Ikeya-seki

parable of life
zooming through the stratosphere
in parabolic flight.

ancient sign
(pestilence and war)
viewed at the perihelion ellipse
but only before dawn
or near the waning dusk
for you are eclipsed
in the brightness of day.

eccentric mass
tailed with 75 million miles
west-east travels
toward the Oriens on high
defining and passing-
you of all
could steer into the sun
be captured and consumed.

WHY NOT?

source of light and heat
brilliancy in obscurity
there waiting
wanting
drawing.

near immersion...
such "I"-ism backwards
running and plunging
toward the aphelion darkness
until...

 

*Today's "religious crisis" is real only for those minds that have been captured by ideology-that is, those who have adopted some preconceived representation of human life and faith.  Such is the illusion that avoids hearing the naked word.  It encourages people to fool themselves with dreams about an earlier period of faith or of one that is about to come, "post crisis", according to the wonderful formula used by some American bishops, who learned it from industrial leaders.  In this way many are able once again to repress reality.  So many men find an unavowed pleasure in debates, unrelated to any genuine commitment.  Few are ready to pay the price of tension, suspicion and solitude.  Nevertheless, the Christian communion is made up of traditions, ruptures, fidelity, anger, love and joy....

-Jean Sulivan  

Cry out there, Rock

Cry out there , Rock

cry out there.

Pebble-pelted

by the children's

loyal casting.

Cry out there, Rock

cry out there.

Mud-pool splattered

in a floods

sharp tongue raging.

Cry out there, Rock

cry out there.

Voodoo-vexed

as a seer through some

canon's wooing, 

cry out there, Rock

cry out there.

Spit 'n spattered

your life's allotment and

Evil's cunning.

Cry out there, Rock

cry out there.

the night we danced

she was lovely

she was pretty;

how we glanced into each other.

and the music 

oh, the music

caused  that we should prance together.

with a whirl

and then a twirl

she and i now danced together.

with a one, two

with a one, two

we whisked about the tables.

up and down, around

leaping with the sound.

we danced amongst the people.

oh, how well we played

music everywhere

milling, thrilling in the air!

what an evening

handsome evening

my beloved freely swaying.

she was lovely

ever pretty;

how we glanced into each other.

that night my heart sang

the night my beloved

swooned me, peacing and caressing.

she was freeing

elevating;

i shan't forget our joyful evening.

detail of a painting in Detroit

 

*Hatch

what

the winged life

wants

is

to be

outside

in the open

commerce

of hearts

where

nothing

is bought

or 

sold

-Jerry Schroeder, Cap.

I sat and listened

            i.

I sat

    and listened to the rains

    one night

    thinking thoughts of you

o scarred-soul boy

crying within your darkness.

And with each

    splatter-patter

    gentle tapping

    of drops

    twenty nights

    raced across

    the impressed memory 

    of my mind.

Why then

    I know not why.

    I know not why

    your frustrations

    (now mine)

    paused me for a time

so short a time

to stalk me down.

Was it 'cause I listened?

             ii.

The clouds

    cry yet on

    and thunder with pain

    that echoes  you

    to my mind again.

But I must rest

and slumber my head

    (the hours have chased me

    down to now).

(My prayers prayed

    midst the softness

    of those drops

    the racking thunder-pain

to our Hope not far away).

You lay with me

    in my soul's calm unrest

    as I listen to the rains

with their twenty nights of pain.

 

nights of the black maria

as nights footed toward the day

coward cars starked vehicles on the way

in pursuit of justice for men

cursed black by some interpretations code

as nights circuited toward the day

three bullets drilled the flesh of some

Yankee trapped by his accented haunts

that stalked his conscience painfully

the nights cooled cruel at the hands of men

who'd mangle, slice and slip in quiet

the arm or leg and toe and thigh of a

former human who over-stayed

what nights would drip a drop of blood

when whiten waters suckle brown-tanned flesh?

waters slurp-in all b.o.

without a hater's discrimination sign

oh, nights that wince with a nightmare scream

at sights of boggie-hoods praying all in white

at centuried riots unleashed at once

upon the souls of a longed-lost hope

oh night, shy nights fleeing past the day

like black marias chasing scenes of crime

release the beauty and longings of your sky

to men blinded to a love-reply

*Painting is a faith and it imposes the duty to disregard public opinion.

-Vincent van Gogh

*I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with senses, reason and intellect has intended us to forgo their use.

-Galileo

 

Desert Oasis  

Heat!  Heat!  Heat!  The heat beats the burning

                                                                   flickering sands.

