“Boys Shooting Craps”
Photo by Lewis Hine
From fineartamerica.com
the desperate play
rolling bones in back alleys
begging for a fade
old bricks can trip up the odds
old dreams come up snake eyes
Archives
All posts for the month January, 2015
“La Pieta”
Sculpture by Michelangelo
Photo from michelangelo.buonarroti.historiaweb.net
marble preachers
deliver their sermons
wordlessly speaking
through sculpture to
lately diminishing masses
depicting dimensions
exemplars of fealty and faith
reverential esthetics
a hushed iconography
coaxing ambivalent souls
to the purpose of prayer
to that peaceable interlude
quiet with dialogue
man with his God
private personal words
amid liturgies scripted
and publically joined
catholic artforms who tend
to offend plainer
protestant ministries
argue commandments
interpreted even to point
of iconoclast wars
schisms east and west
old and new ruptures
along the same route
Michelangelo traced with
the consummate grace of
his hammers and chisels
straight into the rebirth
of reverence for creations
by creatures the Creator
has made sculpture either
of flesh or of stone likewise
settles my ancestral soul
Belasco Theater, New York City
Photo from newyorktheater.me
civil dialogue dies
barely noticed
underplayed dimly lit
without violins
her grim opening
death scene
a poor scripted trope
for the end of an era
whose eminence
quietly stilled
bleeds into the boards
prima donnas emerge
utter vapid soliloquies
chewing up scenery
thumbs-in-vest bombast
performed to applause
of each gullible half
in their turn
from intransigent
audience seats
bought by shadows
concealed in the wings
Canadian Rockies
Photo from
whitemountainphotography.blogspot.com
backbone of continents
bearing the consequent
burdens of staging all life
monumental with force
of emergent creation
thrust up through the
mineral soils and oxygen
skin of an agnostic planet
it renders support for the
roof of the world here
where spirits collect and
cavort above clouds in the
mists from which tumbling
headwater sources find
downpour in cataracts
rushing to feed mighty
rivers and watersheds
lofty divides between
cultures and characteristic
geographies heavy with
height of intrinsically
idiosyncratic composition
inorganic yet very much
alive having more than
once moved cataclysmically
marking the eons that men
would eventually learn
to call eras while naming
these mountains their first
solemn objects of worship
through countless millennia
minds trained so long on such
heights would inevitably
come to recognize God
(Originally posted here by me in April 2013)
(This spectacular church is located in my boyhood home city of Newark, New Jersey. It sits majestically on a rise across the street from where I attended high school. My sister was married here more than fifty years ago. It is world renowned as both an architectural and ecclesiastical jewel. It’s always had a special place in my heart.)
Clerestory windows
Admit into transepts
Heaven’s own light
With agnostic rays
Refracted by doubts
Flying buttresses thrust
From chancel and nave
Transmuting gravity
Through high gothic vaults
Into repentance
Three stained-glass rose panes
Compelling in scale
Adorn forceful façades
Carved from granite quartz stone
Dressed to tolerate sin
Baldacchino and pulpit
Fine-sculpted white marble
Pronounce sacred words
Steeped in mystery’s echo
Profane ears can hear
The Christ and His altar
Pink-born of Carrara
Host the Eucharist
Rapture that ruptures
What evil may linger
View original post 65 more words
Illustration from
lt.umn.edu
swift river that runs
through the heart
of a lumbering sea
carries African warmth
moist ghosts of Atlantis
in restless deep currents
aswirl round the treasures
of Blackbeard through
green Caribbean lanes
slingshot to north by
northeast cutting course
across plunder routes
red cries of Viking clans
shrill on the waterwind
crashed to its purpose
against windward isles
fomenting the storms
that sweep Europe
with seasons of history
(Originally posted by me in April, 2013)
“Great Sphinx at Giza”
Photo from guardian.net
like the stern couchant sphinx
whose stone leonine paws
left no prints in the sands
or the muds of the Nile
you sit watchful with secretive
maddening patience
knowing the sinks that
hide tombs of the pharaohs
and all my unuttered
raw motives and fears
just watching and waiting
for sands to give way
exposing the meal
you will hungrily make
of my weaknesses
“Snowy Winter Landscape with Homestead”
Painting by Michael Graves
From liveauctioneers.com
bury me under the snows
of a quiet cold morning
no need for the green
blades of summer to
cheer my eternity
white blankets
comfort my
everlast
peace
death
occurs in
each season
but wintertime
renders its purity
white with celestial
endowment soft light
unimpeded falls leafless
from heaven’s own fingers
“Romantic Sunset Surf”
Painting by Connie Tom
From fineartamerica.com
abandon what cannot be kept
of the valuable fraction
for two thousand years
land’s end a conceptual
folly for land never ends
it just dives on its whim
beneath oceans the real end
is water incessantly slapping
intending to renovate faith
formed of bedrock and truth
left unmarred by philosophy
leavings of sand and stone
steadfast sufficient with gravity
footfalls for passage of men
who believe in the unanswered
answers that consternate
unwilling skeptical hearts
here at water’s edge froth
oversimple convictions
cool improvisations by
affable atheists fluid of
reason in wave after wave
of procession recession
progressing regressing
yet ever so fluent of doubt
in the ebb and flow language
of moonrise and tides
foaming arguments surge
then collapse under weight
of their very creation
for two thousand years
of the valuable fraction
abandon what cannot be kept
Image from
wallpapers.ru
devil or angel
each voice in my ear
how to judge
unaccustomed advice
both messengers
carry a deity’s
answer to prayer
one has virtue
the other pretends
one is blessed
the other condemned
fingers crossed
have no power
the coin toss
no true guarantee
all I know to be
mortally certain
is I must take
action immediately
in the now of the end
I’ve no choice but
to follow my heart
as I’ve done
through my life
with no voice in my ear
save the human ones
memories spoken
by actions of those
whom I’ve loved
Poesy plus Polemics 