"Lazarus" -A Poem

Here’s a poem that’s been bouncing around in my head for quite some time now. It’s inspired by my favorite gravestone of all time (yes, i have a favorite gravestone). I’ve been contemplating these concepts for a great deal now. Sometimes concepts are just waiting for the right moment to spring forth- the right triggers to thrust them into tangible reality. This past Christmas just got the ball more intensively rolling for me. So, I guess this one’s time had come. Enjoy!

-Joel

“Lazarus”

I’m strolling in the dark

in this slope side dormitory

there’re silhouettes of bednobs

Rocky headboards towering

Lichen polka-dotted pillows

and mossy covered stones

guarding sleepers who’ve resting

beneath their dandelion covers

They’re McNeals and Carouthers, 

Bauers, Millers, Deans,

Greens with two e’s 

and Greenes that have three.

Heads are lined up in rows

whole families lay in cots 

dirt mattressy collections

each sharing tribal names.

And all alone there sits

midst an empty swath of green

one lonesome simple headboard

since eighteen seventy three

it’s now looking quite neglected 

all weather etched and brown 

with no cairns of little pebbles

or faded polyester lily 

And I’ve decided when I pass

I’d like to be laid into that bed

b’neath the blankets of grey grass

Next to Henry Weber’s head

sleeping soundly with my friend

in his protest all alone 

‘gainst his solitary status

with no family of his own

Since, someday when I awake, 

at the birth of Re-creation

I’ll be rising right beside him

he won’t dawn in isolation

we’ll be crowning from the womb

No more singing orphaned song

Squeezing through the legs of earth

to a home where all belong

Henry, finally in that day 

I’ll tell you all about the nights

‘bout the Easters and the Christmases

when I sat with you for comfort

I sat dreaming at your headstone

in the womb of our cold world

longing eagerly for the epoch

of no more forlorn festive days 

no more lonely celebrations

For that Incarnated Baby

who took perfect total strangers

and made brothers out of them

“Sleep” -En pleinair at the Evergreen Cemetery in Ft. Thomas in Gouache on Watercolor Paper- 11x14

ART SHOW!!!

Join me at the Frame & Studio Gallery, 401 Fairfield Ave., Bellevue, KY -41073  April 6th from 6-9.  I’ll be exhibiting a collection of my fine art mixed media paintings and repurposed furniture.  I’m excited to announce that I’ll be premiering my new painting series “ A Seat at the Table: Reflections on Grace, Hospitality, and the Struggle of the Marginalized.”  This series premier will include a live poetry performance by the fantastically talented, Heidi Dare.  ALL are welcome!  Light refreshments will be served.  

REviewing and REimagining “Beach” Art

One of the predictable elements of staying in a rented beach home (apart from splintery decks and textured drywall compound ceilings) is the indiscriminate collection of faded art prints that have anything do to beaches, shells, ships, or sand.  And that’s not including the textile prints, nick-nacks, and signs that read things like “Home is where the beach is”  or “Shell we dance?”  I feel like the home owner is subtly hinting at his doubt in my ability to remember my location on a map.  Like, “in case you wake in the middle of the night, gasping and saying to yourself, ‘GOSH! Where the heck am I?’  I’ve placed little reminders around the house, EVERYWHERE around the house actually, to perpetually reinforce your current coordinates.”  At the outset of my hiatus I determined to do some pleinair painting.  Seeing this over abundance of themed location reminders i had a paralyzing fear that someday my pleinair paintings would someday be hung in a similar collection of Goodwill acquired art.  So, I began attempting to look beyond the mere fact that: i was currently at the beach.  The mundane can be a good thing… it can also cause us to forget all thats happening around us.  It can lull us into saying “OHHHH YAY!!! I’m at the beach!” and excepting the endless barrage of cliche and indistinct motifs.  We fail to recognize the rare, unusual, and maybe passed over elements of life around us.  The truth is: the rare isn’t so rare.  It’s just not always so glamorous.  Hence my rationale in finding this decaying fish carcass so interesting.  This was a rare opportunity to study this animal that, if alive and well in it’s natural domain would have been too fast (and wet) to paint.  So, we shared a moment on the beach in a pile of crumbling shells, broken reeds and driftwood sticks.  A subtle reminder of the dominating fact surrounding us; death is a reality in this current age… even here at the beach.  I don’t intend at all to be a ‘Debbie-Downer’ but let’s not let the novelty of location ever distract us from the story perpetually unfolding around us.