Poem: Schemas

The sorrows of those who barter for other gods shall multiply. —Psalm 16:4

Pentax 645 | 75mm F/2.8 | Fuji Pro400H

I. In This Dark Blanket

These waters must have rolled down
from the tear ducts of one like a son of man
Rolling down like planets of sorrows
rolling into the primal spring, turning
shoreless waves in concentric circles, emanating
incandescent silver blades
caping this dark blanket.
The water must be a blind trickster¹ uttering dark sayings²
or is it a mute singing
a distant sighing
ancient incantations
like withdrawing screams
howls, like thunder receding from a nebula of ash
transfixed in the fading voices of distant stars.
Generations come, generations go³
they all go from sea to sea
grasping the shattered second heaven
of some half-dreamt memory,
of some half-guessed speculation.
The suns and the planets go, running their courses
in the wind, where there shall be nothing.
Incarnate dust
a swarm of limbs groping,
a gallery of hollow exuviaes, of empty chrysalises
from one end until the turning of the tide.
Who has demanded this vanity? Palms, gripping
the crown, assuming every puncturing thorn.
Aimlessly sailing, aimlessly refusing a birth,
going from sea to sea
groping for the unmeasured moment
in the blindness of inherited infirmity
In these waters of engendering and seed⁴
You shall know one thing for certain
He sails to Tarshish⁵, shaking, nauseated, paying the fare
in copper and wine, stomach full of undigested mercy
a prophet sailing nowhere with no god to declare
drowning without trace of remorse or despair
a voice without a message, out-sanctified by pagan mariners
with a little prayer, born dead, incapable of sustained thought
(a real twenty-first century poet)
The nascent sun upon the four rivers, the hummingbird
the orchid mantis, and the peregrine falcon
the jaguar and the markhor
He has named them all. Now the center of it all,
a fruit-bearing tree that morphs and changes
to the wind or shade of water, he cannot know
in the absolute degree, and there two crowns of creation,
and the slithering deceiver of the world, now
nothing but a memory in a half-forgotten dream.
The sea morphs and changes, yet it remains the sea.
The sea shall swallow the earth.
I am no man, no crimson soaked tree
no Prometheus punished for the greater deed
Your birthright⁶ was sold for a single bite.
Nine centuries⁷ slipping, sinking—the blood this earth received still speaking⁸
with whispers creeping inside the round of my skull
splitting ancient wounds with ancient guilt. A garden forbidden.
At times your body is a bullet and your gut squeezed in thin steel
and your throat twisted in thin steel with gunpowder all over it
Bilateral numbness of hands,
canceling behavioral appointments,
charged with static dynamism
of a rose, of what once a child, a son, a man,
the rose of what once a child. I was only a child—
Selector lever is switched from safe to semi⁹
unaware what finger in time will appear to squeeze the trigger
What intruded the dreams shaped in this waking
upon these waters, as it were, a Géricault¹⁰
with our fleeting and irrelevant responses,
that we rather avoid the leviathan’s jaw or the siren’s fang
and in place of our despicable resolution,
consume one another?
History is a cycle of entropy
What dissonant, scrambled voices distract us—
in the vaulted horizon, the cosmic Captain¹¹ and his ark is not in us—
from facing, in the destitution of our minds
and the desolation of our spirit, the hour of our own redemption,
the terrors of our own rebirth?
For every birth there is a death
History is a cycle of birth and giving
What frail prayers of the ineffectual tongue
can move the architect of motion, what pierced hands can coop
this light from the bottomless well, what birth shall it take
to divulge the face of the two spheres
and begin our descent from the cross of time?
That death shall give us birth
History speaks to the dead in the language of the living
The word, unshifting, is always living
What has been written in the past, when observed,
savored, swallowed, and ingested, is always now
and that which has been forgotten will be remembered
the Word shall liberate us from time
the Word upon death shall gift us our birth
the Word ressurected shall liberate us from our death
Quid est veritas?
Ten thousand upon ten thousand seas emerge from the cardinal fountain
branching torrents forking in various orientations
Ecce homo
in this dark blanket. . .

