Poem-A-Day #285 : The Alarm is Going

The Alarm is Going

The alarm is going again -

It has been 15 years 8 years 2 years 1 month -
                    it was yesterday -

I stood in front of the Madonna - the one from 1290
Duccio
               - the painting is on peeling wood

Around her head the gold is sculpture - it is an object grown - the tree gave birth to this fully framed woman

The child reaches for her veil -
                    not yet - not yet -

A etches across the surface - it highlights her sadness - is a weight on her
like the oddly proportioned child -

          too small - too adult looking - a doll really

He reaches for her veil -
continues to reach -

You died on this day - or that day -

                                        the alarm is going again - I am not sleeping -

                         I blame the moon for this - it gets fucked by us too often - blamed for all atrocities - I blame it and the light it steals - the fucking rabbit that lives upon its face -

The rabbit hitched a ride on the back of the heron
          its small white paws going raw from the gravity of what they were doing

they landed and the rabbit reached one bloody hand towards the heron's face
and marked it forever -

The alarm has been going for hours -
                    and I feel like I should have burned up by now

Death isn't fear -

          at least not on the surface - I like to think that I understand this but -

The child reaches for the mother's veil -

                    His hand touches the edge of the loose fabric - blue and shimmering -
          his oddly small fingers pull at the edge - her eyes reveal themselves -

The leaves of gold peel steadily -

Madonna & Child (1290-1300)
Duccio

Poem-A-Day #270 : The James Ossuary

The James Ossuary

1
Draw a circle on the blackboard :

Circles are more difficult than you think - they deceive
                    find ways to flatten under your hand :

Make an ouroboros line of salt eating itself :

Lot's wife turns her head to look back at the burning bed of Gomorrah - it is the moment in the movie where the score drops out and the silence hangs there like wool drying in the sun :

If you could step into the chalkboard - into the circle with the flat side you have drawn -
                    you would be standing on a chalkboard in a classroom -
          looking insane -
defying gravity :


2
Chalk is the compressed shell of history :

The ocean's dream of itself :

Darkness bleached of its inky crush :

How does the weightlessness feel in your hand - I remember
               slapping the felt erasers
     against each other

                         until the cloud of dead things welled around me - there
is a feeling of erasing the self a sort of tossing of a smoke bomb - you are Batman
making your escape

     in their blindness
bullets will not find soft places to press :

It was a reward - the erasing :


3
The chalk box had James in it :

And I don't know what that means - he is not here now :

You find a box in a field and it is stained with the brown of dirt and the red of iron and the holes along its surface are oddly beautiful :

Inside the box are the bones :

I dreamt about removing my skeleton again
                    this time we refused to go grocery shopping
          it was Black Friday it was Boxing Day it was the 4th of July -

          we sat in our -
                                   my
                                          - pajamas - we watched episodes of The Simpsons

                     and then I woke up :

4
The box that James was in - sits in front of you - it has been litigated
declared fake - the very idea - !

The issue is that is is historic evidence for Jesus - the inscription :
                    Ya'akov bar-Yosef akhui diYeshua
                    James, son of Joseph, brother of Jesus :

It is another scene in a movie where the sound drops out - unless
          it's that kind of movie
                              where heavy strings rise up out of the darkness around us

          telling us that this is now :

This
is now :

5
How goes the circle - the standing against it
          the pausing of physics :

The box is compressed history - your hand
compressing itself - is also a history

You realize that blackboard chalk hasn't been made from chalk for decades - the piece in your hand is made of gypsum -
                                        from the Greek - gypsos
                                        when burnt and rehydrated it can be used as plaster
                    it can build - it is drywall :

The room around you is a box of chalk :

The James Ossuary

Dust Jacket : A Little Life

A Little Life (2015)
Designed By : Cardon Webb
Photo By : Peter Hujar

Imagine pain.

What does it look like?

What do you look like in pain?

Not just physical, but psychic. We are conditioned to hide ourselves when we are feeling things greatly at either end of the spectrum.

When we are grieving, for instance, we are told that to somehow find the 'strength' to get through it is better than losing control of ourselves.

Julia Louis-Dreyfus has been lauded for her ability to show up to the Emmy's this week and accept her 5th consecutive award while int he midst of grieving for her father. He died two days ago. This is not courage, it is holding it together at its most visible. And while I applaud her and her accomplishments, I don't know that I applaud her ability to 'hold it together' for a few seconds on a national stage.

