Fireflies at dawn . . . Winged essences, charred bodies still on fire. This evocative poetry-essay collection issues a call for a renewed embracement of the reader's own expressive self. We've each a persona to hear - a voice to resonate through silences of night and the noises of everyday. Life is a mystery hard to crack. We bang it like a door and strum it like a lyre until it opens some new "portal" through which the voice can authentically sound-out the "truths" of being human. That's the happening of this book. - Altarpieces have always been artistic creations to conceive life's "sacred" space. This book follows that tradition, if rather untraditionally. These pieces speak to "hear" life on one's own terms; from one's own altar and cathedral. This "gathering" created a poet-self identity - called 'Apo'kstrophes' The essays join with the poems to conceive poetry and the spiritual quest with a renewed existential-eco-romantic perspective; sounding that quest with both feet grounded on "worldly other" Planet Earth. The challenge to grasp life at the core is a wrenching-wrestling match with the Other, that ever-present dimension of "poetry" on life's path. - Joining philosophical play with the authenticity of word-pieces as true orients, O'Kelly's book, with many poets helping along the way, has taken up that challenge with unflinching creativity. Want a spiritual adventure? Fly! Take the ride! Oh, the ride! Fins spurred in shivers of hide. Life's dearness reined in the roll of the tide.
ALTARPIECES
Embracements and Exaltations from the Scriptorium of 'Apo'kstrophes'By MICHAEL D. O'KELLYiUniverse, Inc.
Copyright © 2011 Michael D. O'Kelly
All right reserved.ISBN: 978-1-4620-1340-1Contents
PRELUDE.........................................................................xiiiThe Project (An Existentially Authentic Intention)..............................xiiiFireflies At Dawn...............................................................xviiDeliverance.....................................................................xviiiCome My Children................................................................2About the Organization of These Pieces..........................................3Mother Lines....................................................................9Primary Lesson..................................................................9Timing..........................................................................10Elementary, My Dear.............................................................11Ginger..........................................................................12Thoughts At Fourteen In The Grocery Aisle.......................................13Because of Mary Jo..............................................................14Survivor........................................................................15Our Wakefast....................................................................16Philosophy 101..................................................................17o little flower.................................................................19Daily Grammar...................................................................20Editing Room....................................................................21Break Ground....................................................................22Rake And Rumpus.................................................................23The Common Cold.................................................................24Sometimes We Think..............................................................25Somewhere In Indiana............................................................26Soothing Agony..................................................................27Hindsight.......................................................................28Some Break......................................................................29Jawbreakers.....................................................................30Communion Service...............................................................31To Tell Of Prodigy In 1957......................................................32That War That Peace............................................................34Sometimes To Rhyme..............................................................35Peepers.........................................................................36Buddies.........................................................................36About this Book.................................................................39Friends.........................................................................47This Lottery....................................................................47Epiphany........................................................................48It Happened (Around 1964).......................................................50The Way Home....................................................................51We Must Ever Cry................................................................52Windblown.......................................................................53The Vow Sounds..................................................................54The Penguin Passes By...........................................................55The Sermon on the Can Full of Could.............................................56Dads Are Not Perfect, But.......................................................58Surgeons........................................................................60Nothing Fancy...................................................................61Proclamation....................................................................63Questern's Miracle..............................................................64Striptease......................................................................65Sleuther........................................................................66Of Tweetie, A Parakeet..........................................................67Garage Sale Counsel.............................................................69Oh, My Son......................................................................70Daughter Talk...................................................................72Aliens..........................................................................73Critics.........................................................................75Something About the "Go" in Chicago.............................................78Breaking Away...................................................................80Primitive Ritual................................................................81Return of the Mountaineer.......................................................84Our Song........................................................................86Natural Remedy..................................................................86About the Author................................................................89Players.........................................................................101Fishing Deep....................................................................101An After Eden...................................................................102The Fisherman...................................................................103Thunderdew......................................................................104Of Wandlessness.................................................................105Whatever It Is..................................................................106The