POEMS for LENT • MOBY DICK

"Moby Dick" by Troy's Work Table.

Sidewalk chalk wash, sidewalk chalk, chalk pastels, and charcoal pencil on 12" x 12" concrete board.

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"'Pale mast, so long!' I say, as I drown, mad..." —from "Moby Dick" by Anthony Etherin

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This poem is Oulipo on steroids.

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There are multiple constraints.

First, it is a sonnet, which means fourteen line of ten syllables in each line. Second, it is a Petrarchan sonnet, which means that its rhyme scheme is a b b a a b b a c d c d c d. Third, it is a palindrome. Fourth, it manages amidst all of that to convey the narrative thread of Melville's Moby-Dick.

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Let's return to the fact that the poem is a palindrome. Not only is it bound by number of lines and syllables and end rhymes, but it does it all with the second set of seven lines being a mirror image of the first set of seven lines!

I don't even think like this. The poem is amazing to me.

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And then the poem ends as the novel, with the crew dead because of the madness of the captain, the ship sunk and all (but one) drowned.

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The chalk art is inspired by Polynesian death masks, in addition to the lines of the poem.

POEMS for LENT • YOU ARE GONE, BROTHER

"You Are Gone, Brother" by Troy's Work Table.

Sidewalk chalk wash, sidewalk chalk, chalk pastels, and charcoal pencil on 12" x 12" concrete board.

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"We danced in sewage / And brushed our teeth with ash." and "We float like eyes stitched to the sky, / Looking for each other / In all the wrong places." —from "You Are Gone, Brother" by Zubair Ahmed, as found in City of Rivers

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This poem, along with its companions in City of Rivers, is filled with a multitude of images and the vibrancy of life. It is also filled with longing and loss.

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The interesting piece for me, though, is what happens between the strophes. In the spaces between them, there are pauses, moments of silence. Each of these is like a breath between words. Each of these is like a time and a space where reflection can take place.

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This poem is remembrance and it is prayer. This poem is seeking and searching. This poem is ephemeral and fleeting things. It is filled with stench, dirt, ash, sewage, sand, and other things that "are vanishing."

Yet, even though things are messy and in a state of decay, the poem still miraculously holds together.

POEMS for LENT • EARLY POMPEIAN

"Early Pompeian" by Troy's Work Table.

Sidewalk chalk wash, sidewalk chalk, chalk pastels, and charcoal pencil on 12" x 12" concrete board.

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"that portrait / with its plum-parted lips, / the skin of pomegranate, / the forehead's blank, unborn bewilderment."

and

"On the black wings of your screams I watched vultures rise"

and

"the sea / is black and salt as the mind of a woman after labour."

—from "Early Pompeian" by Derek Walcott, as found in The Fortunate Traveller and Selected Poems

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As I am reading this poem, I learn that Derek Walcott died yesterday at the age of 87. He lived a long life. He received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1992.

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Many of Walcott's poems are about his native Saint Lucia, but he also frequently incorporated biblical imagery and the myths and cultures of the ancient world. In "Early Pompeian," he conflates a stillbirth and imagery from the culture of Pompeii, in addition to its destruction by the volcano Vesuvius.

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There is power in the labor of a birth and power in the eruption of the volcano. There is an echo of those buried by the eruption in the curled form of the stillborn infant.

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Death, birth, still birth, premature birth, suffering, existential despair. All of it couched in beautiful language—rich, vibrant, lively language.

How did I end up here again? Oh, yes, by choice. So here I am in the dust, the ash, the flesh, the mess.

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Rest in peace, Mr. Walcott. Thank you for the poetry.

POEMS for LENT • DEATH IS a DIALOGUE

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"Death Is a Dialogue" by Troy's Work Table.

Sidewalk chalk wash, sidewalk chalk, chalk pastels, and charcoal pencil on 12" x 12" concrete board.

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Death is a Dialogue between
The Spirit and the Dust.
"Dissolve" says Dust—The Spirit "Sir
I have another Trust"—

Death doubts it—Argues from the Ground—
The Spirit turns away
Just laying off for evidence
An Overcoat of Clay.

—#976 (Johnson numbering) by Emily Dickinson

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I had to work my secret girlfriend into this project! (I think her poem speaks for itself.)

POEMS for LENT • from THE BOOK of the FOUR PRECEPTS

"The Four Precepts" by Troy's Work Table.

Sidewalk chalk wash, sidewalk chalk, chalk pastels, and charcoal pencil on 12" x 12" concrete board.