In great happiness we can also be viewed as crazy. Remember Howard Dean?

This is a ridiculous duality. And while this one incident is not what ended his Presidential run, it certainly painted him in a way that, over a decade later, is still hard to erase.

So. Let's talk about the cover to this book.

Renee Falconetti in Carl Theodor Dreyer's
The Passion of Joan of Arc (1929)

Cardon Webb is playing a game with us that I will get to in a second, but first I want to ask how we react to this image.

My first thoughts are of St. Teresa, Joan of Arc, the Pieta. They are images of women in religious distress, but also in the midst of religious ecstasy.

Webb picked a photo by Peter Hujar called Orgasmic Man. It was taken in 1969. Based on the title alone I think you can tell where this is going.

Religious ecstasy is sexual ecstasy. One only need to spend a little time looking at paintings and sculpture depicting people in the midst of such a state to see this.

The Ecstasy of St. Teresa (1647-1652Gian Lorenzo Bernini

Take a moment to think of these kinds of images.

Who is filled with the power in these religious ways?

I'm guessing that you thought of an image like the one of Joan of Arc from the Dreyer movie. Culturally, we are conditioned to think of women in the throes of passion. They are to be 'taken'.

St Teresa is shot through with the power of god's 'arrow' of love and as a result she collapses into a state of grace that few could know.

Orgasm.

The genius of the Hujar photo is that it twists the concept. We see pain because we don't think that an image of a male could possibly be of the weird between pain/ecstasy that is at times seen as religious. Hujar refuses to show the moment after this, the one where the subject relaxes.

The only male figures who are popularly known for their moments of religious ecstasy are St Francis and St Sebastian. These images are less sexual in their depictions. They are quieter. St Francis usually looks asleep.

St Sebastian (1651)Jusepe de Ribera

St Francis of Assisi in Ecstasy (1627-1632)Anton van Dyck

St Sebastian also manages to look very languid despite being shot through with arrows.

Amazingly the two saints look more like the moment Hujar doesn't show. The moment after. The one of release. Women are shown being taken. Men are shown after the taking. After they have probably taken.

You could argue that these are just as sexual. And I agree. St Sebastian is overtly erotic in presentation. But his eroticism is one of nudity. It is one of gaze. St Francis is perhaps erotic as well, though his robes are not twisting in desire and his face is not out of control. He is sighing. He is taken, but not out of control.

At the top I asked you to imagine what pain looked like. In reality I'm more interested in the next moment. After the initial pain/pleasure sensing. What does that look like? I would argue that the visions of men in ecstasy tend to show that moment. That we are culturally not going to show male figures in the throes.

A little life indeed.



Dust Jacket is a sometime article about the design and art of book covers. The idea is to shine a spotlight on the work of the designer separate from the author. Literally judging a book by its cover.

Poem-A-Day #150 : Planting Marigolds

Planting flowers is perhaps the closest thing to religion that I will ever get.


Planting Marigolds (4/4/05)

The pressing
That's the important part
Getting the roots
to press down and
point the right way

You have to
dig in the correct direction
being careful
not to go too deep
or the roots
will touch the veins of earth
and run towards the center

But it must be deep enough
to tap the water

You have to make it
careful not to fill it to the brim
then let it soak down

This starts the life cycle

Have to say
several prayers
along the way
Crossing oneself
with holly wreaths

But the pressing
making the base
against the wind
telling the thread like roots

This is the way down
This is the way up
Choose

Hadrian the Seventh

The official List of Popes spans 21 centuries of human history. It begins with St. Peter and ends, obviously, with Francis. In between are 266 men. A few highlights:

St. Peter by Peter Paul Rubens

- From August 1799 - March 1800 there was no Pope. The previous, Pius VI, died in France while imprisoned by Napoleon. There have been 4 other breaks between Popes. Those were for 2 or 3 years and were mainly caused by politics in the church.

- Pope-elect Stephen died 3 days after being elected and before his ordination. The Catholic church removed him from the official list of Popes in 1961. Though Stephen's after him counted him in the number after their names.

- Benedict IX was Pope 3 times. He was deposed all twice and sold the Papacy to Gregory VI because he wanted to marry. What's amazing is that he became Pope the third time AFTER he sold the seat.

- John Paul II has the third longest reign behind Pius IX and St. Peter. He was Pope for 26 years. Pius IX for almost 32. St. Peter is said to have reigned for 34 years.

