"tremendum" poems
1.
Diaphanous dragons disgorge a deluge of diamonds
into the shadowed crevices of cumulus clouds.
Ruby-red sapphires overpopulate the glistening sky
like carbon-hardened locust: gorgeous messengers of the gods.
The Earth wears a crimson helmet, shielded from
the odious absence of ozone above the North and South poles.
Near Minneapolis, John Berryman's wizened body shatters
on the frozen riverbed below the Washington Avenue Bridge.
Angels weep to see him jump, as he waves a vaudevillian goodbye.
The sapphires blanch, then turn an angry, violent violet. Black holes ahead.
2.
Shakespeare and Mr. Bones **** on mortality's skimpy
skeleton of life. Will this broken body be resurrected?
Does it deserve such distinction? Better yet, does its daring,
drunken destroyer? Four hundred Dream Songs nod yes.
Berryman toddled ticklishly toward the last traces of transcendence.
Love & Fame broadcast how terribly his faith failed to trade
daily delirium tremens for the mysterium tremendum.
The God he prayed to demanded a syntax pure, plain.and perfect.
With jolts of jest, He jimmied paradoxes into koans. Berryman
howls for the sound of one diamond scratching the outline of his body on ice.
3.
He left a legacy broader than liquor, lechery and the love-struck ladies.
Lust seeded his fallow lacunae and lazily broke his wife's heart.
Scholarship scooted him to the squeamish, secluded top
of his Shakespearean class: Signal student turns trusted teacher.
Poetry cloned the Oklahoma clown in him. No successors,
no schools, no savvy peers, save Lowell. his fellow manic-depressive.
He dreamed songs of hilarity, humility, history, dehumanization.
Poetry proved serious business until it learned to laugh at itself.
Sapphires crackle under the weight of the creaking sun. They spin a kaleidoscopic rainbow of colors onto Berryman's obituary. Somehow, he has won:
An irreplaceable jewel of the sky.
Jul 23, 2019
Jul 23, 2019 at 4:01 PM UTC
Wading in a muddy riverbed,
panning for broken pieces of
pretty blue bottles that
glint in the
sun's rays like
azurite
Upstream,
without warning,
a deafening cry
of impending cathexes
The river surges
gasp...
rushes,
tosses,
thrashes me
in mysterium tremendum flow
and a flurry of foaming crests
I bathe in effervescence and
glide through
torrential sentiment,
submerged in
cosmic love
...sigh
Crawling from this eddy transcendence,
trembling
precariously up the shoreline
to rest in his arms of
fiery brilliance
gasp....
....
....sigh
to set him ablaze with
Divine oxygen that
beads from my
velvet lips like
dew drops, and
coo giggling whispers in his
ear of
soft, tender
reflections,
as he feeds to me
crackling embers that
surge to my
heart centre with
volcanic intensity
Reciting a story
sui generis
nested like Matryoshka,
the ever-unfolding opus,
tangled in sheets of
layers
upon
layers
of papyrus,
scribed
and
scribing
Oh, to wake in such a dreamscape.
sigh
Mar 26, 2014
Mar 26, 2014 at 6:13 PM UTC
no signs no omens no nothing
just a sudden harmony in the noise of time
I was not even watching the speed of darkness
but making pancakes while not thinking that
when he smiles I'm in big trouble
in fine, this nameless connection this loving
togetherness of everything this God
who keeps imagining the world as if it does not know it
appeared in my fragile form, fascinans et tremendum
a vision of a fluctuating infinity with so alive the dying
and life just continued breathing, the pancakes were ready
my inbox full of invitations to cure, illumination, mindfulness,
more connection, more healing for trauma, let's become wiser, deeper, more relaxed, more aligned with the soul of the world
so, I agree but in the meantime only the mystery got deeper
Jun 22, 2023
Jun 22, 2023 at 12:04 PM UTC
“For Ragamuffins, God's name is Mercy. We see our darkness as a prized possession because it drives us into the heart of God. Without mercy our darkness would plunge us into despair - for some, self-destruction. Time alone with God reveals the unfathomable depths of the poverty of the spirit. We are so poor that even our poverty is not our own: It belongs to the mysterium tremendum of a loving God.”
― Brennan Manning
Dec 13, 2016
Dec 13, 2016 at 11:42 PM UTC
god is the mystery
that lingers on the lips of eternity
turn me into everything
i am your obedient child
make me an example
of your generosity
i am immediately elevated
solely by your presence
your essence is immanent
though life is impermanent
Nov 8, 2018
Nov 8, 2018 at 12:37 PM UTC
Give me a God,
Who depends on me:
Who knows not what
He cannot need:
Who waits therefore upon belief;
Gathering grace through
Gifts immune
From all that even
Gods assume.
Aug 29, 2017
Aug 29, 2017 at 3:03 PM UTC