Philosophy/Religion – Page 19

April 11, 2009 by Dave Bonta

The Barbarian Brought Down by a Lioness

This entry is part 6 of 12 in the series The Temptations of Solitude

in response to the painting by Clive Hicks-Jenkins, from his series The Temptations of Solitude

Did he taste of loneliness, sour & marmoreal,
that man from away who came out here
to get away from himself?

What vapors rose from the punctured
balloon of his gut, which he used to tap
with the small end of a fist when explaining

the pull of mountain scenery,
the open spaces & abundant peace?
He would settle here

as lightly as a leaf, he swore, praying
for the developers to be enveloped
& the subdividers subjected to division.

They didn’t feel the wilderness
the way he did, living off the land,
conscious only of God’s grace

as he looked back: the poor earth raw
from harrow & bulldozer, a snaggletoothed jumble
of lighthouse, smokestack, steeple.

Nothing like the orderly ridges
rippling under his attacker’s pelt,
that figment of the blue distance suddenly at hand.

April 8, 2009 by Dave Bonta

The Penitent Roasted by the Sun

This entry is part 5 of 12 in the series The Temptations of Solitude

in response to the painting by Clive Hicks-Jenkins, from his series The Temptations of Solitude

For the sin of thirst, surround yourself with mirrors
& wait for baptism.

For the sin of sensitivity, plant yourself among lawn ornaments,
neon-bright & obvious.

For the sin of poverty, expose yourself
to the cauterizing desert of the sky.

Build a stockade between the storm door & the doghouse
to incarcerate the green thieves of light.

You have lived too many years as a parasite,
drunk the high-fructose corn syrup of paradise.

It’s time to tunnel into the brazen day
& shrug off your integument, oh locust.

Under what basket or milk crate have
you hidden your cry?

April 6, 2009 by Dave Bonta

The Man Who Lived in a Tree

This entry is part 4 of 12 in the series The Temptations of Solitude

in response to the painting by Clive Hicks-Jenkins, from his series The Temptations of Solitude

Turn up the lights on the hominid pen.
It’s feeding time, though some
don’t even know they’re hungry.
You can give them each
a slice of manna if you like.

See the one who squats in the crotch
of that tree? Almost since birth
he’s exiled himself from the ground.
Unlike the others, he seems to realize
something here is missing—
a grotesque sensitivity that makes him
a wolf in this wood, this tree
he clings to like a mother.
When the wind agitates its leaves
he hugs himself & rocks
back & forth, moaning.

Unlike the others who gibber with awe,
he wants nothing to do with us,
& recoils from your face
as if from a stone that the river
never learned how to read.
But see how his tree glows
in this lurid light, like a harp
rearing above a dark-suited orchestra?
Someday soon we will reunite it
with its former companions,
that whole forest enjoying
eternal life: value-added products
of our loving care.

***
UPDATE: Marly Youmans‘ series of five poems in response to paintings by Clive Hicks-Jenkins (including “The Man who Lived in a Tree”) are now live on his website. Go look.

April 2, 2009 by Dave Bonta

The Comfort of Angels Attending the Dying

This entry is part 3 of 12 in the series The Temptations of Solitude

in response to the painting by Clive Hicks-Jenkins, from his series The Temptations of Solitude

You always dreamed of a death
in the open, stopping at the wye
in the highway that runs past
the shell of the old mill,
the land like a black lung
infiltrated by bronchial trees.
You’d keep your eyes pinched shut
against whatever brightness might spoil
the immaculate desolation.
After so many tiresome years
of living for others, this would be
your own time at last,
alone on the baked earth.

But it seems the Father won’t let you off
that easy, sends a pair of his goons
to bookend your shoulders
& breathe cabbage in your ears.
Meaty arms wrap around your chest
like pythons & begin to squeeze.
Let’s go for a ride, they whisper.
Death in the open — you’re finding out —
means all bets are off. The air turns
dangerous with blades.

March 23, 2009 by Dave Bonta

Spirit captions

A headache came tapping like a convict at the end of a tunnel.

We were on the air ten hours a week offering bad advice & good pewter spoons.

I would no sooner open my mind than a bad idea would slip in & begin to replicate itself.

With factories on all sides, flakes of soot sometimes grew to grotesque proportions.

The rabbi warned us never to go out without our yarmulkes.

I’m a positive thinker. We create our own destiny, you know.

My twin died before we were born. We were best friends all through school.

I’ll never forget the astonishment on that Hun’s face.

I’m telling you, Doctor, the moon follows me everywhere I go.

I was a punch line in the comics with my empty thought-balloon.

Turnips, radishes, potatoes, leeks… I am getting in touch with my white roots.

I’ll have you know that “laudanum” comes from the Latin word for praise.

Spirit catchers are an old, old thing. What I want to know, Mr. Hope, is how you capture light.

“Man with a spirit face appearing” is the work of the spirit photographer William Hope (1863-1933).

