*Voice Lessons

out of a suitable 

silence, a cave,

perhaps, a mist

you come to

the cave

hiding in  loneliness

out of infinite

attention to nothing

above

or beyond you

you

sound

-Jerry Schroeder, Cap.

on the horizon

i ask myself

who will see it

who will notice those cries heard in the night

to be complicit in the crimes outside our door?

will ours be a voice trembling 'neath a dimming bulb

warning that the light we see is dark?

totalitarians love war as if  bread for their tables

blood, the red wine coating their throats

when people disappear, they'll help them hide

because crimes against the struggling are cause for more

we'll  shake our heads when the warning sirens wail

longing that the enemy would learn that we are right

who imagines our sincerity to be tainted?

nothing is more natural than knowing God's on our side

when we smell flesh as the dust rains upon our heads

will the silent torture of convictions spew vomit on the streets?

when The Bomb, our bombs sprinkle the lawns of our villages

will then a whimper rise enough to explore the rubble of despair?

when bodies return wrapped in their symbolic flag

will it be too late to redirect the movie

to cancel the show about dandelions on our lawns

and show the faces that horrified the dreams of our parents

now possessive of our lungs as a suffocating theme?

are we to salute or weep the dead murdered at our hands

for they will be our brothers, our children

our neighbors slain upon the carpeted earth?

then the airy transparency of our majesty

will lay crumbling like a yellowed constitution

released finally from its vacuumed tomb

who will see it

who will notice

complicit in the crimes outside our door

as oblong clouds stretch across the azure sky

as if beds awaiting heads to arrive?

We human beings are so intent on proving ourselves to be gods and goddesses that we end up proving ourselves to be devils.

*Everyone carries within him/herself the imperishable Spirit, the inner Observer of all that goes on in the mind and psyche of humankind and in the operations of our organs of sensation and action.  Because of its presence within the innermost heart, and howsoever veiled it might be through the effects of forgetfulness, it nevertheless still communicates to the soul a thirst for transcendence.

-Victor Danner

Why do you warn your children, "Be careful!"
when you enter my neighborhood?
Don't you see I've lived here all my days
through its dangers, trials, toils, its joys?
Or are we more alike than some?
Cause in your neighborhood
I watch for the boogieman too.

NOT

sometimes

i would NOT feel guilt o'er a tragedy

as sweet revenge enters my heart

dominating my emotional state

i recoil, ashamed

for a moment or so

as a surge of mem'ries feeds my thoughts

coaxing the lingering rage against suppression

pay-back-time caresses me

addicted to long forgotten hurts

oh, to be evil for a flash

to know its lusts

purring like a cat having captured a rat

oh to be rotten to the core for a moment of crime

to believe i'd be happy in this state of soul

"it's life, in her justice, beating the children

with the visitation of crimes their parents obliged"

however faintly my conscience bothers me

then the children of the next generation rise before my eyes

mirroring that adage long spoke down the times

"what goes around, comes around"

comes through my door

making visitation 'pon my children

for the crimes i adore

my thirsty revenge tempers its lust

my smothered conscience recovers its shame

*I think as people get older, it starts to become evident that either they become more developed or they become caricatures of themselves. It seems that many people re suffering form a refusal of the fact that they have to grow.

-Lorraine Kisly

sitting with my private self 

within a private room

 i see Myst'ry walking on the air 

and i scream in silence 

as the dark light passes

is mine a call or summons 

a panic-plea, a desp'rate sign? 

who knows as my mouth shuts 

about the soundless wonder

  hollowing my throat

mute, i'm thrown into the dungeon 

of lone communion, where the 

hunger for words is something

  more than for food or fluff

  passed around as super-substantial

this is no carnival, no circus 

where clowns induce laughter 

by falling on their heads

this is blind sanity, incomparable 

madness made sane by seeing, 

the touch of the Invisible holding

 ones attention beyond the skies 

for the viewing of visions

  revealed to the patient-waiters

oh, that i had, i had

i understand why people kill themselves 

coming upon a bridge or meeting a

gun head or heart-on, emptied of hope 

of any chance to change  

to be other than another's thought of them 

to drag the burden of immutability about their feet 

shackling the reputation of their very self 

as if the other were god, any god 

and they, one bad angel loose on the world 

of their making and unmaking 

while the sinless ones hide well their transgressions 

their thoughts, their feats, their transgressions of mind 

their honey-covered flesh enough to be innocent

in the general judgment of the guilty

how i wish i had, i had done 

what's supposedly i have done 

deeds so bad that injustice is necessity 

and sign of inclusion for the pure of heart

  rejected as a concession out of hand

oh that i had, i had, to muster up a smile

  having accomplished something with pride

  exposing the accuser's sins 

frozen in convenient truths and lies

*Behind every story is a story.

