What is War by Richard Schemmerer

What is war but the acknowledgement
of the defeat of heart & soul
what is torture but the sell out
of your values

New York Love Affair by Richard Schemmerer

" ELNS Empty love nest syndrome" photography by Richard Schemmerer



NY love affair

you saw you came you conquered
you left me behind like a world
that had given you the opportunity
that was now to small to satisfy you
you came as a wide eyed country kid
to step past me like a cruel joker that
was dealt a better hand to play with
I burned my tongue on your hot body
and all I am left with are blisters to proof
that it was real even if it was to good
to last to be true to be worth the effort
I never saw it coming that I changed you
so fast that even betrayal was not the cause
but the ravenous heart of youth that had
sucked my tainted aged blood like a freebie
when it was meant as life line for both of us
ah New York you did it again to lull me in
only to spit me back out like a chewed out gum
like a cheap Sex in the City tryst not worth
to be cried over to be sullen like a spurned
lover to keep repeating like the sequel of a soap
and now I see you happy your daily updates
on Facebook that used to contain my face
while my updates are now of the cats and dogs
of the lonely once more in the midst of the
this huzzle and buzzle like bees craving for
attention because we all have this disorder
that we want we need to be loved in some
weird way that makes us unhappy even
when we are finally find that love for awhile
a love that is only visiting like a tourist a
big city excited full of electricity to dive in
head over heels even with a naked soul
to bath in its spoiled unique colors and flavors
like tasting from the essence of a new lover
only to get tired of its all to willing sweetness
a love that becomes a prison of wants
a self fulfilling nightmare where one is relieved
to have escaped and the other graven in sorrow



copyright by Richard Schemmerer

Taking stock by Richard Schemmerer

The seed catcher’s transgression or taking stock

I am not for you I am not against you
I am not for the viewer with his whiny needs
I am a seed that pops up no matter what
or who’s out there because there is no out there

Something Vito Acconci could have burbled out of a bubble of thought
with the intention to provoke a reversal of perspective.

Taking stock from time to time is as important as physical detoxification. Sometimes we think the past is like a roadblock and only the future can save us from the present circumstances but in truth it is the past which prepared the ground we take now for granted.
I grew up smiling at the Woodstock generation they sounded like a sad failed social experiment that self destructed by becoming a catch word like love generation or the derogative “Hippie”.
Hippies where a cultural out growth in my mind more infamous than famous for bongs, long hair and free sex than a valid counter culture movement that initiated a revolution in thinking.
As I take stock now I am forced to acknowledge that my ideas of unconditional love and global identification free from a national agenda and unburdened by discrimination was birthed out of the labor of love by sweating youngsters who broke down the old barriers of race, gender, orientation and that I was the blossom that sprung from their seed.
Taking Woodstock is an underrated effort from Ang Lee who rose to international fame bringing us the Cowboy drama “Brokeback Mountain” which I thought was a very fine movie but a bit overrated.
Of course as a gay man I was extremely happy that BBM got nominated and won some Oscars because it is the rare occasion that a gay themed movie rises to such fame.
BBM ended with the death of its hero who struggled under the weight of finding love outside the standardized norm and got beaten to death by others who faltered under their misconception of what is or makes us human giving into a dehumanizing rage that has been preached from Politicians, Christians and other pulpits for way to long.


A residue of elation still lingers on my minds comfort zone and I look back at the Woodstock era in reference and I have to give credit to them for the joys in my personal life because their ground work gave me the strength not to kill my gay self off but embrace it as a gift and to give myself a platform to excel to reach a desirable potential.

True characters have such conviction in their human rights to pursue their own brand of happiness that I only now understand the implications of the Hippie movement and can now embrace its resurgence all around us.
They made it possible for me to even think about being liberated, free, equal and that I can stand up for it free of shame or guilt.
Director Ang Lee offers such a sensitive direction to guide us so subtle through his movies like a good, the perfect father that by the time the movie is over our hearts a full of hope and so open that even the Russian army could find love in it.
Without Woodstock my coming out would have been a timid, shameful hazing and maybe I would still linger in a closet of guilt to find excuses for being different thinking I am not equal. I still would be running around begging for acceptance from everyone that crosses my path maybe forever and ever.
Instead I can stand proud in my own shoes because Woodstock had broken the dam opened the artificial gates created by a hyper moralized society that had already began to strangle itself and to self distract on its own frame of hate.
The ideal family is not a concept imprisoned by moral values even its inventers can live up too but the ideal family/society values its diversity and finds strength in the love we all desire and deserve.

All I had to do was walk out onto the stage of the world to proclaim “you are either with me or against me and if you are against me it’s you who misses out on my beauty”.
I was so busy expressing myself that I was ignorant of the price others had paid.
I was busy catching up with my karma to change it forever.

Looking back I see myself chanting “I am gay and I am not going away” or “I am Queer and I am staying here” standing proud walking in the down towns during many Pride parades yelling “Closets are for clothing only” looking back I appreciate the power the Hippies generation transferred to me because they had the courage I could imitate it and make it my own.

“Taking Woodstock” took my heart and adorned it with a refreshed sense of wonder and reminded me that the heart has to be shared with all and that it is worth the ache to keep it open at all times because the capacity to Love one another is what unites us and makes us human.

