In the still of the night

In the still of the night

God lays before me

a body empty of bed

But there is wanting

of body, of bed

of all bondings 

the Spirit moves

God calls me;

I hide

while all wanting clings

perfume from a flowering stem

for God is more than good

more embrasure than the heart can bear

more than a body bears

in the still of the night

*There are those like Osama bin Laden - who was raised as an upper class Saudi in Geneva - who will seek the sweetness of a pure line.  One sensed the same desire in the Columbine massacre in Colorado, where the grandson of an observant Jew chose Hitler's birthday to charge into the cafeteria. These are children who want one  pure thing in a world in which they suddenly realize there are only mixed things.

-Richard Rodriguez

*I probably overuse the term (Puritanism), but in Brown I use it most successfully in considering the closing of the playhouses in England in the seventeenth century, where it reflects a fear of the imagination.  I began to detect a Puritanism in the racial politics of the 1960's I was raised in.  I describe in Brown how an American Indian was not allowed to impersonate himself precisely because the Puritans at the university I attended, Stanford, insisted that they knew what reality was and that reality only had one face.  The Puritan impulse for me is an attempt to find clarity or even the handspring of God within history in a way that does not admit to the unpredictable or even the playful.  It is strongest precisely in those areas in our culture where we think we are free of color, free of Puritanism.  I have described the sexual excess of the gay community in San Francisco in the 1970's as very Puritan, and in many ways there was this kind of sexlessness to all sexual license.  It was not joyful.  It was manic.  It was an attempt to identify as gay in a way that our Puritan ancestors would have acknowledged - being one thing to the exclusion of being other things.  The idea that as a homosexual man, I can write in ways that are not at all homosexual, that I have other doors in the hallway of my imagination, remains very puzzling to a number of gay Puritan friends of mine.  They would call it a kind of oppression, because I do not see everything through one lens.

-Richard Rodriguez 

Daddy Said

Daddy said

"Niggas be mean

spittin' poison like vipers

twisted in love"

Been Nigga watchin'

catchin' ev'ry twitch of lips

ev'ry blinkin' eye

Niggas cuss like a mothafucka

with cadence and venom

in a dance that sparkles

with laughter and fear

Their eyes stalk ev'ry doubt

ev'ry chick and dick in stride;

snatch all like owls and lions

on the night prowl of prey

Niggas shoot deadlier without thought

The young lay dead as puddin' proof

A sorry sight, the pints of blood

drunk by the street, not the ill

Too soon buried and forgot

anotha obit thrown to the waste

*Black Woman

Th day I met u I saw strength

and I knew from that point on

that u were pure woman 2 me

possessing a spirit that was strong

I want smiles 2 replace the sorrow

that u have encountered in the past

and since it was strength that attracted me 2 u

it will take strength 2 make it last

My negative side will attempt 2 change u

but please fight that with your all

it will be your strength that keep us both standing

while others around us fall

-Tupak Shakur

*...seventeenth-century Mexico calls the children of Indian-African marriage "Chinos."  Latin America is extraordinarily playful with matters of sex, which is to say of matters of blood, whereas the United States is severe and Puritanical about notions of blood precisely because we are insecure about issues of eroticism.

-Richard Rodriquez 

Christ of my broken self

of a cruciform, torn apart

glue me with your Spirit

set me on your cross

*Since our birth, the one experience assured us is our death.

*When we are too tender about something we can easily become too violent in seeking to defend or preserve it.

-Gregory Wolfe

*Christ 's message was not to pretend the world isn't fallen but to take our crosses and follow him through the suffering and sacrifice.  To create a body of work illustrating a world without the Fall is, for a Christian, to render Christ superfluous.

-Gregory Wolfe 

God of the piecing Quiet

You say more in silence

than we in noise;

speaking to us in gentle language

we shout at You our words.

When will we enclose the din

with the list'ning sound of silence?

When will we echo Your noise

with the tumult of the Quiet?

*A friend told me: "Sometimes we stumble into the will of God".  And I added: "Sometimes, through that, we fall into the well that is God.

*When the parousia happens, there will be somebody cleaning up the shit.

*You need not leave your room.  Remain sitting at your table and listen.  You need not even listen, simply wait, just learn to become quiet, and still, and solitary.  The world will freely offer itself to you to be unmarked.  It has no choice; it will roll in ecstasy, at your feet.

