This is something that ended up being pretty cool in spite of the need some people have of misreading and puling a quote out of context and arguing the same arguments human kind has had since their mouths formed intelligible sounds on war and peace use of guns and all. Melt those farming tools to make swords and all or was it the other way around? And so it has gone since our mouths and tongue formed words into language and said “War Bad, Kill Bad People who make War” and so we have since we first raised a fist in anger. All the cool destroyers and aircraft carriers in the world, and they are cool looking; like space age cool, look them up on youtube, it will amaze. But say the word gun today and people freak out, understandably; but there are also those of us who like to hunt for our food, and fish for the flavor of the pond, river and sea. Me, I like the dirt. I like what grows out of the dirt as I gave up meat six months ago for Lent and it stuck. I guess Jesus Christ and Buddha really do want me to follow the true and very rough road of going vegetarian. No reason beyond Lent when I felt the greatest death into Life has already occurred. Let the animals live. But it you like different meats then for it, for CLEAN meat not factory mess. So my stance confuses people, as it always has no matter how hard I try. I woman once sia d to me back 35 years just a few before I quit drinking, “you know, Lamar. I really like you and can understand you so much better when you have been drinking. You are not so “out there.”. And I’ve heard it at least once a week my entire life. Early in my life I tried dumbing down with hard, I mean the hardest drugs to destroy parts of my brain I did not want to have anymore. I should have just blew them off and walked on, but teenagers need friends and Chefs need to match foods to wines and at the time it was to matc my cool food to the cool food of California! It was wonderful. Alice Waters changed us all for the good. I eventually developed my own cuisine after my apprenticeship and I owe a great debt to Mendocino, the place I long to return. Turn the guns to plows and the mind to the earth, those were interesting years, I grew, then I quit drinking and I grew even more. Whatever. I’m just babbling after spending nearly 12 hours on an 11:59 minute concerto using Classic piano and Chinese classical instruments. it all relates. I believe. Some just have a blast insulting me as best they can and others toss in the Gideians for a nice swipe at my faith. Let me tell ya, if a person is intentionally trying to wear down or test or find fault in your faith are not fair friends. I’d rather return to silent prayer and loneliness. All this boring stuff said, they tried to defeat me in my felief that we have enough guns, people who want to hunt for food should, and rhetoricians are fine among themselves but not with me. My family thinks me a freak and then says oh no not that way. As the great American Transcendental philosophers William James, Ralph Waldo Emerson and most importantly the one who created pragmatism, Peirce. He started so many schools of thought and study that he was pushed aside. Poor guy ended up in his barn with a gun threatening to kill any who came near. His was a tortured life. Created so much before it became that vanguard that it drove him mad. There is a tiny section in Zone Fever Dream Dreams Fever that is a tribute to Charles Sanders Peirse. I really hope you enjoy this music. I was able to work on it and complete it in spite of a need to argue a point. I don’t know why, the argument has existed since before the Bible was a dream. Please do not hate. Seek peace. Turn from Evil. And really really do to others as you would to yourself. speak of others as you think they would speak of you, more good than bad that’s for sure. Life goes on, huh? So insult, indulge, do judge, do smear, do bait and hate. People do represent their religion no matter how many times the opposite is said in defense. I have been and I have observed, and I am not happy. The Arts will live, and even if I am a forgotten grave off of First Avenue then so be it. I have condemned my actions much more than any common nazi can. On top of this condemnation and disdain I still believe, I still have faith, love and hope. Even if I have “only been a Catholic for a day”.
Zone Sunrise
Zones Mahler in his Lake House Weeping and Zone Despair, Mahler Wept As Manhattan Stood Cold, Vulgar
Song Under The Cross (an eternal love song)
Song Under the Cross
(an epic solo vocal song about eternal love and the wait for when she arrives again, and again into the time when we just turn to dust and mulberry bushes.)
