Artistic License
by
Teresa Ann Frazee
I see a masterpiece
There’s no painting there
Gave birth to an image
Conceived from thin air
The stark white canvas
I recently primed
Requires hundreds of brushstrokes
Before my name is signed
Easels on the roof
Under a steel studded sky
Dabs of pigment vibrate
When the L train flies by
A swirling spectrum of colors
In a torrid affair
I stand back
To watch tempera’s flare
With delicate balance I walk
Between false and genuine worlds
Like a trapeze artist on a tightrope
Of simulated pearls
My self portrait
Doesn’t look like me
Looks more like
The person I want to be
Dali, Monet and I don’t belong
In the same breath
I draw from their well
For a drop of their depth
Their creative spirit
Is never laid to rest
Remembered always
As times honored guest
Downstairs a pair of old jeans
Go around in the dryer
Got them cheap at a store
That had a fire
Wore them during
Periods of blues and reds
Now purple stains
Run through their threads
Raw umber is caked
Under my nails
Compared to most
My personal hygiene pales
When I get near
The neighbor’s daughter
Her expression’s of a lamb
Being led to slaughter
She tells me
I keep nocturnal hours
And of spellbound days
My art devours
That I eat my sandwich
With a spoon
Of course lunch
Is never at noon
I sing songs
Without the words
My acoustic style
Is simply for the birds
Walk up the street
While everyone jogs down
I’m as strange as a biography
Without a proper noun
I don’t serve
Sophisticated wine
And my scruffy old bandana
Hints of turpentine
Told her, her hair color
Was burnt sienna from the tube
It was meant to compliment
But she took it as rude
She’s looking for
A wedding ring buyer
All she’ll get from me
Is pseudo intellectual satire
Saving up for
A new palette knife
Not in the market
For a high maintenance wife
She says I am
Frightfully aware of being
That even in a thousand years
She’ll never see what I’m seeing
She wants to have lots of money
And pay with plastic
Anything more than posing for me
Would be way too drastic
Have a mixed breed
He keeps a decent watch
Now as my loyal model
I find he is top–notch
A yellow streak runs
Down his back
Makes up with beauty
For any courage he may lack
If he knew his portrait
Was an award winner
He would always expect
Steak served for dinner
He gnawed at mom’s fruit cake
Which makes a perfect paperweight
My irreverence caught on
Cause I’ve received no gifts of late
The clay like confection
Wound up as a door stop
That gets a laugh
Even from my pop
Could have followed pop
And worked with a wrench
The scenario has
My teeth in a clench
He’s retired now
With rough idle hands
That reveal a history
Of life’s many demands
I would have known
Those hands as being mine
With a hard luck story
For every line
Brother came by
He wears Armani
Hates his life
But loves the money
He lives in the hills
With his wife and kid
Auctioned off his soul
To the highest bid
A novelist he was
Never to become
So to the ravages of alcohol
He did succumb
He wakes up on
The lonely side of the bed
I’d consider him a loner
Cept for the mob inside his head
Sweet temptation
Lured him under
If he was a graphic writer
Is left to wonder
Now he’s a ghost of a writer
With destructive taste
The choice was his
To wade in waste
He loved a twisted plot
The mystery of a locked door
He put his words away
Now he’s not cool anymore
I dream I meet a gypsy
By the railroad gate
She met my brother once
But untied the knot of fate
She reads my palm
For a gold token
Speaks my lingo fluently
With English that’s broken
We walked the Painted Desert
Saw Georgia in a muslin gown
She said, “Come on in my adobe
And set your bones right down
You came for words of wisdom
I know only of this
Choose the world that best suits you
Then you’ll know total bliss”
I asked where Stieglitz was
On this imaginary day
She said he was in the darkroom
Printing with Man Ray
A bleeding heart
She wore on her sleeve
Gave the flower to my dream gypsy
Then we had to leave
My dream gypsy was called away
And prepared to go
To appear in another dream
For a poet she didn’t know
“It happens”, she said,
"From time to time
I’ll shake him off
And you’ll be exclusively mine”
I asked what she does
Between dreamer’s calls
She said she critiques graffiti
On the subway walls
Was concerned for my subterranean muse
"Don’t worry” she said, “I’m not frail
Was born in the Bronx
Near the third rail”
The violined darkness
Traced her bohemian silhouette
My eyes pried open by waking
Becomes a daily regret
Wish I could say my brother
Took his words to ink
Life for him is good
Cause he gave up the drink
That The Museum
Of Modern Art will call
Offering to sponsor
My solo show in the fall
But my neighbor sinced moved
And took his daughter
Heard she married a man
For the things he bought her
And I met someone
Wearing dark wrap around shades
Stood six feet tall
Cause she was in rollerblades
She rolled in my opening
With a glossy Mona Lisa smile
