TRINITY STAR TRINITY
Trinity Star Trinity
3 cubed
3 times 3 times 3
27 poems of 27 words each
Trinity Star Trinity
September 1, 2011 – July, 2012
Lesvos, Samos, Patmos * Greece
Washington DC, America
"INTUITION"
The critical thought
Is to say
Of course, you
Sashayed comme un
Ange through white
Horizon, mountains of
Sea, suckle eye
Milky Way as
It be when
Guide of map
Omega. But I
Know better. Couldn’t
Say in modern
Ity. Pneuma Sophia
Post immediate eternal
Aiōn aisthētikos Fluid
Base blank full
With rhythms of
The sea. [I’ve
Braided my hair
Nonchalantly. Brands disturb
Harmony and today’s
Symbols have lost
Their symphony. I
Wish you were
here. Her name,
Saudade. Spark. Touch
Your skin with
Clean eyes ritual
fuck frontal lobe
stark symbol of
the yearning art
Mottled viscous bruise
of its own
Implicit breathe there
Must be a
Trilogy. Dance Caress
Entrance. The rhyme.
We say. Nothing.
Of after. Birds.
Sun. Curtains. Lashes.
Navel. Shadow. Nous.
I am here
For the Revelation:
Trinity * Trinity]
You reveal doom
The devil enters
Sweet desire, sweet
Black hole, I
Repent, drip, rage
Unworthy, unholy, whore
John, why such
Blasphemy? Peter, why
Sin incessant jeer
Paul, superlative smite
I want to
Give; you ask
STOP ask STOP
Slaughter peacock What
else? Arrheton echo
You will not
Stop until the
Kingdom is yours.
A triangle stands
Alone. Pinnacle of
Spirit, matter, Lord
It is time
to cube the
equation time to
twin the soul
Power of Three
Three. Three to
the power. Beyond
Euclid’s plane a
Star multiplies: us
We are two
Triangles meeting at
A star. A
Third invisible. Felt.
Wordless divine guiltless
The star does
not ask; Is
Body word soul
Unite kiss breathe
Not with desire
But devotion. Gratitude
Infinite space to
Swell, to fill,
To condense into
Air, into vapor,
Horizon. To calm,
To Inspire. The
Sea. Asks nothing.
(Be) The star,
The Kiss, the
Union. Trinity field
Of two triangles
Meeting at a
Prayer, are us.
The wretched weep
But we are
The wretched. Beings
Inevitably foul (swell)
Genesis Babel Flood
Perfection impossible, cheap
And I grieve
Pray to perfection
eidos teleiotes idea
Sweet mirror X
Sensation of peace
Uninterrupted by decision
Uninterrupted by desire
Uninterrupted by storm
And I wail
That the good
Should be the
Enemy (condense) of
The perfect. Rage
That we must
Call it sin
To realize the
Weight of guilt
No tears may
Bear they are
Too sweet. A
Word struggles to
Emerge. Can’t. Black.
Descend into the
Pain of knowing
Your presence ___
Be no gift.
Come back from
The void (the
Perfect) She bids
Because sun doesn’t
Give a damn
If you are
Albino or Hitler
Or even Einstein
Sun, hapless sun
Glorious prime mover
Deity of trinity
Star moon earth
Khaos Cosmos Universe
Uneven garnish of
light on this
page. Simple sea.
Miracle being. Birth
of tomatoes. Fleshy
Olives. Goosebumps. Shade.
Sinew. Sandals. Color.
Saliva. Gift of
Breathe, of joy
And love. Life!
O! such gratitude
Knelt in abandon
Complete Zero Gravity
Still air hovering
Merciful over horizon
Total. Monk chanting
Solitude. To exist
On barren lava
Peaks: a goat
The edge of
The earth a
Voice – you’re alive
Stone. Dust. Dialectos.
Element: Energy - Kneel
Without choice abandon
Knowing. Alive. Quake
at the horizon.
White line infinite
I’ve evaporated into
The thing itself
No distance. One
edge of sea
and sky. Engulf.
Surrender. Sense. Feed.
Sun Sea Earth
Irreducible forms, the.
Our woebegone logos
Hard thoughts at
Each others’, no --
I swell body
word soul gaping
stitches seamless love
is faith: bare
immaculate (I am)
But for gratitude:
If you are
The moon it
Is time you
Set and wane
And wander but
Never so much
As Venus or
Mars (and today
And then again,
You come) When
I call when
I breathe your
Name rhythm of
Sea: my head
You always come
There is no
End to the
Power of three
Infinity three. What
Can contain the
Coast or sea?