This is a classical country blues, lonesome blues song from the dead. One of love eternal. A meeting where three crosses stood on Wolfskin Road. I’ve written a few poems about this area as I found it supernatural in many ways, and not just for the visionary force that was there, yes family/friends who love to say I am crazy take this and place it in a nice evidence he’s nuts file, but I had a love and she and I would sit out here and gaze into the night, listen to the fields as living and moving, you know, wind and crickets, mockingbirds singing back and forth, a night music, we loved this spot and I felt it as holy and as of love. So here it is, an acapella blues where till the end of time she and I will be here but as things like ash and clay, mulberry thickets, whatever it is that becomes of the earth our spirit lives on in this space. A fantasy. A love song. A blues. An Irish or Norwegian saga of a man who has one love and lives to be with her for all time. Love. A good thing. I never imagined singing an unaccompanied blues. But something about it fits. It would be a magnificent song in the right set of lungs, with a group of people who loved art and artists. Used to have that, now I just go it alone hoping somehow it is heard and touches a soft spot in a persons life, brings back a gentle memory, reminds us of life when you would not be arrested for siting under a cross praying and gazing out at the night. I was not arrested by the way, I just imagine in fascist or Stalinist death countries I would be killed for being a romantic.
I can only hope someone happens upon this and may like to hear the warmth of a world that is now a slaughterhouse of madness and fools brought to fever fears by our own little wiemarch and Stalinist mini groups designed to lure out romantics, writers, musicians, painters, Jews, homosexuals, anything that was not their little queen hitler with his tiny hands or macho stalin putin with their own self loathing lying in wait to explode. I would tag. I am no longer allowed to tag. My posts are under constant FB review and they seem to think me inhuman. I guess I should be less creative, or maybe have fewer enemies, I really don’t know. All I want to do is share Art and have someone, anyone, somewhere to discuss it with me. Since tagging has become verboten or just a hassle i peoples lives I am just putting this out there hoping someone will hear it want to talk about country blues. Why is tagging someone a bad thing? Most people, especially the ones who clog up the FB start page the most, have all tags dropped in the unwanted toys box anyway, I know half the people I tag just dump it or have them blocked anyway and are proud of blocking friends from communicating. Ugh! Stupid 21st century kill any opportunities for good conversations and sharing of songs, art, poems etc. I have even become afraid of my faith. What is left when the idea of a salon is wiped from the earth? We now have had the largest mass murder in history for our young nation. The Orange Demon is real. His apes are now running free. I hope someone digs this song and lets me know if it’s cool or garbage, oh wait, too many love to say garbage and bad things, just only if you like it and have something similar or something.
This is a classical country blues, lonesome blues song from the dead. One of love eternal. A meeting where three crosses stood on Wolfskin Road. I’ve written a few poems about this area as I found it
soundcloud.com|By h-lamar-thomas
if you like this please share!
Holy Week Symphony
This is a set of Modern Symphonies and concertos, and a song that builds into a entire symphony. It is one of my best song cycles and I hope that many hear and share the peace that is freely offered, through love as a gift music and peace.
2 Catholic Poems of Faith and Discovery: Dialogue In Fever, In Scripture, My Lord Speaks; and Fire in the Soul, Ongoing
Dialogue in Fever, in Scripture, My Lord Speaks
“Have you told the sun to rise?
Have you commanded rivers to flow?
Do the trees call your name when
The many winds blow?
Would you be so bold? How were you born?
I am now and after when there was Nothing.
I will Be when the last waves collapse
and the final fires sing.”
-How am I no more a servant?
But in finding You I see my heart
Open wide outside my chest, for me it stops,
for You, My Lord, I feel it start.
Sense my blood rush in artery and vein,
Yet still I suffer, I wear this chain
And feel my flesh decay; only the Crucifix
And white bones remain.-
“Did your breath move across the waters?
Build Adam’s lungs and give him voice?
Was it you or Is it Me who looks upon
Eve and grants her choice?
My prodigal, my son, go my wandering child,
All there is of this beautiful land is yours to build,
And know also it is yours to destroy, to bury,
Remember to cherish what is mine and wild.”
-Awake! all is Yours I came to say at dawn
Today while we talked, and I listened, underneath
Your glory, your patience, as Autumn was drawn
Across this South, and I was glad.-
-When you kneeled and pressed your palms together,
Turned your face skyward, then to the ground, and up,
You Said,- “This is the way we pray from here forever.
Say our Father, who art in Heaven…
The words of Job, of David, of Isaiah and Jeremiah
Must be your power, inspiration and your drive.
Of Me you ought to comprehend that of My idea,
My Sophia, all that is, is within me.”
-What more wisdom, more Gospel, must be felt?
How of Luke, Matthew and Ezekiel? May I live when
The lost is found and what is solid must never melt?
