings
within it,
and still later
into that corny
home hearth
crackling
with bright colors
popping.

Into this fire
we have always gone,
hearing
the drumming
of our innocent heart
beating
in a slow excitement,
meeting
again
our love of life.
We curl up
with our love
and wait
for warm spring
to arrive…
as hope grows
into knowing.


Christmas Card, digital painting, 2008 by Frank Moore
Christmas Card, digital painting, 2011 by Frank Moore
















Art of Reshaping Reality

Abstract by Frank Moore, 1996

by Frank Moore
March 24, 1999

There are all kinds of art.
There is art that calms,
art that pacifies,
art that sells,
art that decorates,
art that entertains.

But what I am
committed to is
art as a battle,
an underground war
against fragmentation.
The battle is on all realities.

The controllers
have always tried
to fragment us.
Fragment us
from each other.
Imprison us
in islands of sex,
color,
religion,
politics,
classes,
labels,
etc.,
etc.,
etc.,
etc.,
etc.
they fragment
our inner worlds,
they blow
our individual realities apart,
and play the pieces
against one another.
They are us,
or a part of us.
They are the controllers,
the politicians,
the sexists,
the women’s libbers,
the pornographers,
the censors,
the moralists,
the church,
the media,
the businessmen,
educators,
the victims
and the powerful.

They are us.
They have divided us
from our power,
from our beauty,
from our lust for life
and pleasure.
They have divided us
from most of reality –
divided dying from living –
sex from living,
sex from pleasure.
We are kept in
boxes of fear,
of mistrust.
We are kept waiting –
kept waiting
to do what
we want –
waiting
for enough money,
enough schooling,
for everything to be right.
We are kept waiting
and protecting
and hiding
and suffering.

This is the time
to do battle
with the boxes.

As artists,
our tools
are magic,
our bodies,
taboos,
and dreams.

This kind of art
can be bubbles of childhood –
hidden places
where you can play and explore –
it is the kids’ under-the-covers world,
the playhouse,
the treehouse,
the cave,
behind the barn,
playing doctor,
cars at drive-ins
before going all the way,
Huck Finn’s raft,
tepees.
People are afraid
of this area of
lusty exploring
that they think
they have out-grown
— but they are sucked into it.

But this kind of art
can have a more
heavy-duty
magical side to it
that shocks,
offends,
and breaks new ground.
This side is what is locked in,
the subconscious,
the womb,
the underground,
hell/heaven,
pleasure/torture,
the coffin,
the grave,
birth/death/rebirth,
dream/nightmare,
the hidden world
of taboos.

Artists of this breed
need to be
warriors who are willing
to go into the areas of taboo,
willing to push
beyond where
it is comfortable
and safe
to explore
and build
a larger zone
of safeness.
They need to be
idealists,
willing to live ideals.

The Dance Without Dancers

“Falling in Love”, digital painting by Frank Moore, 2010

THE DANCE WITHOUT DANCERS
Frank Moore
2011

What we have here is
only the first smell of fresh magic.
Matter is hollow tubes
containing fibers
of packets of possibilities.
Matter is symbol,
is metaphor
containing possibilities.
These packets shape matter.
These packets, in turn,
are reshaped by
each body /object
they pass through.
We are affected
by the stars,
and the stars
are affected
by us.
We affect the Tarot cards
and the I Ching coins
we cast.
The physicists affect
the subatomic particles
they observe.

By reshaping
these inner packets,
the material reality is reshaped.

The inner rivers of possibilities
are two way on the linear level.
The magical effects are always
two way.
The light of the sun warms us;
but we affect the sun through
the same channel.

We have entered the level
of the dynamic web
of relationships
in which the individual
does not exist.
In place of the individual,
there appear points
of personal responsibility
in a dance.

It is not the sun that warms,
nor is it us who are warmed.
It is the dance of no dancers,
the dance of relationships
that warms,
and that is warmed.

Reality creation
is a dance.
We are the dancers.
But in truth,
it is a dance
without dancers.
If we really take
on personal responsibility
for the dance,
we surrender to the dance,
give up individual “control,”
give up individual linking
with the results.
By taking on the personal responsibility
for the dance,
we are the dance.
We melt with the dance.
We are only the dance.
We admit these facts.
It is not a question
of becoming,
but of remembering
and admitting.
It is a question
of being,
living,
dancing lustfully,
without controls
or limits
in responsibility.

The life dance
is beyond morals
or limits.
It joyfully digs
into the dance
to the juicy black core.

NO CAN NOTS

This is the poem that Frank wrote for a class of medical students at University of California, Berkeley:

NO CAN NOTS
by Frank Moore
Sunday, April 28, 2002

Talking to future healers
& teachers
& maybe future
muckrakers & troublemakers
Well,
Not really future
Because hopefully
You are doing IT
RIGHT NOW!
Hopefully
I’m not talking to the future guards
Of the corporate normalcy
Armed with can nots,
Limiting futures from birth,
Enforcing coloring only within the lines,
Enforcing doing everything
THE RIGHT WAY
THE NORMAL WAY


Frank Moore at UCB with medical students.
Recorded May 2, 2002 at University Hall, University of California, Berkeley.

This poem was published in the book Skin Passion, a book of poems and paintings by Frank Moore.