Tuesday, December 5, 2017

Guest Blog Post By Australian Poet Michael Fitzgerald-Clarke

Chris Rice Cooper 

*The images in this specific   piece are granted copyright privilege by:  Public Domain, CCSAL, GNU Free Documentation Licenses, Fair Use Under The United States Copyright Law, or given copyright privilege by the copyright holder which is identified beneath the individual photo.

**The links along with the names of the persons and/or organizations are at the end of the piece in alphabetical order.  Some of the links will have to be copied and then posted in your search engine in order to pull up properly



Guest Blogger
Australian Poet Michael Fitzgerald-Clarke
The Jesus Suite

***

and immediately all the doors were 
opened and everyone’s chains were 
unfastened
Acts Ch. 16 v 26

Percy Bysshe Shelley (left) 

Percy Bysshe Shelley’s The Necessity of Atheism knocked
on my sterile nineteen-year-old mind.  Heaven some sort of 
irrelevant stalagmite some sort of dark object passing 
beyond consciousness—stalled years morphed into nothing 
an orbit bleating as consequence as colours of perception 
contract then flower then move to a now shared in coming 
from something—I am miles away from supper—need is a
quality of still point of poetry sudden in discourse.  This
Age is early, a brilliant cornucopia yet souls flap uselessly
as days form, unform kiss the sensate veil, let wholeness be
under longing each fey mountain of belief

*******

King Solomon 


So I turned to consider wisdom and 
madness and folly
Ecclesiastes, Ch. 2 v 12

                    Vanitas attributed to Pieter Claeszoon

Inspire each rise, let life be pure imagination borne by
smoke vague and calling my heart the blood ever coursing
a few steps ahead.  Wise man, why can’t I bottle joy why
must I build with sticks as I kiss each beautiful leaf each
silent friend baring their past handfuls of time white rose
petals a sixfold music peppermint-flavoured bitten from
difficult knotted wings—this system flawed and beautiful
buried somewhere in clouds, each gentle molecule aware. 
I am a creature of skin of erect edges of folded, old
beginnings.  The sun is old its dreams are older than GOD.
Nothing coheres quickly.

*******

Book of Job 


He does great things and unsearchable, marvelous 
things without number
Job, Ch. 5 v 9

Begotten in word and style, an alphabet curved into water
three times drunk as art and sun play as carnival—pass
under future history replete with cirrus clouds and the
festivity of the colour yellow, each mask lengthens with
sunset, lakes in eclipse cleanse an urge to Heaven
belonging to a ladder in a world touching silent scars a
birth with stars growing in space elegant with search and
number—missing from September’s guise perfect wise
allies soak their sails under bridges and I am covered by
foam, to emerge as poetry pink in spiritual heat, intricate 
as prophecy that lets my surfaces syncopate in form

*******

Painting attributed to Margaretta Angelica Peale 


Sustain me with raisins
The Song of Solomon, Ch. 2 v 5

Left: attributed to Salvador Dali; Right:  Joan Keats attributed to William Hilton

Be a poem that erodes swiftly, let dust never be rock, else
day not erode into sound  Percy Bysshe Shelley loved
raisins, almost super sensually—a Red Sea moment parted
his ink, it rose in beauty in mystery as deep as forming a
universal heart chaste with song  Give otherworldly songs
air—each star is invention high, implied & sacred.  Be shy,
each soul recovers their promises blown into skin, and yes,
time mystical and exotic direction.  Let us drink the cup
of John Keats, it is all we knew, and as heaven offers
birth, the pieces contend for a quilt of light to adorn
a mild spirituality replacing objects for words


******* 

1896 image of David praying


Turn, O LORD, save my life; 
deliver me for the sake of
your steadfast love
Psalm 6 v 4

Left Weeping Coconuts or Coconut Tears attributed to Frida Kahlo; Right Moses on the Knesset Menorah 

Time is perfected in wayward sway, muscular galaxies
completing their poetries weave & explosion, dark with
extent to claim the sky—below the future personality
muddied by etiquette offering repose in its fruits felt as
tears, a style, a class of taunt thousands of years said—let
us ask sleep, else we dream invisible pyramids made with
broken stones.  Is that you coughing Moses.  Was the
sunshine too sweet.  Manna and cranberry juice forty
years delicate music within the trek of breezes  It’s hot
in pink places, style a language of taken breath, vegetables
of our youth that decorated water with light, & burden

 *******


None of my words will be delayed any longer, but the
word that I speak will be fulfilled
Ezekiel, Ch. 12 v 28

Fruits and Strawberries attributed to Salvador Dali 


GOD, toss your three-sided magical coin—I claim your
Antarctic strawberry magic as a certainty flowering in
angelic history that shuffles from art to cure, from answer
to a hymn of skies in another somewhere usually clothed in
another way, vows making butterfly wings stronger than
guns.  It benefits a view of being—let us visit idea in our
soul’s essence, as several phantasms from decades ago 
sew themselves black cloaks in time.  Barely has belief 
registered any wandering sensation—let us shoot our 
great-grandfathers’ yellow sense of time as the tide ebbs 
again, as magic seizes the new reflections once lost

*******

Encampment of Isrealites on Mount Sina 
1836 Intaglio print attributed coo J.M. W. Turner 

all Israelites shall retain the inheritance of their 
ancestral tribes
Numbers, Ch. 36 v 7

A crisis.  Six copies of The Necessity of Atheism are extant. 
I love Percy Bysshe Shelley, but he is not my saviour.  A
solution in the heart of a tree—echoes, the fragrance that
colours persistent fire.  The saints of five hundred years ago
are friends of woolly soul.  Let us fall sweetly, with
coincidence and skin, with writing a place where hope
is waterproof, and nourishes the roots of trees, transmutes
them through air—listen as wombs hold love and other
decorations won from patterns.  There is no stopping. 
There is a potential death.  And another believes in
souvenirs & south-westerlies

