Lullaby No. 9 – Love (The Ninth Symphony)

AUGUST NEW YORK

She stood before us

An omen of perfect love

A still silence protruded

From memories

Of a northern Californian lake

At high dusk

Pristine

The waters stood still

As they watched the moon

Shine in full, true fashion

All her pores to be seen

Though covered in a pale

Post-evening glow

The night’s serenity

Veiled in the psychology

Of always moving forward

Of clearing out the space

Depositing the dusts

Of memories

In an old eastern bloc

On Newton Creek

The heavy gray drabs

Forlorn like the moon

Though the glow of Reason

Outshone

And covered the memories

In clouds and air

To keep the intellect light

Behold what stood before us

The beauty pure and pressed

Drink from glasses

Made of air

The wine of poetry well kept

Well buried in the heart

The cellar of our souls

Where emotion ages something fine

Flashing omens in the sky

Like a mirror of the mind

Inverted day in and day out

The journey never ends

And love opens the heart

A dance with the white rabbit

Who looks upon the hill

Just north of the Conservatory Water

Near the Children’s Gate

With a sparkle in his eye

A whisper on some distant Caribbean wind

There is magic in the world

And here we stand


Jason Greendyk, www.jasongreendyk.com

Lullaby No. 8 – Forming Memories

The beauty of the evening light

Recedes into the dark façade

Of technology’s design

Yes the mountains, the heights

The peaks of the intellect

Recede into the sunset

Like memories

Glowing orange

Fading lavender and violet

Iridescent blue and gone

Black as the night

That was coming on

Silent as the farm

Where we waited all afternoon

Receding into the weight

Of history

The memories that would have you

Sleep no more

Déjà vu au courant

The pleasant strangeness

Of post-industrial existence

Through which nothing quite

Reached you

Sounded

I listened to the poet

As he sang

And my thoughts were empty

In the syllabi

A resonance so clean

As to not be seen

Not felt nor heard

Receding into solipsism

The echo of the soul

The philosopher always doubts

One’s own being

Especially in the grey

Evening manner

The light that sank

Into the widening of your eyes

As you struggled

To find the moment

And all things around you

Peeled away from nothing

Converging on some distant point

The lines of thought

Shaved off the machine

In the whittling

Of your intellectual capacity

I want you all

To touch beauty

As I do now

I want you all to reach back

Look forward

Or simply to your side

And feel again

Or for the first time

The most beautiful moment

Of your life

And let it become you

As you become

What you are capable of becoming

I want you to listen

To watch

To touch

The natural beauty we all share today

In the woven fabric of our lives

And hold on

Jason Greendyk

www.jasongreendyk.com

Lullaby No. 7 - Paris

Paris! Paris!