Feeding.....................................................................110Bottomline: The Art of Having a Period..........................................112Childrunning (Karen's Song).....................................................113Speaking for One Who Could Not..................................................114Query...........................................................................115A Sentence......................................................................116Sleep...........................................................................117Of That Something There Is That Moves The World.................................118Muck............................................................................119Extreme Roulette................................................................121Fledgling.......................................................................122A Parents Candlelighting Memorial...............................................123Agonistes.......................................................................124Harmonics.......................................................................125That Glory As Yet Unsung........................................................126Donor Secret....................................................................127About The Abouts................................................................131Venture Capital.................................................................137Rolling Over....................................................................137What Art Thou ?.................................................................138Who Goes There?.................................................................140The Reformation.................................................................141Workhorses......................................................................146To Take My Mother So............................................................147Nine Eleven Two Thousand And One................................................149Paradiso........................................................................154Simplicita, Inc.................................................................155It's Loose......................................................................156Got A Light?....................................................................157A Horsefly......................................................................158I've Known of Woman Much More Than Once.........................................159Faded Arias.....................................................................164Fidelity........................................................................165Rite de Passage.................................................................166An Ecosystem....................................................................168It's Not Easy...................................................................169Natural Growth Endings..........................................................170Poet's Lament...................................................................171A Craft To Haunt................................................................173Patient's Glory.................................................................173ABOUT 'APO'KSTROPHES'...........................................................177Song of Longing.................................................................184Boomerangs......................................................................184One Window Mine.................................................................185Oh, Well!! (Sung with deepest Homages and Apologies to all).....................188Lines On a World On the Make & Take.............................................192Voice In The Wilderness For Dummies.............................................194Destiny Rides Again.............................................................202The Shadow One..................................................................205Song of the Balloon Man.........................................................206Somewhere Deep In The Hidden Down...............................................208Catch and Release...............................................................209I Read Poets Adrift In Poetries.................................................211A Backyard Tale.................................................................213Where To Wound Is To Heal.......................................................216EPILOGUE........................................................................217POSTLUDE........................................................................243You.............................................................................243In Times To Come................................................................244Saddled On Memory...............................................................245
Chapter One
Come My Children Come, my children, to the surge of this earth.
Breathe hard upon the shore, look deep to sea.
Come, gather round, for each dune-scoop of worth.
This place is old, older than any truth.
It's full of ghosts and love's futility.
Come, my children, to the surge of this earth.
Come to ventures cradled around its girth;
Crags, plains, mountain tops, and rivered valley.
Come, gather round, for each dune-scoop of worth.
We'll enter jungles where there is no path
And caverns so dark there's no light to see.
Come, my children, to the surge of this earth.
We've a universe where space has no width
Or time the dimensions of destiny.
Come, gather round, for each dune-scoop of worth.
Tempests and cruelty will tempt us to wrath,
So, stay close, for beauty's sake ... close to me.
Come, my children, to the surge of this earth.
Come, gather round, for each dune-scoop of worth.
About the Organization of These Pieces
This book's in five (Quintessential) parts, plus Prelude and Postlude, making a week of seven — each with its seasons, dimensions, vintages, days, etc. of mixed chronology. Each section, then, is somewhat proglottidean, with ends and beginnings interwormed in it ... even as the other sections, likewise, flow through it. The Postlude's full of Preludes and vice versa. Seminal to these pieces is a sixty-three-year life-line running from first poem to the last: a story-line organized through poetry-autobiographical as if it were, somehow, poetry-universal-auto-ontological; edited as one might a movie — all the frames following in succession to display the action with the flashbacks and flash-forwards mixed with the chronologically correct. Furthermore, this author, following some picky inspiration, has over time changed a word, phrase, line, or apostrophe in pieces written years ago. I'll confess to wrestles with many patient pentimenti. The proglottidean, after all, has a polysemous wiggle.
So it is, that this book is organized as consciousness seems to work — by roaming all over a person's life: the dones, doings, the doables, the deaths, and dreams. Most days bring all these dimensions to mind: icicles in July, zinnias in January. Being human means being a mixed chronology. You, of course, already know such things. Know this, too: this book can be embraced from any piece-page anywhere in any direction, but is best grasped from its beginning to its end — Prelude to Postlude, Sniff to Wag: frontyard to backyard. (Since losing my wife, Marilyn, in 2009 – this "roaming all over a person's life"[ disjointed as it may be] has become a most poignant and daily reality.)
