Hard and Soft. (Okra and Japanese Magnolia)

How many are your works Oh Lord.  In wisdom you have made them all.  The whole world is full of your possessions.


(Psalm 104)

Q: Why do I take pictures?

A: Cause I can't play the music I hear in my head!

AR365 Day 117. Theme: Music

Today's audio track, from a pretty good band with a limited but dedicated following, playing from the 3rd finest album in the history of the world. ((A Sigh For You by DA (aka Daniel Amos) from their 1986 album Fearful Symmetry))

To follow my 365 on Flickr, check in HERE

the Shinners

AR365 Day 116: Theme: Music.

(okay, were stretching this to illustrate settings that beget music.)

for more images of Ozell and Derick, or to follow my 365 project

http://www.flickr.com/photos/kirkjordan/

Ozell and his nephew Derick inside the Wright Shoe-Shine Parlor, a business which has been quietly in operation for some 30 years, in a warehouse looking-space in Downtown Little Rock, AR (USA)


For your listening enjoyment:


The Soul of a Man (Blind Willie Johnson Version)

or my favorite modern rendition:

The Soul of a Man (Bruce Cockburn Version)

Quercus Borealis

An old but iconic Kirk poem


A Stained Glass Spider Web Cathedral  (3/91)

When funnel clouds clip rainbows

in our world, where the vestiges of Eden whirl

in a mash of mangled parrot wings

or Iris, smithereened to make

makeup,

We can see why rainbows flinch;

They don’t make it very long.

Banshee decibels defign, the decimating means:

Locomotive grinding wheel , cone of writhen hate,

vicious biting vapors, Hell-

icopter blades.

Each bashing is a moment-ary

Torque

Of glass,

disbanding shock,

Indigo

From icon wrenched

reched red,                   shrapnel  butterflies

Violet, 

         Violently constr ue d,             arch

From Arch etype

divorced.

(The sky is reeling odd tonight!)

I’ve read about those pristine days when rainbow shard was rare.

Lions still ate lily-pads, and rattlesnakes were raging fads

As playmates for the nursery.

Prisma-ash is pollen now,

Coursing through our breath,

Twisted beauty permeates, and I like eating meat.

The eyes of flies are pigment parks in geodesic dome,

Black radiance with chandelier, stuffed in honeycomb.

Oil on the parking lot, mimics Northern lights:

Borealis flares in beaded rain, on surfaces like night.

Death implied is banking, pivoting on air

A bloodied stink is calling to a colored thoroughfare.

Gliding white as whisper, missiles cruise the dark

Pilot fish are dental floss for shearing shard of shark.

The cacti in the desert, wear a brutal fringe,

Prickle pear, with rain, explode into a floral binge.

Snow flakes falling virgin white, in the tilted world

Would we know that dance at all, if sin were not unfurled?

Now I share my paradox:

I believe in paradise, with us once and yet to come:

"World without End…"

I believe in beauty too:

"Meadows from His garden here."

But these strange shattered-glories, fallen-splendors reign

Carving raging channels, deep within my brain

Of a convoluted beauty,

Heaven would exclude.

Note: This early poem totally baffled the class to which I presented it. Several praised the images, but it met with an almost universal “hungh”. One kid said that it said “nothing” well, then added that he liked it till it mentioned God. Now I don’t know if I missed on a communication level because the poem really is too abstract, or if I was simply working with alien themes. I wanted to press a religious question with out sounding like a bible.

To be honest, the title threw them. Folks were looking for the cathedral in the poem. But it wasn’t there. I was mixing metaphors and playing with a personal symbol. We tried not to explain our poems too much –“Bad form”; But I'll help you with the title at least.

Somewhere in the nineties a tornado hit our small college town of Stillwater Oklahoma. And not just one, but four separate cones descending like teats from an angry udder. It wasn’t a national story but it did leave a lot of broken glass and shingles and a flipped car or two in our apartment complex. Later, in typical space-head thinking, I imagined shattered glass tossed and lodged in spider webs … really ….like the bits of broken glass in church windows. The rest is yours.