She’s my type alright
Tells time with a sundial
I invited her upstairs
For etchings to view
Now my address is
Where her mail is sent to
Better fold up the easel
Up on the roof
Dog’s howling at the wind
But there’s no scientific proof
Catch the downtown train
In an inspirational snooze
To Andy’s factory
With my smiling gypsy muse
Those used to be highs and lows
Were endless tedium
But with my dream gypsy
I’ve found a happy medium
Miscast Shadow
by
Teresa Ann Frazee
My shadow comes from another dimension
One of darkness and restless form
She preyed on my innocence
On that very first sunny morn
The wanton things she does
I surely could not do
How vague her weightless eyes
Her hollow heart, I see through
Blurred in her unresolved place
Bound to cross the line
I stand foreign in her rambling shoes
The feet she moves are mine
Black spit emits from her inarticulate tongue
Indifference is in pity’s place
From this fragile order of power
I stumble to keep the pace
I’ve heard it in a homily
Do not give in to fear
And lose to a sufficient end
To all you once held dear
Upon witnessing my shadow
Do those many deeds unsaid
I call to a godly ear
But she’s always a prayer ahead
And soon after the sun has set
An unholy hush stills the air
Caught in a metamorphosis, I smell
Her blasphemous breath lingers near
The street light pours over me
I stiffen while she bends
Her wild arms flung around me
As if pantomiming old friends
Candles flicker from twisted wicks
Casting phantom postures black
I look straight ahead of me
But I know she’s looking back
Placing bets with mortal stakes
Stranded on the outskirts of luck
Fate sinks deep beneath the mud
Where the wheels of justice are stuck
But I’ll master my own identity
Ultimately live void of light
Stoop to her ecliptic level
And simply drop from sight
The Mask of the Anonymous
by
Teresa Ann Frazee
Who can identify the spirit that lives in a soul?
Within a societies blinded code of consciousness
Labeled nakedness tarred by their selected perceptions
As we sleep dreaming wrapped in the blanket of righteousness
We the heirs of the same half-way house as our parents
Blameless sons and daughters wear the mask of the anonymous
Society evaluates each fast burning secret
Then they arrive at their conclusion through sheer pompousness
Androgyny, forced to chose ripe in the heartbeat of fear
Mastering no error in the bone, crossed through flame and hail
Many obstacles arise from our path to decisions
Reluctantly we must replace the mask with a thin veil
Revealed in the simmering venom of tongue-tied speech
In the churchyard as preachers warn for eternity’s sake
Mangled hearts masquerade deprived of a sense of being
Why do they ask us to be real then render us fake?
It is written down somewhere in these crowded ruins
On the watermarked text beneath the river of illusion
Engraved, nail driven through white picket fences on well groomed lawns
Behind closed doors preserved in a perfect world of delusion
Detached, stumbling through their habit-forming cultural darkness
Hidden within the realm of control, where such a time exists
Oh to crawl out of the wilderness and walk unyielding
And see with a clean eye where artificial light persists
Silent characters disappearing into gender roles
Those matters, incubated minds are not willing to discuss
Our free will slithers away exiting into nothingness
Is this the very best our current world can offer us?
The Other
by
Teresa Ann Frazee
In my room, I am alive
Elsewhere, I simply exist
Hell - bent on artistic perfection
There my haunted hands persist
In this creative trance
Where the norm disappears
The Other morphs the heart
Until a single soul premiers
Past curfews of conventional hours
I venture into God’s dreams
While critiquing demons perch
On steel studded eye beams
Imagination is sanity’s scapegoat
Let there be no confusion
Inside my shared solitude
Reality bows to illusion
There are no forbidden fruits
My conscious is totally clear
My duty is to purity
Mediocrity’s lazy eye beware
Our manhandled morality
Is a crosshatching of lies
Their origins are pedestrian
Echo the Muses’ cries
No patience for hunger
Thirst is of no concern
Weariness is not relevant
The laws of passion govern
Prussian blue soars
To an operatic height
Bound by luminous strokes
Of thick Titanium white
Southern light spills onto
Canvas of reinvented space
Stirs the stillborn masters
From their artless resting place
Like a flaming baptism
I’m cleansed to the bone
Freed from the matter
Of this body on loan
Sentimentality lay fallen
Fear hides at the door
Irretrievably lost from the tribe
They’re of use no more
A lightning pulse answers
The how, the when, the where
I share a castless shadow
When no one else is there
I can smell the Other
As a beast can smell its kind
Instinctively we vow
To leave no idea behind
Moonlit Manifesto
by
Teresa Ann Frazee
Truly you humans are all the same
Did you ever offer me your hand?