Your Fire

burns brush. 

The forests blooms.

it is your face

your face that draws

and i yearn to touch

then you

all of you

as if a magnet

pulling me to steel

melts us into passion

burning  love

*Palliative care is equipped to manage most patients' physical pain, but the suffering of dying encompasses much more.  It includes the pain of unfinished business, the letting go of attachments to people and places, as well as to ourselves and our lives.

-Rebecca Sachs Norris

*The state hat gives me life is the gate that gives me death.  Only a few understand this intuitively.

-Lao Tzu

*...the pain we  feel at a given moment is more real than the pain we may endure in the future.  This earth with all its charms and beauty is after all the earth of the "exiles of Eve."
-Czeslaw Milosz

commander

the commander's head 

filled with empty dreams 

of a special joy

bobbing in anxious tones

over dead men's bones 

being carried home.

midst shattered nerves 

and tainted hope 

hyped by the illusions  

of a superficial faith 

mourning-morphed 

into empty feelings  

of noisy drunks.

nervous throats 

coughed discomfort  

as if toxic smoke 

from aborted hope 

lay' o'er the graves  

of these recent dead. 

bearing in himself 

the burden of squandered hope

he shuffled to depart 

gathering his notes 

like scattered jacks.

poised to depart 

the monotony of those 

clothed in the earth

a nervous switch of irony 

greets him at the exit door:

a patient parent pleading

he'd bring their children home 

outside flag-draped tombs 

and preferably close to whole.

*...perhaps we make a mistake if we take the definitions of who we are, legally, to be adequate descriptions of what we are about.  Although this language may well establish our legitimacy within a legal framework ensconced in liberal versions of human ontology, it does not do justice to passion and grief and rage, all of which tears us from ourselves, bind us to others, transport us, undo us, implicate us in lives that are not our own, irreversibly, if not fatally.

-Judith Butler

our house is on fire.

  can't you smell the smoke?

  toxins are blazing

 poisoning the sky.

gawkers stare at each 

other guessing at what's

 beyond the flames.

  curiosity turns judgmental

 as they press to see

 puss oozing from beneath the doors

 a fragrance mixed with dust.

  alleluias lay silent in the gray

 awaiting the brigade

 to douse the raging flames.

   whatever rises sounds of doom

 mournful as voices wail

  for respite from the torrential fall

 of curses lifted to the sky.

  where oh where are the savior-gods

 who led us to this apocalyptic now?

  if only they'd open the gates

 trying to flee their gilded cage

 and set us free from the promises made

 yes set us free from the tomb they've built.

Sucking every bone of You
every joint, all marrow
like a man hungry for food
empty-belly, starving
with pig feet in his mouth
and chicken feet in hand
am I for you, O Lord

The smell of You, the taste for You
gluts the glands of my soul
into saliva, sweet, dripping
languishing for a bit of You


Sin doesn't oppress me. I oppress myself by my sin.


Break me down, Lord, and all the barricades I set up between You and me.  I want to approach You, not with caution but with open throttle.  In me are road-blocks, detouring my route to You.  If  I but move them from the highway of my life, I'd drive straight to You.  What's outside me is not enough to stop me from driving past You.  The crosses, words, bells, sacraments, Church must be settled within me.



How many of us never give milk because no one pats our leather hide!

mystic

dare drink

then laugh aloud

higher and harder with each ingestion

each swallowing

and gracious off'ring of the Word

be communicant

sharing thoughts with the thoughtful

a guide to spirits with The Spirit

the Wholly-Thoughtful Jokester-Foolish

one would have thought thunder broke

as the iron fagots twisted and shattered

blessing the fracture of self-adherence

with tears gathering for the healing

the invitation to The Dance

engagement in The Party

*Waiting for Warmth

the water is running

 as I stand before the mirror

waiting for it to warm

to wash, shave and comb my hair

waiting, too, for something else

a coldness in me to go

in the light of a love

that won't run out as I grow old

in this winter a stillness stirs

my eyes pool 

a spring clears my way

washing me with tears 

-Jerry Schroeder, Cap.