                                                        Desert sands stalk a nomad, a monadal nomad

                                             drilling toward an oasis waterfront.

                                                        A monad no-man snaking with and against

                                             the whirling sands to find as oasis drinking font.

   Plod the yellow ocean waves that drys the throat

                            lingering for water.  We men are

                                                    pilgrims and strangers

                                                                                      to the land, passing

                                            through from oasis to oasis.  Each sand a stone

                                                        crumbling beneath our feet as we near and

                                            pass oasis from oasis.  Wind-flows eat our eyes and

                              age our cheeks and our man labors

                                                    for the Life.

                                           Nomadal monads and monadal nomads we can become...

                                                                   and so our life.  Aggregates of

                                                      shameful men and shameless things.  We are

                                           nobody to everybody and nothing to something.  This

                                                         is how we drag on from oasis well to oasis

                                                             well.  Rest there to build up strength

                                           then brave the war of contestant sands and wind-throws.

prison of the mind

the prison in our mind   it's that that draws us round from cemetery to 

cemetery   from tomb to tomb where our stinking pasts are laid

we long to douse the smoke-clouds hovering above the smoldering of our 

deeds   the garbage pit that yawns as we watch   here we stood attempting

to burn the rubbish that taints us   the refuse of sins thought long discarded

in the dump we called "home"

we're like fools in dunce caps facing the wall of rejection   twiddling our

thumbs waiting for some trapdoor to spring   hurling our vision into bas-

relief on the wall of lost grace

like dour virgins posing for a date   we sit staring into cameras that hold our

image without a soul   seated and staring into the coated glass   hoping our

Mate will ring and lead us to Spring

but will we remain stuck on the hinges of old queries   trapped in the

questions that philosophy can't resolve  as we travel the road hungering for 

Light 

 

cosmic ray

straight through

pierced

and pained.

shot and

tensed

bent down.

squirmed by...

tossed

to me.

i felt

locked

and gone.

that ray

marked 'him', 

pierced.

Furnaced forest

                                                                        Fall is afire

                                                                              in the forest.

                                                                       See the Springed shoots

                                                                             blaze

                                                                             with the gold'rod

                                                                      and the fir trees

                                                                            green

                                                                            amidst the orange-reds.

                                                                      Fall flickering

                                                                           on the sky-line;

                                                                           flames licking

                                                                           at the horizons.

                                                                    What a sight

                                                                           pulcritudest

                                                                           (jealous sunlight!)!

                                                                   Yahweh's bonfire

                                                                           burns a lamp

                                                                           glowing steady

                                                                  close to Winter.

 

we speak as if innocent, but it hurts.
-ken stewart

that gnawing worm

who knows the worm gnawing within

intimate like a sexual being with a face

someone we sup with or greet;

a worm like Adam and Eve's

strolling with us in the night-light

in the garbage that tickles our nose

and draws up the vomit;

the worm that's that close

that we befriend it

and train it to live in ourselves

and appear "right" with others;

the worm that circles our garden

the one that haunted Cain?

detail from a painting at the National Galley of American Art 

elegy for a dead ken

rush to my funeral

you would-be brothers

come, marching in

bouquets in hand

lay them at the foot of my coffin

peer into the box

protecting my remains

speak your words of praise

while  thinking thoughts of shame

i'll listen

won't budge an inch

fear not

jesus won't awaken me

hand me back to you with tears

years to come

when you're free as me

buried with the dead

neath stones chiseled with steel

our names etched and forgotten

we'll meet to fuss, to cuss

to begin again

learning to love each other 

for once

If death doesn't get you, something else will.

painting from National American Art Museum 

shoving the poor into the ghettos of our contrition

might trigger a long lost compassion, warming the breast

like a bright orange ball, full of sun

shivering in the coolness of our embrace

is this the need we're searching for

contending against crumbs flowering our world?