Peace, you command, and speak: we Live.-
“Your prayers, intentions and actions are all alive,
I will never leave you alone again, keep close these words
Of Love, Hope and Faith, know what you make and derive
Of Me is cherished, as Paul wrote: here is your Glory.”
Fire In The Soul, Ongoing….
Found my way in by a cracked and solemn weeping willow stump,
Straight into the woods of Oglethorpe County, straight into a cluster
Of wildlife singing, briars tearing into my arms, bleeding,
Bleeding through thin skin, these blue veins growl,
Andi t reaches in, this “IT”, it tears my soul from my body,
Hangs it in leaves among the water oak trees along the banks
Of this tiny river in the woods, where I knew right then…
What it was like to have spiritual crisis blues.
Standing on a foundation, white clay and red maple mulch,
Spongy earth bouncing. Strangely colored crickets start to gather,
Jump and disappear, but not too far cause I hear their legs strumming
A gipsy chorus for lost loves in the forest.
Me,in this walk alone into the wood. A stroll into my own unknown.
A full sun burns blue down, down into this haunted stream,
Turning muddy waters clear and clean. Crisp they say, it’s OK.
I have the Blues no one wants to hear, and not a friend is near,
Forget family, forget Church, they just back away and say: “it’s yours”,
But I don’t want it, not again, not this splitting soul from bone,
So I dig my hands deep into the blue sands and mud,
Bathe in this clinging soil, and then color this body
With lavender and thistle, blue of my hill people dozens of centuries ago
Fighting Rome and then fighting the King; and finally fighting
The One… alone, trying to draw near, reaching to pull
The trees lower, and lower so I can grab a bit of the spirit
I lost a few days ago, a few days ago this Crucified was just a memory.
Gone. A haint, jumps up, chasing me through groves of dogwood and pecan,
Naw, it would not let go, it would not let me go, this banshee
Screaming my spiritual blues, a blues clutching like Death to my breath
Like there was no letting go, I tried, I ran, I doused my hair with lemon,
Stuffed pepper up my nose and salt in my shoes, begged Lord come back, please.
Expecting something different, something different at least this time…
But the spiritual blues came, wrapped around my body, and I was alone.
I asked the priest, I asked the friend, I asked the family and then no one,
It didn’t matter, they figured these shadows were mine to claim,
They knew this time the spiritual blues won, but what they knew was wrong,
I just wanted to sing, I wanted to purge doubt, doubt like black sulfur water.
Bring down the cypress and water oak trees, find the clean springs
So I can live again, so these screaming doubts between love of the flesh
And love of the mind and love of the soul I thought was mine
Would stop, and turn and go away. Would find itself flowing…from these springs.
These spiritual blues are never easy, and one day someone will listen
And understand, understand, that my soul is at stake and I am tired,
And I am a man: Alive with God. I am this man. I am this man.
The bark and hunting howl of His hounds on my trail,
And I know I quit running and hiding in the hills, it is between the Lord and I,
A man trying, a person, trying to make peace with Trinity and self,
with all that is here and even more…Peace…Can we make peace?
Spiritual Crisis Blues
Spiritual Crisis Blues
Found my way in by a cracked and solemn weeping willow stump,
Straight into the woods of Oglethorpe County, straight into a cluster
Of wildlife singing, briars tearing into my arms, bleeding,
Bleeding through thin skin, these blue veins growl,
And it reaches in, this “IT”, it tears my soul from my body,
Hangs it in leaves among the water oak trees along the banks
Of this tiny river in the woods, where I knew right then…
What it was like to have spiritual crisis blues.
Standing on a foundation, white clay and red maple mulch,
Spongy earth bouncing. Strangely colored crickets start to gather,
Jump and disappear, but not too far cause I hear their legs strumming
A gipsy chorus for lost loves in the forest.
Me, in this walk alone into the wood. A stroll into my own unknown.
A full sun burns blue down, down into this haunted stream,
Turning muddy waters clear and clean. Crisp they say, it’s OK.
I have the Blues no one wants to hear, and not a friend is near,
Forget family, forget Church, they just back away and say: “it’s yours”,
But I don’t want it, not again, not this splitting soul from bone,
So I dig my hands deep into the blue sands and mud,
Bathe in this clinging soil, and then color this body
With lavender and thistle, blue of my hill people dozens of centuries ago
Fighting Rome and then fighting the King; and finally fighting
The One Christ King. alone, trying to draw near, reaching to pull
The trees lower, and lower so I can grab a bit of the spirit
I lost a few days ago, a few days ago this Christ was just a memory,
A haint, chasing me through groves of dogwood and pecan,
Naw, it would not let go, it would not let me go, this banshee
Screaming my spiritual blues, a blues clutching like Death to my breath
Like there was no letting go, I tried, I ran, I doused my hair with lemon,
Stuffed pepper up my nose and salt in my shoes, begged Lord come back, please.
