The Writing Disorder - Nick Bryant

New Photography

DILAPIDATION

by Keith Moul

"These pictures document conditions in America that I encounter in my travels. It is not unusual to find dilapidated structures on remote farmlands, or abandoned houses on the edges of fields, whether still productive or not. But I have become aware of an increase of derelict structures. I only stop and shoot if circumstances please my eye, suggest drama or shout pathos. I'm not suggesting Dustbowl abandonment, but a reduction of financial viability on display."

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Lakeview, OR

Oklahoma

Central, OR

Garibaldi, OR

Crescent, OR

ALTERNATIVE PORNOGRAPHIES

What by our natures rouses our aversion
invariably excites us the most:

when an arsonist perverts
science, feeding heirlooms to fire;
when a vandal pisses on votive stones
worn from long honoring integrity;
when prurience is longing’s only object, or
it may be innocence at the moment
that insight is most possible,
but the innocent settles for acclaim.

It may be the broken spirit of desire:
bullish with inevitability, he hears
a new uncertainty in her response
that will not daunt the courage in his loins;
each riots over frayed edges of their trust,
slights the other’s tatterings, ascribes
to appetite his beefy mutterings,
to dust her inchoate chance at life.

It may be the common form: bodies
grunting with glazed effort, groaning
into positions artful, or pleading
for the next higher plateau of ecstasy
(often monosyllabic, redundant and breathless).

If we are to be debauched, let the bodies
at least be slender, efficient and fair;

make them rippled in sinew, tawny,
pert, voluptuous and up to exhibition;

tender to arsonists, no ambivalence
about combustibles, and excellent accelerant;

let our vandals have the intellect
to prize the pain they spray about;

but keep our innocents pubescent,
protect them from ugliness — and most
especially, ugliness enjoying its pleasure;
or, ugliness still young itself, before
profoundly more ugly; or ugliness
that declares itself the spite of grace!

Beatty, OR

Warrenton

Wilsonville, OR

Beatty, OR

Crescent, OR

AN ARCHAEOLOGIST

See a woman
in graceful ease,
pleased with her ancient time
and children.

Then, during crisis, she
lets fall her cup.

Dust and millennia smother
its ceramic shards,
her oriental garment,
and the ever new alignment
of her family bones.

Oklahoma

Montana

Beatty, OR

Central, OR

Pacific City, OR

THUDDING NIGHT RAIN
(at my desk)

Finally falls a rain that thuds.

I haven't felt a thud rain for years.
                   How did I not listen to
                                     and watch the sky for this?

At 1:00 A.M., eagerly, I step outside.

Sod-life relents,
                  it floats up or burrows down.
Surfaces, melting in dark, shine.
Caught, air assents, helpless.

I open my mouth and ease my parch.
                  The summer grass sucks noisily;
                                     like air from a pressure vessel,
                                                       the ground emits its steam.
I slide barefooted like the boy I am no more.

I have known plentiful bones
                  bleached by sun,
                                     piled as if by oracles.
What a thudding rain could do
                  to make believers for life,
                                     refreshed and holy.

But I am alone.
                  I can only speculate.
                                                       I have no link to the heavens
except wet hair,
                  muddy feet
                                     and torn shirt that binds me.

Housed with their dreams,
do others lie drenched in this awareness?

Keith Moul has published poems widely for more than 40 years, but photos only for the past couple. Two chapbooks of poems have been released since late 2010: The Grammar of Mind by Blue & Yellow Dog Press and Beautiful Agitation by Red Ochre Press. BA was a winner of Red Ochre's 2011 chapbook contest. Also in 2010 a poem Keith wrote in response to one of his photos was a Pushcart nominee. Keith is retired and living in the Pacific Northwest, writing and taking photos.

Artist Statement:
I do not restrict my subject matter except to common decency. Good photos require good light, or at least enough light to manipulate with editing software. Any photo taken may produce at least one version of itself that is worth retaining; often it contains more than one version by cropping the original. I never alter content by eliminating part of it or changing its position within the frame.

I alter an original photo with five priorities in mind:

High resolution
High color saturation
Maximum contrast
Superior brightness
Depth of subject, especially on landscapes or panoramic views; or roundness of more intimate subjects

Therefore, I do not seek “realism,” but vibrancy.

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