This

Didn't have a scanner readily available for this 'project,' or else I would have simply begun my quirky notion instead of writing about it (yuck!). The Sacrament and who He is, is slowly spilling His consequences into all areas of my life, as the literal notion of 'sacrament' would seem to suggest - a symbol/embodiment that bridges and embodies realities beyond its immediate self.

. . .But enough of that for now. BASICALLY, without long explanation here, I've decided to hand-write the novel (I have yet to get beyond outlines) and, in the throes of this passion, decided to hand-write anymore entries that may come along in this weird and ethereal 'blog' thing. O God of Progress: you may try so hard to be something horrific and shoddy and sterile, but there are ways to subvert you into something oddly and particularly beautiful.

. . .A meaty recipe along these lines, a juicy personal pipe-dream for some distant future: Pull together a group of people as though for a drama and make a nuanced, solid world/situation/'stage' as well as character sketches for deep, authentic characters. Each actor-of-sorts takes home a written hand-out describing the world/situation/stage as well as the respective character sketch. Simmer and stir, dialogue is encouraged. Reconvene in a month and hire a stenographer for the occasion. Create the story in a session or sessions, and with each person speaking in character. At the end of the process, pay the stenographer, thank her/him, and receive the manuscript. Copy as necessary, staple, do whatever EXCEPT any content editing, give to whomever.


-r

Icarus and His Winged Condom

The greatest tragedy is not
That of the human sins
Screamed from the pulpits
But that of happily left alone doggy-doors for rot

-Rot, redefined,
Assigned a place between the temples,
Clean forehead, palms, fingertips,
Soapy mouths, and hair parts
Of a corpse;
Suds sundered, brow parted,
Open hands to the south
All stripped
Of any remorse.

Behold, the Soap
That will wipe away the Sin of the world
Before Lamb can;
Behold the Rope, the caking Blood
That we refuse to call a bleeding
Out [gurgggle. . .];
So we eat the cotton
And we pray for God's blessing
To the nourishment of our bodies
So we can wear the cake
And reheat it, too,
To the sundering of our souls.

Icarus with his winged condom
Weeps over a melt-down dying home;
Jezebel and her question-mark hair dyes
Gnashes at God for the baldness gene.


-r

Blacksmith

A yawn so wide and so much it hurts
Too much for a throat to swallow
I have been all or none, gape or shut,
Brooding in the dark corners of the deepest rooms
Or baring so much it rips the corners,
The dark, the yawn
Of a tragically self-reliant soul
An iron slab sundered and warped inward
Under past absolute melting points and the lip-cracking kiln
Until he now, stabilised, lives out the daily liturgy:
The eternally terminal inward curve
Or bites off parts unprofitably in protest, shatters outward, flailing in all angles.

Enter the Blacksmith, who is not I nor a sheer act of mine:
I would be cold statue or lit gunpowder,
Unstable, instant arrival at one, gape or freeze,
But it seems she will linger and arrive again gingerly at the city limits,
Hair clippings perhaps shedding, mystery, her giggling,
All that is mine gladly slid to the floor,
Her drifting back into the eyes' horizons,
Reaching to hold hands with the woad war-paint man
With his hasty fuse madly lit over the gunpowder that is a moment;
She defuses him with her hands' warmth
And her laugh
And the lesson of her moment.

Please, tell me more; teach me more;
Iron art slowly warms;
I am beginning to tarry.



-r

2 for Mystery, 0 for Empiricals

--
I had
Stumbled upon
Someone else's poesis,
Staged from the pregnant dawn when time first trickled out,
Stage

NASHVILLE, who whispers discontent
UNION STATION, quietly anticipating
THE TRAIN, asleep, sun-down on her anger
THE TRACKS
SUNSET
THE STORM, brooding unseen in the backdrop
THE NORTH

Staged,
Not yet framed, not as yet created
In that first dawn of time's spilling out,
But a mind's eye hinting at
The Eyes,
The Being of supreme Imagination
Who can conceive every
Stage, Drama,
Conceived and Conceivable,
Always embodied everywhere;
But often lost to the finite, fretful eye, a
Glimmer of this cosmic tin occasionally flickers in the river.

NASHVILLE--
A few minutes early, I
Decide, haphazardly, to light
Up on the patio behind
Union Station by
The train tracks.

UNION STATION--
Intangibly, I could sense
A dark energy wafting incensed
From the North, an unsettled cosmic exchange, when
The train cracked

CLACK

(Shudder,Shudder--)
A taste of burning metal
Shrouded sunset and half-hidden silk moon
Slapped clattering against
The dark violet front of the North
Lightning, flash lightning, violence,
Sharp bolts
Steady moan of the violin train and tracks
White light and sparking off
Union Station's cold granite gol gothic facade,
A cosmic conversation, cobalt and granite seraphims.

Shock
Melts into a throbbing unfolding,
Train squealing on,
Train squealing, squealing, on,
Storm rolling in, arriving,
Smoke puffing backward against my intentions,
A cosmic conversation, cobalt and granite seraphims.

--I had stumbled
--I had stumbled upon
--Go away,
Go away from me, LORD,
I am sinful.


--

Which came first,
Water, Thirst?

Drops lance down the window,
Comets, weave:
'Will this drop intersect that drop?'
The Interrupter makes it out as a horoscope.

But
Moved beyond awe or games into bared horoscope,
No snowflake imitating,
No drop intersecting alike in a test-tube,
No test-tube,
No test,
There will remain unknown yet a rhythm
Or cosmic Smile playing pots and pans.

Leviathan Has Attention Deficit Disorder

(Leviathan does not typically carry two forms of I.D.
And will not wait in D.O.T. lines forever.)