Splay

Gnarly

And If you find it here, I never mind a Flickr vote

http://www.flickr.com/photos/kirkjordan/

Cohesion

The 365 group of which I am a part (a club of Arkansas based Photographers who have an outlet on Flickr, in which we post a picture a day for a year....) have recently been playing with drops of various kinds.  This is my variation on the drop theme.  Flickr here.

The Visitation

Providence United Methodist Church, Charlotte, North Carolina on the "I'm dreaming of a white Day-after Christmas" storm of 2010.   (What cleary was a storm for the the Northern States, turned Charlotte into a postcard, which in turn cleared in a couple days.   This particular look is produced from a single image...(No Photoshop trickery) as flowing-blowing-snow pours through a strong shaft of light used to illumine the steeple.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/kirkjordan/5302401018/

You say, I say

You say, I say
(correspondence with a departed poet, KSJ)


Dear Anne

It may be
that you,

Living as you do
in the radiance of city din, or eating
underneath His chin,

Are not quick to hear
poems from half dead lips,
or peer
into the dark abyss from which you
are so greatly liberated.


But,
if our Brother would consent
I pray he pass a fond hello, or
let you know that one
who labors under sun with double heart and dusty eyes
has found within your words
a sister in the soul.

--

It’s a strange thing,
this parting of the heart and posting light

(or misery)

for all the colony to see, but
could you ever have imaged that
your words would reach
three hundred fifty suns
into the future?

And now, here you are
right up front: the “first” gal poet in an anthology of American works.

Anne Bradstreet
1612 to 1672

--


I thought to tell you first, how things have changed—
Your wilderness is parking lot
and littered with machines beyond your dreams.
We wear less clothes or sometimes hold your ilk,
in poor repute.

Indeed, we think of Puritans as pleasure snuffing prudes--
stern faced zealots with a taste for gloom and work in general
But then I read your words and find

SUPRIZE!

A red blooded woman with a taste for joy and life in general

--
And now,
What’s this? Could it be
that crickets filled your ears as they do mine

Or that
oak trees powered through your soul
like living praise?



You say:

Then on a stately Oak I cast mine Eye
Whose ruffling top the Clouds seem’d to aspire
How long since thou wast in thine infancy:
They strength and stature, more thy years admire.
Hath hundred winters past since thou wast born,
or thousand since thou brakest thy shell of horn?

I say:

A seed is power
Spewing power,
Stink or weed
Or common flower.

You say:

I heard the merry grasshopper then sing,
the black-clad Cricket bear a second part;
They kept on tune and plaid on the same string
Seeming to glory in their little art.

I say:

Cricket and cicada calling
A walling falling on dawn
Black audio, rainbow snow
Blowing like a blizzard through my ears.

You Say:

Thy Swift Annual and diurnal course,
they daily streight and yearly oblique path,
Thy pleasing fervor and they scorching force
All mortals here they feeling knowledge hath;

I say:

Brother sun slices though the heavens
Like a bobsled
Running down a course of rigid nothingness
Ever pushed and pulled by pulsars
and the stellar winds of the Milky Way,
But still, He smashes the horizon
Exactly when, and
where He should.

You say:

What’s glory like to thee,
Soul of this world, this Universes Eye?

I say:

He steels a peak through the hole in the sky
We call the sun.

You say:

In a secret place where I once stood,
Close by the banks of lacrym flood,
I heard two sisters reason on
Things that are past and things to come.
One Flesh was called, who had her eye
On worldly wealth and vanity;
The other Spirit who did rear
Her thoughts unto a higher sphere

I say:

I got this doppelganger henchman
with the lusty eyes
steals my joy and deals in lies
plays with matches and gasoline
says: come on man, you can’t be clean.

You say:

Be still thou unregenerate part
Disturb no more my settled heart,
For I have vowed and so will do,
Thee as a foe still to pursue,
And combat with thee will and must
Until I see the laid in dust.