Racism USA

I see changes coming

but fear, if we forget,

the kind of people we've already been

Behind our smiles of comradeship

social accommodations are easily breached

and the return to bias is conveniently brief

Scapegoating rises easily from our souls

with simple gestures and rapt remembrance:

a familiar tale will toss us back

to patterns germinating within our flesh

One nagging itch

releases the venom of the past

warming our memories

gathering the fragments of hate

Carnival masks are dusted, donned 

patched and polished to spite;

facades, reshaped, hide our face

guarding our eyes lest they show our ugliness

Racism is the easiest cover-up of national sin

once we're convinced that every one's in

*Anti-Semitism is also an expression of a lack of talent, an inability to win a contest on equal terms -  in science or in commerce, in craftsmanship or in painting.  States look at the imaginary intrigues of World Jewry for explanations of their failure.

At the same time anti-Semitism is an expression of the lack of consciousness of the masses, of their inability to understand the true reasons for their suffering.  Ignorant people blame the Jews for their troubles when they should blame the social structure or the State itself.  Anti-Semitism is also, of course, a measure of the religious prejudices smoldering in the lower levels of society.

-Vasily Grossman

water scene

i.

you smile

edging toward the ledge 

you tease Death 

laughing into the deep 

tempting Neptune to kidnap you 

to grab you a diver 

at no risk no pain 

an explorer with sleep to gain

ii.

shall i leap into the water 

ask the sea be my mother 

or should i sit on the rock 

and relish its stability 

till the typhoon flies 

or a branch brings peace

We write back and forth

with greetings of friendship 

unsure our bonding 

while longing for one

Our smile is broad 

upon receiving a letter 

but wait we will

till our eyes spy the other

We melt into our ages 

our flesh altering with time 

doing the predictable everyday

till a face stands at our door

A stranger-friend rings from the porch 

awaiting a reply, an opened door 

unsure of our bonding 

while longing for one

So how shall I smile 

unsure our our bonding 

peering through that face 

since the longing is gone

*Human history is not the battle of good struggling to overcome evil.  It is a battle fought by a geat evil struggling to crush a small kernel of human kindness.  But if what is human in human beings has not been destroyed even now, then evil will never conquer.

-Vasily Grossman 

upon seeing you in a photograph

i your smallness, lost between the giants

your face conceals its joy

your lips block its smiles

i'm sad spotting myself in you

my journey plotted clear in yours

 which is and is yet to come

i hope a scenic trip for you

with flowers in your eyes

the sun, your companion brother

singing within your face

i hope a song will form

and escape through your cavernous lips

the tingle of freedom uncovered

and firing up your feet

your body wildly welcoming

the awe of an awakened child

i'll watch and wait by the river

expecting  you to cross

*Wherever we are, whoever we are, the responsibility for the integrity and beauty of our personalities cannot be shirked.  I must get up each morning, take life into my own hands, and put my distinct, unique, and unrepeatable stamp on it.  I must freely decided to create the mood of the day rather than let circumstances and conditions of the day rule my life.  With my spirit, the breath of God in me, I will transform the raw matter of my life and form the raw matter of my life and make it beautiful.  That is my human vocation and my moral duty.

-William McNamara, ocd

Catechism 101

 

*When the social position of the artist was that of an artisan or a super-crafts person, the spirit of competition acted as a stimulus.  Today the position of the artist has changed.  They are no longer valued as the producer of their work, but for the quality of their vision and imagination as expressed in their work.  They are no longer a maker of art: they are an example of a human, and it is their art which exemplifies them.  This is true at an appreciative and philosophical level even under capitalism, where works of art are are treated on the market like any other commodity.  In the artist's new role there is no place for comparative competition.  One cannot properly compete to be a representative of Humankind.  It is the contradiction between this truth and the dominance of the art market over all art production which destroys so much talent and creates so much confused desperation among artists in the capitalists countries.
-John Berger[gender modified]




Truth

Is this what Truth is:
a disguise behind words
a life hid under cloaks?
Is there no truth to be spoke
beyond life lived in disguise
parading behind masks
prancing 'round maypoles
as if a pillar of fire?

O that un-truths were vaginal: 

un-poked, sewn, strapped to appear as whole! 