Portfunia -- The Hype -- by Richard Schemmerer

Where their is smoke their is hype. Portfunia is not hype free is not without its own little messy scandals. We are not what we pretend to be; sometimes we are better other times we fall short like in sin as it is called in the outside world. We have major who was blind sided by a youthful devil and now has to go back to the private sector. We occupy parks and invite run away youths to set up camp and do art at places called P>E>A>R. We build it and they came like the junkies who line up on Broadway to get a replacement drug for their coffee addiction. We named the latest marginalized neighborhood Pearl and made it an oasis for the wanna be rich crowd who sip latte's at Love Joy cafe while rapid transit mauls over innocent pedestrians high on NW drizzle.

Portfunia Beach of Illusions

Stranded like on a beach of illusions like can we save the world by saving Earth or do we have to save ourselves first before we can even think about saving anybody or anything else. I am scraping stickers of occupied walls and signs that used to be street signs pointing us in the direction of conformity and normalcy but have now been inundated with grizzly masks of cartoonish freaks.

The city is collaged like a canvas made from houses and urban detritus. We drown in art but it is like drowning in a shallow pool. If we only would stand up we could see the horizon and we could walk away from this beach of illusion that holds us captured like a prisoner in Abu Ghraib.

But when I go on being busy stitching my crochet webbings around trees and the very street sign as if that would make the difference in my calculation about who I am going to be when I finally out grow out my beard and my skinny jeans to skinny for my skinny Latte and when Ill start pointing the way in real live not on some cartoonish screen will that be the time when time will have a future again and able to escape from this retrograde virus we call the religion of politics.

And all these questioned answer will vanish like the wars we keep alive just to proof to ourselves that we are the greatest under all the weakest. And the corrupt will be called out even if we ourselves have empowered them to mislead us.

Berlin Dumpster Diving by Richard Schemmerer

Dumpster diving

What is history but a dumpster of our collective conscience. What is the past but the dumpster for our atrocities. What is yesterday but today on repeat button. Potsdamerplatz is now Sony center a movie house complex, A Rastafari teaches his son German a Turkish boy loves the spectacle of the candles in a catholic church a white blond girl lives as a wife of a Salafist. The West has found its Mitte so did the East both claim the same Story one as winner the other as loser. It all is called Berlin it all is everybody's dream landfill, the IT place to live out a vision of a multi-culti society with warts, scars and bandages but united by the will to survive as equal parts of the same equation. Berlin is not just a historical dumpster but also a human one with the discarded with the ne w born next to each other looking for ways to survive from the rubble rebuild and gentrified or otherwise left as reminders of a reality that some times or even most of the time takes its toll up front but for sure at the end of the journey.

Y's at Nine Gallery at Blue Sky by Jerry Meyer

What's is an optical ILLUSION WHAT IS REAL WHAT IS A SYMBOL WHAT IS METHAPHOR WHAT IS A HOAX. We are daily confronted to decipher that which is presented to us by others as communication to inform us to encourage us but also to mislead us. In an age where truth has become irrelevant and message is king we are the stranded whale robbed of its natural habitat where the seen can be believed in. Welcome to the new age stop asking others why but start answering your own questions and built your own world around it.

Portfunia 03 -- The Cross

The Cross

by Richard Schemmerer

Portfunia is the cross we carry
is the road that splits the heart
is the place where lust and pain
exchange their spit into a glob
that make life's conundrums
easier to swallow like a mint
that has been laying unfinished
in ones trousers pockets and
is now refreshed by hard sucking
to cover the bad taste of yesterday
that still lingers after one to many
shallow wantings for a truer truth
that lets us laugh again against the tide
that pushes its worn out war slogans
along the air waves of our happiness
to conquer the last vestiges in us
in the pulsating veins of thoughts
that don't put us down into place
where we just seen us a demographic
to be bombarded with callus advertising
of a life style that doesn't suit
neither humanity nor the planet as a whole

Portfunia 02 -- don't slang map my Comey

"Portfunia" upcycled sculpture by Richard Schemmerer


Okay lets give this a try and interact. Portfunia Unleashed is a page I started awhile ago but it never got of the ground. Maybe the time is now in the year of the impending end of good times. Portfunia is looking for the last remnants of the signs of the time the signs of "The Unleashed." As we are all herded around the daily fake news bowl and chow down what's served up piping shit hot we lost track of the creatively outrages inspiring uplifting works many are still engaging in or conspiring to do.

The Arts are being cut not just like in circumcised but basically chopped off like in Bobbitt of the Art body which is us.

Doing art is always an act of resistance to a system that is mostly enamored with control of mind body and our wallets.

This doesn't have to an act of cry baby but can empower what we wrongly term SOUL but is in actuality a part of our intellect that is always searching for ways to express itself.
If this channel is blocked by ourselves or others disease can manifest.

PORTFUNIA will go out on the streets of the world with Portland as its epicenter to keep this queer light alive in us.

WEIRD is good but it's not enough to be weird just for its own sake -- that is narcissism. What I am looking for is a PULSE that is collective in Nature.

A sorts of renaissance of our highest ideals and greatest hits of human potential.

Yes that's a lofty goal but we have been dumbed down so we have to make up ground. Art is the holy ground we can meet on and prosper together.
Art not for arts sake but art that has a budget that can be used to counter act the upheaval the future is presenting us with.

don't slang map my Comey
don't let the truth die within you


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Comey