Expecting something different, something different at least this time…
But the spiritual blues came, wrapped around my body, and I was alone.
I asked the priest, I asked the friend, I asked the family and then no one,
It didn’t matter, they figured these shadows were mine to claim,
They knew this time the spiritual blues won, but what they knew was wrong,
I just wanted to sing, I wanted to purge doubt, doubt like black sulfur water.
Bring down the cypress and water oak trees, find the clean springs
So I can live again, so these screaming doubts between love of the flesh
And love of the mind and love of the soul I thought was mine
Would stop, and turn and go away. Would find itself flowing…from these springs.
These spiritual blues are never easy, and one day someone will listen
And understand, understand, that my soul is at stake and I am tired,
And I am a man: Alive with God. I am this man. I am this man.
A man trying, a person, trying to make peace with Trinity and self,
with all that is here and even more…Peace…Can we make peace?
Tomorrow Fades
Gone the waves
A need flies
On sunlight
Blue this time
Why blue
I was always writing
In orange and
Star lit meadows
The slow Georgia hills
Lay flat then curves
Forever into the far North
A peach tastes so sweet
So much like sunshine
Open above
And I raise a peace sign
Of hope to the clouds
Even though
Everything is changing
Much too fast
Fast fading fast alive
Loss To Grace and Rage to Life
How many different journeys made up my life and death?
This is just a tale of where, when and how.
Of the loves that were woven into the green iris of my eyes,
How magicians were challenged until there was no magic at all;
How when one day while shredding the hedges that lined the waterside
Of this small pond, a place in the woods, a home of cinder blocks,
These waters where I floated in a dark grey metal boat,
A two seater, no motor, just paddles, a quiet slide from one end to the other,
This little boat, born of this small pond, this dark rainbow body,
Gliding over where catfish languished in summer heat,
As though written in by a young Cormac McCarthy,
As if only he could find the words to make believe this was a place
That was never at all. This was a landscape of one among the many,
So alike and yet so isolated, so much the same but then again not.
But it was, sprinkled with angry bream that sparkled back at the sun,
Who shone with fearsome blue, black and silver flashes, broad side,
Pushing the water upwards, blinding their prey, rising to strike
Slow stone fly nymphs, maybe even grab a taste of occasional tad pole,
A feast at dawn where life came to live, a funeral at dusk where it came to die.
On this long day while shredding the hedges that marched
Off into the woods, I raised a fist to the heavens, and cursed
God on every sweaty breath, on each diphthong and cluster of vowels
That I could muster, that I could holler, filled with hatred for a lost childhood,
Broken by phrases locked in brackets, wanting even then to be freed
Of memories dark as darker than miles from any home,
When all I wished was to find was a way to live and to describe…
That only woman “who was to be my love”, and in return that I was hers.
It never came. It never happened. Each curse came upon me.
Each was driven by poisoned water, of soured wines
And rust skinned potatoes, brown and wilted lettuces. No real food.
We would pour three fingers of wormy mescal, then drive away
Up the winding asphalt that moved along among the short leaf pines,
Cruising with an ease most described by the winds,
Most alive in the breezes of a Georgia summertime.
What was it that I wanted, what was I proving in these scorching days
And even hotter nights when I stood alone by the pond,
Screaming at God, begging, then demanding to show me something real.
But we all know how these things go. They go nowhere.
Just a tied fly floating downstream into the rapids.
Down there where no catfish hang around, where silver carp
Pass by and hunt further and further for dead and rotting things,
Things that litter the bottom of every stream and body of water.
Was I really there standing and shouting? Hell yes.
Cussing out God for leaving me to figure how this was “I am”,
A life of struggle, of loss, of slander and success, of always being
Almost then gone. But He was patient. Letting me run the wild
Out of my soul, laughing at this arrogance that lived to destroy,
Standing back when it was certain the next cliff would take me
Coming near when my hands fell off the wheels, turning
Just enough to live another hour. This was how it started.
