" Baby " A Poem for the new year

I remember the first time

we kissed.

 

Ah, the electricity, the shock that you created

never felt it since.

 

The present narrowed to your eyes

and the wonder of your soul.

 

Sex was just a consummation

inevitable............

never equal

to that moment.

 

V

Michelangelo 1475----1564

                       D  A  V  I  D 

Sistine Chapel

All the same, it is the Sistine ceiling that displays Michelangelo at the full stretch of his majesty. Recent cleaning and restoration have exposed this astonishing work in the original vigour of its color. The sublime forms, surging with desperate energy, tremendous with vitality, have always been recognized as uniquely grand. Now these splendid shapes are seen to be intensely alive in their color, indeed shockingly so for those who liked them in their previous dim grandeur.

The story of the Creation that the ceiling spells out is far from simple, partly because Michelangelo was an exceedingly complicated man, partly because he dwells here on profundities of theology that most people need to have spelt out for them, and partly because he has balanced his biblical themes and events with giant ignudi, naked youths of superhuman grace. They express a truth with surpassing strength, yet we do not clearly see what this truth actually is. The meaning of the ignudi is a personal one: it cannot be verbalized or indeed theologized, but it is experienced with the utmost force.

• Creation of the Sun and Moon
  

• The Separation of Light from the Darkness
  Detail of the Sistine Chapel, appearing over the head of the Prophet Jeremiah
  Michelangelo painted the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel from 1508 to 1512, commissioned by Pope Julius II. On becoming pope in 1503, Julius II reasserted papal authority over the Roman barons and successfully backed the restauration of the Medici in Florence. He was a liberal patron of the arts, commissioning Bramanteto build St Peter's Church, Michelangelo to paint the Sistine Chapel, and Raphael to decorate the Vatican apartments.
  (thanks to tom@tom2.webo.dg.com)
  

Seers and prophets

There is the same power, though in more comprehensible form, in the great prophets and seers that sit in solemn niches below the naked athletes. Sibyls were the oracles of Greece and Rome. One of the most famous was the Sibyl of Cumae, who, in the Aeneid, gives guidance to Aeneas on his journey to the underworld. Michelangelo was a heavyweight intellectual and poet, a profoundly educated man and a man of utmost faith; his vision of God was of a deity all ``fire and ice'', terrible, august in His severe purity. The prophets and the seers who are called by divine vocation to look upon the hidden countenance of God have an appropriate largeness of spirit. They are all persons without chitchat in them.

• Delphes Sylphide
  ceiling of the Sistine Chapel in Vatican City
  

• Sybille de Cummes
  ceiling of the Sistine Chapel in Vatican City
  Sibyls were female seers of ancient Greece and Rome. They were also known as oracles. Like the Jewish prophets of the Old Testament, many sibyls had their sayings recorded in books. Jewish prophets spoke unbidden, whereas sibyls tended to speak only if consulted on specific questions. They sometimes answered in riddles or rhetorical questions.
  (thanks to William Arnett)
  

The Erythraean Sibyl leans forward, lost in her book. The artist makes no attempt to show any of the sibyls in appropriate historical garb, or to recall the legends told of them by the classical authors. His interest lies in their symbolic value for humanity, proof that they have always been the spiritual enlightened ones, removed from the sad confusion of blind time.

The fact that the sibyls originated in a myth, and one dead to his heart (which longed for Christian orthodoxy) only heightens the drama. At some level we all resent the vulnerability of our condition, and if only in image, not reality, we take deep comfort in these godlike human figures. Some of the sibylline seers are shown as aged, bent, alarmed by their prophetic insight.

The implicit sense of God's majesty (rather than His fatherhood) is made explicit in the most alarming Last Judgement known to us. Is is Michelangelo's final condemnation of a world he saw as irredeemably corrupt, a verdict essentially heretical, though at that time is was thought profoundly orthodox. His judging Christ is a great, vengeful Apollo, and the power in this terrible painting comes from the artist's tragic despairs. He paints himself into the judgement, not as an integral person, but as a flayed skin, an empty envelope of dead surface, drained of his personhood by artistic pressure. The only consolation, when even the Virgin shrinks from this thunderous colossus, is that the skin belongs to St Bartholomew, and through this martyr's promise of salvation we understand that perhaps, though flayed alive, the artist is miraculously saved.

As grandly impassive as the Erythraean Sibyl is the heroic Adam in The Creation of Adam, lifting his languid hand to his Creator, indifferent to the coming agonies of being alive.

• The Creation of Man (Fragment of the Sistine Chapel

P O E M " GALLERY " My First Posts--10/07/03

 

Sitting in a cold,dreary office

a desk piled with work present past and future,

as life`s seconds tick endlessly onward

My mind returns to you.

 

Time slows and stops

then reverses, as mental pictures

    [the portraits I draw best]

 

Burst upon the scene;

are hung with care          

and gazed upon

in the privacy of my gallery

 

Vince

EMILY DICKINSON POEM " LOVE IX "

  IX.
-
             HAVE you got a brook in your little heart,
             Where bashful flowers blow,
             And blushing birds go down to drink,
             And shadows tremble so?
-
             And nobody knows, so still it flows,
             That any brook is there;
             And yet your little draught of life
             Is daily drunken there;
-
             Then look out for the little brook in March,
             When the rivers overflow,
             And the snows come hurrying from the hills,
             And the bridges often go.
-
             And later, in August it may be,
             When the meadows parching lie,
             Beware, lest this little brook of life
             Some burning noon go dry!