-Kafka

I have looked upon the Host

I have looked upon the Host

the Body of Christ:

have seen the works of Man

baked in it

have seen the folk of earth

pressed in It

have touched the joys of all

in the taste of It

I have looked into the Cup

the Blood of Christ:

have seen the dreams of Man

stir in It

have seen the pains of folk

squeezed in It

have savored the tears of all

in drinking It

I have looked upon the Christ

in His Eucharist:

have heard His freedom

while eating It

have yes'd His promises 

while drinking It

have said my thanks

while feeding It

*Tecum

With You

inside

a steady stream

of living light

we meet

in the presence

of nothing

more than

yes

we welcome

each other

unceasingly

-Jerry Schroeder, Cap.

*Carry

it does not

matter

so much

how well

you carry

a note a melody

but how

consciously

you

carry

this 

instrument

of 

presence

of

mystery

you

-Jerry Schroeder, Cap.

Extinct volcano!?

Old Ruth staked a spot deep in her lava pit today.

One would have thought it was extinct

but I saw it gush as her ripened frame shock

as the earth and mountains of flesh rocked

and she moaned for a god like a priestess of Delphi

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

*All our heroes have mud on their feet.

*Behind every story is a story.

*We human beings ares so interested in proving ourselves to be gods and goddesses that we end up proving ourselves to be devils.

*Things That Make Hearts Break

pretty smiles

deceiving laughs

and people who dream with their eyes open

lonely children 

unanswered cries

and souls who have given up hoping

The other thing that breaks hearts

R fairy tales that never come true

and selfish people who lie to me

selfish people just like u

-Tupac Shakur

Having the fire of some strong passion blazing in my head

the weight of some red anger hanging over me

my heart rocks back and forth

like a metronome mocking time

pacing the rage bathing in the heat.

My flesh rashed pink with an itch

that, bothersome, under-my-skin's embrace

bore through my veins as unnerving depression

Tis the potion of the forsaken

the elixir of the long-abandoned child in flight

the cocktail of the well-spoke Jesus out of sight.

Rapids of rejection long forgot

soak the soul as if drowning by baptism

a weighted spirit  desiring to be selected

yet sinking under sea like a rock without legs.

In this night-walk of feelings a thought enters in:

it's the dark-wood crossing where Dante meets Virgil

journeying to Beatrice on the Sun-side of Hell

to the Light-side of sadness crawling in his soul. 

*...R.H. Blyth once noted: "We are being sentimental when we give to a thing more tenderness than God gives to it."....Oscar Wilde hits closer to the mark: "a sentimentalist is one who desires to have the luxury of an emotion without paying for it."

-Gregory Wolfe

*When we are too tender about something we can easily become too violent in seeking to defend or preserve it.

-Gregory Wolfe

*...Christ's message was not to pretend the world isn't fallen but to take up our crosses and follow him through the suffering and sacrifice.

-Gregory Wolfe

*If There Be Pain...

If there be pain

    all u need to do

is call on me 2 be with u

And before u hang up the phone

u will no longer be alone

Together we can never fall

because our love will conquer all

If there be pain

    reach out 4 a helping hand

and I shall hold u wherever I am

Every breath I breathe will be into u

4 without u here my joy is through

my life was lived through falling rain

so call on me if there be pain

-Tupac Shakur 

We are half-persons with quartered  faces drugs

lacking balance in our lives;

leaning on the edge of collapse

we embrace Hopes' escape from despair

We cry with muffled tongues

a Word swallowed in each sound;

thirsting for the Wine of Peace

we imbibe Life's oblivion drugs

We long the Physician come to patch our broken parts

to hear our garbled response through desiccated throats

We languish on the banks of Eden

peering at the Tree across the Way

awaiting the cherubim to sheath the sword

and Christ to ferry us in

*To engage art is to use it, and it will do something to or for you, even if it does not cause you to go on a buying spree.

-Theodore L. Prescott

*One aspect of receiving and having faith is some fundamental reordering of the way one looks at the world.  Faith begins to de-fang that hungry, omnivorous creature within each of us, the one that so easily turns people and things into objects to satisfy our appetites.

-Theodore L. Prescott

*My Dearest One!!

There R no words to express

how much I truly care

So many times I fantasize of

feelings we can share

My heart has never known

the Joy u bring 2 me

As if GOD knew what I wanted

and made u a reality

I'd die 2 hold u or 2 kiss u

or merely to see your face

my stomach quivers my body shivers

and my heart increases pace

2 give me $ or lots of gold

would not be the same 2 me

I prayed and watched the distant stars

and finally u came 2 me!

-Tupac Shakur

Death in family earlier today(Sunday).  Will need to be away from blog for several days, at least.

Thanks for your understanding.

i sit with You

but it's You 

Who sit with me

not only sitting

but preparing the space

arranging chairs

providing food

for our conversation in silence:

interiority swept clean 

calmed to tiredness

for spiritual rest

the emptiness packed

with peace and solitude 

*Our discovery of God is, in a way, God's discovery of us.

