Stephen Mead was raised in the small Dutch rural community of Selkirk, NY. Having chronic asthma and allergies while living on a farm gave rise to a rich imaginary life to compensate for shyness. Upon graduating high school with honors in creative writing and drama, Stephen was more interested in completing the novels he'd been working on since age 16 as opposed to attending college. When publication failed to materialize for these books, Stephen, like many a writer, found himself entering the work force. Though he attended two years of art school in his twenties, having won an art talent scholarship, Stephen dropped out with a sense that academia was anathema to his creativity. In the early 1990's Stephen's poems began appearing in such journals as Onionhead, Bellowing Ark, and Invert, but upon moving to Provincetown, Mass., Stephen decided to concentrate more on visual work.
It was in the year 2000 that Stephen started seeking publication again for both his writing and his art combined. Since, then, thanks to the wonders of the World Wide Web, his work has appeared internationally both in cyberspace and hard copy. Often the writing has appeared along side the paintings, and at other times with the text superimposed. In 2004 Stephen began experimenting even more with these poetry/art hybrids creating a series of e books, including the award winning We Are More Than Our Wounds. From there Stephen began experimenting with his art and poem as films, at first creating slideshows with captions, and then doing his own soundtracks and voice overdubs. In 2006 Stephen put this technology to use releasing a CD of poems set to music Safe & Other Love Poems, as well as two print editions of his image/art hybrids, Selected Works and Tree Companions, a fractured fairy tale for adults.
In 2007 Stephen hopes to find a publishing home for his quirky book of essays A Thousand Beautiful Things, a memoir of sorts based on a life "in two hallways and four small rooms".
Burnt (Helen Speaks)
I have met you before. You were
Somebody else. My gaze
Says nothing, my fingers,
My lips.
I am still as the core of a
January northeaster
Waiting for the sky to grow
Clear with its cold fire,
The stars.
My skin is singed with their
Half-life, a wafer gone yellow,
Harsh, crisp, brittle
From one passing love, and then
The next and the next-----
Really, a whole legion...
That is what I dream of
And wake sensing no loss,
Only a huge hushed din.
It's a riots' aftermath.
I'm here to tell you
That's why this won't work.
Once, like an epic
Such a potential passion might
Have risen to quell the burning.
Then, from the ocean, we would
Have flown, a couple of comets
To the heavens.
Presently I am wiser,
Having no fantasy wooling my eyes.
The most steadfast lover is sadness,
Sometimes stern, but authentic.
Earlier you called me angel.
That's when I fell.
Lies, lies.
Troy remembers
Cliff Is A Blue Angel
With a prussian blue crystal heart.
It is clear as the kindness
In my lover's seal eyes.
Back streets, alleyways
Roll from Cliff's robes-----
Time's winding sheet
Unfurled 'til he's nude.
Soldier, your bones of armor
Are whitest radiance, the roman
Shoulders shucking off duties,
War tours, a grief-----
Now Cliff is so pure,
The pool of each eye,
A portal for an earth,
For an ocean...
Two tears, tattooed,
Are high by his left cheek,
The ear, gold-hooped...
Cliff, is it Dover washing white
Froth over indigo there where you are?
Oh Holocaust Nosferatu, half gypsy
James Dean, half shaved Genet,
You are a saint out of prison now
& what of our own tears?
Mortal is flesh & sorrow too
Only a season...
Cliff, wave back to us
& spit your tobacco-----
Blue birds sail forth with good news.
From The Far Away Nearby
(For Georgia O' Keefe)
Somehow distanced,
Rooted to breeze, the impartial
Sky, these stretches of flung life-----
For years I have reached toward
This exact place in time, a setting
Without windows: open, opening...
Above hawks swoop.
The desert collects driftwood.
Here, at the center, is an embrace:
Hard but solvent, an essence, fossil-white,
Ladled & poured...
The canvas depicts a cow's skull,
One branch fetched from the far away
Nearby, evocative, antler-elegant.
The cactus blossoms, some space
Filled beautifully by holding living
Close
Yet
At arm's length...
This calla is a landscape.
Bells bong, shiver flesh
From the hills of New Mexico.
I had to come here in order to be.
Visual Works
Stephen Mead on YouTube.com
Stephen Mead's work on lulu.com