Book release, Lullabies for Warriors

I am pleased to announce the release of my new book, Lullabies for Warriors. Written as a nearly chronological sequence of poems tracing the progression of my thought from the conception of my son through his birth and coming to cognizance, the book dives into the hopes and despair of the advent of new life in the contemporary world.

Despite the overall chronological order, it begins, so to speak, at the end. The first poem is the positive reinterpretation of a work of a more stark nature that had been written prior to conception. Upon discovering the news, I rewrote this poignant, resonant poem infused with the optimism of hope to read at my son's baby shower.

From that innocence in conception, the poems start from just after birth, just after being thrown into the world. They travel through the early stages of life stark with the residue of darkness prior to and the new light of innocence upon conception until the moving forest of ideas stands still in a consummation of hope and despair. Following that is a reincarnation of self in this new place of fatherhood, as the son gradually becomes cognizant of his existence.

As awareness fights its way to the surface in the moving forest, the book comes to a close by traveling back to a time before the beginning, to the original poem which conceived of the new light of innocence in resonance with the spirit of the world. Having been aptly written for NO!R New York's show, The Ceremony of Innocence, it is a shining of light into the darkness of the contemporary world where we must all fight for good.

My son's name means Warrior, and this is a book of Lullabies for Warriors.

A wolf on the American prairie

The industrial desert calls
To a stormy old soul
A weathered storm
A ripened fruit at last breath withal
As time insufficient
To bear flower to reality
'Tis just a moment comes and goes
Is all in all
Won't you watch me?
I want to disappear into the life like ochre
The existent non entity
A gentleman of cordial depth
In his glass taste the humanity leaving
Tumbling silent and digital
A receding openness
Less current to speak of minds
Just contemplating
Disseminating
All the room free of conversation
The great American opera
A toss of hair turn of a page
Rising to trust in the ambient ideology of the spheres
And willing to stand empty of posture
A figurine ineffable
I stared him dead silent in the eye
'Midst the cultural rain
And we met so soon
A façade crystallized
The repetition a fresh dream to imagine
To realize
A carrier pigeon
A trapeze artist
Flying over the river
Though a free bird never flies
He just rides the current
That's all
An eagle scouring the bald heights of industry at sunrise
Scheming his thievery
Drunk off the moon night 'fore
A wolf on the American prairie
The industrial desert sprinkled with grass
Porcelain rain to nourish a scowling meditation
Howls our souls into past disintegrations
Of the steady meet
The glitching hue
A ghost of routine
In newly lightened netherworlds
Like moths to ambiance
We flock to gods
Infatuate or contrived
Flying circles 'round our weathered eyes
We're by some hope then mesmerized
I watched the hood of darkness
Breathe embroiderings of black stilts
Above the pointed rooftops
Harboring the olden souls' gentle arrogance
In the eagle's eye I was poverty
In the wolve's I was crying abandon
A panic so rapid as to still
Distill serenity remarks
The dark is mere the light
Where yet to point us home
Where the heart is scattered wide
A gestural dance of time upon a prairie
Chasing the tales of birds that sing the sun
It's dusty in the empty rooms of soul
And we've no doors to close behind
Rather the foam of sea
Coming so close to home we die
Sipping merlot with the blackbirds
A dash of blood beneath the wing
Twirling sparkling water with the bluebirds
A ray of sun in flight to sing
All through the thickets' swamp
Where thieving masters capture things of grace
And rape their souls that came too far
Falling irreversible without a trace
The tails of wives of old
Goodnight my ineffable
I've lit a candle for you too soon
The savannah is a golden flame
Where we imagine we came true
Though even all in all
A moment came and went
Then late one stormy night
By that same candle had been lit
I felt our shadows had been drift
Up from foamy sea
Embracing in the coming fall
The New York symphony
And on the prairie where the rabbits play
Their holes of darkened shame
In American persistence
We can simply turn the page
Toss our hair upon the wind
And meet so soon again
Carry on another day
For after all and all
Life is mere a whisper woke
That may we proper cultivate
To grow and grow and grow
Into a neverending poem