I say

Brother Jesu
Lend a hand
I got this ugly double-man
Hearing with my ears and talking out my tongue
How long Oh, Lord till he’s undone?

You say:

My crown, not diamonds, pearls or gold,
but such as angel’s heads enfold.
The city where I hope to dwell
There’s none on earth can parallel.

I say:

I want to dwell in that city
City of substance and form
I want to warm my skin in his eyes
And rise with the children of dawn.

You say:

Glory

I say:

Hallelujah

Rise

One of the deep pleasures of riding the State Employees Van to work, is that I can take a nap and give someone else the driving frustrations. One of the chief frustrations of riding the van is being caged when all glory is breaking loose. Like these last two days of rises and sets. (But then, this bridge isn't the kind of space you can stop or walk. And the birds... a total suprise. I never saw them till I looked back at my frames.

A bruised reed he will not break, 
and a faintly burning wick he will not quench; 
he will faithfully bring forth justice.  


(Isaiah, attributed to Christ.)

Twist and Shout

"For you shall go out in joy and be led back in peace; the mountains and the hills before you shall burst into song, and all the trees of the field shall clap their hands." 
(Isaiah 55:12)

Photonotes: Bradford Pear.  1 second or so exposure with twist and shout zooming.

Accidental Posting, Reliquarium by Kemper Crabb

I accidentally posted my review of Reliquarium, by Kemper Crabb on this blogspot first, and now some of the search engines are posting this as the place.  But you can find my review of Reliquarium here....where I post reviews.

Smells like Rain

The Cubist contempalates Pointelism.

Fall Color

  

Global Warming.  My life experience is too small to make that observation, but when it comes to weird gorgeous warm, today is it.

Hum

AR365, Day 43, Theme: Thankful


This is a multi-hued thanks. Symmetry. Crepe Myrtles. Red, Yellow, Blue, with rods and cones capable of showing us that the world radiates. (Imagine those colors all being there, but you were not equiped to know it.) Then there is God's eye, giving substance to our own.

Thank You.

Fred has a secret

AR365 Day 41, Week 6; Theme: Thankful

I met Fred while walking back to the car. (I had just had a fine meal of Salmon at a banquet.)  He saw me looking around with my camera, and asked if I might take his picture. I was able to buy him a sandwich.


One of the things I ask from time to time is "How do any of us become the people we become?" How much of who we are is sheer dumb luck, how much is determined by genes and environment (and in what mix) -- How much of what we become is the result of personal choice -- and how much belongs to the unseen purposes -- even grace of God. I am not sure we will ever untagle those riddles, though somethimes, when I consdier my place in life, I am deeply thankful.



Could'a   KSJ  5/2001


Could’a been a Tyson

Slice’n chicken, or your face
Could’a been the sliced
Could’a been your face with teethy ear.
(Either way, I’d make some bucks
or fade away amidst the clucks)

Could’a been a coon dog
with a culinary nose
Could’a been in Birmingham
near the fire hose –
Catching liquid cannon balls, or
Blasting back your uppity
insurrection –

Indeed, Could’a been the one to say
“I’m not riding at the back today”
Could’a been the one to place
shackles on your hands --

Could’a been old Bobbit
now at half-a-man.
Could’a made the scissors
at the factory …
Could’a been ol’ Jimmy D.
with a giant olfactory.
Could'a been the pilot of the Inola Gay.
Could'a been some new born kid
slightly in the way -- of light.

Could’a been some buxom blonde
Before your camera lens.
You asked me to stand
right over the fan, and
I fed your lust while acting
like I didn't know.

Could’a been your weak-willed husband,
burning anger deep inside,
but without the will to take you home.

Could’a been old Abe
Or Grant or Lee
Found that vision flexes with geography,
Could’a been a blend
of honor, necessity or lies,
Led the nation into blood
Or sparred us from the greater wrath of God.

Could’a done the goose step
Could’a been a goose
Could a been the hangman
Could’a been the noosed.
Could’a been so hard, as to fan the oven
Could’a been so twisted, as to join a coven

Could’a been the ripper
or the ripped.
The hooker or the hooked.
The bookie or the booked,
The bastard or the dad,
The vulture or the lad -who didn't find fresh water.

