Solstice
Michael Stipe & Big Red Machine
Happy Juneteenth everyone! Below is this week’s writing inspiration. Feel free to engage as you would like. Please share any exogenous production as you see fit.
Frailty
Con/Jur/d 6.15.2020
When asked I can not
answer why the breath
ends here
We love to talk and dance
having remembered
when drum beats
could be
earth sticks water
blood skin joints muscle
lungs wear
the knowing thins
frail grows desire
For this
and the next
Inhale / Exhale
Solstice
Con/Jur/d 12.21.19
For a time
every Solstice
put in a poetic bell - jar
as if ___ it could ___ be pinned
later in a velvet lined box
wings spread
a color frozen
concrete cast
against ___ nightsky ___ Absolute
But now
with the infinite behind
it all short
est and
longest
never really mattered
only the coming and going
is a dim relative to the
Big ___ Big ___ Brilliance
the Sun’s spiral passage
reflects to us all.
The Building of Future Ruins
#deepadaption
Con/Jur/d 4.17.2019
The little brown and white
ceramic dog looks forlornly
into emptiness notice black
feet and crutch ends where
jagged ankled edges remain
of a once proud Saint Lazarus
(no the other one) the one
who dances with Oya and
takes the goods of those
touched by plague the kind
of god who starts disease
in anger ends it in healing
and love
Gave his statue (rather its
absence) a beer today
needing to celebrate
rebirth and Spring
as much as
we need to celebrate
the Winter Solstice
and the promise
of the Return
to Light
despite all the offerings
and abulitions protective
beats and cacophonic
prayers
he shattered
due to events
better left unsaid
reminding us
All and Everything
only a future ruin
Hekua Baba Hekua!
from destruction
always return
Hekua Baba hekua!
hekua baba hekua
hekua Baba
hekua.
Winter Solstice 2016
Con/Jur/d 12.21.16
I stopped
writing poetry
putting pen to paper
finger tip to board
I’m still living it
How could I not Science
cannot calculate
the amounts of
atmosphere DNA warmth
from hearths and shelters
microflora and microfauna
survivor’s epigenetics the
worlds lost when victims
sank beneath the peat
or lay in shuddered
piles upon the ground
we have taken into
the Longest Night
the dark that never
gets short
We all spiral here
Passing our whole lives
in the frigid embrace
the Dark Mother
our satellites
and rockets
huddle close
for safety
occasionally
Bold Children
break away
only to be swallowed
too far from winter fires
to find their way back
to community and collections
a calculus filled with apocalypse
End Time Teleologies scientific
prayers of purpose
cause calling for end
Why this environment?
Why something rather than nothing?
Why suffer? Why Think? Why? And
again Why?
Only poets answer
Thus and thus and thus!
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/12/19/photos-of-the-week_n_4475493.html
Carrying the Goat Head (NYE 2014)
Con/Jur/d 1.1.2015
At the party last night
few ate the Black Eyed Peas Collard Greens
and Aduki in aged Miso Sauce
just to be sure
When does the New Year Begin?
On December seventeenth when
I celebrated nineteen years of working
with working for working the Orisha Omolu
On Solstice when curious parts
of the past collided with ever uncertain
futures meanings created by viral
narratives infesting hosted nows
On the tick of a clock
lubricated with champagne
and wet or dry platonic kisses
On the steam rising from Mount Ijen
as the white masked Indonesian men
in hard hats bury a goat’s head offering
to the Volcano a tradition to the afore
mentioned uncertainty to be more
blessed than blighted
The Vast Abstracted Eye Chorus rumbles:
Seeing just the digital shallows of a soul deep
photograph replicating from the Ulet Ifansasti/Getty
Syndicate: How Quaint! How Primitive! Look at this
in our Modern Age! Do they not know that Time has
been conquered and boxed by instruments most
occidental and divine What infernal sulfurous
heathens these are! These sacrifices do not
provide the macronutrients needed to build
efficient machines don’t they understand
meat rendered by blades stainless
and hygienic with chemicals
cleaning the mud gunking
up works produces
brains clean and
most prudent
A mountain is simply a poor design that impedes
gainful development unless upgraded by ski lift
and lodges it remains only fitting for backdrops
and stages for most thrilling entertainments
Don’t speak to Abraham’s literary children
of magma hearts when human sacrifice
by calculated proxy has become
the standard the emotions
of rocks and still cursed planets
is beneath our ruminations!
