Poem by Ian Blake

The Art of Living

Frustration.
Urges.
Giving into the weak, sexual prey.
Letting elations linger as they
delicately drape off of a hanger,
satisfactions’ got to be dispensed.
Indulging in excessive desire and
self-gratification will only lead to
misery someday.
Availing awareness toward this
human concept will help avoid
entrapment in future circumstances.

None of us,
here,
are angel-headed hipsters.

We are those who seek to glimpse
the light of Bodhi, the brilliance of
understanding our own intelligence.
Where knowledge is the only
suitable character that travels
with us after death.
It’s with this same conviction
of memorizing a poem one night
before bed and waking up the next
morning with this knowledge.
Have you retained what you’ve
learned?

Death is a long sleep.
We travel and awake at a different
place and time. And what we’ve
come to learn along our paths
reverberates with our souls.
Jealousy is often manufactured
between friends, more-so than
strangers. This is indeed a cognizant
piece of information for us all.
And commitments.
These are generally angles of our
lives we too easily (learn to) tamper
with. Sometimes we fail to commit
because its notably painful
or a commitment intrudes our
pleasures and desires.
During alternative times, we are
inclined to evade a commitment in
order to achieve a greater
harvest. The latter will not attract
misery, though the first will authorize
it to arrive without a caveat.

Ian Blake was born in Brooklyn, New York and raised in Northern New Jersey. Having lived on both coasts, Ian often finds inspiration for his writing from various aspects of nature, dreams and his traveling endeavors.

Ira Joel Haber was born and lives in Brooklyn. He is a sculptor, painter, book dealer, photographer and teacher. His work has been seen in numerous group shows both in USA and Europe and he has had 9 one man shows including several retrospectives of his sculpture. His work is in the collections of The Whitney Museum Of American Art, New York University, The Guggenheim Museum, The Hirshhorn Museum and The Albright-Knox Art Gallery. Since 2007 His paintings, drawings, photographs and collages have been published in over 160 on line and print magazines. He has received three National Endowment for the Arts Fellowships, two Pollock-Krasner grants, the Adolph Gottlieb Foundation grant and, in 2010, he received a grant from Artists’ Fellowship Inc. He currently teaches art to retired public school teachers at The United Federation of Teachers program in Brooklyn.