Study after Velázquez's Portrait of Pope Innocent X 1953

This is just scratching the surface. This leaves out the Borgia Popes and the 41 Anti-Popes. And when Pius IX declared himself Prisoner of the Vatican in 1870 and the title stuck until 1929. And countless other things.

My favorite Pope-related artifact is the series of Pope Innocent X paintings by Francis Bacon. In all, there are 45 variations. Bacon was painting after the famous Velázquez painting of Innocent X.

I've always loved the horror in the paintings. The feeling of a caged soul. A trapped thing. That yawning mouth eating the world.

It is critique without being critique. Bacon famously said that he painted the Pope because he merely sought "an excuse to use these colours, and you can't give ordinary clothes that purple colour without getting into a sort of false fauve manner."

I bring up Popes because I just finished reading Hadrian the Seventh by Frederick Rolfe. The book concerns George Rose, an Englishman who is basically elected Pope on accident after Leo XIII dies in 1903. What follows is one year in the life of the new Pope. He sells off the Vatican jewels and forces Europe to redefine its borders. And then he is assassinated by socialists.

Fr. Rolfe

The book is an interesting look at church politics. There are pages of Papal machinations and in-fighting. There is a scene where Hadrian removes his Papal ring and confronts his Cardinals not as Pope but as George Rose that is one of the most interesting exchanges I've read recently. The compartmentalization that Hadrian/Rose puts himself through to allow himself to BE Pope is amazing.

Frederick Rolfe's book is also mostly a thinly coated wish. He was a failed Catholic priest. He shortened his name to Fr. so people would think he was a friar. The book reads like one long fever dream of a man who felt that the world owed him more. And for that alone, you should go read it. Each page is a screed on what Rolfe thinks the church should be doing vs. what they are doing.

I could discuss Rolfe's at length, but will just add that he dabbled in photography. Of young boys. He was an open homosexual in Victorian England. He died alone and penniless in Venice at the age of 53. And he carried on a long distance affair through love-letters and poems with a priest.

Dust Jacket : A Guide To Being Born

A Guide to Being Born
Designed by: Alex Murto
Illustration by: Lou Beach

Alex Murto designed that typeface, called Effing, that was meant to be sexual that floated around the internet a few months ago. His covers tend to be the 'take a nice illustration or typeface and put it together' type.

There is nothing wrong with this. It makes good covers. This is one of them.

But it has zero to do with Murto. As far as I can tell, he added flowers to the original illustration by Lou Beach and softened the colors to make it look more three dimensional.

Which...I guess...

The whole point of Beach's work is that it looks like weird acid-trip versions of Victorian illustration. The flatness is part of the aesthetic. Beach is trying to reference specific things from our past.

Old advertising, medical diagrams, religious icons.

Like this ad for Maidenform from the 1950s. They did a long campaign of 'I dreamed I...' ads. The idea was that you could do ANYTHING in these bras.

Take a look at this ad though. There are women in bras wearing animal heads.

It's hard to compete with that today. If this ad showed up in Vogue next month people would go crazy over it. It is weird. And not average weird, very very very weird.

But also really kinda amazing. Like frame it on the wall amazing.

Which is why Beach does what he do.

His recent book 420 Characters (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt 2011) was one of my favorite odd finds of last year. It features 160 stories of only 420 characters. At one point Facebook limited the characters in posts to this number. Beach posted these as his status.

The book features his collage illustrations along side the stories:

Many are animal-headed men and women in various Victorian and mid-century costume.

If I hadn't told you the ad above was real, you would be excused for thinking it was his work.

A lot of his work, the cover illustration included, incorporates a sense of the medical drawing. Reminiscent of Gray's Anatomy.

I think of the times I have gone to the acupuncturist and stared at the charts. Thinking that they are beautiful and terrifying. The same experience occurs in doctors offices. The charts and ads on their walls a constant reminder of the ways a body can deteriorate and fall apart.

Victorian illustration of cadavers and medical equipment are striking. For their bluntness. Their shocking realism. The acute awareness that the drawing was made of a dead person, that the organs seen were exposed so the illustrator could draw them.

The viscera of it can be felt.

Which, given the oddness of Victorian society and it's prudishness is interesting. That these people would decide that they would turn their noses up at so many things as being 'crude' while demanding this incredible realism in their medicine.

These are the people that brought us the modern form of the seance after all. Modern mysticism in general really.

