If you know me, then you know how much I love spoken word poetry and song lyrics. Creative lyrics–by disparate bands from two different songs separated by three decades–come to mind. In chronological order, the first music group is the American rock band known as The Doors, who everyone has heard of, from Generation Xers…
The withering of the imagination to the point of poetic impotency at the hands of reason (logos) clad knowledge-seekers during the epoch of the Enlightenment left a void in its philosophical wake. But as we know from experience, human nature has a way of redressing itself by swinging the proverbial pendulum back toward what it…
The effect of the Enlightenment bifurcated not only faith and reason but also imagination and knowledge. “[S]ome philosophers of the Enlightenment thought that image and imagination simply clouded and obscured the pure dry knowledge that they were after” (Guite, Faith, Hope and Poetry, 2). This was done in vast contrast to the age when fables,…
Nathanael grabs the spear. He shuts his left eye to place his prey in his cross-hairs, then releases the javelin with Odyssean accuracy. But the creature parries. The spear gets stuck in the heart of a warrior in a painting that the king had commissioned 15 years prior.
A woman coughs up blood in the ICU at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles where her husband stands next to her bed, rubbing her back, helping her expel pink phlegm into his handkerchief. At a table for two, at nearby diner, a deep voice punctuates the greasy air that smells of Saturday Night’s Special:…
We’ve wandered into the maze of the Minotaur— a chemical chimera that pursues synthetically manufactured routes deep inside labyrinth folds in our skulls with no way out where pleasure is the highest good. “Made” we’re told “to conquer mountains that wait to be subdued.” Our Maker— the Succor— sovereignly sneezes, washing…
Before there was time, before there were gods, before there were blood sacrifices, before there were written words, Light spoke and split the atom of nothing. Time was dragged into existence, filling empty space. Some call “nothing” chaos, but chaos is disorder, which is something. It’s not even darkness, for darkness is a black top…
Gentle Jesus. Born a King. You laid in a foul feeding trough, appearing to many as humbly. O Precious Prince, you were hunted down and brutally beaten like a lamb led to the slaughter. O Beautiful Savior, you were so brave to die for me. Prior to your divine…
Not your Precious Moments figurines
but sleep-deprived warriors
with holsters for concealer and coffee.
Quick on the draw to conceal lines on their face
and savor the passing whiff of a fresh pot percolate.
The story of Salvador is complete! It’s taken me 20 years to write it, taking time off in-between to attend several prestigious seminaries to educate myself on the seminal topics of the novel, such as psychology, theology, philosophy and ethics, which have all influenced its themes, such as suffering, hope, doubt, despair, courage, paradox, faith,…