Altarpieces as an "omnium gatherum" seems natural and necessary given the time span it covers. And, though the memoried chronology is often shuffled like a deck of cards, it maintains a collective unity (plays a single hand): ends-beginnings, antecedents-consequents ... and all that's between the lines. Perfect it's not. A "self" it is. Just another Gawain-Perceval here, trying to piece together a broken sword. There's always some uneven notches where the pieces don't fit. Never smooth. Never perfect. But, given the sordid swordedness of our earthquaking altar — about as fit as fit can be. It's integrity that holds — not perfection: as resiliency's the revered modus operandi over resurrection. Poetry has many dimensions of "license," but honesty has to prevail in every one. That's the Yeatsian "stitching and restitching," but the result, as told, is not necessarily "straight laced." Word play, after all, has some serious rules, including the expectation of breakages so new light can shine through in new ways.
The sectioning pages (Login, Parts I through V, and Logout) are as representative "altarpieces." Also, they are breaks in the action to encounter word gatherings for poetries and altarpieces yet unformed. They manifest a "presence" that stares from an unclear, but relentless "holding" by "otherence" waiting for some 'Apo'kstrophes' to shakeout the sounds beyond background noise of space-time and history. These are pages to pause and recognize the branching cracks of unknown trail-tones in the old teacup for sippings of the inscrutable. It derives, in part, from Eliot's "... Every phrase and every sentence is an end and a beginning, Every poem an epitaph." Yes! And every poem a birth. These sectioning pages tell of laborings to come; "Unpurged images" of any given day are reminders of unformed "pieces" squirming on the altar. Beckonings! Humblings! Breakings! Often static in ignorance, but alive with connections.
The functional and aesthetic tradition of "altarpiece" is honored here ... as amplification of meanings inherent in "the altar." Altarpieces and poetrypieces have had a partnership well known since any embracement of altar and poet (all mousike of psyche and vice versa) was first manifest; which is about when human time first got conscious wind of itself. Poetry's always wailed from that free wind; not just ex cathedra, but ex ex cathedra ... freed to be something like the conscience-voice of freedom itself. The inspiration has always been reciprocal between altar and poet (entelechy and craft, eternity and memory); the unevennesses but as steps to the next epiphany of some "Presence" calling from the silence for a voice. Needless to say, in this endeavor, I come more from the tradition of the "Bard" than the "Priest." Homeric society, and the Greek tradition, unlike other societal beginnings, drew a distinction between the functions of poet and priest. Overtime, I have embraced that distinction. Since I've been on both ends, I find it correct. Walt Whitman expressed this with his famous dictum "The priest departs, the divine literatus comes." Poetry is more Tao, the Way, rather than the institution. It is flow not cessation. Music not dogma. Leaves of grass more than leaves of dogma. Prophesy, however, seems to come from both, but usually with different use, and conception, of the illumination. There is "something" happening from the poet that's fundamentally different than the priest; though in the "seer" dimension they do overlap. My life has identified me most with "poet." Ah! Here's Whitman again, arriving "quick and audacious":
A world primal again, vistas of glory incessant and branching, A new race dominating previous ones and grander far, with new contests, New politics, new literature and religions, new inventions and arts. These, my voice announcing—I will sleep no more but arise, You oceans that have been calm within me! how I feel you, fathomless, stirring, preparing unprecedented waves and storms.
