Synopsis
Blood and Silence is a brief compilation of poems and meditations that document the spiritual, psychological, intellectual, and poetic evolution of a young man. The book is organized into five chapters that occurred chronologically in the poet's young adulthood.
"Prelude" is the earliest poems, representing the young man's nascent view of the world, and his discovery that complex ideas can be succinctly and effectively presented in a small number of carefully arranged words.
"Bleeding Man" evokes a world of interior suffering that results from astonished accelerating awareness of how the world batters our dreams and emotions, potentially sweeping our souls even to the brink of extinction.
"Inward Sun" consists in mystical and spiritual imaginings about God, the soul, the self, Spirit, perception, language, and Nature that lead the poet away from the precipice into an enlightened, sustainable vision of living.
"The Waters" meditates on the impact of tragic life events, suggesting how one can respond in thought and attitude, advising that we must leave those moments of horror behind, shield ourselves, if we are to rejoin life's living flow.
"Eden Morning" is a sequence of poems about love, mysticism, aloneness, fear, courage, perseverance, awareness, and ultimately, blissful union with the kindred spirit who becomes the poet's all, forever.
Selection from Prelude
The Leaves Are Changing
the leaves are changing
color
softly, slowly,
undiscernably,
yet,
tangibly:
green
into yellow
into orange
red
brown,
into black
what splendor marks their flight
into
death
Selection from Bleeding Man
The Bleeding Man
On this plain, grim desert fringe, Burnt, cracked portal fronting Death, Lies the bleeding man, alone, A thousand miles from home. Twenty years he fought the bloodless Fiend, who parried his assaults For sport, fending without shield; He strode boldly, defiant, Feeling with each inconsequent lunge And swipe the power bleed from him. Now he swoons, old man at last, Frenzied heart jetting life from him, Pumping all onto craving sands, While bleached sun sears his parched cheek.
Selection from Inward Sun
Ruined "I"
In the dark wood of my soul,
I came upon myself:
a letter "I" made of stone,
in ruins:
prostrate,
cracked,
brittle,
wind-pocked,
weatherbeaten.
Vegetation growing around the base,
eyeless worms squirming beneath
the wet, mudded, supine form,
bugs crawling on the top and sides,
acid lichens dissolving its exposed surface.
Cracked and worn such that
it could never stand up again.
Were any to try to raise it, stand it up,
it would fracture irrevocably,
collapse and crumble into
dry stony pieces
and dust.
Selection from The Waters
Taboo
There are some questions for which the least untruthful answer is silence. Denial is a lie. Yet, to summon an image of darkness that wanders only the void of the past (because it has been put to death) into a fully lit living and growing present, is to counterfeit that present (by creating new darkness where light is meant to be)--hence, to sin.
Once lost, light can never be recovered fully. A speck endures, shriven calcification of soul, spacetime singularity speaking in silence: "Someone died here." Graven inlet, it always will be findable if one searches, even amid utterly reformed born-again existence. And if one looks deeply into it, as into a backward-pointing lens, probes with it, beckons, stirring quieted pools of nothingness, voided darkness can be witnessed, made visible, and, should faith falter (which it mustn't), wakened.
Our lives, indeed, are fragile. All love is. This moment only is real. What would we have reality be? Surely the only life-sustaining possibility is to blind our eyes to all darkness, past and potential, to let the present well into being and fill all existence with its new light, light that has never before been seen or experienced.
And apologize for instantiation of taboo, this void of silence.
Selection from Eden Morning
Eden
You asked me once about Eden--what I thought about it--if it was a real place, where it is--
When that light pours in across our sky, creating the heavens before our eyes, with light that shines outward from within us--there we begin to live in Eden. Because that light, I believe, is the light that shines from Eden into this curtained world. And when we come to that place, and drop all complications of our earthly personality, and live in one loving essence--then, that light, that beautifully beating, breathing, ushing light raises us into Eden by wrapping us in the images, the world, the life that simply is, forever, Eden.
Contact
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