Could have been the woman that I hold …
Could have been the child that I scold.
Could have been
any of a hundred folks on the other side of me ...

Could’a begged my change – for booze
Could’a caught my glare
Could’a begged some dimes to live
Could’a shared the air
Could’a waited for my tip
or needed a kind word,
Could’a looked to me for light
but found me self absorbed.


Indeed, Could’a been a Jeckle or a Hyde,
held a dozen people deep inside;
Could’a felt as if my brain
would fly into a trillion parts.

(okay, this I can believe.)

Could’a been a David,
Good at writin’ psalms
Could’a a been a crowd
Good at wavin’ palms.
Could’a been a Kirk
Then I’d really be a jerk.
Could’a never needed to think odd.

Could’a been a rock
called forth to sing Your praise.

Things I am thankful for. The series. 1



Rays: Sunshine on My Shoulders Makes me Happpy.



TP







H2O



Liquid Neon

for a few more images:  Kirk's Flickr photo stream.

man in the moon

October 27, 2010

October 7, 2009

Sierra Club Generic;)



Blessings

Image (c) Kirk Jordan

Oh, graciously hear us,
Graciously hear us, we pray:
Pour from Thy windows upon us
Showers of blessing today.

Day 25 of the Arkansas 365 project

The Mighty Works Project, would like to thank God for the blessings of very real rain on our parched land.  This fall has been so much dust, but gentle wetting rains have given new color and life to the land.

Collision Course

Hosea, Can you see, by the dawns' early light.

10/19/10  tuesday Morn opened at the intersection of Sunrise, Sugar Maple, the Arkansas State Capitol,  and a massive storm system.  Moment later the skies turned dull, then to drizzle.

God is great.

I eye (Self Portrait)

I eye (Self Portrait)


A day ago a friend sent me a link to some incredible eye photos...which I hope embace in artist way (shamelessly borrow her idea) . I was trying the approach on myself. Looking into a mirror as I pointed my macro (off center) at my eye. My guess is the self in my eye, is the image of myself that I saw as I looked in the mirror.

Day 3, 4, 5 - Self Portrait Theme

Day 5

Day 4

Day 3

I will confess, I do have enough of an ego, that I enjoy snapping a pic of myself once in a while, but this week's 365 theme (Self Portraits) is kind of like giving Listerine to a Drunk.  Due apologies to everyone, and I hope to be back to standard themes soon.

Day 2, Self Portrait Theme

Day 1, Self Portrait theme

Well, this really isn't the kind of photo I like to post to Mighty Works, but I just started with a small group of fellow Arkansawers, who are doing a 365 project.  We are posting to Flickr, and are supposed to put up a pic a day.  This week's theme:  Self portraits.  And since I have done this to other folks, I thought I was due the same treatment.

Beetle Juice

Cucumber Beetle rides the Zinnia.

Not sure if its a Cucumber Beetle because of what it eats or its general color, though it looks kind of like a Gentlemanbug, in complimentary attire.

Ps.  Starting Oct 1, look for a pic a day, here an on Flickr.



Harvest Moon and Jupiter.

Historic Event in need of photo!

I hear this was an historic event --  Harvest Moon, falling on the last day of summer as equal day and equal night (eqinox) trade out to greater night.   Beyond that, the moon and Jupiter rode the sky real close, and  -- If I have my facts right, both closer to us than normal.   If you look real close you can see the rings.

Ps.  I have a tool that shows what people are searching for when Google sent them here.  Now I imagine the odd looks for all those looking for Harvest Moon/Jupiter.



Zinnia Down

For friends of the Mighty Works Project.

Starting October 1, You should get a picture and line or two of poetry per day.  Turns out I have joined a Flickr group, consisting of Arkansas Photographers, who have committed to posting a picture a day.  I'd like to do the same with poetry, and hope to scratch and catch something each day.

The Moving Garden