Our times are dark as the midnight hour, when all must unmask

Candles lined your thoughts

In the crafted soot of your inner mirrors

The things you would not allow yourself to see

Not for some fear of depth but more for mere pleasantry

The sparkle in your eye

Rose with a dark red resolution to the meniscus

And formed divergent ripples on your surface

Some profound sadness bursting in the transitional moment

And settling in a cool rosé smoke

Through which shone bright like a diamond in the rough

The bitter desert sun

A perpetual calling in your dry psychology

The mirage of sweet wine

And candlelit blackness

A contemporary denim torn for your machismo indulgence

The façade of grace an infinitesimal point to flock toward

Journey ever on

She begged you to leave behind the desert of reality

Where apathy was your cloak

And enter the mirage of life where emotion held no ground

And all was truth in reasoned eyes

Your ripples are your salvation said the pond

They speak to the depths of your solitude

They beg you to come back

Over a glass of Spanish fine

Slate your bitter smile with each caress of the stem

The midnight river was the tears you refused to cry

You needed the bitter remedy to make sense of your porous heart

Always filling your glass with devotion

So long as there was nothing left for you

The administration of freedom your box

Mechanisms to harness your spirit

To the branded thoroughbred

Spin your mane with the finest yarns

Just to keep the warmth in

And how is it these poet’s sleeves are filled

With fine holes of considerable depth

Yet all that matters is the imaginary number

Dancing through your mind at the end of the day?

And even that is meaningless as you slip into a waking slumber

A dreamer in the veil of life you carry on

A frugal spirit carving beauty out of nothing

To find a home for thoughts like blooming flowers

That would perish in the structure of the mirage

For lack of timely watering

Yet free to blossom the desert

Even as the valley of death is yawning

And the stems are sulking in the shadows

Bereft of any poignant sadness to softly mumble on the wind

In hopes the soul of the world would take note

And bring your spirit back to Him

The poetry dried in your mouth

Kneeling prostrate for the judgment of your rhetorical soul

The answer was becoming

You were nothing more than your thoughts

Than your dreams this desert high

Your reality was a mirage you’d found it proper to deny

And because there was something more

Something in the way that could not be defined

But pined nonetheless for you

Whenever you closed the door

And the whimpering of that spirit kept you in the sky

No matter what desert you were crossing

And why should it abandon you now?

Sift sift sift your soul

Gently through the sand

Consistently, peacefully, methodically, patiently

For somewhere in the desert

On a wild gypsy night

A mirage will rise before you

Your hearts will mend the stars

And love will fill your sky with an ancient lullaby

Peace will be your sands in the arid land of souls

And silver flowers will blossom

From the earthen rains that visit

Upon the yawning valley of death

That lies deep in the middle of darkness

No there’s no light in the darkest of your furthest reaches

The sun will rise again

Archived Blog Posts

Archived blog posts will continue to be available at http://jasongreendyk.blogspot.com/

New Book Coming Soon, Lullabies for Warriors

Recollecting this interview with Aloud and how important it is to keep the free spirit of speaking Aloud alive in this new age of Trump.

I will soon be releasing a new poetry book, Lullabies for Warriors, which approaches head on in what was real time the conflicts and hopes of presenting the world to a new human being. The work links back to when I first conceived the real possibility of having a child in my mind and continues through his physical conception, birth and first 3 years of life. The spiritual conception was close to when this interview took place...

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"ALOUD: Do you think artists can feel a bond with their work that a parent might feel with a child? 

JASON: People can almost treat their artwork in the way they might treat a child. Nurturing it, treating it with love and watching it grow. The fact that we can approach artwork in this sense of nurturing growth and then let it all go rather than cling to it."

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Now, since my son's physical conception, the nurture of child and art have been simultaneous, and synonymous.

Stay tuned!