by Jack Ramey | May 12, 2015 | Art, Jack Ramey, plato, Poetry
The last few bars of Mysticali Rose drifting down the street mixt with dust and rolling mesquite the beat lingering there in that corner where heat gathers itself up into a knot of tangled memories and squats in a heap of rags and print and sighs out loud for squandered love. You want to sing but cannot even hum. You want to scream but no sound escapes your mouth. Only the white moth flies out making good her fatal break as bone men strum their liquid guitars and proud dancers in red shake their fiery heads in tune, in tune with the fierce rhythms of leaving. from Eavesdropping in Plato’s Café Featured Painting: Blue Dancers by Susan...
by Jack Ramey | May 1, 2015 | Jack Ramey, plato, Poetry
… And when the thousand years are expired, Satan shall be loosed out of his prison, And shall go out and deceive the nations Which are in the four quarters of the earth, Gog and Magog, to gather them together to battle: The number of whom is as the sand of the sea. Revelations 20: 7-8 Living in the Land of Gog we see but dimly as through scrim of fog. So much is hidden from our privy view, daily we are bidden to rise up and listen long to our leaders talk as they talk through strong martial voices, intermediaries on screens chalked with pie charts and actuaries whose heads bob and prophesy war, disaster, horror for a future we must prepare for by making sacrifice, keeping ever vigilant eye out for terror planned by dark, silent neighbors, spies of our enemies, the dogs who live in the Land of Magog and worship the false god. Living in the Land of Gog we must bow to the One God who knows and sees all: Aygog. Aygog the All Mighty, who chose to live among us as common sod who nightly burned like us and daily froze and bled Himself for us so that we lowly might eat and drink of Him, suffer with Him to make ourselves free of all that is earthly, all unclean unseemly habits, unprescribed behavior, all action not writ down from His dream : the Great Dream of Aygog that screams out the aweful name of the Savior while we are shaken awake, the teaming...
by Jack Ramey | Apr 27, 2015 | Art, Jack Ramey, plato, Poetry
XXVII Simonides of Keos inventor of the art of memory said that painting is silent poetry and poetry is painting that speaks. He knew the true poet’s wish: to make a poem whose images speak to so many people that its words live on forever. But forever is much too long a time. Just ask poor Sappho whose poems cannot be found except in tiny scraps: one stuck here, one stuck there, one found wrapped around a mummy’s head, recycled to preserve a politician’s memory. from Eavesdropping in Plato’s...
by Jack Ramey | Apr 25, 2015 | Jack Ramey, plato, Poetry
Sometimes I want to be like Wang Wei or any other Chinese poet silent on a cold mountain top looking down on corrupt civilization and the brutality of all species struggling to live out their days feeding on others. Sometimes I want to be like Bruce Wayne with a dark secret identity using my mind and pop-techno-toys to fight evil and crime. But what is evil? And who decides what acts are crimes? The hive-mind? Or the unseen rulers of the world who have held us all in thrall for centuries? Sometimes I want to be like Jesus walking sandaled across the land healing the sick and raising the dead but then again I do not want to die hanging on a cross after flogging and torture and all your friends deserting you because they do not want to die like you. Sometimes I want to be like Orpheus or Saint Francis with birds landing all over my head and shoulders and fingers and arms all the dark gentle creatures of the forest come around to talk to me, to walk with me as I tell them about the joys of poetry and meditation, the devotion of ecstasy and rapture – things that they actually already know in their furry feathered minds, and they then teach me how to be in the world, simple and holy and pure, without wanting to be someone else. from Eavesdropping in Plato’s Café Featured Painting: Poet on a Mountaintop by Shěn Zhōu, 1427-1509 Related Review: The Selected Poems of Wang...
by Jack Ramey | Feb 16, 2015 | Jack Ramey, plato, Poetry
After reading the morning news Such properties as these do make me funk. I shall go outside and become one with ducks, who must for now remain invisible, even though they seem indivisible from my poor twisted psyche today in a world full of grand plans and final disarray. The drama and dharma of the purple iris petal, and the innocence of the wild daisy’s kiss all attest to this: there is a power deep down things a leafy testament from grass to trunk to bird wings lighting on branch tips swinging in the breeze of spring’s morning lifting light alike to ants and me and all of creation. A rare honey bee at my window becomes an ageless Blakean angel reborn in aura-glow of all seven colors of chakra’s rainbow : her buzz a mantra hymn to what is holy now and always will remain so: the tidal flow of connected electrons that spin and show how vital and how sacral is the soul of earth the grand cycle of birth and life and death here on this plane of existence where we wrestle with sorrow and joy, doubt and belief. Are we really here on this struggling planet or do we dream this brief butterfly dream for only a moment, mate then with the pleading cry of our mother; die, and rise up again, bleeding, whole and free? Will we discover a new creed, a covenant covered in green leaves that breed forth regeneration, resurgent song sprung from the great well of divine imagination spun from the words and mind of the holy multiverse that dives...
