by Justin Robinson
Stone Ghosts
Stone ghosts. Mineral spirits. God in and about all. All things carbon and soul. I’m paraphrasing Spinoza, here. Yesterday I underhanded a blueish stone into the Rancocas and listened to its silence as it sank. Extinction swallows all. To wait isolate and untouched in an unfelt dark until all light elsewhere departs. How my fingers must have felt. That last callused touch. I watched the absence expand, diminishing causes and effects. God as immanent cause. Not before but always. Endless. To the end. I wish not to be one of Spinoza’s stones. When I die I hope I die. To wait for nothing, unfeeling as nothing. To wait.
The Boy Admires His Haircut
I’ll mess everything up
in a moment, but
for now my mother is
severing certain hairs,
paring me down to someone
happier than I now
am. My cells litter
the kitchen floor. My mother’s
proud of me, my haircut,
inordinately so. Or perhaps
she’s not, perhaps
I only want her to be proud
of me. I have a song
I like, “A Boy Considers His
Haircut,” which I wish to ape.
According to Epicurus,
my soul lies
on the floor, not dying
but already dead, fragmented
itch. I’m proud, I decide, of what
she thinks she’s made me.
Colin Lubner writes (in English) and teaches (math) in southern New Jersey. His work has either appeared or will appear, temporally speaking. Recent pieces can be found through his Twitter: @no1canimagine0. He is keeping on keeping on.
After questing across Canada, for the last four years Justin Robinson has settled in Toronto to focus on creating Expressionist Art; through Portraiture, nature, figure drawing, and ‘the living moment’/Narrative Expressionism. With a special interest in exploring atmosphere and the human condition, often the subject material is vastly different from the next and flows from a creative-intuitive perspective. Realized in the form of rich tonal values, color, and brush strokes, the works share a quality between abstract-emotionalism and a structure provided by realism. Former student of; Kwalikum Secondary Schools Art Program, School Creative – Institute of the Arts, and currently a student of London Art College.