We humans speak with twists 

contrived nuances chiseled into lies. 

But we are what we are: 

broken, bent, contorted 

hiding behind goodness 

lest we meet God 

and drop our props 

bearing Truth cause She's more pure 

than any money at hand 

or fecal stench exiting our bowels.

Truth seeks to breathe free
that lies by stagnation will die.
The noble speakers' task will be
the pursuit of Truth that She'll run free.

Looking in, looking out

 

...that prayer i was to say

my kneeling before The Space

empty of words, feelings, thoughts

hollow of meaning and meaningfulness

i was to be at prayer

full of hope that The Ear would open

to my confession of sin

my sin, full-nest resting in my breast

birthing wrongs that  fly

both day and night

i was to pray

that The Transformer would cast a miracle

and change my eggs

into a fighting gift of aliveness toward Him

that i would move beyond locked-in-hereness

that some new sum of me might mature

that some one more Christian than my wobbly self

might emerge from the woods

and i am here present

kneeling before the Father

at the soft bed of my weakness

and the cold heart of my flesh

that plugged ears might open

 and the doors of me fling wide

i pray for conversion

like Paul in his desert

for hard scales to tear from my eyes

my devilish way of seeing

my futile way of viewing

i pray and plead

confess and implore

that some new me be born

and Easter rise again

*Love, in the divine sense, is the giving of one's whole being to another, and when we say that God is love we mean that God gives God's entire infinite Self to every single object of God's love, to every creature that God has made. Of course the gift is received in varying degrees by different creatures as the light of the sun, shed with equal brilliance upon all parts of the earth, is reflected more perfectly by a mirror than by a brick. Humankind can reflect God's love more perfectly than an animal. To reflect it with absolute perfection, one would have to be God.  But while the degrees of reception differ, the gift is always infinite in fullness.  To humankind and to atom, to star-cloud and to earth, to sun and to snow crystal, to mountain and to worm, to sage and to food, to saint and to sinner, God, to whom size and number offer no obstacle, gives eternal and inescapable union with God's very Self.  For in God to exist, to create, to love and to redeem are all one pure and simple act; they are God's Self.  And the gift of union with God's own Self is the Logos, the eternal Word, incarnate in history and incarnate in the souls and bodies of people as Christ.
-Alan Watts

*Self Portrait

again

I am

interrupted

fallen from a frame

too tight to welcome

wonder and without

patience

to wait until nothing

remains

resting on a silence

ready

to perform

for the first time

again

-Jerry Schroeder, Cap.

Tell me one time

Tell me one time
that God like black
just one time
that God like black

Black feel like a sore
like black and blue
like a scab yanked from a bleeding wound
Black feel rejected
like folk shuttered from ones face
like pigs skinned to kick about
Black feel like daggers carried about at night
like criminal dens sheathed in the dark
Black feel like society's perpetual dis-ease
like a sneaky plague slipping neath ones door
Black feel like a mood, hogging a fog
a murderous attitude that engulfs a room
Black feel like a cruel humor choking a groom
that demeaning jokes to laugh one off
Black feel like the color of bills
like suspect-dealings in a market of thrills
Black feel like a check-mark made by the raising of hands
designating one guilty when the guilty have fled
Black feel like magic
where a wizard turns every thing white
with words the color of the ace of spades
Black feel like the widow's kiss
her hourglass measuring the speed of death
Black feel like choice memorial rot
carved in stone to pacify ones thoughts

Black is many tales and fears
passing through some story-teller's mouth
but tell me this:
does God like Black?
Do people who are black
have one caring friend?
Just tell me this that no matter what
there is a God that chooses black

Before Black was beautiful

In this land where color matters
where monies control ones worth and toil
a lost child, nude and photogenic
wandered about looking for himself.

Being a man before his private hairs budded
some phase of him having been abandoned
he quizzed the mirrors reflecting race,
faces of people more acceptable than his
not locked in a thousand jails-terms repeated
not a cache of bones cast aside as trash.

Who'd understand his psychotic frustrations
his fingering of figments and fragments of youth
the brown of him both burden and curse?

Dark feelings of rejection flavored this presence;
what's vulnerable guided his search for home.
Living in anger stoked flames, consuming peace;
the scorched spot in his heart being love cremated.

Calloused and ill, he longed for freedom.
His tears never freed his burdened self
a mannequin controlled by a ventriloquist's fist.

