A song of praise
You who situates himself among the wailing,
are our saviour.
Strong and mighty as a lion
Great as the whale
Kind as a mother
Refreshing as a stream
Unchanging as a mountain
Forever on your holy hill.
© Denis Adide 2014
"Somewhere in the process of obedience to the law, in the turning to scriptures to discover more from them, the sight and sound of the living – active and moving – God whose Word dictated their deeds was replaced by the ritual itself. There he stood amongst them, unknown to them, lamenting their self-blinkered hearts, ready to intervene and bare the cost".
A song of praise
You who situates himself among the wailing,
are our saviour.
Strong and mighty as a lion
Great as the whale
Kind as a mother
Refreshing as a stream
Unchanging as a mountain
Forever on your holy hill.
© Denis Adide 2014
He couldn’t look me in the eye. I couldn’t hold this gaze much longer either, the tears were slowly welling and I didn’t want him to see me cry: I didn’t want him to think me weak.
[What is weakness but strength hidden,
what are damned tears and a stern face
if not markers of fear victorious
flags at the feet of mountains
and courage lost…
and courage lost.]
He only ever cried once when I was around. That was a while ago, nearly a decade. Time has made me unsure of the honesty in the droplets he slowly wiped with his handkerchief, folded into a perfect square.
[These ‘spots of time’ like brushstrokes loose their paint the further they stretch,
colour rages against the canvas, the canvas wins – unless the painter dabs once more.
But some streaks are seared, from the furnace to the mind they are etched
and like the wounds they are, remembered they are ever sore.
And scarred ….
And scarred…
And maybe sacred.]
Shame had brought us here. The same that made me quiver when I thought of how I might end up opposite you. Just as he does opposite me. Afraid to become a composite I had lived up to my name – his name. IF we end up here I hope you’d not hide as I did.
And thus we stood in silence. The words like a torrent had flown out and filtered downstream. Wetting the hard stones on their way to the plains. Forgotten until our descent.
[… and like wounds they were, remembered ever sore.
and ever sacred…
never sacred…
always scared like courage lost…
and no more…
no more.]
“Yet to those who believed”… Help my unbelief.
© Denis Adide 2013
… But you are an artist, you shouldn’t have to explain your work.
I might be totally alone in this, this feeling that my work – me really – wont be understood or appreciated. This inner feeling of lower worth stifled my creative juices for many days. I found myself frustrated by my inability to share what I created so much that I stopped creating altogether. It was when I went to see my younger brother about his helping me with a few projects that he uttered the words I here quote. The came like a sledge hammer through the wall my ego had constructed around itself. Pondering his words I realised that it wasn’t a fear of not being understood and thus appreciated but rather the terror of actually being an open book, cast aside on the empty seat in a packed train carriage. It is almost paralysing.
does it make sense?
The fear rested at the route of this question – one I always ask whenever I speak to people. I’ll try and stop.
do something radically different
A suggestion from a wiser man. Which I’m here trying.
A post a day, come rain or shine.
Vindicate me, O LORD for I have led a blameless life,
I have trusted in the Lord without wavering.
Test me, O LORD, and try me, examine my heart and mind:
For your love is ever before me, and I walk continually in your truth.
I do not sit with deceitful men, nor do I consort with hypocrites;
I abhor the assembly of evildoers and refuse to sit with the wicked.
I wash my hands in innocence, and go about your Altar, O LORD,
Proclaiming aloud your praise and telling of all your wonderful deeds.
I love the house where you live, O LORD, the place where your glory dwells.Psalm 26:1-8
Denis 26:8 [between 9 &10 pm]
Will you vindicate me? I have not led a blameless life,
constantly I doubt your hand and presence in my life.
My faith wavers like a flag: steadfast in the wind
and baren in the still. I forget you till I need.
My inner heart does love you, but my hands resist;
opting rather to sing in dishonesty.
Though I avoid deceitful men, my tongue is just as adept
in my solitude I find a hypocrite.
I long to do great evils and admire the seats among the wicked.
My hands still stained, and the stench of dishonour upon me,
I dare to approach your Altar. Not in penitence,
but masking my guilt from my companions.
For fear of shame I bite my tongue, hiding praise for you
beneath my pride: sourced from the gifts you give me –
I, too quickly, forget your wonderful deeds.
If you don’t, with my guilt before me, who will?
2012.
Seated, he heard the foreign sounds
Of passing cars, of children, of hounds,
Of planes sailing through the clouds
Of silent moments, and of crowds.
The wind through the leaves whistled
The bamboo heaved along with the thistles
Distant worlds in torrents neared
But window blinds blocked out the mounds
Seated, he thought to find the nouns
For subtle smiles, for tickles, for frowns
For faces floating from the downs,
through greens, through forests, and through towns.