Pentax 645 | 75mm F/2.8 | Ilford HP5 Plus 400

II. Rose Petals in Petri Dishes

After all is done tonight
the dayspring light shall fall against evergreen
pines, oak leaves, gray twigs, ashen branches.
Azaleas in shades of alizarin and white dogwoods
blossom by the Cape Fear River.
In Spivey’s Corner, the yellow myrtles flay,
bleeding viridian red infused with olive green
silvered by the blazing sun. And the unseen,
summer wind shall lightly sway the blooms
between the contoured dance of the branches.
Soon, the geese shall once again visit Lake Rim,
like a stoic pilgrim checking in at a familiar lodge
on a perfunctory journey already completed
before the Mayflower’s voyage.
They take no thought of St. Andrews Cross suspended
or the love-song of nymphs emerging underneath
Undisposed to contemplate the hues in a poplar leaf
deaf to the melody of time’s antique symphony
For them is no distinction between the budding iris
and the red-tailed hawk clutching a passerine
but otherwise content about the lake-water gliding
down in the gothic arches of their necks.
And there shall be no snow or sleet
covering the interstates, but only a temporal skin
of frozen dew upon the hillside appearing
like a satin moth’s wing upon the sleepy grass.
And you shall be warm, for my skin shall be upon yours,
and I shall be dreaming of this landscape
and the moonlight an intimate stranger.
But even though I’ll never know you,
I know you heard my heart (You saw the sonogram)
I’m grateful for the moment
Before you said goodbye
By the waters of the Nile, you will sit down and weep.¹²
We have seen the sun beat on human brows
and we have seen human brows harrowed in agony
and we have seen agony multiply many sorrows
Sorrows upon sorrows told in a many community
and we would’a regarded it adequate.
Here the nascent mouths of Ramah sing¹³
Hear Rachel weep tonight
Strangers shall mourn us right
little papa you can blame expectations
but best believe it’s on your evaluation
mama I know your
hidden worth, concealed trauma, confused tender love
but who’ll pick you up
when they take me down
spotless, they take me down,
snip-snap, they take me down,
RU-486 take me down,
legal rights take me down—
You think leaving mama is cool
you touched her first, fool
bet now you can enroll in school
go get that undergrad, dad
but say who’ll be there for you
after all is done tonight.
These waters must have rolled down
from the tear ducts of one like a son of man.
Or they must have been spinal fluid mingled with blood,
Perhaps it was meconium that formed the dust of the earth.
What waters of engendering and seed,
What darkness underneath the surface of each skin.
Come father, come mother, see this spatter.
Dance. Ask my head in a silver platter.¹⁴
Aimlessly sailing. Aimlessly avoiding this birth.
Aimless living of life that is not life
shall deliver us straight to the void.
Sailing to find any word, unknowing there is only the Word,
born of water in the world,
to seek to know—to hunt and hold
and in our decaying state shall gift us
with our second birth, redeeming us
from our congenital curse, our pathological depravity.
Blessed are the poor in spirit.¹⁵
Whispers seeping inside the round of my skull with a small sound
wounded to hollowness—I am never complete, never completely hollow,
never complete. Those who demanded for a sign received none—
the children of Nineveh will live to condemn this generation.¹⁶
We hold these truths to be self-evident¹⁷
That women and men are created equal
and endowed by our Creator with certain unalienable rights
First and foremost—Life
Rose petals in petri dishes
Shriek like raging train
Their voices heard, the verdict—
I would have been there for you
until the seas dries up
and Carthage burns down . . . and you would’a regarded it­­—
I hold these truths
these lovely, lovely truths—
to be self-evident.
Do you forgive your brother from your heart?
I believe
in the forgiveness of sins
and in the resurrection of the body
and life everlasting
Amen.¹⁸