 

*...secrets steal your childhood away from you.
-Sahar Delijani



*In this mortal life, mercy and forgiveness is the path that leads us steadily to grace.
-Julian of Norwich

 

poem for a crazy moment

Blog Naughty One as you sit near the bus stop for me to arrive

why aren't you ever there to greet me as I fall

Don't understand why you're insistent in your ways

as if you're the one hurling scriptures through the air

Weird and strange like a Galapagos hiding neath straw in the morning dew

away away away from the high stoops where angels glide and graze

using not what others use, not even they would include

wanting whatever touch of sweetness their teeth sink into the skin

Think about the weirdness of the empty sugar canes

where the rum was inhaled before the aerial foray

Don't know I just don't know where the grey goose will pounce upon the pig

chasing it home to find a bit of morsel or clay after the corn chips have fled

Write on until the last goodbye of sugar cane when Darwin arrives

He'll have less to explain in the sweet by and by

But he'll laugh during the murmuring of the flame

giving Life a chance before you sprout and fly

with Klaus to the outer world, Antartica floating by

Fly away fly away till the riders slip the apocalypse upon the train

'cause you'll be discovered with flowers in your broom 

*Nothing Short of Being

she grieves and goes

to Friday

the bottle drops from

her hand

the pills scatter into

the grass

in her all is

home

the underbelly of

being

-Jerry Schroeder, Cap.

To love one another is loving God...with all the if's, and's and but's.  But, it isn't easy nor sugary!

 

No matter how brilliant or smart we are, in someway there is always some one smarter than us.

in St.Louis 

the silence collapsed 'tween the empty space

to catch its breath as the din whirled within

the inner scream of a noisy soul

caught in the web of self-sedition.

'twas a need for direct conversation

for a meeting with angels messaging to God

for an angel-guardian for a renegade friar

out in the desert of the Consumerist Hoard

that the Dove might stir peace 

at the juncture of Nothing

would stoke flames there to consume the dross

then leave bare the Ground scorched

 by Love's consummation.

new breathing would commence in the burnt-out space

smelling of incense emitted from Christ.

*...we need to be the artists and poets of or own lives.

*It is clear that love is never simple, that it brings with it struggles of the past and hopes for the future, and that it is loaded with material that may be remotely-if at all-connected to the person who is the apparent object of love.

*We sometimes talk about love lightly, not acknowledging how powerful and lasting it can be.  We always expect love to be healing and whole, and then are astonished to find that it can create hollow gaps and empty failures.
-Thomas Moore



*Once we apprehend the biblical criticism  of mimetic contagion [copying/copy-catting] and its results, we can understand the biblical profundity of the talmudic principle that Emmanuel Levinas often cities: "If everyone is in agreement to condemn someone accused, release him [her] for he [she] must be innocent."  Unanimity in human groups is rarely a vehicle for truth; more often it is nothing but a mimetic [copying], tyrannical phenomenon.  It resembles unanimous elections in totalitarian countries.
-Rene Girard

 

if e'er we lay upon the sun for baking bread

may we toast our children buff-brown

and each slice of us is nourishment for the clan

*We should remember that gaggle of Mary's left at the cross, the only ones of Jesus' followers who endured the stripping of all hope and expectation about what he was to each of them - teacher, brother, lover-and what he was to be for the world- priest, prophet, king, over thrower of the established order.  All that is stripped away,  annihilated, made into nothing.  Yet, still the women remain, near the concrete person, wanting to tend the concrete body.  They stay through the death of their projections, through the suffering of the disidentifications, stay on through a painful, ignorant, frightened waiting, wanting to receive the utterly new, even if afraid, waiting and wanting even unto the dark coming of his death.  They stay on in the dark and through and beyond the dark.  And so it is to women that the resurrection is first announced.
-Ann Belford Ulanov

[my addendum: ...and yet, they ran away from the tomb, afraid, and telling no one; (based on the original resurrection story in St. Mark)]



*Any philosophy or religion that prevents the blossoming of the human personality is worthless.
-Mohammed Iqbal



Human nature: the beautiful face with the ugly scars.

 

one of those things

jesus walked through the front door of a church and stumbled

the congregants arose and shooed him out the door

he sat at the entry pounding on the iron doors

hoping someone might come with a glass of water

he tried speaking but abuse was poured into his ears

wanting to say i'm more than you imagine

but who'd listen once the cops were called

their sirens wailing as the minister raised the Cup

they dragged him down the steps as a loiterer

shoving him into the wagon, beating his head

while all in the church proceeded peacefully noble

the believers happy their worship was clean

*Life accepts you; life loves you as a separate part of itself; life wants to reunite you with itself, even when it seems to destroy you.
-Paul Tillich

 

Jesus decides to become a bomb

Strapping words to his belly

and actions about his feet

he sets out to upend the people

and challenge us to think

living trust

times there are when words are spittle

spat upon waves from mouths spewing lies

and we are drawn to drink it in

times there are when we sit in boats

floating toward a distant rock

no rudder no oar to move is toward from the shore

times there are when speakers stammer

to speak new words from texts that hammer

faithful trust beyond impressions

these times are all too much

but we carry them with heads held up

our bodies broken our spirits intact