The étuvage of dreams

Where the caged bird sings

Of casual perfection

A nice thread

Torn in the empty silence

Of a stateless sky

The collective humanity

No more real than the divine

A woven heartstring unraveling

In the conflict of the others

Bury thy truth

In the expression of distaste

And carry on in the cool flow of things

The free mind pulls

From flights of fancy

To gather the strands of our hair

That have laid to rest on the ground

Burnt in the pleasant sun

The shavings of new life

Hanging in the balance

Of repressed emotion

The waters that came to your eyes

To dilute your disgust

A light heart in the wake

Carry on another day

Dispassionate

Breathe in the future

To save your breath for now

A letter from Paris

Your concept has answered you

In the truest fashion

Smile

The soul of the city

Knows of thy coming

In another life

His kingdom receives you

The power and the glory

Like a child’s dream

You pass

And dare to claim your spirit

From confession

Jason Greendyk

www.jasongreendyk.com

Lullaby No. 6 - Nonexistence

The empty walls exiled you
In the apprehension of dreams
Break the spell
The distance in your voice
Set back to the message
Written in clear blue skies
A nonexistence
Your canvas to believe
In what you will
Otherwise mere
The reminder of God's death
In the existence of the state
Of things
A condemned building
Whose spirits
Were sympathetic of the fair
Bedeviled the April witching hour
I saw the fire in your eyes my child
The breath of new life
In this empty spell
A European draft whistled
In the pliable nature of your freedom
Your Father wore on His sleeve
As He said, I am the Son
And you are one and the same
What I dream you become
What I desire you manifest
Your fiery eyes as cool
As the great blue ocean
And as fierce as the wanting itself
Like pearls
Darting from the light
Pensive they said
What thoughtlessness
Your eyes were like the depths
A mirror of my soul
Iridescent in the endless night of life
Turn to gray stone
What was left
The morning star nodded
In the direction of your fate
And with good Reason

Jason Greendyk, www.jasongreendyk.com

Sermon on Reason at the Fridge Art Fair - Recording

Download and listen to the Sermon on Reason held at the Fridge Art Fair on May 10, 2014 in Long Island City, NYC, a reading from the Seven Sins of Reason and the Selvage.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/9kh0nhmobc2j7vv/Seven%20Sins%20Reading.m4a

Jason Greendyk
www.jasongreendyk.com

Lullaby No. 5 – Born into the Noise

Pour out your soul

In the deterioration of your thought

As the delegation

Of futures’ promises

Binds your hands to your back

For you must learn to see with your eyes

And not your touch

Cease the blinding of the wool

That you pull over your heart

In the comfort of the corporate void

An abstraction of your existential digression

The drifter was no more

Instead you justified your motions

With a Reason

Through choppy seas

You stayed your course

The signs of God

Your only direction

In the aftermath of your rebirth

Born into the noise

And whip of the whirlwind

That stirred your dreams

Of once before

The want of absolute perfection

Despite the fine grain of your reality

And the rough fabric of your existence

You drove an impeccable line of your intellect

To the creation of a form

That defined the context of your new belief

The end no longer the juxtaposition of the journey

Rather found itself forming in every thought

The daring journey across the Sea

A Reason to move forward

In and of Itself

Filling the swells of your heart

With fantasies of your situation

That would constitute an end

All illusions that bore your vessel

Along the steady current of a hidden moon

The great Reason in the vast night sky

That caught the light of the stars

And passed it forth to You

To blessed guide you home

Where your family filled your dreams

With a reason for your being

A raison d'être

A cause

Greater than God

Or any Reason that came before

Carried you silent through the noise

And whip of the whirlwind

A storm that was never meant to end

So you just stayed your course

To no end


Jason Greendyk, www.jasongreendyk.com

Lullaby No. 4 - A Dark Hole

The world’s breath exhaled

An exhaustion that pulled you to life

Breaking the dawn

Out of your tension

A patient stroking of the drive

A straight line to focus on

To carry you through the smoke

And the mirrors that showed you

Your own infinitesimal cave

Of granular detail

A dark want of perfect order

That not a soul could entertain

A communist insurrection

Of the creative spirit

That drew gray lines

Across the black and white

And built uniform blocs

Of efficiencies

A dark hole in the essence of logic

Through dreams of intellectual filters

To improve the human experience

Like a red balloon let to the sky

Vast and blue like the sea

Into which we are thrown

Best bury your critique

In the clean appearance of things

And guide your direction

Through the filtering hole of Reason

To the high level of thought

That barred your execution

Lest you slip into the rational abyss

Buried in the minutia

By the passing of time

Always always slipping away

A chill down your spine

Would inspire your relevance

No matter how acute your passion

Your emotion is simply not

Important

More a mere reflection of your loss

Of the logical flow of things

In the interest of perfection

Your grip severed your ties

And you were nothing but free

At the world’s weary eyes

Your ideal a mere predilection

Of your divination of Reason

Born from the absence of your soul

In the theory of incompleteness

Within and without withal cast

Into the Sea

Where the old gods were a-swimmin’

In the doubtful nature

Of your existence

Jason Greendyk, www.jasongreendyk.com