Illuminations: Emancipation Prayer

Our illuminations for Five Prayers is almost complete, & it was be up as a Scribd book soon. Here's the first poem, "Emancipation Prayer" - the original text, written near Varna, was posted here. All of the prayer poems, including the illuminations for the first series, Seven Prayers, are here. (If it's too small to read, try clicking on the image.)

Emancipation Prayer

Composed near Varna, July 2009

The sun has been set free of its bonds, dislodged from our system,
Like a unicorn,
Shorn of its horn, its body a weathered mule body,
Its sunny soul quick & mortal as the rest of them,
As worn out as the morn,
As worn out as the river is naughty,
Put bitumen on your bugbites & you'll never win the lottery.

The sun has been set free, chortle, old men you've been right since the beginning.
There'd be an end to this spinning,
Shorn of its gramma-knit sweater, without agony or pity,
The Secretary of Energy's combover is seen graying & thinning,
The city's belly is aching,
The meaty center of this meaty city,
Left behind & all the better for it, weaned from the moon's dried-up mammary.

The sun has been set free of its servitude, with newfound valiance,
There'll be a man in a Hawai'ian shirt,
His plastic ukulele as his weapon, his violin violence & his other talents
Deployed against the Four Horsemen of the Green Party.
The city is a terrific flirt,
The city is a worn-out sortie,
So I'll tattoo your secret borscht recipe onto my buttocks, to be read only glow-in-the-dark by the drunk sorority.

The sun has been set free from sin, set to skip town by local bus,
Like a mastodon,
The earliest Vaalbaran genocide, slippery steppes slimed with blood & pus,
The mess beneath the Poet Laureate's refrigerator,
The broke-down Matterhorn,
Or our slothful-ass Sicilian waiter
Will also be set free from sin sooner or later.

The sun has been free - rejoice, children, & go to bed--
Rest your weary noggins--
Bound to no man, no slave of minimum wage, free to set its own systems & cycles instead,
Free to gyrate, to vibrate, resist the urge to beat the dog when it's misbehaving.
Rest your goosebumps, pumpkins--
Get down your night chords & sing--
It left no note, it's gone with no farewell, no vodka shot & no flag-waving.

EMANCIPATION - New Shape-Note Anthem, with printable score & demo solo-quartet recording.

I was hoping to post this on election day, but the recording couldn't quite have happened yet. Due to the complexities of this shape-note anthem, the recording process was a bit trickier than anticipated, & in result I apologize for certain resulting sloppinesses. It's just a test demo to hear the harmonies! The text is from William Blake's AMERICA: A PROPHECY (1793), his epic illuminated poem about the American Revolution, in which the god Orc sings this intense hymn of freedom. I'll add more thoughts about this piece later, but in the meantime enjoy my attempt at singing all four parts with myself.

The morning comes, the night decays, the watchmen leave their stations;
The grave is burst, the spices shed, the linen wrapped up;
The bones of death, the cov'ring clay, the sinews shrunk & dry'd,
Reviving shake, inspiring move, breathing! awakening!
Spring like redeemed captives when their bonds & bars are burst.
Let the slave grinding at the mill run out into the field:
Let him look up into the heavens & laugh in the bright air;
Let the inchained soul shut up in darkness and in sighing,
Whose face has never seen a smile in thirty weary years,
Rise and look out; his chains are loose, his dungeon doors are open.
And let his wife and children return from the opressor's scourge.
They look behind at every step & believe it is a dream,
Singing, 'The Sun has left his blackness, & has found a fresher morning
And the fair Moon rejoices in the clear & cloudless night;
For Empire is no more, and now the Lion & Wolf shall cease.'

Celebrity Canto

Let’s take a walk thru history with an American icon.

Sure! He collects rare shards of colored glass from Turkey & Italy,

And he’s written a lot of books, but who has found time to read his last one?

Now he pauses on the Piazza, but there he goes, he runs like a century.

He ascends a mountain of fine light, it’s all been done before in particles.

Historians will disagree about whether he was depressed at this time or pretty happy.

Meanwhile, he’s already thinking about a poem he’ll write about this walk of dangling participles.

He has a brief adventure involving batrachian nepotism & a gutterful of shit.

Compared to the trials of Hercules he admits that he is no Hercules.

The mainstream media licks its lips thinking about every step of it.

He considers this when he considers every step he takes.

Then, losing himself, he does a gay little dance & slips into a gooey pit.

The media quickly sidetracks & reports that his mother died in those earthquakes.

There is an eruption of sympathy & he finds time to masturbate to an old John Ford movie.

Hark! thumps, claps, deafening huzzas! The gospel trombone & his mother awakes.

Scholars think that his imminent divorce was preoccupying his psyche,

But I know & you know that he was always focused on his public characterization.

He knows he looks good in that suede suit, but it’s out of style by the time he gets to the Louvre.

His wife actually was just raising a big stink about House-Elf Emancipation.

He was trying to bide his time by walking around the block again,

But the mainstream media realized they could sell more papers by popular music democratization.

The Chancellor of Germany sent her condolences, but sent it at the wrong time on the wrong train,

A small press illegally publishes his letters to his mistress, & he sues them into bankruptcy:

They were just being opportunistic, but no need to explain.

His wife leaves him like a free radio blitzkrieg, but her breasts have gotten flopsy.

Now his mistress is in every magazine, but he loses her & finds ten more corseted supermodels.

He converts to Mormonism! He jumps up & down in J. Edgar Hoover’s stilettos for all the world to see.

The Celebrity His Aria: I’ll condemn you all to the Ninth Circle, every last one of you pundit assholes!

My memoirs will be impenetrable, I’ll admit to raping half of the penitentiary!

How many volumes can even my most devoted enthusiast stomach? Remember the earlier puddles?

But it’s all given me some space to breathe. My ex-wife’s face was the crime of the century.

Your televisions are all pointed North. The penguins are finally safe from your scrutiny.

The British National Dish may be curry, but mine has gone home in a flurry.

House Arrest! There have been worse fates for Saloth Sar & the late Sheriff’s Deputy.

I can finally database my shard collection, & the historians can rot in my impunity.