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I look for the Lord to make things clear. Until then, fidelity.
As much as Judaism is on my mind, I can’t seem to take it anywhere. I don’t have the resources to seriously research it reliably, and, unlike how I learned so much about Catholicism in my early days, I’m not sure how welcome I’d be on their message boards. I want to integrate my Catholicism with my Judaism, find a way to express a Christian faith in a Jewish mode, to find that balance so I don’t lose my heart and my head to it.
Lord, be with me in this. Lord, do not let me go into the depths, but keep me always with you. Sheol has nothing.
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My article “Comic Book Heroes” has been published in the most recent issue of RVA Magazine (rvamag.com).
Praise YHWH!
Screen grab below:
Lord, you are my God. In the heaviest light, the broadest plain, you are here. You hold your children, you keep them safe. I worship you, because you are the Lord.
None can run from you. None can escape.
Your gaze extends to the horizon in every direction,
and your hand can reach over
the most western river or northern mountain.
You touch the earth,
and you bring life or destruction;
your hand moves upon Israel
and your hand moves upon Egypt.
Alleluia, alleluia.
kadosh kadosh kadosh
The rabbi stands, and raises his head.
His congregation chants, sings,
and the Hand of the Lord is there upon them.
It wails like a star, screams its light.
The congregation chants, sings,
and the plow moves.
Holy things are for the holy.
The wind flings itself across the dirt
and the pilgrims at the mountain fall for it.
It is a strong wing. This is God’s mountain.
Oh, praise the Pillar of Fire!
The Hand of the Lord is even here!
Pilgrims drop their hats,
and their shoes behind them.
Holy things are for the holy.
What is the Gospel’s power,
if here in the mountain’s rainshadow
the crops wilt?
Life is more than death,
and the heart’s praxis
welcomes God’s hand.
Lord, Lord, Lord
your name is sweet to me!
YHWH is God,
YHWH Elohim,
kadosh kadosh kadosh
Holy things are for the holy.
“Volcán Cotopaxi”
Deep reed water sky
Over feet caked in black soil.
The hoe swings a pendulum –
The earth shakes.
It must be moved,
And it shall move.
Miles beneath the mountain
I have heard rumors.
A ways down the road,
Oh, three towns over,
There’s a gun that grinds the light
And it sticks in your hand.
Its bullets thorn the air.
It snarls.
Volcan Cotopaxi snarls
Dull as brushed steel,
Churning like the mill.
The hoe swings a pendulum –
The earth shakes.
It must be moved,
And it shall move.
Oh, the clouds are low, low,
and they are full,
Pregnant, dark with strain.
They burst open. They explode,
and black horses cross the river.
I told you, the clouds are very low.
One rider had a white pistol,
gleaming gunmetal, my wife tells me.
He tried to drop it.
He shook his hand.
For a moment it dropped like a barbell.
Oh, but it was still in his hand.
The hoe swings a pendulum –
The earth shakes.
It must be moved,
and it shall move.
Volcán Cotopaxi, his six brothers,
they ready their own.
The poem is apocalyptic, deliberately so. I’m exploring some territory I’m planning on developing in the future in a comic called “The Iconoclasm.”
A farmer is conversing with, well, you, I guess. He has heard rumors, you know, about some ominous things. An old gun that seems to be more than a gun; it doesn’t reflect light, like any shiny gun — it *grinds* it. And it sticks in your hand — you don’t hold it. The action is from the gun. The gun is what is doing these things. It is a power to itself. And the action of the bullets? They don’t zoom or fly or cut the air — they thorn it. Something is amiss about this gun. Remember when the rider tried to drop it? For a moment it fell — and then, it was in his hand again.
The image of the farmer hoeing the earth is central. The idea is that the land is shaking, quaking, in anticipation of whatever hell waits to be unleashed. The earth must be moved, and it shall move. Deathly things are coming upon it. These things, though, I’m comparing to as simple and pastoral an action as farming. What violence is going to be visited on the land is simply a tilling.
I enjoy the image of storm clouds are something full of portent and expectation, and of pregnancy as fullness awaiting some natural release. But what happens when the clouds are emptied? Horses cross the river. Black horses. Are they coming from the clouds? Or do the clouds, themselves dark with rain, prefigure them?
Volcán Cotopaxi is the name of a Peruvian volcano, a prominent member of the pacific Ring of Fire. But is Volcán Cotopaxi a person here? Is he the gun? Is the distinction between them even worth making? I like that ambiguity; in apocalyptic writing, imagery blends with reality, and it’s intentionally hard to discern where these things begin and end.
Notice how he snarls, but his snarl churns like a mill. Another productive, agricultural term applied to the coming violence. His snarl doesn’t grind, it isn’t an ultimately violent action; it churns like butter, or flour.
Read this poem in relation to “The Iconoclasm,” posted earlier. The two are very much on the same subject. This one is “earlier” than it, though, in the narrative.
The traditional icon of the Resurrection: not an empty tomb or a rolled-back stone, but Christ breaking the chains of Hell, and pulling Adam and Eve out of it. He stands on battered gates.
Lord, by your cross and resurrection, you have set us free.
You are the savior of the world.