This was how all this spirit hunting came into being.
These were the moments when a great love of all things woman
Sublimated every text, every conversation that was to follow.
A life’s tease. A significance lost on ordinary dissertations
Of subject predicate, subject object, thesis stated antithesis sworn in,
Brought back home and lost again when critical theory,
A post Freudian exercise, a means of thought built for the analyzed,
It hatched more anger than love at all, and why, why did it go back to the night
When I stood unsteady by a spring in the forest, a place so wonderful
Ruined by my childish raging, a place suddenly dangerous
When hurricane winds marched over from each distant coast,
They met and blasted together in the woods of West Georgia.
The thin pines bowed and snapped, threatened back at me,
As though remembering the night I hated God
And swore not ever would I be among the faithful.
Years later, here I am, just as tormented, just as isolated
As I ever was, but everything is different, everything is by the erratic,
Welcome and worthy Grace of God. I count by the dozens
Those who ran when I changed, when I said God is Love, is patient,
And is all things dark and light, Crayola colored,
Hand painted and chisel formed, swaying back and forth
One moment on the winds, then floating along the brownish waters
Of a hot September pond in the woods, the last before anticipated Autumn,
When pleasure returns to cool this porous South, that the lakes do not dry up,
Nor the springs stop giving life, the pleasure is real, Real Presence.
What can I say? No longer alone cursing at length, now I pray.
Now I wonder if I am a better man, if there will ever be that She
With whom I can walk by the dawn bright rye grass, to speak sunrises
And mental exercises, that maybe one day, I will be forgiven,
Maybe one day I can see it is I who must forgive myself,
Not by God, not by Mary, not by Lord Jesus Christ,
Not by meditations on right action and right faith where Compassion rules,
Once by the tears when I walked into the Hall of 500,
Deep in Guang Zhu someplace China,
500 incarnations of the teaching soul of Buddha,
Later, for me, it was 500 saints,
and above them all they were led by Saint Raphael, sweet Raphael,
Beloved archangel, led onto the bridge from life before Christ, to the one after,
The one opened up by John the Baptist, then Lord Jesus Christ salvation,
The one where it all started to happen. By mortal death came life after death.
….And not by Faith alone, but by Faith with Action…Believe!
But wait, maybe it is by faith alone….Yes. By these ways, by this life lived.
Finding, climbing, rising, doing all I can to find a way back home to God,
The place that is, just is, is always home, that place of Life.
…Please don’t leave me… Faraway is too drear and cold.
Let me be here in this always becoming life of conversion, always moving
Towards God and never from, lead me on my Love, forgiving and patient
Faithful and alive, for some it takes a lifetime to awaken.
Conversion and Salvation are dynamic, sublimating everything.
And me, I am surely one of them. Thank you my beloved, hope and desire.
(Once again, back home to God, thankfully born into this life.)
But I Cannot Say Her Name
(I miss)
A voice.
This piano.
Once maybe twice
But more than thousands,
So many songs
And meditations,
Nocturnes formed
On miles of sky
Lain out on grasses
Disappearing.
Disappeared.
Hope.
Each time
We were together
These things sustained.
How I wish they were now.
You were all.
This was desire.
And it is here
Passion is alive
Tomorrow Fades
Gone the waves
A need flies
On sunlight
Blue this time
Why blue
I was always writing
In orange and
Star lit meadows
The slow Georgia hills
Lay flat then curves
Forever into the far North
A peach tastes so
Much like sunshine
And I raise a peace sign
Of hope to the clouds
Even though
Everything is changing
Much too fast
Fast fading fast alive
Three Poems: Tomorrow Fades; Loss To Grace and Rage To Life; But I Cannot Say Her Name (I Miss)
Caution, Catholic Crossing Ahead:
Tomorrow Fades
Gone the waves
A need flies
On sunlight
Blue this time
Why blue
I was always writing
In orange and
Star lit meadows
The slow Georgia hills
Lay flat then curves
Forever into the far North
A peach tastes so sweet
So much like sunshine
Open above
And I raise a peace sign
Of hope to the clouds
Even though
Everything is changing
Much too fast
Fast fading fast alive
Loss To Grace and Rage to Life
How many different journeys made up my life and death?
This is just a tale of where, when and how.