Deep within old cinders glistened
He strained his heart so it would listen
And the world without in torrents neared
But window blinds blocked out the mounds
© Denis Adide 2011
“Let us make man in our own image
and in our likeness form him.”
Perfected yet dead; still he lay
void, recent from the deep.
No thoughts emerged nor receded
None pleaded for victory, none defeated,
And none rebelled: He was balanced,
inanimate, formed but still,
alive but perfectly dead.
Then breath, hovering over the deep;
the same that churned him from the mound,
approached from steep heaven
and un-barrened sea to seep
Awakening earth from death to sleep.
Inhaling, he embraced life – the gift;
drifting into the breath that once crept
into the crypt – fleshy heart at the mercy
of fleshed earth – made first animate.
Before him he saw his naked arms,
with naked eyes saw naked feet,
felt naked air be drafted in
and blown on naked skin.
Untamed wind within,
unchained wind without,
both whispering “Live!”
© Denis Adide 2012
Your absence –
felt more than empty clouds,
or late rains after hot days,
or delayed snow in the cold,
dark winter months,
or breath withheld
by clasping hands,
the dry well,
a moonless night,
shadowless willow,
no pulse on a flat line –
is killing me.
My heart –
like new shoots,
empty young beaks,
and soft small fingers –
reaches out,
calling
weeping
….
immersed in the hope
that wherever you are
on this, our day,
you’re happy.
© Denis Adide 2012
and to all who received him, all who believed. He gave the right to be called the sons of God
How am I to face the eyes of pity
that will surround and follow me
the rest of the days before they all
begin to forget, Knowing that I,
for the love – yours – sowed within,
am reaping eternal – internal – grief?
I can’t unless you give it all back.
I had enough love for four lifetimes
and more, all you to do was ask;
all you had to do was talk, take,
walk, live… give – a little.
Set my heart alight – immolate –
this rebellion must succeed.
Failure ensures my mind recedes,
past the faith I held, as the torch of old
that with coloured rings made a whole
of the hemispheres. Once to love,
and to hold, but lo! and behold the bold
did to frailty fall.
Forsaking the rollings stones, they became
immersed in moss. covered in the green
they gave way to the mud that slowly
inched over inches to make six feet;
and ashes – once oaks – returned to dust:
the crowds, like the vicar, slowly left
pinching more earth and spraying them
over the flowers – like the memories doomed
to rot and die – that adorned the lonely casket.
The groom, escorted by all into the sepulchre,
now slept. His weeping stilled by the thick
air, lightly lit, hovering between the stained panes
that crowned the walls. Prayers unheard,
like insence, floating hazily; kept in by
the sooty roof.
When they bury the dead, everyone leaves
except the dead. They stay, singing to the stars,
unrequited songs of love, of hope, of floating dreams
in tins unsealed, of loss encountered in daring
for victory, of death, of end without end,
of conflicted beginnings, of afflicted unamended –
untamed – …
Their affectations slowly, like their flesh, disappear:
Unheard once covered, unseen once left.
I can’t unless you give it all back.
What hurts is the hand that held the blade
and not the merciful blade itself. For edges,
sharp or blunt, have no master, no loyalty,
nor judgement. They serve hearts, and hands,
and feet, and thoughts grown to become deeds,
and deeds done in attempts to undo others:
be they dreams once seeded, now rejected
as shoots – unplucked but doomed to die.
uprooted into insignificance, like a drop of rain
falling from the clouds onto the surface of the sea,
drifting. One among many drops; no longer a drop.
At once sea, no mercy but what is given me,
no power nor self. Shelved until the improbable:
the currents drift me back up into the realms
of elevating rays. For now though, and maybe
forever, the abyss awaits, and hell.
And I can’t unless you give it all back:
all of it, in it’s separate pieces and moments;
spots that form the person that, within your
supposed love, I grew to become: grew
away from being.
© Denis Adide 2012
For all the human handiwork it displays, the bible remains a peculiar holy book. I cannot think of any other text that has such authority over me, interpreting me faster than I can interpret it. It speaks to me not with the stuffy voice of some mummified sage but with fresh, lively tones of someone who knows what happened to me an hour ago. Familiar passages accumulate meaning as I return to them again and again. They seem to grow during my absences from them; I am always finding something new in them I never found before, something designed to meet me where I am at this particular moment in time.
And in reading God’s word, he most profiteth not always that is most ready in turning of the book, or in saying of it without the book; but he that most tuned into it, that is most inspired with the Holy Ghost, most in his heart and life altered and changed into that thing which he readeth; he that is daily less and less proud, less wrathful, less covetous, and less desirous of worldly and vain pleasures; he that daily (forsaking his old vicious life) increaseth in Virtue more and more.