Joseph Ceravolo: "Between a rock and a hard place..." | Meditation at the Pink Panther Haircut Saloon

Ramapo state forest trail 055 | by daniel sanijoa

Ramapo state forest trail 055 [Ramapo Mountain State Forest, New Jersey]: photo by dan Kong, 9 January 2014

Joseph Ceravolo: "Between a rock and a hard place..."

October 25, 1986

Between a rock and a hard place
I looked for love
So unlikely, yet I entered

the cave, secret though it was

nestled in the Ramapos

Appalachian chain, there for centuries

leading further and further in,

so unbridled and endless

without sound without sight,

without division, expected angels,
original powers, leading inward scared,

yet between the rocky walls a warmth.

Days upon days I walked

living only on flowers of darkness

until a junction appeared in the dark,

man-made, drilled and a size

through which I just passed.

Through this I could hear

the faint flow of a river overhead.

A man lay dead at the cloudy entrance

as the small opening opened into

an arcade of tile and concrete.

Another man and woman lay squirming

on the wide platform

above a series of tracks.

A stench of urine suffused

with the exotics of burning leaves,

burning tobacco, burning cocaine and marijuana.

Men with pale foreheads, men with dreadlocks

passed by my caution, my fear,

while lamentations broke everywhere.

Along the tile wall others moved hips and shoulders

while radios on the platform

and drums in the distance

vibrated a bass beat like a giant

beating on the walls of a city.

Lamentations rose from the wretched with babies

in their arms, scavenging along tracks.

Hundreds of feet above, through an opening

the cries of a celebration above descended

to the deaf and dying ears

through an area infused with hydrocarbons

in tubes and containers like an industrial grave

of chemicals and strains

of undreamed, unknown viruses.

Above, the crowd roared through the machinery

The glass of buildings shook from vibrations

originating at the beginning of the world,

but where there was violence originating

God seemed to be calling, and the earth

was crazier above than it was beneath.

O greater light infused by darkness

opening up creation and shaking the world!

O luminous rays waiting in dark

as shadows closed on mountains

and dusk appears on swamps!

O hazy light resurrected from dirt!

But can I receive for myself this grace,

being so unworthy and longing

being so incomplete and frightened

by the level of threshold holding pain?

And people were thrown down from above

my soul led my body back to the beginning.

At the entrance back an angel leaned

all bloody from head to ankles,

his left wing broken and hanging,

his right across his red body.

A woman naked in the clouds

held his broken wing to not collapse.

This body had not been here

when I had entered. I came in free

And now my only thought was how

could I get by those sensitive wings

that could block me out forever

could close on me and rack me.

But as I approached slowly

the woman grasped the angel

in a winged embrace

and it seemed the feathered angelic

whispered something strange

to the beautiful woman embracing,

And I noticed his arms

were full of needle marks and scars

his eyes in dark brown deceived the blueness they were,

his heart beat wildly under the pumping

while she looked pleadingly at me
as if to say, "pray for me, give me freedom,"

and he whispered again to the woman in embrace,

"Don't let him pass without the words"

I stood motionless while, at this,

the woman dropped embrace

and the wing flew out against the rock,

a wing like steel bars, locked out the tunnel.

It was then my hairs erected on all parts of my body.

My penis, my stomach, my heart throbbed

without control, I was enslaved.

Joseph Ceravolo (1934-1988): "Between a rock and a hard place..." (October 5, 1986), from Collected Poems (2013)

Ramapo state forest trail 040 | by daniel sanijoa

Ramapo state forest trail 040 [Ramapo Mountain State Forest, New Jersey]: photo by dan Kong, 9 January 2014

Hawthorne along the Wanaque Ridge Trail in Ramapo Mountain State Forest, New Jersey: photo by Famartin, 12 May 2013

Stream along the Wanaque Ridge Trail in Ramapo Mountain State Forest, New Jersey: photo by Famartin, 12 May 2013

Stream alongthe MacEvoy Trail where it crosses a small stream in Ramapo Mountain State Forest, New Jersey: photo by Famartin, 12 May 2013

View up the MacEvoy Trail where it crosses a small stream in Ramapo Mountain State Forest, New Jersey: photo by Famartin, 12 May 2013

Rocky stream along the MacEvoy Trail in Ramapo Mountain State Forest, New Jersey: photo by Famartin, 12 May 2013

Stream along the MacEvoy Trail in Ramapo Mountain State Forest, New Jersey: photo by Famartin, 12 May 2013

View up the rocky stream along the MacEvoy Trail at around 430 feet in Ramapo Mountain State Forest, New Jersey: photo by Famartin, 12 May 2013

The Ice Cave [Sterlington, Ramapo, N.Y.]: photo by Dave NY, 8 April 2007

Is the #Ramapo Fault waking up? M5.1 #earthquake downgraded to M4.1 quake felt from New York City to Baltimore via @StrangeSounds: image via Strange Sounds @Strange_Sounds, 30 November 2017

Meditation at the Pink Panther Haircut Saloon

Untitled | Kolkata, 2018: photo by Koushik Sinha Roy, 20 May 2018

The Pink Panther haircut saloon_011 | by stefaan.decuypere

The Pink Panther haircut saloon_011: photo by Stefaan Decuypere, 19 May 2018

Meditation at the Pink Panther Haircut Saloon

I'm not going to say the entanglement of the aviator in his parachute, caught in the bare limbs of the tree, vulnerable and exposed above the battlefield, is a historical meaning exactly, but the entanglement of meaning in historical communities is a bit like that. Variability across history increases the estrangement of a remote text, which is always stranded, never able to get back, can't recognize the landmarks, nothing feels familiar. But haven't we always been here before?