That mysticism comes through in Beach's work in subtle ways. The cover reminds me of icons of the Virgin Mary. Of old religious relics in general. Something about the egg with a face on it. The pose. The absolute zeal of it.

An exhibit of Frida Kahlo's clothing recently opened at Museo Frida Kahlo in Mexico City. There are corsets, braces, a prosthetic leg. Her flowing native Mexican inspired gowns bring to mind the Virgin. The country and its history.

Beach's work calls back to Kahlo's and further back to Hieronymus Bosch's nightmare-scapes.

These artists juxtapose the beautiful and terrifying to create worlds we want to look at but never want to encounter. The artistic counterpart to the stranger in the alley, the creepy side show, the dream you cannot wake from.

Frida Kahlo's brace/corset.

Dust Jacket is a sometime article about the design and art of book covers. The idea is to shine a spotlight on the work of the designer separate from the author. Literally judging a book by its cover.

SALIGIA

Hieronymus Bosch - The Seven Deadly Sins and the Four Last Things

I know people who have a hard time with friends being published. I have been in a situation where upon telling someone of a recent publication they talk about their own work in the context of how they really should get it out there more. This communicates that 'if you could do it, so could I'. And I feel it, I really do. But that reaction is not supportive.

People I know getting their work out there is a win-win. It allows me to say that they are good people and deserve it. Do I feel that little pang of 'why not me?' Of course. But I know that the people getting published are worth it.

It also allows for the mighty connection. And those are bread and butter honey. Envy really starts to rear its head when we start talking about books. There I can be catty, downright mean. Mostly I become self-loathing and terribly lazy with my own work.

I'm not even positive of why I have an internal distinction. It could be that a 'book' is a physical manifestation of timelessness. It means libraries, classrooms, generations, translations. It means being on shelves. Being in a magazine more and more means being at the end of a link - blahblahblah.com/yournamehere

The seven deadly sins are, of course, Wrath, Greed, Sloth, Pride, Lust, Envy, and Gluttony. These sins do not really pop up in the bible though. There are two places where the book gets specific with what pisses off the lord. In Proverbs 6:16-19 the list is given as:

1. A proud look.
2. A lying tongue.
3. Hands that shed innocent blood.
4. A heart that devises wicked plots.
5. Feet that are swift to run into mischief.
6. A deceitful witness that uttereth lies.
7. Him that soweth discord among brethren.

In Galatians 5:19-21 it is:

adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lasciviousness, idolatry, sorcery, hatred, variance, emulations, wrath, strife, seditions, heresies, envyings, murders, drunkenness, revellings, 'and such like'

The current sins don't enter the world until the 4th century, though in slightly different variations. They took their current form when Pope Gregory I standardized the list in AD 590.

I am partial to the original Latin sins. There were 8 of those: Gula (gluttony), Fornicatio (lust), Avaritia (greed), Superbia (pride), Tristitia (sorrow/despair/despondency), Ira (wrath), Vanagloria (vainglory), and Acedia (sloth).

I look at the list and kinda love the lost sins.

Hieronymus Wierix

Acedia is apathetic listlessness or depression without joy. This was changed into Sloth over time. I figure it is because it is not as directly translatable. It is similar to ennui. Or the feeling I get when someone I know publishes a book.

Vainglory is unjustified boasting. The semantic change of the word vain from 'futile' to 'narcissism' led to this being folded into the larger Pride. Again, slightly ill defined. Also very far-reaching. Point me to someone who hasn't boasted once or twice.

Gregory I also got rid of Tristitia, adding Envy in its place. The idea that despair is a sin. A 'going to hell' sin...is amazing. It speaks to the harshness of the early church.

These three are evocative to me, more so than the others. I can point to places where I feel them when I read the work of friends. When I smile and say congratulations. I see it in myself when I don't submit to a magazine because I feel like the whole thing is rigged and stupid. I see it when I stare at the words I've written and want to delete until it's blank again. I see it when I talk myself up. When I say things like 'Your poetry is ho shit' and 'My poetry will read yours to filth'.

I see it, for what it is, smoke and mirrors. I love that people I know. People whom I critiqued in workshop, have become something. And I continue, with the idea that I am something too. Perhaps the 'sins' are there to light that fire. To keep us striving towards something more like the 7 graces - humility, charity, kindness, patience, chastity, temperance, and diligence.

Emphasis on the diligence.