 

Now, that`s pretty good.   LOL

V

POEM " A Nod To Freud "

  The id,

  undifferentiated want,

  feels the breast

  starts to connect.

 

 The ego,

 in service to the id,

 defines the world

 as its palliate.

 

 The super-ego,

 in service to society,

 says no to psychopathy

 it is here we live.  

 

Vince  

 

c 2004  Deabler, V.T.

To my readers. I have renamed this journal as a tribute to psychologist Dr. Rollo May. His quote "To Grow Is To Be Anxious" has always been my favorite. Most Profound.

V

 

" LIFE AND DEATH " A POEM

in his bed

never used to the smells,

paralyzed.  

 

his voice now a blink       

     of an eye,

his dinner by tube,

breathing assisted.  

 

reading done by an aide

slovenly written magazines

who is this week`s star?  

 

oh, but the memories!

daydreams escape him

into the arms of Mary.  

 

twenty years of love     

     and desire

wreaking havoc on

unhappiness.  

 

and then the truck

monstrous, growing

crushing them

sending her to heaven

and him to bed.  

 

he used to fear death

and its questions  

 

nevermore.    

 

 

Vince  

 

c 2004  Deabler, V.T.

A Short Story Part 3

  Barbara was nervous, wary. "But who are you? What do you want of me?"

 The tall man looked kindly into Barbara`s eyes. "I am He who is. Nothing more. I am here to protect you. To give you solace. Gabrielle here, is my gift to you. She will be with you always. Remember her."

 "Are you Jesus?"

 "I am the Son of Man."

 "I`m so confused. What do you want of me?"

 "Faith."

 "Faith is so hard. Life is so hard. I have no friends, no money, no love. How can I have Faith in You or anything?"

 "If you have Faith, then you will have all that you need. Rest assured."

 Barbara felt the tears running down her cheeks. Faith and love were so hard for her. Her life had given her so little of these things. Yet she was overwhelmed by this meeting. Could Jesus really love her so much? He would appear to her?

 "I appear to everyone, in some way, Barbara" said the tall man. "Yet many choose not to see. Faith is not for the faint of heart. It must be freely given to Me."

 Barbara realized that the tall man had known what she was thinking! "Oh, God, forgive me! And I have Faith in you."

 "Then you will have all that you need." With that, the tall man seemed to fade, as if a hologram. Gabrielle approached her, touched her hand. And Barbara felt a melding, a blending. She felt peaceful and fell asleep.

 

Vince

c 2004  Deabler, V.T.

A Short Story Part 2

  That evening, the two figures appeared as usual, standing to the right of the bed. Instead of lying there passively, Barbara abruptly pulled herself up and sat on the side of the bed closest to them. "Who are you? Why are you here?" she asked.

 The dark man turned his body to her and raised his head slightly, enough that she glimpsed his face. His eyes were blue and kindly and the smile on his lips allowed her heart to slow.

 "We are here because you summoned us, Barbara. Please don`t be afraid."

 "But who are you, how did I ask for you?"

 "We are always here. We are always everywhere, at everyone`s side. Waiting to be beckoned, to be seen. Most people, late at night, have seen us. But most people are not as open to us as you, Barbara. For most people, we are seen only for a split second, when they awaken in the middle of the night, perhaps from a dream. As they open their eyes, we appear; they see us and startle. Most of them dismiss us and turn us into shadows, a dress laying on a chair, a coat hanging in a dark closet. People have that power. Others are frightened and turn on their bedside lamps in order to drive away the shadows, drive away their fear of us. But we are always there."

 "And there are the special people, like you, Barbara. Those who open their eyes at night but also open their minds. Who lie awake and wait for us, looking in the shadows. And to them do we appear."

 

c   2004  Deabler, V.T.

A Short Story Part 1

  It`s only at night, when shadows come alive.

 Barbara worked at "All-nite Diner", and the thought of walking home always gave pause. Jamesford was an old town, sustaining its self by its proximity to the interstate. Barbara had grown up here, the fourth generation of Irish stock; like most girls growing up in small towns, she had had her dreams.

 Senior year of high school, her English teacher had encouraged her writing. Mrs. Abrams praised her bright mind, her imagination. In twelve years of school she had been very lonely, had only the friends that presented themselves at night, that seemed to materialize next to her bed.

 At first, she would close her eyes and cry out to her mother, who would rush in to comfort her. "Bobbie, it`s ok, only a dream" her mother would say, holding her in her arms. As Barbara grew older and her mother responded to her angrily, more dismissively, the nightly visits becoming tiresome, Barbara first felt the terror of loneliness.

 She prayed to God to spare her these dreams, yet even in the midst of her supplications she felt their reality. The two figures stood before her each night, unspeaking.   One of the figures was a child, perhaps four or five. Very silent, her face blank, a slight downturn to the lips. She seemed within herself, by herslf, lonely.

 The other figure was ephemeral in its blackness. It seemed a man, tall, dressed in black, a hat pulled down concealing his eyes. It seemed not real next to the child, its figure vacillating between distinct and something else. Something that reminded her of a Hologram, like Princess Leiah in "Star Wars", something from the past.

 After many, many visits there came a time when Barbara became bolder. The figures must be here for some reason! She must find out what was their meaning, why they appeared to her each night.

 

c 2004  Deabler, V.T.