Now, this little firefly flashes its notchpen through the night; soars to code/commune with the infinite light from a mortal dawn. Miraculously, an internal bioluminescence morphs with tongue to wag as a photic organ to see (as in visionary) through the point of a wand (pen, baton, bow, pencil, computer, etc.): envisioning something of the point of it all beyond flowers fading in some flash-dance galaxian gas of ignis fatui. Eliot had it right calling for "tongues of flame" to "infold" the "fire and the rose" as one. Such thoughts informed the organization of these pieces. So, too, Yeats' moving from his call to the "sages" to "gather me into the artifice of eternity"( Sailing to Byzantium) to his later (Byzantium) call from the "unpurged images of day" that cause the "night walkers' song" leading to "An agony of flame that cannot singe a sleeve." And, therefore, "Astraddle on the dolphin's mire and blood" old images are broken and new smithies "Fresh images beget" from "That dolphin-torn, that gong-tormented sea." I recall these lines of Yeats, because I think my mane and fins and hooves and gills imagery has some of its source here; and, perhaps, a bit from Eliot's mermaids, the Fish symbol, and Buber's horse and hand, the epitome of "I-Thou." And not to be forgot is Keats' line of longing ... "To visit dolphin-coral in deep seas." Some deconstructionist critic might find other wildnesses hidden in these piecings. Perhaps some will find some "fresh images" begot herein. Wouldn't surprise this — pagan-horse-borne-surf&turf-fisherman—
'Apo'kstrophes',
whose combining image, symbolically, could well be the little "seahorse" as companion to the little "firefly." Ah!—but to ride the dolphin in and out of the dark of the sea to the light of day and plunge again the deep is to feel the bone-song-soul-surge of Water-Earth — life in death and death in life. The oceans are less calm today than ever. The ancient-fresh image/sound of AUM will surface and dive in all that follows. In a "splash" somewhat beyond MacLeish's Ars Poetica conclusion, 'Apo'kstrophes' will illumine the third of the poetic arts beyond just to "mean" or "be," but the "sound." Contrary to MacLeish's famous poem, herein will be a different conclusion. A poem should not be "palpable and mute as a globed fruit," nor "silent as sleeve-worn stone." A poem, indeed, should just "not mean," but it should be more than a "but be." A poem should sound — be a sounding, make a noise, be heard, resonate, vibrate — rattle the bones, tone a cry; be a rain one can hear and a song one can sing. A poem should be a sound if it's to mean or be. Sorry, Archibald, but 'Apo'ksrophes' dolphin-steed "splashes" the boundries and sounds the deep. We are "selves," because we are sounds. Otherwise, we are muted "slaves" "globed" on a voiceless abyss.
[Alas, this is a book of words. If I could compose music there would be more music and fewer words. If I were a painter, there would be more canvasses and fewer words. If I were any other kind of artist, sculptor-architect-performer, there would be more of such somehow and fewer words. Sometimes words help us understand the deeper significations in the other arts. Here, they have the task of releasing their own significations: both as signifiers( sounds and subatomic levels) and signified (ideas and the atomic ). If this word-book does not open me or you to the more of our own world while blowing in our faces fresh winds from the rosy dawn and deep abyss of time(why write such a book, otherwise, if no sonorous vibes reach the marrow) — then it's easily discarded, perhaps in honor of Auden who said "Poetry makes nothing happen." "Poetry," however, does cause the happening of Poets. It tries to "sound" the signifiers with the right words for meaning, being, and becoming. Poets wander in and out of the "poetic marrow" of existence to catch as catch can a ride on sound-forms begging to be surfaced by the language they inspire. Yeats said it so: "He that sings a lasting song/Thinks in a marrow bone." Also, this is not just a book of my words. There's a collection of "poets" and "others" here ... as altarpieces. Since it purports to be poetry, and of poetry, more than a scholarly treatise, there is no index or bibliography, though I've cited works quoted in the text. The painter, Matisse, said that a work of art is determined by its manifesting une harmonie d'ensemble — meaning nothing out of place or superfluous to the whole. Such a harmony is hoped for in these, often dissimilar, pages of retrospective and prospective pieces positioning themselves to be and sound as one. Alas, this is not as the Sibylline books that were consulted for divine will by opening them at random as was done even of the poems of Virgil. But, a random assay of Altarpieces to test its metier is encouraged. Just don't be discouraged if there is no "oracle"; and yet, courageous with surprise to feel en-couraged, should one seem to happen.]
Mother Lines
Time to unleash a sonnet for Mother
Say beyond words what it's like to be born;
Proclaim her my first beloved other,
The paradigm of every yelping morn.
These, my pawed lines, but an ambulation
Amongst scratches and scrawls to mark her place,
Whelping and untethered animation
Wandering the tracks, scented with her grace.
In search of rhymes, I recall the labor
That freed me agape into this enthrall,
Sure, I'll not forget the carnal favor
Fleshing a howl's own sound down the long hall.