Of the loves that were woven into the green iris of my eyes,
How magicians were challenged until there was no magic at all;
How when one day while shredding the hedges that lined the waterside
Of this small pond, a place in the woods, a home of cinder blocks,
These waters where I floated in a dark grey metal boat,
A two seater, no motor, just paddles, a quiet slide from one end to the other,
This little boat, born of this small pond, this dark rainbow body,
Gliding over where catfish languished in summer heat,
As though written in by a young Cormac McCarthy,
As if only he could find the words to make believe this was a place
That was never at all. This was a landscape of one among the many,
So alike and yet so isolated, so much the same but then again not.
But it was, sprinkled with angry bream that sparkled back at the sun,
Who shone with fearsome blue, black and silver flashes, broad side,
Pushing the water upwards, blinding their prey, rising to strike
Slow stone fly nymphs, maybe even grab a taste of occasional tad pole,
A feast at dawn where life came to live, a funeral at dusk where it came to die.
On this long day while shredding the hedges that marched
Off into the woods, I raised a fist to the heavens, and cursed
God on every sweaty breath, on each diphthong and cluster of vowels
That I could muster, that I could holler, filled with hatred for a lost childhood,
Broken by phrases locked in brackets, wanting even then to be freed
Of memories dark as darker than miles from any home,
When all I wished was to find was a way to live and to describe…
That only woman “who was to be my love”, and in return that I was hers.
It never came. It never happened. Each curse came upon me.
Each was driven by poisoned water, of soured wines
And rust skinned potatoes, brown and wilted lettuces. No real food.
We would pour three fingers of wormy mescal, then drive away
Up the winding asphalt that moved along among the short leaf pines,
Cruising with an ease most described by the winds,
Most alive in the breezes of a Georgia summertime.
What was it that I wanted, what was I proving in these scorching days
And even hotter nights when I stood alone by the pond,
Screaming at God, begging, then demanding to show me something real.
But we all know how these things go. They go nowhere.
Just a tied fly floating downstream into the rapids.
Down there where no catfish hang around, where silver carp
Pass by and hunt further and further for dead and rotting things,
Things that litter the bottom of every stream and body of water.
Was I really there standing and shouting? Hell yes.
Cussing out God for leaving me to figure how this was “I am”,
A life of struggle, of loss, of slander and success, of always being
Almost then gone. But He was patient. Letting me run the wild
Out of my soul, laughing at this arrogance that lived to destroy,
Standing back when it was certain the next cliff would take me,
Coming near when my hands fell off the wheels, turning
Just enough to live another hour. This was how it started.
This was how all this spirit hunting came into being.
These were the moments when a great love of all things woman
Sublimated every text, every conversation that was to follow.
A life’s tease. A significance lost on ordinary dissertations
Of subject predicate, subject object, thesis stated antithesis sworn in,
Brought back home and lost again when critical theory,
A post Freudian exercise, a means of thought built for the analyzed,
It hatched more anger than love at all, and why, why did it go back to the night
When I stood unsteady by a spring in the forest, a place so wonderful
Ruined by my childish raging, a place suddenly dangerous
When hurricane winds marched over from each distant coast,
They met and blasted together in the woods of West Georgia.
The thin pines bowed and snapped, threatened back at me,
As though remembering the night I hated God
And swore not ever would I be among the faithful.
Years later, here I am, just as tormented, just as isolated
As I ever was, but everything is different, everything is by the erratic,
Welcome and worthy Grace of God. I count by the dozens
Those who ran when I changed, when I said God is Love, is patient,
And is all things dark and light, Crayola colored,
Hand painted and chisel formed, swaying back and forth
One moment on the winds, then floating along the brownish waters
Of a hot September pond in the woods, the last before anticipated Autumn,
When pleasure returns to cool this porous South, that the lakes do not dry up,
Nor the springs stop giving life, the pleasure is real, Real Presence.
What can I say? No longer alone cursing at length, now I pray.
Now I wonder if I am a better man, if there will ever be that She
With whom I can walk by the dawn bright rye grass, to speak sunrises
And mental exercises, that maybe one day, I will be forgiven,
Maybe one day I can see it is I who must forgive myself,
Not by God, not by Mary, not by Lord Jesus Christ,
Not by meditations on right action and right faith where Compassion rules,
Once by the tears when I walked into the Hall of 500,
Deep in Guang Zhu someplace China,
500 incarnations of the teaching soul of Buddha,
Later, for me, it was 500 saints,
and above them all they were led by Saint Raphael, sweet Raphael,
Beloved archangel, led onto the bridge from life before Christ, to the one after,
The one opened up by John the Baptist, then Lord Jesus Christ salvation,
The one where it all started to happen. By mortal death came life after death.