But look!
A sliver of light brightens up his face.
His brown flesh shivers neath a milky smile
for someone said his skin is lovely.
Thought he half-believes they're addressing him
his body shimmers with a sense of worth.



*The meaning of the Incarnation...is simply that we do not have to attain union with God.  Humanity does not have to climb to the  infinite and become God, because, out of love, the infinite God descends to the finite and becomes  human.  Despite humanity's refusal of God, despite our pride, our fear, our helpless and hopeless involvement in the vicious circle of sin, God's nature unalterably remains love-the agape which consists in giving oneself wholly and without reservation to the beloved.  Therefore the eternal Word, the Logos, becomes flesh, making our nature his nature; he assumes our limitations, suffers our pains and dies our death.  More than this, he bears the burden of our sins: that is, he remains in union with us even though we crucify him and spit on him; he continues to dwell within us and to offer, or sacrifice,our lives to God even though we commit every imaginable form of depravity.  In short, God has wedded Itself to humanity, has united Its divine essence with our inmost being "for better for worse, for richer for poorer, in sickness and in health" for all eternity, even though we elect to be damned.

If I ascend up into heaven, you are there;
If I make my bed in hell, behold, you are there also.

All that remains for us to do is to say, "Yes-Amen" to this this tremendous fact, and this is still within the power of our fallen nature.  Our motive for saying it, however perverted by pride and fear, makes not the least difference, because the fact is the fact: we have been given union with God whether we like it or not, want it or not, know it or not.  Our flesh has become God's flesh, and we cannot jump out of our own skins. And once we realize the futility of our pride, that we can neither ascend to God nor, by reason of pride, prevent God's descent to us, the proud core of our of egoism is simply dissolved-overwhelmed by God's love.
-Alan Watts



*The more you protest against life, the more bogged down you get in it.  That's a truism.  The problem is how to leave the earth behind, rise up and go further.
-Ilya Kabakov

In the spirit of prayer

 

*When Sister Death arrives, we'll be ready.  She's the only way to go.

*All of our heroes have mud on their feet.


An open file

Mine's an open file:
Antietam and Gettysburg raging within me
I'm a slave vying to break free
but war wages 'tween the blue and grey

Napalm falls, scorching my memory
shocking it with awe
to frustrate justice by denials

This war seems perpetual
embedded in the quagmire of hist'ry
smothered 'neath pretence and forgetting
lest revenge ignites pages
where the history of Blacks lay dormant

I don't know
I just don't know what to do
or how...
I know Lincoln doesn't speak
nor sleep around here
Booth's gun is my heart
loaded and ready to fire
wild, into the wilderness

To ward off envy, I'll shoot to kill
but who will die before I'm skilled

I need forgiveness
perhaps self-forgiveness
while hungering for justice
but fear my anger won't get none
not even an enemy's, perhaps



*The function of the Incarnation is to unite humankind as individuals with God as God, without "confusion of natures."  Human nature does not become divine in the process, but perfectly human, for when Spirit is in union with created nature it does not overwhelm it but perfects it.
-Alan Watts

untitled

 

Parousian shout

From their fanfare of shock
rising from the rich o'er the poor
the strong o'er the weak
will be a roar of praise
the underlings alone can mouth
a day of renewal and acclamation
of huggings and embrace
when the down'll be up
and the high-flung thrown into doubt
wondering "How could this be
when all my labors were for You
even though they suffered for the love of You
when all my claims were for staking You
for giving You reign o'er the terrorists of earth
o'er the realm of the Fiend;
how could this be?"

Ah, praise there'll be
that heaven will ne'er tire to hear
cause all the strong and rich
the grand upon the earth
will be drawn into its arms
by the victims of their might
by their pains to rid the land
of the dregs of Adam's sin.
The Sin will have been them
brought through the Golden Gate
by the forgiveness of the pained
and the blood of the Lamb.

leave the town you roam in

a long-time blind

a long-while dead

leave the town you roam in

don't look back

never return

grab no morsel

the Past you've left

there, poison is food

and you were drugged 

your eyes boarded 

your feet bound 

leave the town you roam in

keep stepping on 

flee with the wings of Freedom 

your eyes have been purged 

your health restored 

your limbs swing free 

your thoughts sing renewed

leave the town you roam in

out into the darkness 

turn toward the Light 

recover your dignity 

let Joy rule your life

leave the town you roam in