christophercocca-blog

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The Old Italians Dying by Lawrence Ferlinghetti

http://www.scalponefamilytree.info/OldItaliansDyingPoem.htm

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"As a term, postmodernism came into my vocabulary in 1988.  It had not yet moved from art and English and music into theology the way it has in recent years by then, but it was, of course, still extant in the visual codes of culture."

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"If you don't see me in Heaven," I said to my wife, "I'm probably in 1995.  You may have to come find me."

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No Hands Nor Feet But Your Own

Listen, I said.  I mean, I have to ask you something.  Something about him was different.  

I looked my brother in the face.  Are you an angel? I said.

"No."

How did it happen? I mean, what was it like?

He showed me his hands.  His arms stopped at his wrists.  They were sewn shut.  

"I tried to become a priest in South America. I thought they might take me.  But not without hands."

Who did this to you?

"Them.  When I came back.  My God," he said, "I must have scared them. They said now I couldn't afflict them." 

I would like to send bushels of hands to the Cathedral, I said.  

"No, brother," he said.  "Send them hearts."

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Behold. paisani, we bear the sin of the world in our guts. 

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Brave One, Dear One

I have a built-in crisis setting.  It’s existential and chemical.  It auto-pilots when I’m out of (3S,4R)-3-[(2H-1,3-benzodioxol-5-yloxy)methyl]-4-(4-fluorophenyl) piperidine, or if I forget.  Forgetting is the point, though, when you have OCD.  In some ways, this is a self-defeating process.  Self-fulfilling.  Built-in are the lucid dreams, I’m at a loss to comprehend the nature of reality.  Was I really with you in the morning glory patch, did we really kiss? Were we only children?  Have we really grown?

  It occurred to me that the arrangements we have made might be fleeting in the scheme of things. That what we bind on earth is not bound in heaven, that the transcendental existential is as far from categorical experience as play yard weddings are from our confessions before God and man and State.   

  And what if this is so?   I have no built-in answer, no built-in way of knowing.  For the moment, I am led along by feelings stretching legs and gaining holds.  (3S,4R)-3-[(2H-1,3-benzodioxol-5-yloxy)methyl]-4-(4-fluorophenyl) piperidine is the oil I pour down from crenelations.  And what if I hold back?

  Brave one, dear one.  Don't hold back.  Pour the boiling oil down, turn these hordes to ash.  Emancipate from biochemistry, from a lack of serotonin, clarity, peace.  Brave one, dear one, see your doctor.  Brave one, dear one, please, God, take your pills. 

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Comment Spam as Found Poetry

"Asking questions are actually fastidious thing if you are not understanding anything completely, however this post gives good understanding yet."

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Niebuhr

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Listen/purchase: holy holy holy by saints & Children.

Really proud of what John Hardt, (not that) Rob Bell, Andrew Yang, Willy Weiant and the folks from Retro City Studios did on this track and on the album.  With @johnhardtmusic.

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April 23, 2008 (On The Bypass)

It was Northern music and the sun spread-out like Plato's forms and I was locked there for a minute in God's plain sight and him in mine.

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My First Tweet (2008)

what the heck is twitter and how will i use it, I wonder.

— Christopher Cocca (@ccocca) April 13, 2008

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intro/invocation

The Sun and Moon would be our sibling rivals Made for balance, still they praise you without measure –   Kestrels sing their compline, great things move in waves and we look up – For bearing, we suppose   But should we stand like Brother Oak, crown canopy cathedral, Or testify on boarders that the walls we’ve built have fallen?   Should our witness be in mountain stone? In glacial walls still climbing or the humility of lowlands, bowed with humble hills, our time as mountains ended?   Put hot coals on our lips and we will sing! of stones and tunnels through them! In graves, from pathogens according to their kind, we will drink the run-off, we will rise and fall on the rhythm of your breath in the heaving of your frame we find ourselves   And we believe you rise.   The dead shall rise, the dead shall rise, and with a shout, release. Part air Part sky Part sea Part sea Moses parts the sea  the cold war kids, the space race tribe, the children of the atom cross    the Earth is wet embrace And we will live forever on the landed sea, the breath of God in waves, in waves, the coming of Our  Lord in time Great Beasts always breaching, the thistle in the whirl-wind the great finch and the thorn, we are children on your breast in the heaving of your frame we find ourselves.    

“intro/invocation" songs from a broken liturgy: volume 1 by saints&children © Christopher Cocca/saints&children    http://saintsandchildren.bandcamp.com/track/intro  

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All Hallows' Homily (After Martin Luther)

Clay in  the potter’s hands

Bones in the potter’s field

we fall headlong into you

the sackcloth of your handiwork;

we are torn and broken

we are on the mend.

Did I see you, Sister, when God brought us out of Egypt?

Did I see you, Brother, when God made us from the dirt?

And the breath of God is mossy;

Life enthrones God’s shout across the cosmos

In the quiet of the garden,

in the chaos of poor birth, bloody, shit-stained, real.  

In the quiet of a compline,

In the scandal of God’s murder,

In the God-forsaken God made like us,

bloody, shit-stained, real.  

The breath of God is muddy, the breath of God is sorry, the breath of God is spent.

And God descended into Hades, Death, the Void, a gap, our Hell

A place without God,

God occupied

In solidarity with the living clay, the dry bones in the field, entrails spilled in shame for silver, power and the devil’s game, control.

And by knowing life without God, God suddenly knew us.

And God realized  God was cold, and moved then toward the fire.  

And God realized God was hungry, and prepared then for a feast.

And God realized God was lonely, and God set a table for us.

And God’s love burned away the hellfire

And God’s hunger swallowed up the grave

And God’s longing made a place for us;

Eat, for all is ready

Come, for all are welcome,

Know shelter in the Mighty Fortress of our God

In the potter’s field, where broken shards are cast aside;

where broken people, cast aside, sleep in common graves

the new fruits of God’s kingdom push up from the clay

Nourished in the blood of God

reformed and reforming

we are shaped by wounded hands

bloody, holy, real

crafted by the Living God

treasured by the One who formed us first from earth

with mossy breath

and here again in blood and love and holy fire

remade and remaking.

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It could have gone this way.

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In The Brick House

  I heard music coming from the Brick House.  We were on the swings.  They were playing Brian Wilson.

I heard you in the comic shop. My friends tried to sing but you were speaking.  “Someone like you,” you said. “Some almost just like you.”

I saw you on the gray path, painted by the moon.  You wouldn’t let me take your picture.  All of us were blue.  

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work for justice and you'll end up here one way or another. 

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