Dust Jacket : Bye-and-Bye

Bye-and-Bye: Selected Late Poems
Designed by: Quemadura
Painting by: Piero della Francesca

Religious iconography is always fascinating. The faces glancing upward in fervor or down in reflection.

I often find myself at museums wandering aimless through the galleries of old relics. The altars that open to reveal triptych of faith, death, heaven or hell itself. All painted in fading colors on thin veneers of wood.

Each layer of paint seemingly easy to peel. The wood separating at the edges. You could imagine taking the tip of a finger and picking at the parts until some came off in your hand. What would that feel like? That ancient wood and pain sitting in your palm.

This is what I think about in these galleries.

That and the strange devotion to something that would lead to the objects being created.

One of my favorite examples is the Chapter House at Westminster Abbey. It is an octagonal room built in the 1250s. The ceiling is vaulted and very high. It looks like a circus tent. The floor is a rare complete 13th century tiled pavement. Covering the walls are murals depicting the Apocalypse. They date from the 14th century.

A lot of the panels are hard to see. There are whole sections that are just faded to white. These sit next to sections that are in beautiful condition.

The effect of standing in the room is to feel like history is arbitrary. That there is no reason for one section to carry over for generations while another fades beyond memory.

This is what I think about as I walk around the objects amassed in museums. The cases of Mary's with child. The gilt halos. I think about what other objects vanished. What remained and why. And I wonder what will remain from today. From me.

There are great examples of religious art. Goya. El Greco. DaVinci. Earlier works like the Chapter House murals. These things are from a time where the Christian god was very very real. Was feared. Was held at bay and worshipped through these works and others like them.

To see them held in cases. Stripped of most of their power. Left with only aesthetic.

The cover is the center panel of an altar. The full panel has a very different feeling than the close-cropped version of the book jacket.

Here what we interpret as a sad woman reflecting on life. On religion. On the poetry within. Here she is a giant, triumphant. Welcoming the masses into her cloak of protection. She is Mary, mother.

What's interesting is that I'm not sure which version I like more.

The washed out one in close from the cover is interesting because of the introspection. The larger, true painting, is interesting for the strength and the message.

This reminds me of when J and I went to see Tatzu Nishi's 'Discovering Columbus'. Nishi built a living room around Gaetano Russo’s 1892 statue of Columbus in Columbus Circle. 70 feet in the air, you came face to face with this:

Suddenly the city around me, the statue, the man from history classes - they contracted. And all I could think about was his jaunty pose. One hand on hip, smirking across space and time. The chopping of the rest of the monument, the cutting off of the noise of the intersection. It changed the work. It made it mean something else.

This is why I walk the rooms full of religious artifacts. Because those cases of things make it all mean so much more.

And so much less.

Dust Jacket is a sometime article about the design and art of book covers. The idea is to shine a spotlight on the work of the designer separate from the author. Literally judging a book by its cover.

Dust Jacket : Yellow World

Yellow World
Design by: Jon Gray (gray 318)

This is a book about surviving cancer. Albert Espinosa survived and wrote a book about imagination as the means of that survival. His 'yellow world'.

A lone world floating in space.

That imagination is a lone planet drifting in the darkness of space is something to think about. Each of us have within us a world separate and equal to everyone else. We are all a constellation, a solar system.

A lot of modern art is about existing in space alone. About the individual experiencing the object. Mark Rothko's Chapel in Houston, Texas is a fine example of meditative art.

Rothko Chapel

You walk into a stark gray room, you are faced with 14 black color field paintings. There are a few benches to sit on. It is pure mediation. Rothko's work requires this. For his paintings to exist as art, the viewer must bring multitudes into the room with them.

In a design week interview, Gray cited Olafur Eliasson as an inspiration for this cover. I certainly see the connection to Eliasson's piece The Weather Project.

That work was installed at Tate Modern in London for 6 months in 2003. It filled their 5-storey 3,400 sq. meter Turbine Hall. I had the chance to visit it.

At the far end of the room was a giant glowing yellow disk. A sun. It floated oddly in the hazy space. The ceiling was mirrored. The floor of Turbine Hall is slanted so as you walked forward the 'sun' seemed to rise. The effect was like staring into the sun, and being oddly closer to it.

Many people would lay near the disk, staring up into the far away mirrored reflection of themselves.

Danny Boyle's movie Sunshine deals with a crew of people attempting to reignite the sun. The mission is suicide. It is a flawed film, the last third is a mess, but the beginning is beautiful. It is about saving everyone, but no one.

