Baptism (Fall 2022)

Bridging the dichotomy between visceral macabre and surreal-like beauty, my series Baptism is expanding narrative that explores the journey and process of an angel’s brutal fall from grace. Through a series of interconnected triptychs and altarpiece-like compositions, my work traverses through the parallel connections of man and the divine image of man represented by the angel; the concept of the “immortal,” in this case, an angel of the highest order, a seraph, “immortal” or “earthly” desires and temptations, making the “immortal” mortal or giving the “immortal” earthly and human-like wants and desires, and as penance for said desires, the subsequent fall from Heaven.

My poetry is vital to the development and creation of each piece within this series, with every line written through the fallen angel’s eyes in compositions that mirror biblical scripture. Parallelism and dichotomy are working themes within the writing that make an appearance as other visual, conceptual, and sculptural themes of cyclical mortality, death, punishment, desire, martyrdom, and repentance. The cycle of time is explored through the four seasons, moving backward, with each season representing yet another death/fall of the angel. And with every death, another story is woven in connection to the ones that came before it.

Baptism (poem)


And from Spring, I plummet
Angel of the mourning
May my fall be fatal for the heretic in me hath fallen once again
This poisonous miasma has condemned me for the second time

And my body crashes onto frozen floors,
My fall is broken by the icy surface
I feel all my bones fragment,
Bloody marrow spills from the splintered vertebrae and sticks to the glassy mirror
Winter has come and has slighted the world
Into a white wake,
Spring was taken from this Earth

How cathartic

How beautiful it is to witness winter’s divine comedy
A precious commodity
My blood begins to pool
Lividity
Again, white embalms green
And white is painted red
Bloody floors begin breathing
Intricate red lacing crystallizes beneath me
And the searing heat of bittersweet blood begins to freeze
These frozen floors, this frozen lake is my unearthing

My catacombs of disgrace
My crown of thorns
My halo

It rests within the gaping fracture of my skull
And plunges my mind deep into the gallows
The rotting flora and greedy centipedes that once riddled my head are now preserved in frosted casing
Set to continue their feast in the promise of Spring
A promise to continue their scavenging
Like the committee of vultures that woefully pick at red skeletons til what remains is

Nothing

In the heights of the clouds, morning begins to
descend into nightfall
Evening
An ocean of blue flutters above me
A kaleidoscope of butterflies pay their respects
Their misguided migration leads their mourning over
sinners
But I am no Abel, no saint
Only Cain

For there are better angels
For the untainted and holy abstain
I need not your pity nor saving
For this cruelty by God is necessary
This is my purgatory
An unholy sacrament
Baptism

The world has gone numb and silent
The blue butterflies prayed for me
Only to be picked to pieces, their wings plucked
Ripped and Tethered
They, too, went silent

In my diary is written the prophecy,
My fate that bleeds into the pages of my skin
Red ink tattoos my body with its sermon,
Leaving in its wake blistering heat
The humors of my body laugh
They rage, they cry
They pray
They scream
They reek of melancholy
I throw up black bile as the tumors on my flesh wallow dreadfully
Toxic phlegm clogs my throat as dark, thick blood spills from my cracked lips
In a kiss so intimate and deadly
Yellow bile plagues my insides
Writhing and Bubbling, Oozing
Eager to join the others in their pillaging
And these raptures decorate themselves as my
stigmata
The Brain Fever renders me tired, and still

And there I lay

May this be my eternal burial, my oblivion
May this be my frozen crypt
As the chasm of my mind spills onto this frozen surface
Gaunt and rotten fingers circle my ankles
I feel their prints bruise my frostbitten skin
The bones begin to shift and shatter, pulsating pain is brought by the severing amputation
And my ankle protrudes out of its socket,
My skin peels back against the bone
No longer shackled to the muscles and joints
I’m pulled beneath the depths,
And water plunges through my lungs
The claws of the Evangelical tear at my broken wings
Manic hunger and bloodthirsty teeth break and bind,
twist, and dislocate the tissue from bone

There I lay

Devoured by my kin
Stained feathers dance through the blackening water
The snap of my brittle glass bones in their teeth and the rushing blood down their lips leave my body
ravaged
My once pure white wings, now stained red, have
been viscously torn from my frame
Mangled and Mutilated
The collapse of this lake mirrors my fall
As I sink, the hierarchy of angels that once walked the Gardens of Eden have been sent to deliver my
penance
They have been sent to eat away at what is left of me
Eclipsed by the tendrils of mellow ripples
The pallid sky above me is drowned by red, murky water
As I am taken by the depths, my eyes freeze shut

I will never see snowfall again

The water is so cold

My lungs flood as I am buried deeper and deeper
My breath is vanquished, soulless

It’s so cold

Amen, for angels do fall



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