Sometimes I feel like the universe is electric. Everything, all of creation, is singing this amazing song, and my ears and soul can barely take it in for its size and volume and complexity.

I’ve been working on a song this summer, trying to put to sound and poetry fragments of this notion and the implications that accompany it. I’m calling the song Untoward Choir.

Verse 1:
I’ve been listening again to words that aren’t words
And melodies mostly unpitched.
Untamed is the truth I’m hearing.
Sand through hands, a wave’s retreat:
Displays of its captors’ defeats.

Vendors package and sell pale echoes of lines
Laying lifeless though painted for show
While the sources sing on
Their Voice ‘come a wild terrible glory
Mocking each manicured Story.

Chorus:
Earth, wind, water, fire
Love, fear, trust, desire
Seasons, cycles, orbits, turnings
Tasks mundane and witches burning
Wars, forgivings, can’t keep livings
Textures, colors, fathers, mothers
God and goddess, child that taught us
Dark and light, religion’s fight
Wisdom, madness, torture, gladness: sing.
All sing.
The Untoward Choir

Verse 2:
From a tiny, dense seed
Booms the universe’s show
‘Til the force makes its splay return inward.
A cosmic flasher flashing.
Brazen expansion exposes the all
‘Til contraction curves secrets back into the pall.

Outward, inward
The cycle repeats
in my listening, history revealing
the secrets dense in my soul.
Look out to look in, look in to see out
Chaos’ pattern the fount from which all Music flows.

Verse 3:
Each life sings a line
On Millennia’s scroll
Weather noble or base in its creed.
Truth-telling unaware.
The Choir impartial to evil’s intrigues
Neither forcing a limit to angelic deed

In the choice that appears
In this consciousness raising
To fashion the shape of my phrasing
My soul beats time
Pulsing to sing with the flame in me burning
Melodies birthed from the Love of my yearning.

This entry was posted on Friday, August 20th, 2004 at 6:45 am and is filed under Books and Art, Philosophy, Writing, Religion/Spirituality. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.