Dear Mother, your lead has always been true;
All last lines, as the first, bind me to you.
Primary Lesson
Praise you, good teacher, for your craft and art,
Forming our children through their first seasons;
Sculpting an optimism in each heart,
Teaching wisdom's hug, its many reasons.
Your's the special gift to instruct the soul,
Letting the mind venture through its blessings
And joy in the freedom of being whole.
You blossomed to voice their deepest singings,
Guiding their labor to its own reward.
You, treasure seeker, dug deep for the rare,
Showed all where the wealth of the world was stored
And gave each the courage and will to care.
Cloning, no doubt, will prove some day too wild;
But each classroom needs you to teach each child.
Timing
We were Second Graders, she and I,
When everything was fresh and spry,
Playing in the garage with time,
She with "hers" and I with "mine."
Like the doableness of casual Spring,
Another performance was opening.
The garage, now both theater and school,
Found nature's script to be the rule
And kairos to be for children, too,
As when the universe first did dew
And the Bard's "ripeness is all"
Was creation's cue and call.
So it was, as crocuses rouse April,
That I responded "I will if you will"
When she, both hands resting on "hers," implores:
"I'll show you mine if you'll show me yours."
Then, dropping her pants as offering a prize,
She guided my fingers between her thighs
To feel with hers the soft, hidden power;
A butterfly touch, soft on a flower.
Caught by the confidence of the sublime,
I was dropping my pants to reveal mine
When, suddenly, we heard my Mother's voice:
"Children! Where are you?" Then we had no choice
But to quickly close our little drama
Of nectar, now naughty before Mama.
With our possessions, caught in this advice,
We repanted quick, never doing it twice.
Some years would pass in life's sweet dance
Before I would, timely, get another chance
To join the consummate in this shared play,
Where our other Mother has the last say.
Then, metamorphosed like the butterfly,
I sailed past birds and bees by asking why
Such buttering stings, soars, and flutters by.
Years later, another's "Hello! Where are you?"
"In the garage, Dear. My timing chain blew!"
"Again!" She cried! [Oh, timing's breaks aren't fair.]
"Cleaning my points, Dear!" ["Damn kairos repair!"]
Elementary, My Dear
In Peabody School, he was shy, skinny
And, in third grade, he scratched with a penny
"Nancy Hunter" on the bicycle seat
Of his new, blue LaSalle and it was neat,
For she rode everywhere he did and could,
To school and all around the neighborhood.
They were together on each daily ride,
Though none could see her hand holding his side.
Nancy Hunter, blonde hair, pretty and smart,
Never read the LaSalle's seat or his heart.
As decades rounded like a sprocket's teeth,
This memory has been firmly bequeathed.
He has, since, bicycled many a grade
And much surer, now, why a poem's made.
As write, he will, from scratch, on anything,
A primary truth's become sacred writ:
Write with a penny, but don't
nbsp; sit
on it.
(any longer!)
Ginger
Ginger-girl, by this, gains her past-due fame.
She first stoked the burn in my thinking's train.
Oh, I had thoughts, her body close to mine,
But always walked and talked her home on time.
Seventh Grade was full of sensual stuff,
But finding Ginger with Jim was enough
To convince me ignorance was not bliss:
They summed the logic in puberty's kiss.
Caught them, in her home after school one day,
On her stairwell puppy love lost its sway.
There, I tasted how love to flesh is won;
The numbs of being naive, stupid — dumb.
I'd sensed poetry in the recipe
As bottles spun pointed often at me.
And Ginger was always so very warm,
But this pup stayed sonneted in the storm ...
Like a tent pitched in the wilderness wild
With a couplet to zip to hold love's child.
Thus, Ginger gave meaning to being tame.
Later, I rhymed free, wandered with the game.
I snap ginger roots, now, with a zipless brain
To fuel the fireboxes of wisdom's rough train
Of clickety-clack, blankety-blank verse:
Gingerly choo-chewing what won't rehearse.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from ALTARPIECESby MICHAEL D. O'KELLY Copyright © 2011 by Michael D. O'Kelly. Excerpted by permission of iUniverse, Inc.. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