*******

 

I am the Alpha and the Omega, says the Lord God, 
who is and who was and who is to come, the Almighty
The Revelation to John, Ch. 1 v 8


Jesus Christ was my personal saviour, oh but that I had
known my insane mind was His.  I was an atheist, loving
nothing but my spiritual blindness—and His holy delight
someness excited my soul even whilst the sun, delicately
poised, agrees to winter.  The cost is between us.  Let us
sail into seasons evolved into smoke toked by monks and
thieves.  Let us steal geometry put it into a canvas bag,
destined for Russia’s clumsy perhaps.  Oh, purpose, as
Christ bursts my heart.  I was mute, overcome.  My
juice slaked my shallow courtesy and fruits and flour
and halva were a halo

*******

I am the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last, the
beginning and the end
The Revelation to John, Ch. 22 v 13

Fitzgerald-Clarke's handwritten notes of Jesus Suites

Auditioning for death each day, Jesus Christ will be my
personal saviour, I just don’t know it as days offer their
marrow as air troubles a music disturbing thought.  For
each cloudy, quivering soul night raises quiet with, Jesus
is more than psychological truth as his steps pen a
manuscript of starry light that travels from heart to heart. 
A complete and immense beauty of purpose.  A love an
unrestrained vastity.  And no words find me alone—the
streets of the city might be unforgiving, so let us sing
resurrection, let us fly to a oneness of perpetual blossoms,
where faith given fruit a moment to be generous.

******* 

                  
Heart Illustration with circulatory system attributed to Bryan Brandenburg 

my heart stands in awe of your words
Psalm 119 v 161


Is there half a gate.  Is there a three-sided coin.  A journey
of will missing a wayfarer, be equipped with a thermometer
and a femininity of mind.  Let us love endlessly unsettled
between act and falling.  The knowledge sleeps through
many weathers chipped with unusual dust  Priests of the
secular dream change your money invest in pomiculture
and marry the piercing wind purveying opposites—let the
Age meander away from urgency to the forever ambivalent
landscape a few words cannot form.  Please learn the ethics
of gruel, as a jazz riffs mythic lines noctilucent in Mary’s
womb.  Peer into the insides of sight, grip and hold passing
months

******* 

St. John the Evangelist by Domenico Zampieri 1620


And we have seen and do testify that the Father has sent 
his Son as the Saviour of the world
The First Letter of John, Ch. 4 v 14

The Red List attributed to Marc Chagall

A pleasant poetry is not enough.  I take my soul in my hands,
and fling it into Jesus author of flowers and heart dancers and
the gamble of skies.  Let us hug time, call its husk an escape
from confusion, the genes of a bird made from air imagined
and led through cloud.  Jesus, this clumsy nothing is young
with prophecy flowing into its past.  A design thin with
intimate instances of heaven, the opportunity to be steadfast,
and other.  Immersed in truth, yet terrible, narrow warfare
remains difficult—sour wine in a coffee cup, a bird pecking
at a sacred cake.  Let us taste butter straight from the churn
as we reminisce, and cherish eternity

*******


The first page of Colossians

If with Christ you died to the elemental spirits of the 
universe, why do you live as if you still belonged to the 
world?
The Letter of Paul to the Colossians, Ch. 2 v 20


   
Attributed to Salvador Dali 


Ah, the airy murk about the tree of blood.  Rest in fallibility smeared between women and men equal in inner pink as seas mutate, clasp fingers, see innascibility as both divine and new syrups from names floating near hurricanes.  Let us skirt ancient continents, and follow string theory incanted in candlelight.  Let us open windows, trace curlicues in the ways to holiness.  Let us number affections forcing equivalence from air to soul to the New Testament of the Holy Bible—sing our humanity, its sweet currents layers of Paradise.  Meanwhile  Christ becomes word becomes earth becomes mountain—love becomes infinite contraction, awakening.

*******


30 AD Greek papyrus of Gospel Luke 


Blessed are you who weep now, for you will laugh
The Gospel According to Luke, Ch. 6 v 21

The Magpie attributed to Claud Monet 


How many saviours does it take to make paint dry.  I’m in
detox. Soon I will be able to fly again, when I stich my 
velour wings. Look up the cashed-up fish then windsurf 
the nearest lake.  Jesus, the breezes animate being 
gooseberry green—the RHS raw with heat until coincidence 
wings overhead toward the glassy moon—oh, cold thought, 
Antarctica is the promised land, raise another solution 
teacher watch it become a stubborn number longing to 
leave Earth.  Happy are the honeybees drinking from hollow
time.  Jesus, plant extempore apple trees, secures the 
language of fruit.  And holy numbers as sheep as doves 
in drizzle

*******


Is A House Full Enough attributed to Hyatt Moore
Copyright granted by Hyatt Moore

If any want to become my followers, let them deny 
themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me
The Gospel According to Luke, Ch. 9 v 23


Yes, in the Townsville quiet, Jesus Christ is my personal
saviour. Yes, the quiet music of the solar system bequeathed
by GOD is corporeal prayer.  And ideas sing, there is no 
ending as true as the corporeal poetry of Jesus, the faces, 
the breath kissing absence.  Yes, I have prayed the protection 
of the blood of Christ shed on the cross, and in the 
sumptuous spontaneity of this moment the sound of the 
wind through the trees intimates the one tree most alive.  
A sudden shock. A voice writing love.  And beyond a 
universe-sized miracle, a universe surpassing miracle 
languid and perfect.  Thanks Jesus.  Faith is washing me.  
I’m ready