Of course nothing can feel
not fixable by laser or scalpel
maybe chemical conflations
forget and abstract
Not all gods pretend
to be human
And Time is greater
not only a function
of an equation
When does the New Year Begin?
At the party last night
few ate the Black Eyed Peas Collard Greens
and Aduki in aged Miso Sauce
just to be sure.
Extracted from “Voices Pretending to be Silence”
Con/Jur/d ?.?.2014
11. An Old Song
It's just the wind
while she tells tales
of Egypt Lebanon travel
spots worn black with oil
from hands touching Hathor
Phalli and a statue of the Maid
Walking with the wind a phrase
long understood pre-idols before
we knelt in-front-of the Words
Just the Wind was a people
a way an understanding
The World Breathes
before the epic
just this truth
before all else
whispered
just like this.
12. just
We forgive old men their ignorance
knowing their search began in a different world
One infinitely clever and resourceful the disembodied-
light had fewer paths to go down (on summer solstice
I went with a friend early in the morning to buy one rooster
two hens and a baker’s dozen of doves both white and colored)
family tribe religion place and no-place the branches available to
hang (when i first found the diaspora-spirits a Big dream came)
Now our thoughts are nomadic photons rediscovering home
infinite-paths (on the Moon we grew marijuana a blight has
come) constrained by topography not real geography
map-makers the new gods of what we will think (
someone suggests we kill a chicken dressed
all in white beads the only color on the dark
side) and how we will do it while mathe-
maticians and sceptics hold mirrors
and reflections as realer than real
( I don’t kill to wash away sins-
sounds hollow in this industrial
space of our devising)
It is hard to forgive the young
(On Earth you don’t need too)
who mouth ancient curses built
(the ground is full of blood)
by ancestors responding to a need
to survive and its logic of fear and soil
( i refuse a sound of escaping air carries
my spirit beyond organic caring) Children
believe it has always been this way digital-
knots replace traditional submissions of joy
to your betters inventing shinier simulations
of why the right to your ecstasy no longer
matters before the power of me mine
Beneath these tended palms
beside the middle school play
shadow and light the only
right and just thing
that matters.
13. shadow and light
I feel close to freedom today
Ravens and other carrion eaters
swoop through the early morning fog
intent on finding remains for breakfast
I see the corpses on July Fifth scattered
by the corner store where new drunks
arrange their blankets trying to forget
roofs and beds their passable lives
Even the birds don’t care
about the American flag used bottle rockets
firecrackers broken beer bottles and other signifiers
another failed attempt to bring back the dead child
who revelled in wanton destruction pyrotechnics
and torture of beings lower down the evolutionary
ladder unable to distinguish between god
and country or candy and vegetables
That’s all gone now
But we were talking about liberation
Not the bright bang of sudden conversion
or the rollercoaster of privilege and place
but the impact of water on granite
the gradual creation of cracks
in what once seemed solid
the inevitable collapse
leaving only
the vessel hollow but full
of shadow and light
at the root
of it all.
Winter Solstice
Con/Jur/d 12.22.2009
Put on your animal masks and horns
into the woods to find the Mulberry
Tree the center of the World where
the Sun has been hidden
Abstractionists won't notice under
their eternal lights hidden in concrete
and steel caves plush with running
water and sixty-hertz Oms
Here beneath the shadows of trees
the darkness of wet and the chatter
of Children waiting for Magic to happen
the truth is apparent inside and out
must be aligned Nothing is real except
what is left when your bones are dust
orbiting whatever is left after The Great
Impulse finally rests leaving us here
on the Longest of Nights
singing drumming and calling
to ease our Terror and Love
with the promise of Light.
Thanks y’all for rambling along with chips from Solstices past
Much Appreciation,
Juris d. Ahn & Dr. Concrescence