There are scenes in the movie of the characters on an observation deck staring at the disk of the sun. Looking at its boiling surface for something akin to a god.

In the movie, the god never arrives. In meditation, you are not looking for god but for an inner truth. A self god.

Yves Klein, Blue Disk 1957

Yves Klein created a lonely blue planet in 1957. His Blue Disk is both stark and rich. Klein wished to visually represent the 'authenticity of the pure idea'.

Purity of idea.

I am reminded of Koans. These thought experiments are meant to illicit the 'great doubt'. A few examples:

'If you meet the Buddha, kill him.'

'Without thinking of good or evil, show me your original face before your mother and father were born.'

The classic we all know:

'Two hands clap and there is a sound. What is the sound of one hand?'

What happens to that yellow world when Espinosa is no longer fighting cancer?

Assuming that the world is a meditative safe place to go to while fighting cancer, does that world vanish when it is no longer needed? Imagination is a tricky place. You can disassemble as easily as assemble.

Maybe the yellow world is a koan. A place that does not exist, created as the means to protect and survive. A place that cannot be fully taken apart once put together. It is perhaps also a scar.

Seen from space our planet seems perfect. Quiet. At peace. Imagination allows us to pretend that this is true. Reality is another matter altogether.

Process

Hours of the Virgin 15th cent.

Dictionary.com defines 'process' as:

a systematic series of actions directed to some end (to devise a process for homogenizing milk) or; a continuous action, operation, or series of changes taking place in a definite manner (the process of decay)

When asked about my writing process I find that people are shocked at my lack of organization. I don't plan what is going to happen. I never have. Of course I do my research, I do a lot of it, but I don't plot structure or end points. Structure grows organically as I go. Maybe this makes me a 'bad' writer. A 'not serious' writer.

My writing is more a procession than a process. There are people/objects/events and they are elaborately clothed. They walk along some street, it may be quiet or packed with observers. There may be an object of worship being carried on the backs of those processing. There may be a queen on a seat. A virginal child to be slaughtered. A bull. They could be chanting. There is more than likely inexplicable smoke.

The crowd is moving towards a unified future. An ill-defined site of finality. That period at the end of the thought. Along the way one of them will take focus, will form relationships with the others, will enact something akin to story. And then they will find their site of period. Another will rise.

Funeral Procession for Elizabeth I

That I choose to describe my thoughts as a mob of people stalking streets in religious fervor is probably all kinds of crazy. You can tell me that to my face. I won't mind.

J recently asked me about how the writing of my second novel is going. I should catch you up:

I wrote a novel last year. I spent a full year working on it, worrying about it, caring for it. I recently started the process (that is certainly a structured set of actions) of finding an agent. It is going well but is early days. A visceral response to the process was to delve back into the world and start the second book. Eventually it will be a trilogy.

So J asked me how it was going. The outline, the acts, etc. I don't do that. I wrote the first book from beginning to end in 2 months. I wrote 10 or so pages a day. I have been editing and rewriting since then. This is how my procession works. I write something in a flush of energy. Then I stand away a bit, and stare into what happened.

Orion Nebula

It is like looking at the nebula left from nova and trying to find new stars.

Then I go in and arrange, rewrite. I emphasize certain parts, take others out. In general I try to shape what naturally happened in the initial outpour.

Do not misunderstand, I do not adhere to the wrong-headed idea of 'first thought best thought'. I adhere to a strict sense that the initial impulse creates its own momentum, that how it expressed itself was on purpose. It is a matter of finding the facets and polishing.

Did you know that some stars turn into diamonds when they die? Our own sun is predicted to end this way. At the end of the procession is a huge frozen nova core. Reflecting endlessly into space.

And that is a body of work isn't it? Millions of facets polished until they reflect the author perfectly. Of course some of us never get that far. Some do. Some leave behind cracked mirrors.

You can say that my lack of focus will impede my attempts to leave something. Even an imperfect something. And you may be right. But so might I.

Yips

Yips (Jyllands-Posten Publishes Drawings of Muhammad  2005) 9/30

And you raise the club – you swing –

You biff it –

With everyone watching

you miss downhill

from 10 feet away

with no wind –

And you blame everyone – your caddy –

The time of day – this climate

of war –

The fact that you receive death threats

at work –

The fact that you draw cartoons for a living –

That you didn’t sign on for this –

That the whole thing is kinda stupid –

Hot Cross Bun

Martin Usborne takes pictures of dogs left in cars. They are at times haunting, sad, frightening. They are always interesting:



Leaving a dog in a car is something we do without really thinking about it. We cannot take the dog into such-and-such a place, so it is left. Hopefully with the window down a bit and hopefully not on a hot day.