…Please don’t leave me… Faraway is too drear and cold.
Let me be here in this always becoming life of conversion, always moving
Towards God and never from, lead me on my Love, forgiving and patient,
Faithful and alive, for some it takes a lifetime to awaken.
Conversion and Salvation are dynamic, sublimating everything.
And me, I am surely one of them. Thank you my beloved, hope and desire.
….And not by Faith alone, but by Faith with Action…Believe!
But wait, maybe it is by faith alone….Yes. By these ways, by this life lived.
Finding, climbing, rising, doing all I can to find a way back home to God,
The place that is, just is, is always home, that place of Life.
(Once again, back home to God, thankfully born into this life.)
But I Cannot Say Her Name
(I miss)
A voice.
This piano.
Once maybe twice
But more than thousands,
So many songs
And meditations,
Nocturnes formed
On miles of sky
Lain out on grasses
Disappearing.
Disappeared.
Hope.
Each time
We were together
These things sustained.
How I wish they were now.
You were all.
This was desire.
And it is here
Passion is alive
NOTE to you all yeah Poetry is alive and I say the name, Jesus Christ.
There are these three poems I have been transcribing from dream, notes and words hammering away, on events from undergraduate scenes where it turns out terms of Faith have been in my poetry all my life, it is just that now it is infused with all that I can as Grace and Real Presence. These things expose the beautiful, supernatural, Gospel alive, embracing the great studies and life in Buddhist and Catholic contemplations. To say the dangerous, forbidden, sacrificial and salvation wise to sundown and light mornings, it is by seeking it live in Imitation of Jesus Christ in these times of isolation and introspection, of examining Faith and the crazy miracle that I woke up one day sitting in Mass and a happiness more subliminal and pervasive than any I had ever felt. I apologize to anyone put off by expressing the Beatitudes, Grace and Gospel, of intense readings of Isaiah and the Songs in my life and poetry.
The promise was that life would get harder, that the closer to God the more the stones and diversions, fear and at times pain just beyond pain, and yeah, it’s all true, it does get harder, more difficult, but at the same time there is the development of what I hope is becoming a better Man and a better Artist, and that maybe if I am lucky someone will feel this pulse and agree, or argue against, how this living in Imitation of Christ has found life in my poetry, in the place it has always been, it’s just that now I am writing from a perspective of being towards what has been here all the time. Blows me away. It is OK to say Lord Jesus Christ. It is perfectly fine. This is the center of the Mass, when Heaven and Earth meet, this one moment in the Eucharist when Christ is here in the sacraments, in the body and blood.
Deeply, and sincerely, I don’t expect a bunch of people to read or even care, but I do hope that someone, anyone, anywhere has a conversation that just wants to burst out, that wants to be born, an argument or agreement, anything, anything that tests or supports the reason Why. I dig it. I am as surprised as anyone. Ask any friend past or present, I do believe and it grows stronger. Pretty cool. But it blew me away when I saw it in my poetry. Modern, post Whitman, Strand and Wright, in today a poetry as it always was not blast off rhymes and memory beats. I often write, automatic writing, and edit later, but it is all studied and edited, manicured and fashioned into a certain way afterwards but the meanings and intentions are unchanged. Oh well, if anyone see this and has a good conversation, please, please I am starved for insights and similar explorations, but not starved to be swayed to Protestant or agnostic, even back to Buddhism, and there is a lot in the teachings that foreshadow Jesus, that send a similar message, but nothing equates to the Salvation, to the gift that are the teachings, prophets, sayings, life and death, ascension of Jesus Christ. Those who’ve known me all my life, you understand, I know you do. Don’t be afraid. He really did say “I give you this, this 11th Commandment and it is Love, to love one another as I have loved you.” I hold this dear. This is as naked as a contemporary writer can get. Don’t hate. Turn from evil. I honestly love, even in the margins, always in the Church, so interested in our parish and parishioners, all the emotions in Mass, I love my friends and family even more, there is love.
And I think this finishes off my week of total exposure and raw heart. To top it off a bloody migraine got its claws into me Saturday morning and has not let go, but I have to write, even through the kaleidoscope and purple star thistle memories…
H Lamar Thomas' Blog 