From the Steeple
From the steeple
just yesterday I found myself
thinking again
of this emptyless Emptiness
eating away at my soul
petrifying my heart
in the end, what’s to be lived
but an endless death
if not moment after moment
we meet in what is essentially Your breath?
just yesterday I found myself
thinking again
thinking – again!
does it ever cease to please
myself, lost in thought –
where is God in it all?
mind you
explain the sadness
just yesterday I found myself
bound by shackles of shame
failing to reach,
falling
beneath the sea
green rust copper weeds
blackened fruit, lost seeds
God, to be free!
and on this day I’ll find myself
wanting to dissolve
wanting to dissolve the iron
bars of assumed identity
– the irony of it all!
exhausted from your journey
you will give up, gladly
the confines of your mistaken identity
And on that day I found myself
found my Self
in a brilliant sky
clarions resounding confidently
from the steeple
NY April 2000
[Text for bass soloist, written for the composition for large SATB chorus, bass soloist, piano and soprano saxophone, commissioned by Holy Apostles Community Chorus and performed in 2000, “Song of Praise”]
Deep Waters, Rejoice 1992 – post-script
” Absolve thyself in the great sea of the waters of Life. Dive deep in it, until thou has lost thyself. And having lost thyself, thou shalt find thyself again and be one with Me. Then shall the glory of Myself, which is thy true self, be mirrored in thee.”
Source unknown
Post-script to the title composition I wrote for 6 performers in 1992
Metal rust paint
Yellow orange and red
Sky
Gallery
Are you in?
It’s not easy
living like a
god
loving self
no matter
what
I kneel and pray
and still
I
sway
I want to join
hands
Are you in?
NY 2013
Boethius on Beauty
” Beauty manifests itself as an equilibrium in which there is a harmony of stability and movement, identity and variety, the massive and the light, the low and the high, the equal and the unequal, the one and the many.”
Boethius, 6th century
reed skin breath metal
improvisation for bass-clarinet and assorted drums (overdub)
recorded in 1995
Forgotten faces
