without faces

seen too many paintings

all motion, no features

Blacks moving, hither-thither

heads cocked, flung o'er a canvas's frame

dressed in reds, yellows and wonderful lush

ev'ry expression of human touch

resting in landscapes within the artist's reach

'cept faces, flesh-featured, in browns and blacks

where are the faces with eyes and lips

with noses sniffing the perfume air?

a faceless people can't feel themselves

they're blind performers in another's dream

dancers living on cadillac-clouds

hopeful of dollar bills raining down

i wonder why some paint this way:

imaging people with no face of their own

shouting,"Glory, glory!", with no face for God

*Thoughts of Alan Jones:

  -The story is told of a young pupil who yearned for enlightenment and went to a wise man for advice and counsel.  The guru, without a word, led the disciple to the river and held the young man's head under the water.  When the pupil began to struggle for air, the old man held his head under with all the strength he could muster.  At last the younger man, with a tremendous surge of energy, broke away from the old man's grip and came up out of the water with an enormous and hungry gasp.  The old man looked at him and said: "Don't come to me to ask about enlightenment until you want it as much as you wanted that lungful of air."  Enlightenment is not a mere intellectual affair.  It is a matter of life and death.

short of magic.

  -Christian believers have tended to be nervous about and suspicious of the waking-up process because it is thought that Christianity has nothing to do with enlightenment, but only with salvation. The distinction is an unfortunate one.  Enlightenment, without some truly saving aspect to it, is little more than an intellectual exercise.  Salvation without the inner transforming power of self-knowledge is little short of magic.

  -Believing is never simply a matter of assent to a doctrine.