Matt Beard

Insinuation XI: Like Polished Brass

Lengthening shadows signal the cycle
Is nearing its end
Soon to repeat again
And as the fading light races the horizon
The dust is what we’ve laid eyes on
The circuit complete
The awakening of earth’s mind
In a thousand incandescent lights
Streaming forth
To welcome all and then some
To receive the failed and winsome
Her final thought to hold a mass
For that which is hers to keep
The rest of which like polished brass
Not hers will be released
And tomorrows births
Will be described
In terms of shining metal
And tomorrow’s worth
Will be inscribed
On every flower’s petal

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Insinuation X: Green Explosions

The fragile seed
Takes root and shoots
Green explosions of sunshine
Burst forth from the scattered ashes
Of those laid to rest
From the day when the mad disease
Took aim and shot
Their passing became
The passion behind
The protest of laughing children
Bellies full
The harvest abundant
Ringing from the bell tower
Over field and foe alike
The vanquished appetite
Of the now rusted machine
But a distant memory
Clouded by satisfied times
Grounded by gratified rhymes

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Breakwall

Recent Live Art piece from the Save the Waves fundraiser in SF a few weeks back. I’m really stoked how this one turned out. I went with a simple image of a wave about to break into a breakwall, an enigmatic comment on our role in shaping the shoreline, creating and destroying surf breaks along the way. I figured it would be relevant to the cause. Not sure if any of that came across at all, but still I was stoked to be a part of their event and raise a few dollars for them along the way.

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Weight-Bearing

Load upon load
and weight to bear weight
these beams bear witness to our memories lost in the fire
on the night we crossed the bridge
to the hobo camp
passing driverless cars
and the rising tide
forced us to climb over the rocks in order to round the headland
where lovers loved
and dreamers dreamed
and thieves did their best work
stealing all that we had
and leaving us with nothing
but ashes.

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Hand Jive

Painted live at the San Diego Surf Film Festival, 2014. Throughout the 4 day event, contributing filmmakers were asked to trace a print of their hands on this 36″ x 36″ canvas. On the final day, I incorporated their hands into this finished piece.

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California Spring

20 things I’m thankful for in the middle of this storm…⠀
⠀
A life spent exploring this coast. ⠀
A brother that showed me the way to enjoy the ocean. ⠀
A mother with the patience of a saint to bundle into the VW and wait while we surfed the afternoon into evening. ⠀
A father that loved to drive… for hours… wherever we wanted to hunt for a wave. ⠀
A bike path through the park that led to a path that followed a river that flows into the sea at Seal Beach where a kid without a driver’s license could taste freedom and ice cream and square slices of pepperoni pizza. ⠀
An arrangement between working parents that saw us spending summer days – M-F from 9-5:30 – on the beach at the Surfside jetty. ⠀
Little shacks built for shade and locals that busted them up. ⠀
Eventually a license to drive and the keys to the VW opening up the coast from Santa Barbara to San Diego. ⠀
A retirement home in Atascadero where my grandparents moved and gave us a taste of the central coast and it’s marked difference from the regions below Point Conception. ⠀
A college education of sorts (major: art / minor: philosophy) at Humboldt State that opened up California’s deep northern coast to my wide eyes. ⠀
A community that embraced my art and everyone else’s too. ⠀
A great place to put some roots down. ⠀
Dozens if not hundreds of trips up and down the state’s coast over the years- at first to visit family, and then a gradual transition to my life’s work. ⠀
The California Impressionists of the 1920’s that made me realize that what I already loved was worth pursuing.⠀
A slow but steady chance to make a livelihood on this edge of the earth.⠀
All of you who’ve supported and encouraged this at-times questionable life path. ⠀
A van like a covered wagon to make a home wherever I go and provide a dry (if not always warm) shelter from California’s storms. ⠀
Books to read while waiting out the worst of storms.⠀
California’s beauty in the middle of a raging storm on the Big Sur coast back in 2010 that saw me hopping out at every break in the rain to soak it all in and make notes for this and many other paintings.⠀
Oh, and poppies, also the poppies.

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Traveling Light

Now let me get this straight, I’m supposed to want what you’ve got?  Ain’t no wagon big enough to hold all the worldly possessions you offer, the shine and pop glittering off your leadbolten chains sunk and anchored deep in the molten core of the earth. No offense, friend, but I’m aiming to travel a little lighter than that.

Everything I own is packed up here, ready to go wherever life is still fragile and not yet covered with concrete and steel.  Boxes of unsettled memories, most of them mine, some of them borrowed, but that’s just fine.  I trade them on the roadside to strangers and friends alike just to feed my family. I got kids that call me Pa and a wife that loves me true and a newborn baby with eyes so blue they make the ocean cry even when the sun is shining, so it don’t bother me none that my tarp’s been leaking and my lung’s been rattling.  You call me poor, but I am rich. Richer than you anyway.  Your mountain of worthless money can’t buy what life has given me freely.

And you still say I’m supposed to want what you’ve got?  You step out from behind your polished black veneer of tinted glass to hurl spit and fire at me, threatening with scorn that I should dream your dreams for you?  You wonder why I stand unmoved as you command me to sign the dotted line and exchange what I’ve got for your drunken dream?  A cup of clean water for your barrel of poisoned wine?

Your dreams are nothing to me. I am the undreamed, my friend, and your stillborn dream will be left on the road unmourned where it will be trampled by the masses you dreamt of trampling.  And as for me, when all the words have been spoke and all the dreams undreamt, I’ll ignore my leaking tarps and my own rattling lung just long enough to smile on my kids and hold my wife close and jump in to the cleansing ocean of my baby’s eyes one more time before I have to travel even more lightly on.

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Death is Unoriginal

There is nothing creative about death.  Destruction and decay follow the course that’s been laid from the foundation of the world.  Turning life into death is the natural order of things and always has been.  Tune into the program nightly and witness the procession of fast-food destruction served up on microwave-safe trays for public consumption on a global scale.  Pass the ketchup.  The armchair graveyard is never satisfied.

The crushing weight of seven LA freeways cannot compare to the tragedy of the needless speeding of Death’s Process.  Recklessly darting from lane to lane while shrieking a mournful howl across all 8 lanes, Death’s Process hangs one hand out the window flipping a wretched bird to every hopeless soul who by birth, design, or foolery lacks the horsepower to keep up with the flow of traffic.  Confined to the right lane, where they await a forced exit, cut off forever, these legions of hopeless are unmourned by the onslaught of a constantly accelerating culture.

Standing on the side of the highway, breathing in the concrete vapor of exhausted lives it’s a terrible and tragic fleeting moment when you connect the dots and see the wreckage spelled out in slow motion.  Parents weeping for children ripped from their arms by needless disease.  Children stranded, orphaned, and worse because we all had important things to do the day we saw them on the side of the road.  In this moment, delicate as the fluttering wings of a butterfly, the rush slows to a walking speed, the city evaporates and there is nothing but barren fields of earth.  Welcome home.

The TV is dead and gone now.  A new vision has sprouted from it’s earthen grave. Why live another spoon-fed day when we can go to the kitchen ourselves and cook up a thunderstorm with the fruit of the suddenly fertile earth? Feed the children, comfort the parents, take them all in to your own broken heart and listen for the sound of the wind and rain beating against that thin veil separating you from death itself. Life is not what you ever expected.

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