Saturday, June 30, 2018

Mandala




I 

Taking up the brush
to paint the east gate blue
as we maneuver naked around one another
fourteen men filling in the lines
within whose boundaries we can play
as children before us were capable of playing
playing now at monk-see monk-do
with the ersatz materials at hand
all symbolism simplified
poster paints instead of sand
on a prestretched canvas
the petals of the lotus
on which the central temple rests
now collaged with the fragments of our longings
an Attic vase
two musclemen smiling at one another
across the divide of someone else’s fantasy
a spruce cone
deceptively phallic for a tree’s swelling ovary
a dragonfly
New Age ascended master
portrait of the artist as a young man
all opening now as petals of one flower
around the improbable goal of pilgrimage
yin-yang of two cocks
curved into one another
our contradicktion in terms
of tantric homosex
this vision of a temple we’ve raised
against all odds
for a few days at least...
 

II

...and the dedication two nights later
wherein we speak forth witnessed meaning
into these fragments
then silently pass our map of cosmic truth
from hand to hand out the door
and to the verge  of waiting flame
not quite the sweeping of sand into the river
but dissolution nonetheless
by what means we have
for what we have created
chanting Om Mane Padme Hum
as fire dims then licks
then at the flashpoint blazes out
with what we have
what we are and offer
under a night sky swarming with stars
amidst a woods swarming with fireflies
our feet wet with dew upon the grass
sister of our flesh

Thursday, June 21, 2018

At Solstice



From Wallace Stevens, "Sunday Morning"
 

VII

Supple and turbulent, a ring of men
Shall chant in orgy on a summer morn
Their boisterous devotion to the sun,
Not as a god, but as a god might be,
Naked among them, like a savage source.
Their chant shall be a chant of paradise,
Out of their blood, returning to the sky;
And in their chant shall enter, voice by voice,
The windy lake wherein their lord delights,
The trees, like serafin, and echoing hills,
That choir among themselves long afterward.
They shall know well the heavenly fellowship
Of men that perish and of summer morn.
And whence they came and whither they shall go
The dew upon their feet shall manifest.

Saturday, June 2, 2018

Daniel Barkley: The Voyage Onward

 
Embarcation II, 2003

 
The Far Shore II, 2006