Home of random thoughts, misguided musings, wicked words and the men who make them.

Friday, April 28, 2006

The Addendum

I believe an addendum to the comforting Mount speech:
the promise of solace and the wounded are blessed.

Be pliable, tender; be meek.
Be willing to shatter as the Maker sees fit.

But
I believe there is something else
it’s this:
it’s this fact that this life will not always play nicely,
and sometimes
you
can’t pussy out.

Loud things collect
like a pile of vultures, and
turn from the carcass of
deeds to face
you,
and when they, and then
the hard truth, I believe,
is that you must learn
also the choice
to rise to the wind
to bellow above it, and straight in their faces.

To prank a child’s safety
if he once broke your heart,
and flee into the woods, and snicker, thereafter.
To carry too far all your beautiful pottery and
to drop it, prepared,
for love of the crash.
To stride from your wreckage and,
drag it
while clings it
to your legs,
and laugh
until it releases.

To be set on fire,
and then not to mind,
for all the ways it is merely cleaning
you.

And to all of this
exactly your method.
With no one to own you
through sense of what's needed
from you
nor by you.

But there are rules:
If your heart glazes, you lose.
You weep for your foes.
And your rage must be harmless,
sweet and amusing to someone good, in the telling,
and made pure
by willful
abandon
of any pretense to rightness.
(I have seen this work out.)

And don't fight the Devil,
who will kick your ass.
He is stronger than you and invisible,
and played his own games before you were a thought;
Politely say so and stay out of his way.

No, fury towards God,
and be in those moments an ape with a mane,
own them, those moments
you rude right to tantrum
when you know none of the sculpting,
nor poems of Cosmos.
Your pride is the thud of the fist on your breast
while suns, atoms and cells are vastly more subtle
and no less good-natured.

Why this?

I think, through it all,
sin of right
wrongly lived out,

don't ever, ever forget, not for a moment,
that God high above
always,
always, always,
always smiles,
always smiles,
and always smiles at you.

Friday, April 21, 2006

Invitation to hear some stories...

So I started a blog to get some stories out of my systems. Some old and new. Please come over and check it out. Its at eliasinfinity.blogspot.com and its called Tellin' Stories. Cause thats what its all about.

Wednesday, April 12, 2006

Sorceror Series: Revelation Sunshine

I have been enjoying the entries. I have been quiet because one of my personas is trying to get these seniors graduated. Anyway...
I was in love a number of times in my life. Not a lot but enough to appreciate it and question it.
Cree Summer, an actress from A Different World and various cartoon voices put an album out about eight years ago produced by Lenny Kravitz. Few people have heard of it and few people had been looking out for it. I was one of the people the album caught. I was in my first year at grad school and had rediscovered Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds. You know art school and all that. Anyway I was wandered around looking for something interesting and I stopped by my friend Angelique's room. Angelique was sitting on her bed eating carrots I think and watching Leno. My state was slowly becoming altered so I decided to sit and visit and watch TV with her. Leno announced a performance by Cree Summer. I was skeptical. Her character from A different World was quirky and though presented as deep into her convictions about the world, a little flaky. Also she had come to be known for her cartoon voices as well. Well she came out and I just couldn't believe it. She was covered in gold body paint and dancing on a Persian rug. I thought I was in the sixties. The music started and it was a jumpy guitar with some Lou Reed chords. And I got sucked in. It was about the slow discovery of friendship to intimate love. And it may have been Lucy or something but I was completely into the performance. Honestly I though the song related to my growing friendship with Angelique but when I looked over to see if she was feeling the song. She (under the influence of some other smokable) though I was trying to take her carrots and slid over on the couch. After that awakening I went back into the song. It got me like songs do. Later I bought the album and listen to it often even to this day. The hook of the song was "out of my mind, into yours." WOW. Flashforward to a half a decade later and I am in love... You know, with the one I've talked about before and she dug the album. I mean she got it!!!! Deep in the bliss of new love I was teaching a mixed media class. Since I started doing the Collage Sorceror series work I decided to have the first project for the class be from a meaningful or favorite song. Being in my ambitious teacher/artist stage, I promised to do the project with my students. I chose Revelation Sunshine the first song on Cree Summer's album Street Faerie. I wanted to show how we were in each others head and we were sharing our dreams and experiences. And ain't that what love is?
The colors and meaning are consistent with my other work, though her color was (and will always be) orange. I took out any specific visual marks on the profiles and was using a relieved symmetrical design, cause that's how I made my students design their work. Images of things we enjoyed and where we want'd to be. While the Sorceror is at the center welcoming the Sunshine(her nickname) and the words of the song dance down the page:
Look
Did you see was I obvious Could you tell I did try to hide it.
Love is
Love is all
Love is all around
Love is all around us.
Out of my mind Into yours.

And I loved the rawness of it and the sincerity of it and it reinforced for me the power of music. One thing this this series has taught me is the power of life experiences. Cause I was deep in it, but Cree had another song on the album called Mean Sleep. Which stated I had a mean sleep over you and it hurts coming back to life. The beautiful thing is I can see the poetry of the painting without missing the power of the feeling that inspired it.... cause it was true and selfless. And the resounding truth I got from the voice of Elmira was:

LOVE IS ALL AROUND US.

Elias

Tuesday, April 11, 2006

Answer

Answer

If we were all parent to the world
we would see that it is too rowdy
we would see how the greed
has made us all jump;
we would see, plainly at last,
the corporations.

If we were all lovers to the world
we would respond without scolding;
we would attend and caress;
we could learn to bare our need for the same
perfectly.

So then, why not?
So then, why this?

Now I think that we have missed the mark
through the time spent defending ourselves
and the recklessness and half-measure
of our methods,
big and small --
the methods of a second and the methods
of years,
and the rebounding consequences
that trigger,
and then trigger
and then...

If so,
it comes then, to this,
God,
the question
of self-defense
which You have not answered,
not so we have heard:

In this world of Yours
we, children of Yours...

Must we?

Thursday, April 06, 2006

I never really thought of myself as a poet (and maybe you'll know why in a minute.) But here are some poems about God.


God (I)

Superman, shoulders bent,
eyebrows bent,
as though in despair, but it’s the signature of awe.

Batman finally healed, finally
healed and peaceful.

Wonder Woman, and all
that is pure about Wonder Woman,
and all that is naughty about Wonder Woman,
and the hot mix of these.

The Flash, and a thousand times as fast,
but not boring.

Spider-Man,
just Spider-Man
and a billion times more.
Not killing the thieves.
(But unlike Spider-Man, killing the thieves regularly,
And everyone else.)

All of them.
And the minds that thought them.

And water.
And the mind that thought water.
And the mind that thought war.
And the mind that thought peace.
And maybe all of it.
And maybe none of it.
And more and more and more and more,

And still not talking
until I render my worthiness
by raw, impossible teetering.
Or something else, quiet and regular,
that I have never learned,
building my ways as I have,
out of the motions required
by the mortar and stone that were given,
and the hungers for what was not.
(And also out of those rough things that were made
when I learned to mix clay and straw.)

...And also the clay,
and also the straw,
and also the me that mixed them --
not taking that back.

But rather taking it, sometimes,
to some somewheres,
and not taking it others,

Or so it seems to me:
yet another it,
in a cauldron of its
within the I.

* * *

God (part II)

Whoever it is that thought up
the idea of God
the Provider,
as Providence alone,
the undemanding warm sun
on a beach raining fruit,

Should be folded up into a little box
and shot.

Just my opinion.
Not my action,
partly because of, you know,
a famous precedent of some similarity.

 
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