Nikon F100 | 50mm 1.8 | Kodak Ultramax 400

III. Ascend to the Fire

Is time only because of growth
a quantifying tool, a measurement of entropy?
The hour stands,
still in its dancing between the sun
and the ripple of the Euphrates,
first among the first rivers.
And shall time cease when all life extinguish?
The hour stands,
still between the hinges and the corridors
of the revolving gate, between darkness and light.
And shall the hour empty the cup of meaning
when measured by time,
and not by moments of repentance and love?
Coming to a kingdom I no longer desire,
desiring a kingdom I long to come
Septennial disgrace turning to grace­¹⁹,
a time to measure, and a time to be measured.
And how shall you measure each passing
upon the nameless river where the morphing tree blossoms
perpetually, its branches being the branches of all known
and unknown trees, shifting upon the blow
of the unseen billowing wind, or the turning shade of the water.
There you shall drink and forget the tears upon your eyes²⁰
And there you shall see life unmeasured
for it shall neither cease nor expire.
Shall you and I then wallow in the mire²¹
through which our sins transpire?
It is not as above as it is below.²²
In that garden there are pools of water that were once burning sands²³
Consider how time is constrained
by prayers of the impotent tongue.
Adveniat regnum tuum.²⁴
Sing, groaning earth!
And break forth into loud cries
Let the beating wings of the locusts be your lips,
and the descending vulture be your mouth,
Sing like the rush of many rivers
rushing down to wash even the last grain of sand.
Let the desert wind howl, and the viper unveil its fang,
and every river-dwelling adder, and every beast
and every creeping thing come forth,
in that day when men will yearn to die,
but it shall be denied them.²⁵
Shall not the books be opened?²⁶
See with open eyes the consummation of history
Let the mountains shake and cloth the land with ash
and high plains split into valleys laid low
for a garden must be planted, a garden from above
where men shall seek respite, each one under his own tree.²⁷
In that garden one must enter through the narrow path²⁸,
where the wedding song is sung for one who has waited—
She has waited in fervor and suffering,
therefore let her drink from the vine,
for her bridegroom has arrived,
and we shall know one thing for certain.
Sing, meridian earth!
Let the stripped forests sing forth branches,
for every bird shall sing the song of the new earth
and the jaw of the wild beast shall not clutch the gazelle
but they shall lie down together, grazing the meadow.
And the sun shall not oppress man,
but each shall tend his own garden,
feeding even the child of the stranger,
and the moth shall no longer destroy.
What you therefore worship as unknown­­²⁹—
The hour of closing is at hand³⁰
The tempest of the centuries breaks our raft
for we have despised the ark, now we drown
we drown, down to the jaw of the leviathan.
In the fraction of a moment’s incision
after all required events occurred
and all proper prognostications fulfilled
after all predetermined predictions concur
and every decision of men accounted
between the starlight and the sea
at the right point of redemptive history
appeared the narrow path:
The Word, the unmoved architect of motion
moves the totality of history, from eternity to eternity.
the Word, who washes feet³¹ and wounds alike,
loving even those who mock and revile.³²
the Word, in the schema³³ of a son of man
deviser of time outside time³⁴
begotten before and born in time³⁵
and in outstretched and bloody form³⁶
fulfilling the riddle of the crimson worm³⁷
who shall appear again not to wash, but to burn³⁸
who shall soak the earth in flames of fervent heat
and all who reviled shall be fuel for the coming fire.³⁹
The sun shall darken, the moon turned to blood
and the stars shall fall from their places.⁴⁰
Descend, descend lower before the Word,
A bruised reed he will not break.⁴⁰ Now is the time.
Salvation is a gift received through faith in Jesus Christ.⁴²
Wash away for redemption is paid for,
bathe in springs of forgiveness, submerge in His death,
rise in His resurrection,⁴³
and ascend to the fire of the second birth.

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