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"You dream: from your heart grow / a prickly palm-tree, a pink lotus / your head has sprouted a bush with a nest in it, / you dream, a bride in red / beside you, you in red ornaments / dance for the joy of the Lord." —from "from The Book of the Four Precepts" by Yuli Gugolev (translated by J. Kates), as found in Contemporary Russian Poetry: An Anthology (Evgeny Bunimovich, editor; J. Kates, translation editor)

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"Imagine yourself asleep, pretending to be dead," is how the poem begins. But I get to escape death and enjoy the dreamscapes that Gugolev leads us through, because it is only pretend.

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I don't necessarily understand everything here, but that is quite alright. The images are rich and strange. There is a sense of myth and religion sneaking into the lines. There is beauty amidst the weirdness.

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We may not be dealing with dust and ashes here, but there is Earth, Water, Fire, and Wind as foundation. It gives form and life to the persons, places, and things in the poem.

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When I imagined the anthropomorphic plant in the poem, I could only see the plant-man as having a lotus head, even though the poem clearly states his heart begets the lotus and his head is a bush. So artistic license was indeed taken with his representation. And I imagined the bride as a plant as well.

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I fear that I may be missing cultural references that I do not know (and don't even know I'm missing). Even so, there is plenty here to reflect upon and revel in as one image morphs into another, as one line leads into the next. So that is what I'll do. I will read and savor, read again and savor once more.

POEMS for LENT • PSALM 88

"Psalm 88" by Troy's Work Table.

Sidewalk chalk wash, sidewalk chalk, chalk pastels, and charcoal pencil on 12" x 12" concrete board.

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"I am as those who've run out of time / Without vigor, afloat among the dead" and "My eyes burn with acid sufferings / And every day I call out to you / Every day I reach out my hands toward you" —from "Psalm 88" by Norman Fischer, as found in Opening to You: Zen-Inspired Translations of the Psalms

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I didn't intend on being in Psalm 88 today, but here I am.

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These translations of the Psalms are written by a Zen priest and poet who was raised Jewish. There is a meeting of different religious faiths in these renderings of the Psalms. Yet, they still sing and sorrow, whether of a Buddhist flavor or of their original Jewish sources.

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Originally, I was planning on Psalm 90, which has more of a Lenten feel to me (and feels better balanced between lamentation and celebration than Psalm 88), but then death set in. My cockatiel, a long-time family companion, died. Then I had to work a funeral, which I knew was coming. But both were bookended by other deaths. Death everywhere. Dismal weather. Rain and gloom. The sorrow of watching a nation and its people crushed by those who worship wealth and greed at the expense of that same nation and its people.

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Psalm 88 is a cry for help to a God who seems absent. And the cry in this psalm is never answered. It just hangs there.

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The language, both familiar and unfamiliar, due to the difference that lives in the lines of these translations, causes me to approach these psalms with caution and quiet. The difference makes me see things that it becomes easy to not see when I read them in a "normal" translation. The difference allows me to hear the pain and suffering of the psalmist in this particular lament.

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Sometimes one is "Pulled down to the bottom / Gasping for breath". If that is the case, then how can one still scream?

POEMS for LENT • THEOLOGY of NONEXISTENCE

"Theology of Nonexistence" by Troy's Work Table.

Sidewalk chalk wash, sidewalk chalk, chalk pastels, and charcoal pencil on 12" x 12" concrete board.

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"But if I plunge into this via negativa, the figure I'll find is not on high , and I expect no revelation" and "Of not accepting that you're not, the silence" —from "Theology of Nonexistence" by Jacques Roubaud, as found in Some Thing Black (and translated from the French by Rosmarie Waldrop)

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Some Thing Black is a collection of poems by Jacques Roubaud that explores the aftermath of his wife's sudden death. These are poems of mourning and grief, and, eventually, coming to terms with his wife's absence.

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"Theology of Nonexistence" in other words is "God-word of Not Being." But what if God is silent? Or worse, God may be speaking in some sense, but one cannot understand it?

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"Theology of Nonexistence" falls in the middle of these more than 80 poems. It is a balance of loss and love. It is a cry into the abyss of death. It is protest and remembrance.

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Some Thing Black is one of the inspirations for my own Black Psalms. There is something about these poems, these ruminations and reflections upon death and existence, that presses into truths as it moves along. There is brutal honesty placed upon the page, and it was something that I hoped to emulate as I likewise explored disease, suffering, and existence. Answers may not necessarily be forthcoming, but sometimes the simple act of asking the questions is enough.