. . .When the wasps first lit on the awning
In the first light of the dawn of spring,
We continued to open our windows and spanked our children's talking-back asses raw,
Getting them out of our hair and into the out-of-doors.
(The wasps invited more.)

-Good old Amos!
Amos burned an American flag in the Capitol building
And refused to serve the mandatory community service
And did not apologise to the troops or minorities in mandatory written form
And did not laugh at the cued jokes
And did not sacrifice his head at the altar of the omniscient Stages of Development
And did not trim his hair according to medical breakthroughs
And did not set forth according to the captain of industry's maps, and
Said instead, 'Mr. Mayor Incarnate, Mrs. State Secretary, - the Flood will make a statuary
Out of them, out of us, on that day She interrupts and arrives.
Heavy-chested, in hives, our dam-workers will have had their fill of woes in
Our negligence we have summoned a sigh rise forth,
We tease our pearly-eyed inviting women in the south whilst from the North
Back-burner pots even now bubble over to sleepy shadows, and the
Toothy fed feasts of ours remove fear of the Waters rising in the West.
Clammy-eyed, those dam-workers can't continue to hold all our woes.'
(The wasps have even now disappeared amid, within the awning)

'For our centuries, we have thrust our City down in the "valley"
And made the "valley" all ours;
When the time falls ripe, the River will come to lay claim Her bed,
And She shall only know in her heart that She has been meant
To sleep in Her bed (our "valley"),
Even as Leviathan disregards any hooks or screams in his next drumstick meal
-These ant legs on Her bed
She does not comprehend
-But She feels the rhythm of the Order of Vocations,
She has always known Her bed well.

'Bid farewell to this present house, children-
So I say, and you laugh, and your hands shield your temples from me.
Leviathan can't be hooked and flashed forever.
When will we hear? will you see?
For we have already woven wasps within
All walls, and swallowed Leviathan goldfish with giggles;
But these are our new walls, dammed "valley"
-Because we disliked the hue of the old walls
That are still in our place by the river bed
-Because we preferred Her bed to our own
And forsook the gentle Stream in Her bed
-But these are our news walls, dammed "valley",
That were made out of negligence, bile, wasp eggs . . .'

(Dregs and smiley clanks await and are summoned for silly Amos profusely;
We still hum, doubt; new
News bulletins flee from the Bells that might - that have just now sounded the toll:)
'When will we hear? will you see?
-Who me? but I do love the City,
but I love the River who loves Her valley,
I do love the Name who set our City.'

-r

Recent Playings

I'm currently writing an article concerning the nature of art, the exploration of objectively 'good art,' and so forth - which I'll most likely post in some form here when finished. For the time being, here are some relatively recent works of a similar subject . . .

1996 Camry, 4-cylinder Automatic
Hurrah. Palette and materials speak for themselves.

Carya monolithis, Monument to Modernity

This was my second and (to date) last attempt at an experimental medium inspired by industrial sanding. I painted layer after layer of varying colours on a piece of plywood - in this case: white, then blue, then yellow, then red - and then used a power-sander to 'shave' it to what can be seen here. This is sacramentally intentionally ugly beyond all attempt - a picture of a 'tree,' based on poem concerning the same subject. While the central subject is blue-separated-from-yellow with a 'balloon string' trunk, there is the subtle outline of a 'real' tree along the outside of the test-tube tree. The inscription translates: 'Ginsberg, Ginsberg - you were the blind, mute bastard of Komos; you are the one who spoke of the end of the world.'

Untitled
Acryllic on cardboard. Using a small piece of cardboard for this work was an attempt to afford 'sacramental' movement - to bring a physical correlation to the image portrayed.

Untitled
Acryllic on ceiling tile; grid formed from air-conditioning unit packaging. More industrial-inspired art.

Untitled . . . 'That Shirt'

Materials: red acryllic, pages from a Church of the Nazarene Manual, a letter box, an empty toilet paper tube, a broken mirror, a black marker, a red marker, two image clippings, a dress shirt, a tie, a Church of the Nazarene return address label, nails, and a bandage.

I made this just prior to my Confirmation, as a sort of reflection of the journey to reach that point of deliverance. At first, as in the first picture, I had the tie untied and open, but the 'tie noose' idea clicked and, in my opinion, really completed the piece.

In the first place (and this is the level I was operating on), this is loaded with all kinds of personal expressions and realities. In my struggle over/with the Nazarene denomination and with my coming to deeply understand the steep cost of becoming Catholic, I seriously considered suicide. The pages and illustrations and notes on and inside the shirt have to do with my trying to help 'fix' the Nazarene denomination's catechesis and doctrinal crisis, as well as the utter despair that followed.

However, I think a photograph of this seems incomplete without a viewer looking at it; it seems to have struck something beyond whatever it was I was trying to strike at. I've noticed that the piece itself makes the viewer the 'piece of art,' on display in a profound way. This seems to be a conduit/window that 'stirs up' the human struggle with ugly realities, in oneself and in others. In some instances, the viewer averts her/his eyes quickly. In some instances, the viewer stares quizzically. Sometimes - and usually only after a few encounters - the viewer timidly and curiously moves closer to peer into the 'heart' of the shirt. Any given person can have (and has had) any or all reactions to the piece, even as the human (at least our present and particular manifestations) seems to do with her/his life.

Untitled
Acryllic on canvas. An experiment with a colour-contrast method. This piece is based on the coronation ceremony for a new pope, in which (traditionally) a barefoot monk interrupts on three occasions, lighting a flax rag on an iron pole and pronouncing, 'Holy Father, thus passes the glory of the world.'


-r