Mandala by Charles Gilchrist "The Flower or Life in Nature's First Pattern"http://www.mandalaproject.org/What/Main.html Mandalas are in nature, in experience, inside us. We create our own experience mandalas often without knowing. Artist create concrete mandalas ( sometimes on paper, sometimes in the sand or on the ground) for religious ceremonies and as visual catalysts for meditation and awareness. This poem was written years ago when I was given this Gilchrist mandala as a gift. It hangs on my living room wall. Today it reminds me of the organic nature and mystery of life's experiences. When I look at the mandala, the shapes begin to shift. As they move something happens. It is hard to describe. It is like an invisible oil that greases a wheel getting it to go forward. It is like a hand that comforts. It holds an energy that transforms.
SHAMANIC ARTIST, LA DI DA IN SIX PARTS
Elizabeth P. Glixman
I
Shrieking harmonic convergences
unleashing unified fields of hues
He blows light from his hands
to those who can catch
glowering balls
without falling downward
in the after shock of glazed echoes
and the heat of ruby red slippers
sparkling wings filmed by a universal studio
His hair streaked an orange tipped fire frenzy
flails startles sleepy caterpillars
and anyone with curves who desires
the anonymity of smoke.
Feathers flower from his quaking nostrils
They rhumba the rhythm of yahoo
the whipped cream of it all
His percolating ear vibrates to magma moans
a seismic transformation gone wiley
He is a derelict cohabitating with
fruit of the loom cotton that dabs
his burning eyes
Is that why people think he is mad?
Genital seeing is not cognized by many.
II
At birth painted sounds were in his womb
His knuckles turned red clapping
archetypal images
conjuring prismatic paper multifaceted bells
Templates of ringing wake his third eye
from transcendental sleep
His fingers spin three-dimensional spheres
the free river of refined visual language
III
One point is the beginning of time
Then there were two and then
there were snowflakes
endless in calligraphic directions.
The words on the pear tree
the vistas
the pavement
ground like mutton
Plato watches the lambs in rubber boots
walking the river of shadows
He outlines the mad man's geometry
the focused eye of his hand
Meticulous mandalas bulls eyes of contemplation
Bravo thinks Plato about the octahedrons
tetrahedrons
roused in circular heavy weight
bond flames
IV
The first word of God was laughter
He never spelled it phonetically
He let it burst out in a catastrophic hug
He wrapped his insides in spectacular unformed
cobweb fireworks
bringing in diminishing darkness
Dispersed fireflies fondled the
weightless space kissed voracious ambiance
learned to recite
the alphabet in choral repetitions
without a lamp by the bed stand
Forms began
V
In the age of Kali Yuga
a complete 432,000 years
Destruction is the tune our ancestors
watch and can not vocalize
They are too busy spying
VI
The painter with his stretcher sticks and pliers
pries our minds open
underneath the generic
gravestones of in and out breathe
The acrylic visionary wins
the world series of names
bats the square root of all
He colors the beginning
and ending of God's laughter
with watercolor cubed mandalas
ink stained pyramids
and other shapes
inhabiting his uncluttered mind
The mad man bellows and puffs
He waves his pencils marks
They are freedom flags
wrapped in God's arms
embracing us
Arms as large
as what can never be colored
only in vague nightmares by children
with fat hand chalk.
The man in red tipped hair is mad.
He sees proportions that we can not measure
Rulers we can not name
When a toe crushes the galaxies
we can begin to imagine
God's coat size and the circles of his eyes.
Published in
MUSE APPRENTICE GUILD :: SPRING 2003
