Somewhere #13 | R0038267 copia_a: photo by Roccantica, 7 April 2010
Children swing from a goalpost during the traditional Cossack games outside the village of Arkhonskaya in North Ossetia Alania Russia Photo @edkorniyenko @reuterspictures: image via SundayTImesPIctures @STPictures, 1 June 2018
Shiva Yeshlur, 13, from Rock Springs, Wyo., jumps into the air after correctly spelling "diastrophism" during the third round of the Scripps National Spelling Bee in Oxon Hill, Md., Wednesday, May 30, 2018.: photo by Cliff Owen/AP, 30 May 2018
Children swing from a goalpost during the traditional Cossack games outside the village of Arkhonskaya in North Ossetia Alania Russia Photo @edkorniyenko @reuterspictures: image via SundayTImesPIctures @STPictures, 1 June 2018
Shiva Yeshlur, 13, from Rock Springs, Wyo., jumps into the air after correctly spelling "diastrophism" during the third round of the Scripps National Spelling Bee in Oxon Hill, Md., Wednesday, May 30, 2018.: photo by Cliff Owen/AP, 30 May 2018
A Space Odyssey, 2001: photo by Stefano Lista, 30 May 2018
A Space Odyssey, 2001: photo by Stefano Lista, 30 May 2018
A Space Odyssey, 2001: photo by Stefano Lista, 30 May 2018
Untitled: photo by Sam Rodgers, 26 May 2018
Untitled: photo by Sam Rodgers, 26 May 2018
Untitled: photo by Sam Rodgers, 26 May 2018
5 comments:
I think we've just had the longest week of our lives. Here among the killer humans!
Was Jesus really kind to kitties though?
Gregory Porter: Take Me to the Alley (1 mic 1 take)
Gregory Porter: Take Me To The Alley
Well, they guild their houses in preparation for the King
And they line the sidewalks
With every sort of shiny thing
They will be surprised
When they hear him say
Take me to the alley
Take me to the afflicted ones
Take me to the lonely ones
That somehow lost their way
Let them hear me say
I am your friend
Come to my table
Rest here in my garden
You will have a pardon
Take me to the alley
Take me to the afflicted ones
Take me to the lonely ones
That somehow lost their way
Let them hear me say
I am your friend
Come to my table
Rest here in my garden
You will have a pardon
They will be surprised
When they hear him say
Take me to the alley
Take me to the afflicted ones
Take me to the lonely ones
That somehow lost their way
Let them hear me say
I am your friend
Come to my table
Rest here in my garden
You will have a pardon
You will have a pardon
Oh, take me to the alley (Take me to the alley)
Take me to the afflicted ones (afflicted ones)
Take me, take me, take me, take me, take me
Wait just one minute, now. Jesus was human, and invented rat poison.
When you say it like that it almost makes sense. Like everything else about Jesus.
So did he invent it to rid his garden of, perhaps, those who were afflicted, yet - O woe, worse affliction - not human?
Perhaps for use on extermination projects there in his garden of pardon, yes. It sounds so warm and pleasant there. Don't you sometimes long for the feeling of being nestled to the breast of someone strong and large? I mean, only for a minute? A bosom friend so to speak. A bösenfreund.
Still, Jesus should have thought about adding a warning label.
"They too are your children, O Lord, why do you wish horrible unintelligible pain and convulsions upon them, for sport, as though they were toys - is it out of that boundless kindness we are supposed to be feeling when we are here in the garden, being pardoned by you?"
You so rarely get a voice in that lower register these days. Gregory Porter's something else.
That metaphysic that Ceravolo worked through in his later poems - thinking about his body and its place and the thing doing the thinking too. An odd solace there. I'm very glad there was a Joe Ceravolo.
Hold it right there, old fellow. You are blaming the wrong victim. Jesus was the rat in his father's garden. Rats are sweeties. Once before being crippled by the traffic, when still able to travel the streets, I had the acquaintance of a woman of the street who kept a moveable rat hotel, or perhaps dormitory would be the better word, in a three-tiered shopping cart, with food and water stations on each tier, a carefully monitored diet arranged in full consideration of food groups, and a cloth draped over everything, tough gal, sweet ratties; month or two later, bumped into again, enquired after ratties, she shrugged, They ran off when I was sleeping. No longer here, ergo gone. Street epistemology. But his father pardoned him by squeezing him so tightly against his chest that all the breath went right out of him. And that's why we have climate change, all these crazy restless winds. I'm sure you've noticed. You're just so much better than I am, when it comes to not letting the traffic get to you.
Duncan,
Please forgive the old coot's ravings. It takes hours for the googlies to take pity on the old bugger and put up a comment; in these twilight hours of Blogger it's all boats lowered all the time, it seems; and in this case 'twas not merely any comment, but a comment from a gentleman. So... I had just now seen yours, and replied at typically raving length, but the googlies disappeared that, too, showing that their updated democratic application of chaos theory as psychological torture seems to be going quite well, thanks very much.
The Porter track has evidently been affecting me for some time now, I ought to learn to be showing it a bit more respect, then, for the very beautiful thing it is. Those pipes. And the look - almost a letdown to learn that it is a skin condition. (!) Anyway the facial aspect, that strangeness, deepens the total profound impression.
In another performance, evidently unseen by anybody - in fact and literally, nobody at all, since last time I lookt, maybe a year ago - that aspect is diminished by distance, and distance is good, though everyone's in the dark. Here he identifies the afflicted ones, and it turns out they are, as we had expected, of the street (or, it is hinted, of the audience).
Take me to the alley by Gregory Porter at Cobb Energy, 23 June 2017
Ceravolo's acknowledgement of the body defies descriptive terms like candid, frank, honest, open, to be replaced by awkward, embarrassed, sometimes even clumsy, but never confessional; the feeling is at most times, above all, real - and much to be grateful for, in that!
Without a life at some times and in some ways troubled, I can't imagine there being an interesting poetry, in "our" time. Not that the trouble itself is ever the production, more that it's always the source of tension, the spring of the energy.
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