In all the centuries I have roamed
Still from your hallowed ground I am banned
Loved me in novels and cinema
But when I approach, you back away
A mythical curiosity
Among the unseen in the light of day
A pale menace in a vampiric state
An exiled soul with all pleasure past
A detached heir of the unforgiven
Forced into this monstrous role I’m cast
In a stony bed rumpled with leaves
Slowly rising from the punished earth
So at home in the first chill of night
Eternally lonely since my birth
A lost resemblance of affection
May a bridegroom bring to me
Live forever in our kind of love
Rewrite the script of my destiny
When the hour comes around at last
On a plasmatic feast we shall dine
Secluded beyond the iron gate
As he reigns in the seat next to mine
Circling ravens will serve as witness
For in a gown of gauze I’ll be dressed
Our infinite union proves so divine
Even your ancestors would have blest
Above cherubs will gasp at the sight
Not able to trust their very own eyes
Together we’ll fly in our neutral space
And let the fever in our veins rise
You and I are not so different
Do you dare deny the pang in me?
Go on, just try to dismiss my needs
Do not undermine my potency
But soon if love does not occur
With a barren womb I’ll leave this place
Do not worry I will disappear
And not disease your precious race
To be seen as the world’s infection
That is when you mortify my pride
I’ll sink beneath the assassin’s stake
Only then will I throw my cape aside
Or after the sun’s fiery zeal
As my inward breath will find its end
So I shall finally burn away
Leaving ashes to no mortal friend
The Light Under The Door
By
Teresa Ann Frazee
We the pale children of our time
Slide homeward across a hundred years
Into the darkness where shadows fly
Tonight we’ll play with our living peers
While the contented sleep dreaming
We roam about our old dwelling place
Where sweet memories are kept alive
Bartering innocence with time and space
Sweat pours through astral bodies
Dripping into sockets of cloudy eyes
Like faded pipers stirring boyish days
Of long hot summers catching fireflies
Or riding wooden horses that go round
Reaching to grab shiny brass rings
And the smell of tiny cakes rising
While lost in play on old tire swings
But dawn’s light muzzles our laughter
In a world of nothing all day
Imagining these things to come
With stiffened postures we lay
Our hearts are filled with dust
Icy breath trapped in the lungs
Only when the golden daylight falls
Can words roll from our tongues
Yes, speechless until we’re midnight born
Confined daily under roofs of stone
At night we join our small glowing hands
But we never seem to feel a bone
Like flaming rockets in the dark
When our sparks and lightning mingle
The jolt of life ignites our souls
And our imaginative senses tingle
Then up the black staircase we ascend
Cradled in a whoosh of rising air
Plunged through the light under the door
To our old room with it’s new heir
Will the living child accept us
Or will his hair stand on end?
We’re young and not certain
If our true natures will blend
Right near him now we hovered
He smiled then blew a hollow flute
Played us an ancient melody
A tune that had long since been mute
We danced on our vacant beds of rust
Once again moved our cold feet
And swayed the body in its way
To youth’s wild frenzied beat
Away from our monotonous rest
Flung our day clothes all about
Stomped on those lifeless things
And shook the world with our shout
Tumbling adrift toward anonymity
In a slow motion race against our curfew
As we played freely and left our print
On the same toys we never quite outgrew
Suddenly dawn waved high her magic wand
As we scattered around she counted heads
Then swiftly caught us all with one hand
And gently tucked us in our daybeds
Bohemian Born
by
Teresa Ann Frazee
Woodland transients wandering in dark rhythmic motion
Sought a haven in the shadows of the outskirts of night
Liberated from the jurisdiction of social rule
Instinctively led through oblivion by an inward light
Anything is possible inside a soul’s wilderness
Laws of indifference pave the pedestrian tracks of day
Found a direction in a corner of disrupted Eden
Again, spontaneity has led fate hopelessly astray
Down where the hollow’s overgrown by the passages of time
When the restless hounds of midnight are in a savage state
They unleash a thunderous outcry loose upon the world
In which only the bohemian born can relate
Art & Literature
Frazee Fine Arts
Teresa Ann Frazee has been a visual artist for over thirty years, with juried and international exhibitions including solo shows in galleries, museums and other venues, receiving many awards and honors. Teresa has also been pursuing her other love, writing.