Feel free to leave additional caption suggestions in the comments.

March 9, 2009 by Dave Bonta

That Old-Time Religion

I remember this one metalhead I used to know, guy
about my age, told me the first time he heard that Quiet
Riot song Bang Your Head on the radio, he was so impressed,
he fell to his knees in the middle of his suburban driveway
& began to smash his forehead against the asphalt
as hard as he could, & it was bleeding something awful
& his mother came rushing out & stopped him, yelling
What in God’s name do you think you’re doing, but little
did she know he’d just been saved. I was a metalhead
from that day on, he said. I almost passed out, but it felt
so good to just let everything fucking go. I saw stars.

February 28, 2009 by Dave Bonta

Tree of Knowledge

This is what happens
when you start making up
your own mind:

the tree drops its tantalizing fruit,
sheds its leaves, & the woodlot
shrinks around it

until it stands alone in a line
of fence posts & telephone poles,
trembling neurons sifting the wind for sparrows.

You become as gods,
endlessly bifurcating,
simple as stinkhorns.

In place of paradise
there’s a field, a pasture,
a dishy blankness of sky.

***

In response to an image prompt at Read Write Poem. Other responses are linked here.

Photo by camila tulcan, licenced under a Creative Commons license.

February 8, 2009September 23, 2012 by Dave Bonta

Lines from a Robot Owner’s Manual

for Dana

Responsible robot owners must avoid over-identification. Remember, for the robot, things didn’t just happen; it was created. That knowledge would drive a human being mad.

It cannot procreate. Abiological life is the ultimate in recursiveness: the unit is its own motherboard.

Yes, its internal power source periodically needs to be recharged. But such regular maintainance is a feature, not a bug — would you want a robot that was completely independent? And for you, too, power ultimately comes from without.

It cannot recognize itself in a mirror. This assertion sometimes confuses people, because it is always completely obvious to the robot which reflection must correspond to itself. But for full recognition to take place, at least a smidgen of uncertainly is required.

Emotions can be programmed as well as anything. The robot feels them in the same way that a deaf composer hears his music.

Its delusions, if any, are indistinguishable from those of its programmer.

The unit is, we assure you, completely unhaunted. What ghost would inhabit such a sleek and gleaming absence of rooms?

The only determinant of personality you control is the choice of name. Everything else is simply a product of entropy.

Weather can’t be escaped by staying under cover. Unstable isotopes decay. Solar winds can breach the magnetosphere. The earth slows, queering all clocks.

The robot’s greatest enemy accounts for sixty percent of your weight.

February 5, 2009May 30, 2016 by Dave Bonta

The Good Question

UPDATE: I rewrote the poem and remade the video on September 18, 2010. The post below refers to an earlier incarnation, using mostly the same footage.

Video link.

Although I’ve experimented with video poems before, this is the first one where I relied on audio for the text rather than superimposing the words on the screen. The footage was all shot this past Sunday, at the top of our field (which is also the top of the Plummer’s Hollow watershed). My friends Chris and Seung had come up from D.C. for a weekend of sledding, and while temperatures on Friday and Saturday stayed nice and cold, and we had some spectaular toboggan wipe-outs (which is the main point of tobogganing, as I understand it), on Sunday morning the thermometer climbed into the 40s (i.e. between 5 and 10 degrees Centigrade, for you farriners). The snow turned sticky. Snowballs flew back and forth like carrier pigeons with one basic but never monotonous message.

By the time we got to the top of the field it was time for some sunbathing, and that’s when Seung’s interest in snowball-making turned from skirmishing to art, as seen in the film.

I wanted to see if I could make a video shorter than a minute and a half, primarily because my most common reaction to other amateur videos is that they aren’t edited well enough. I’m sure there are still lots of things I could improve, though. I don’t particularly like the sound of my own voice, and in general the video doesn’t come close to conforming to the idea I had in advance. There are a lot of avant-gardey things I simply don’t know how to do, and probably can’t do until I get better video editing software (on order). But it’s a start.

For inspiration I am indebted to the poets who have been making videos for qarrtsiluni, especially Christine Swint, who recently tried to stir up interest in the art at Read Write Poem as well.

Incidentally, I also have a photo of Seung up on the photo blog — a badly underexposed, low-resolution snapshot taken with the camcorder that I altered almost beyond recognition in the digital darkroom for a portrait of an altered state which is not, I assure you, an accurate representation of our condition at the time.

January 17, 2009 by Dave Bonta

Barakah

I am for the roadside rather than the road.

I am for the one who announces
rather than the one who is announced.

In the middle of a ballet, I am the fly
rubbing its hind legs together
on the collar of a coat.

I am a friend to those who curse
when they’re happy
& sing when they’re sad.

And when someone places a hand
like a hot iron on some starched bible,
I am with those who blush
& stare at their feet.

Wikipedia article on barakah.