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One of my favorite ways of creating chalk art is when I can build a new piece over the remnants of an old piece. "Theology of Nonexistence" uses the "bones" of "Of a Child Early Born" to create a new image.

I like the process of transformation that this kind of art-work entails, especially when the results are satisfying.

"Theology of Nonexistence" and its predecessor are two of my favorite chalk art interpretations of this "Poems for Lent" project so far.

POEMS for LENT • PHOENIX-TONGUE

"Phoenix -Tongue" by Troy's Work Table.

Sidewalk chalk wash, sidewalk chalk, chalk pastels, and charcoal pencil on 12" x 12" concrete board.

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"What some refer to as love / others burn as fuel." and "One egg we cooked in the center. The rest we saved." —from "Phoenix Tongue" by Michael Schmeltzer, as found in Blood Song

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This is another poem that is not only for Lent, but of Lent. In fact, it starts with an epigraph of Genesis 3:19—"...for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return."

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The (divine) fire that scars often returns us to the (mortal) ash and dust that we are.

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This sonnet contains so much that it needs to be read many times. That is the only way to unpack everything within.

Sex. Death. Family relations. Childhood memories. The Towers from 9/11. Cruelty and care residing together. Loss. Joy and suffering. But mostly suffering.

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The poem is the first in the collection and acts as a gate for the rest. Be careful when you enter that you aren't consumed. (Perhaps that wouldn't be so bad, though. We dabble in being born once more.)

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In addition to the imagery of the poem, I couldn't shake the notion of the speaker being the Titan Atlas. (And I don't even know from whence this notion comes.) Here Atlas holds the egg of the world, cooked in the flames that "set the nest ablaze."

POEMS for LENT • OF a CHILD EARLY BORN

"Of a Child Early Born" by Troy's Work Table.

Sidewalk chalk wash, sidewalk chalk, chalk pastels, and charcoal pencil on 12" x 12" concrete board.

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"For the child is born an unbreathing scripture / and her broken authors wait / on one gurney together." and "if lightning staggers down the hall of mothers" —from "Of a Child Early Born" by Katie Ford, as found in Blood Lyrics

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I could have easily chosen nearly any poem in Katie Ford's Deposition (2002) or Blood Lyrics (2014).

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Like "The Anti-Golem," this poem is about creation and the messiness that it entails. It is likewise about ritual, prayer, and incantations to ensure that the creature lives.

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Like "Evolution," the process of creation involves being scarred in some sense as creator. In "Evolution," it is fire. In "Of a Child Early Born," it is lightning.

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I know this longing and pleading and negotiating. Not due to a premature birth, but due to miscarriage and loss.

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The comparisons—things that weigh as much as "this child of grams"—are what really carry this poem for me. I can feel the lack of presence, the lightness, the fleeting quality of this life manifested in metaphor and words.

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The chalk art is inspired not only by the poem, but also by the Star Child in Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey.

POEMS for LENT • THE ANTI-GOLEM

"The Anti-Golem" by Troy's Work Table.

Sidewalk chalk wash, sidewalk chalk, chalk pastels, and charcoal pencil on 12" x 12" concrete board.

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"Prenez d'abord une poigneé de poussière et cendres et, en disant le nom d'anti-Dieu, c'est-à-dire de Satan, soufflez dessus."  —from "The Anti-Golem" by Alta Ifland, as found in Voice of Ice / Voix de Glace

"Start by taking a handful of dust and ashes and, saying the name of the anti-God, that is, of Satan, blow upon it." —translated from French to English by Alta Ifland

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There are so many things right about this poem.

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First, it is a dual-language edition, with the original French facing its English translation, both written by Alta Ifland.

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Second, it dabbles in Jewish folklore meets Charles Perrault by way of the Brothers Grimm.

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Third, it is humans meet God by way of Satan. Or, more so, it is humans become God by way of Satan. Except that is the "lie." (And there is the connection to "Bell Theory.")

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Fourth, it is a prose poem that is so finely crafted that it doesn't need line breaks. (In fact, that goes for the entire book. These prose poems have been written in French, translated into English, fine-tuned in French, fine-tuned in English, et cetera, until they sing.)

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Fifth, not only is it a poem for Lent, but it is a poem of Lent. It is "poussière et cendres," "dust and ashes."

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The meeting of the man with Sleeping Beauty, now both awake, and the awakening of nature that follows, is a weirding way of examining the Fall. Paradise is the "lie." We are left with questions of life, new life, a return to life. We are not given answers.