Galaxias, find the
Point exact: Behind,
After Zeno? Nevermind
Horizon where do
You lie? The
Mind. No. Heart.
The moon’s intuition
Breathes late August
Blue moon drunk
With love for
Hera I have
Known other types
of ecstasy but
None as pure
As Heroine none
As pure as
Trinity Star Trinity
give with abandon
feel only adoration
the more I
sense your energy
the higher it
multiplies love is
the source to
infinity, three. Here!
Now! God the
Belief in infinity
Damnation of totality
Trinity Star Trinity
I believe in
Infinity I believe
We are one
Trinity. Star. Trinity.
"HERA"
NOTES
Trinity Star Trinity began on the Island of Patmos. To Greece for a wedding and stayed on, first to Sappho’s birthplace on the Island of Lesvos, then the Island of Samos to the birthplace of Hera. The architecture which marks Hera’s birthplace was once 9 times the size of the Parthenon. If Sappho is the best poet to ever live and the hero of desire (a-directional, desire for desire’s sake, if you will), Hera was her predecessor. Prior to Hera’s dethronement at the table of the Gods by Zeus, humanity (as far back as recorded) was primarily led by Female gods representative of mother earth or the moon.
A hurricane stateside left me in an Odyssean détourne’d return, and I spent the next week on overnight boats to the Island of Patmos, the Island of Kos, and the Island of Nisyros before my flight was rescheduled. I considered it most literally a gift from the gods. I had wanted to imagine what it was like to walk the horizon at the time of Homer when the space between subject and the stars and spirits was not our Modern distance. Gebser’s The Ever Present Origin. The Illiad. Sappho. The White Goddess. On the Island of Patmos I found tension, where St. John the Evangelist (and Patron Saint of Writers) brought Christianity to Greece and wrote the Book of Revelation, and Trinity Star Trinity began in a reaction: a digestion of the histories of deity and practices of faith encountered on my short voyage.
At the Monastery of St. John, I loitered around and managed to obtain an invite to one of three daily prayer sessions performed year-round at sunrise, sunset and midday. In full dress, chant and incense/candle ritual, each of three daily sessions lasts an hour. Only a few local devotees were present. Older women. I noticed one, hunched, eyes closed, performing the ritual “father, son, holy spirit, amen” across her chest, not once, but nine times in repetition. Nine? Three or even six would not have surprised me, as Orthodox tradition is full of symbolic “three” repetitions, and sometimes six to note the pair, as in a wedding. But nine was new. I surmised it must be three times three. One three for each symbol: father, son, and holy ghost. Lord, flesh, and spirit. And it occurred to me that I was looking for not three times three, but three cubed. Three times three times three would actually be a more perfect symbolic representation of each facet of the trinity. And coincidentally my lucky number has always been 27 (3 cubed). I felt I knew why that had always been and my head span and the form for Trinity Star Trinity was born in concept and form.
I did not care for the Book of Revelation. It was “superlative smite” to quote the poem. Masculine, traditionalist in the worst sense, and apocalyptic. Having been to Patmos I will never again proclaim apocalypse in America; it is too passé. Everyone in every century has already done it. I imagined John as a Jesus groupie who wanted to go back to an old form amidst the Roman “moderns” to keep the old alive, 1,000 years after. Of course, I do the same, trying to revive a concept of what it was to live at the time of Sappho or when Hera was queen, but, there is only room for one of us. And in my poem, John is out. A New Age is in, to mock myself, where faith as experienced is as three dimensions: devotion of awareness (modern), but without a modern critical distance (antiquity), including multiple agency (both she who prays and whom she prays to embrace each other’s energies), from which grows the fourth dimension: intuition (where spirit is felt). Three cubed is four dimensions. The poem also embraces Sappho’s conception of desire – rather than John’s puerile defamatory take – as well as the Greek (and prior to Greek, and after Greek) interest in astrology, triangles, early mathematics, and “Platonic” concepts of the ideal.
The language of the poem is quite simple. A few Greek words for their sounds and particular concepts, but it is primarily a repetitive prayer or ode. Ultimately its beauty comes from how the language might rise off the page differently each reading to embrace a feeling, as many other chants before it. The feeling is the love of devotion or faith, and I hope its vibe can be literally felt. It prefers optimism and possibility to the damnation of John. But he may remain the Patron Saint of writers, a holiday celebrated the 27th of December each year. A fitting date. I must admit, the Monastery of the Apocalypse did indeed inspire in me a revelation.
Finally, much thanks is due the truly kind M. Magnus whose deep knowledge of pre-Socratic Greece helped shape many of my wanderings. The sigils included are inspired by and dedicated to him. The poem, above all, is for Hera.