Teresa has had her work exhibited in the following magazines and books. Literary House Review, Skyline Magazine, Poetry Shelter, The Horror Zine, Twice the Terror, The Horror Zine Anthology, Death Head Grin Magazine and Ebook Anthology, What Fears Become: The Horror Zine Anthology, Aphelion, My Word Wizard, Story Mania and The Original Van Gogh's Ear. Teresa is the founder and host of the Boca Raton Museum of Art, Artists' Guild Poetry Reading Series: "Art & Literature" , author of "New City Souls" Poetry Cabaret and author of Sebastian Kane, performance. Inside her world of make-believe, she paints and writes what she knows to be true. Bound by the creative force, she leaves reality entirely up to you.
Prophetic Dreams
by
Teresa Ann Frazee
Once again the human predicament of sleep falls upon this still hour
Rarefied dust of a long forgotten dream whirls through the portals of imploding space
In the chamber of rest, eyes veiled in an anonymous white haze of snatched sight
The past returns, vandalizing the property of the present at a rapid pace
Incubated in the marrow of illusion, prophetic dreams feed on our existence
Some interpret into nothingness, knowing they don't impress any longer
They burrow deep in the transitory sludge of subconscious habitation
Through a passage on the edge of oblivion, this is where they tend to linger
Colliding with dimensions of reality, dreams mark their territory
Keeping vigil, they wait in secret triumph until we become one by night
Like ventriloquists dummies, we speak their language and move as they would have us move
As we're masterfully weaned off comprehension, trading what is real for insight
Free now from slumber, the woken, still woozy, whose idle lives were lived from afar
Their baited will has been conditioned to give little thought to the minds eye
Or the summoning odyssey that reigns nightly over ones imagination
Back to a world with no sense of what is real, the truth is as good as a lie
Disentangled Blue
by
Teresa Ann Frazee
Redirected, roaming life’s path without a guide
I call out for a miracle to take pity’s place
In the encroaching haze of night where shadows lurk
The darkness ravages light with a ghastly embrace
Left with the weight of decision slung across my back
Where reason has been circling and has dropped behind
Despondency and restlessness drag their mossy feet
Then suddenly everything becomes joined and aligned
The approaching howls of threatening hounds change their course
While wide–eyed creatures make their lairs under cloudless skies
Dawn’s light scatters across strands of disentangled blue
And tramples the past that heavily upon me lies
My still stumbling spirit begins to walk a straight line
A leveling wind blows and covers old tracks of woe
Now in the sun’s salvation I forge my path freely
Reborn I follow my wounded breath out of the shadow
.
Sanitary Lies
by
Teresa Ann Frazee
They’re little, they’re white, they’re lies
They sting more than heal
They strip you of your emotions
Then tell you how to feel
They’re self-serving bribes
Disguised to mean well
Conditioning us like dogs
At Pavlov’s dinner bell
The stale black breath
Of tongue-tied lies
Tightens the blindfold
Around justice’s eyes
They have the power to charm,
Talking heads with schemes
Profit from your strengthless will
And steal your heartfelt dreams
If I believed night’s penance
Could erase the days mistakes
Or could spot the real Santa
In a mall full of fakes
I would roam about
With brainwashed fools
Like heaven’s ill-trained children
Under a system of mythy rules
Our memories are etched
With once upon a time
And happily ever after
Promised in a nursery rhyme
Little girls with high hopes
Of becoming prince’s wives
Are disappointed grown-ups
Who hate their ordinary lives
Found the truth beneath a stone
Buried under its igneous roof
Took it inside, now I must
Live with all this proof
Held up to the light of day
Had the sweet smell of purity
Opened me up to fableless faith
Giving doubt a sense of security
Existed in the half-light
Ensnared in a web of neglect
Finally woke up freed
From a sleeping intellect
Burdened no more
From the weight of sin
Washed my hands of it
Knowing where it’s been
Put down the baggage
Of guilt and shame
It is hard to believe
Only you are to blame
Ghosts in the attic
There well might be
But I can only testify
To things I can see
To not know is absurd
A waste to be unaware
Nothing like the whole truth
To clear the stagnant air