Mikey Dread « CONNECT/HOOK

REVELATION: three, seven – the Kingdom of Heaven

The key to unlocking both glory and shame.

Philadelphia knows He’s arriving in newness

inscribing on foreheads His city and name.

(Though it could be on tee shirts or baseball caps, true –

unless someone takes time to decipher the text…

is it Greek? Aramaic? Amharic? What next?)

Don’t be mad – it’s not me but old John who’s to blame.

Of names and on numbers of Savior and Beast

I have long been a-pondering, trembling, wondering

mushroom-cloud raptures in mind’s eye a-thundering.

How will we get to that marriage-day feast?

Will my garment be ready or filthy with fall-out?

(The song says His blood will make clean if we call out

in faith for forgiveness, in humble repentance

believing that grace will abolish the sentence.)

You may wish my rhyme to be likewise abolished.

Bear with me. Forgive me, I grant it’s not polished.

I speak what I feel and I write when I’m able;

which brings us to heavenly thoughts gastronomic:

what dishes we’ll meet as we dine at that table-

strict Jewish? Angelic? Or pre-Abrahamic?

Shall they serve us from silver or common ceramic?

Being clay to the potter, an unfinished vessel

I leave all these questions for others to wrestle.

Yet there’s still one more realm I explore in conjecture:

the sounds at that gathering. Classical? Rock?

Unending revivalist Christian refrains?

Shall we headbang in heaven with glorified brains?

Psychedelic/Psychotic…? or Handel and Bach?

(Lighten up. It’s the end of my bible-school lecture.

You’ve seen a few rooms of my castle-in-air,

and we ALL know it’s reggae they’re playing up there…)

IMAGE CREDIT: melekmediahouse

I just posted Nicaragua by Darío to the Español page. I always think of primitivista art when I read that short poem. Darío mentions tigers in the poem, which is strange since there are none in Central America. My Spanish vocab words for the day [from the poem] are zahareño (“untameable, wild, unsociable, intractable”; I always thought it meant “Saharan” and Darío was merely being exotic but I was wrong) and peaña (“pedestal”, for a statue or art object). The part about the idol reminds me of the idolos de la isla Zapatera but they are not on diamond pedestals so you will have to imagine your own. Since the human heart is an idol-factory, that shouldn’t be too hard. My lovely wife is from Nicaragua, and I have sometimes placed her on a diamond pedestal—and so another connection to the poem.

On the reggae side of things, I linked my reggae poem to a Mikey Dread dub song only to find out he passed away on my birthday in 2008. I had not known that. I always loved his dub music and he seemed like such a positive Rastaman. The stuff he did with the Clash on Black Market Clash was great (Armagideon Time) but my favorite is Beyond WWIII. I still have African Anthem – on cassette! Since he passed away 3 years ago you can see I am really on the cutting edge of Reggae news these days. Well, we are already in eternity, so what’s three years here or there, right?