-Thomas Merton

*We become contemplatives when God discovers Himself in us.

-Thomas Merton

*In order to know and love God as He is, we must have God dwelling in us in a new way, not only in His creative power but in His mercy, not only in His greatness but in His littleness, by which He empties Himself and comes down to us to be empty in our emptiness, and so fill us in His fullness.

-Thomas Merton

*Nothing Can Come Between Us

let's not talk of money

let us forget the world

4 a moment let's just revel

in our eternal comradery

in my Heart I know

there will never be a day

that I don't remember

the times we shared

u were a friend

and being a friend 2 me

was not easy or fashionable

regardless of how popular

I become u remain

my unconditional friend

unconditional in its truest sense

did u think I would forget

did u 4 one moment dream

that I would ignore u

if so remember this from here 2 forever

nothing can come between us

-Tupac Shakur

Purple Madness

Purple, racing through each vein of blood

taps the passion-points of desire on course

that I am mad with wild-want

of want for you like Spring for flow'rs.

Blooms form 'long the breathe of my lips

flow'ring to smile at rhe smiles of your face

which my hand cups like hot black tea

being sipped with pleasure, English-style.

Your words are filtered steam cov'ring my face with warmth

as your chin hooks my arm closer to your neck.

I speak and laugh with the the madness of want

as you butt your way to my thighs at rest.

Tis a strange purple-passion oozing 'tween us:

respectful play and controlled desire seeking caress

all in the press, the poise, the silent interludes

all a holding-in what the heart knows is true

*Imagination should be a probing into truth, a penetration, not a fabrication of something that we want to believe.

-Gil Bailie

*We live in a world that has calloused our sensibilities, a world where we are bombarded visually, ravaged by stimulation until we can't see or hear or taste or feel or touch anything, and in this world the artist is charged with bringing us to our senses.  This is the sacramental sensibility.

-Gil Bailie

*Rene Girard has said many times that we want to talk about language instead of using it - we have a sort of postmodern hermeneutics of hermeneutics of hermeneutics.  "In the room the women go, talking of Michelangelo" is the condition from which the visual artist must save us, and the great mainstream of art in the twentieth century has abandoned that task.

-Gil Bailie

Who Are U?

I am on the wall

in flash of colors and

Black and white

I am nude odalisque

laid upon a chaise

eyeing eyes that search

I am caterpillar

inching toward the chrysalis

eating green as nurturance

I am ritual, dance

movement in 40 parts

spinning out a question mark

I am poetry in lines

scribed in foreign script

spoken accents, nondescript

I am woman-to-be

a man hung in doubt

where vaginas open as caves

I am persona salad

of van Gogh, Ifo, Pompeii, Egypt, too

Rivera, Lawrence and plastic's speak

I am more than all I know

an iota of what I know

a myst'ry verse of song

I am...

I Luv the Field of Flesh

Male flesh, woman flesh

young flesh, aged flesh

baby flesh, youth flesh:

I luv the field of flesh

Smooth flesh, wrinkled flesh

brown flesh, white flesh

hilly flesh, flat flesh:

I luv the field of flesh

Quiet flesh, busy flesh

breast flesh,bun flesh

passion flesh, plain flesh:

I luv the field of flesh

Your flesh, my flesh

his flesh, her flesh

their flesh, all flesh:

I luv the field of flesh

God-flesh, personed flesh

giving flesh, saving flesh

loving flesh, each flesh:

I luv Your feel for flesh

*God

when I was alone and had nothing

I asked 4 a friend 2 help me bear the

pain no one came except...GOD

when I needed a breath 2 rise

from my sleep no one could

help me except....GOD

when all I saw was sadness

and I needed answers no one

heard me except....GOD

so when I am asked who I

give my unconditional love 2

look for no other name

except......GOD!

-Tupac Shakur

might a dream-talk

speak a word in my night-mind

open some window in my deep sleep

and lead me from the dark to light?

*Some thoughts from Thomas Merton:

     -Contemplation is no pain-killer.

     -There is "no such thing" as God because God is neither a "what" nor a "thing" but a pure "Who."

     -God is the I Am before whom with our own most personal and inalienable voice we echo "I am."   

The Fear in the Heart of a Man

against an attacker I will boldly take my stand

because my heart will show faer 4 no man

but 4 a broken heart I run with fright

scared 2 be blind in a vulnerable night

I believe this fear is in every man

some will acknowledge it others will fail 2 understand

there is no fear in a shallow heart

because shallow hearts don't fall apart

but feeling hearts that truly care

 are fragile 2 the flow of air

and if I am 2 be true then I must give

my fragile heart

I may receive great joy or u may return it

ripped apart

-Tupac Shakur