But we don't think about it.

I'm fascinated by these things that are never thought about. The things we do daily that have a place in some ritualistic past.


Hot Cross Bun 4/3

We stand – behind a counter talking and you say
I wonder why such-and-such came to be

Everything was ritual that slowly vanished into time

This line across this roll – you think it’s got something to do with
it rising in the oven – not popping open and being ruined

But it’s a devotional to god – a reminder as you eat

The roll would turn out the same either way
So it is with anything really – we do things this way because we’ve always

And why change something we’ve always?

Pastor

Pastor 3/15

Who tends a flock and does not use the milk of the flock?
            1 Corinthians 9:7


Let’s put the image of altar boys
kneeling in darkened rooms
lighting the ends of brass snuffers
putting on endless layers of robes
off to the side

Instead smell
the heavy incense in its thurible
dusting the room in dark smoke
practicing his swing a priest
is whispering memorized passages

The room is wood lined
smelling of old cloth and stone
basements and ancient rites
in medias res
the sound of chiming bells

Atone

Atone (Christus Victor) 2/20

Here in a garden – here in tired olives – here with bended knee

Shrove

Shrove 2/15

I remember running with pancakes
Squeezing lemon over the thin crepes
The pan glazed greased and sliding
At the finish line you stuff the flap
Pour on the sugar and gobble all of it
Tomorrow we fast and fast and fast

Mecca

Mecca 12/17

I beat the rug with a broom – shake out the old
I lean over the fire escape and see the chasm of New York
The Barechu is beginning over Brooklyn – I light
incense that smells like soil patchouli and oranges

            There is a balm in Gilead –

Clouds break into pink drifts – there is
a great schism between sunlight and vision
Everything is glass shifting under water
hemorrhaging reflections – the sound of pigeons

The cloud of dirt from the carpet hovers in the cold
and shimmers – it passes for breath
hiding in brown colors – I take the rug in my arms
and wrap myself in its redness

            There is a balm in Gilead –

And it is passing over my hands – oil down legs
It is a word on the tongue and then drifting over lots
The sky is red then purple then night – a bruise
healing itself –

            I am a strange sort of knight –

Postilion

Postilion (Black Shuck) 9/20

The angels in the rafters are hiding their eyes behind wings
they cover themselves in worry of igniting royal flames

Lightening will strike and destroy the spires and the devil
will leave his fingerprints on the northernmost door

He is a dog with burning coals for eyes and a flaming tongue
and all who see into them will die within the year

Everything is a herald of something else
it is not a line it is an algorithm a continuous looping sigil

Yips

Yips (Jyllands-Posten publishes drawings of Muhammed 2005) 9/30

And you raise the club – you swing –

You biff it –

With everyone watching
you miss downhill
from 10 feet away
with no wind –

And you blame everyone – your caddy –

The time of day – this climate
of war –

The fact that you receive death threats
at work –

The fact that you draw cartoons for a living –

That you didn’t sign on for this –

That the whole thing is kinda stupid –

Christen

Today was the 10th anniversary of the cafe I work at. We had a big party. Bands, cookies, discounts on coffee/tea/beer. They watched Armageddon and sang along to Aerosmith. There were belly dancers and an electric violinist.

I came home and read about the history of Sesame Street. There have been 4212 episodes in 40 years. There are still three original cast members, Bob, Susan, and Carol Spinney who does the voices of Big Bird and Oscar. Bob is 80.

I was only 3 when Mr. Hooper died in 1983, but I remember it vividly. Maybe it was a rerun? Did they rerun that episode? Did Sesame Street rerun in the 80s? Is it such a part of our collective childhoods that I remember it even if I didn't see it in 1983 on November 24th, Thanksgiving Day?

I cried this evening for the first time in a long long time.

Was it for the weird finality that a big anniversary party has? The fact that such-and-such a time has gone what now then? The general loss of childhood? The sudden remembering of the great loss my family has experienced in the last few years?

I cried.

And I'm not sure why.


Christen 8/17

Water in the river

Drinking in the river

Taking in the river

Peal

Peal 8/10

There are not enough angels