Father wrap these the hands of
your dear ordinand, the man’s
hands soaked in sacred scented
chrism, wrap them in this clean
cloth, the Maniturgium,
this cloth that will one day wrap
the precious hands of she his
mother, she his mother who first
protected him in her womb,
she his mother who now lies
in her final resting place
and in Heaven all will know
she bore the world a holy priest,
to Christ’s delight, he her gift.
Gary Edward Geraci
the natural law
is man’s participation
in eternal law
Gary Edward Geraci
Inspired by “The Eternal Law” as taught by St. Thomas Aquinas
Chosen, the world
Frozen; aright,
Your steadfastness
Pure, might His grace
Make you holy.
Take virtue: true
Fortitude: vice
Accrued now mist,
Pierced by White Light,
Dispersed. “Redeemed
By the Almighty!”
Cry ten among
Each age, ten whom
Reach sanctity:
Refused a world
Infused in sinful
Pleasure seeking;
Leisure postponed;
Ignoring the
Scorning, mocking.
One of the Ten:
None too easy:
Turning God from
Burning the world.
Gary Edward Geraci
It is true! Yes God!
The pain is gone, my heart filled!
You’re taking me home!
Gary Edward Geraci
The body no longer the temple
There comes a time when
The acquisition of wisdom
Over muscle becomes the mental
Exercise for men
Intent on building the Kingdom
And essential to the survival
Of a culture that flourishes in
Holiness despite the socialist system
Creeping up the ladder but no rival
To the overwhelming love of One Cross, One Victim.
Gary Edward Geraci
I do think there are holy priests
Who do withhold from the feasts
Of pleasure and comfort seeking
Committed to exposing the reeking
Lies of a godless culture
Where God’s death is “food for the vulture”
And my next breath is sustained
By a material process maintained
In an infinite series
Of coincidental mysteries
Yet subject to the radical manipulations
Of woefully deficient compilations
Of wholly defiant ideations
Of the stuff that’s failed nations
Fall falling felled failing to rise
Rise Christ rise I don’t believe the lies
Just lies
Just lies
Gary Edward Geraci
Gaze of faith
Gaze on a blitz
Blitz of wisdom
Blitz of seekers
Seekers are finders
Seekers finding love
Love across borders
Love among people
People who pray
People who sing
Sing to attract
Sing to praise
Praise God for the day
Praise God for the night
Night and days theirs
Night a taste of rest
Rest from troubles
Rest in warmth
Warmth is comforting
Warmth living in truth
Truth they seek
Truth the fruit of the search
Search along an inclined path
Search while fully clothed
Clothed in one’s culture
Clothed in the garments
Garments of the lands
Garments of the traditions
Traditions to know
Traditions to find
Find true happiness
Find the Way
Way of peace
Way of communion
Communion with neighbor
Communion with others
Others who too are searching
Others who too want to heal
Heal all that divides
Heal those who hunger
Hunger and thirst
Hunger for the banquet
Banquet of all banquets
Banquet to feed many
Many are called
Many both rich and beggars
Beggars who come to feast
Beggars who become rich
Rich...
Feast...
Gary Edward Geraci
What if it really is God
Whom we consume in the small
white tasteless host? Would it really
matter how far apart we were
in place or time? The One and Only,
God, and God consumed! Would this not
be a unity unlike any
other? A unity among
People, one another, a
Communion with each other far
greater than the most lavish, earthly
intercourse ever exchanged or penned or planned?
Gary Edward Geraci
Under the tutelage of Fr. Gerard Manley Hopkins
Clumps of crimson-bright berries clustered close;
Red to catch the light, red to glow in sight,
And numbered, numbering gross
Winter feasts for feeding fowl on berry:
First feed, take flight,
Return to gorge. More! Most
Moist in juice, the cherry
Hued globes - glut of fuel - and sweet in shell; then flight - high and airy.
Would we be so rich in moment,
This shared moment potent,
Fed fully like feathered creatures!
This second excluding no one:
Well in health and playful fun,
Or lost in luck with aching heart.
Wealth is ‘now’: ‘now’ a speeding dart,
‘Now’ a young leader, ‘now’ a truth seeker,
‘Now’ calling himself the Son
Of God. The descent down meant
Rendering also onto Caesar.
Treasure, time, and talent
This eternal minute is a gallant
And noble Teacher,
A giving Teacher, a rich Teacher;
Sharing NOW, a royal Teacher.
Gary Edward Geraci
To choose who I’ll love
Or that all lives matter,
The course of the planet
Or who’ll be President,
Haggles over fracking,
The freedom of press gaggles,
Who’s gonna cross the border,
Women’s rights, where I can worship,
Coronavirus, lockdowns, masks -
Are all just wispy phantoms
If you tear me from the womb.
Gary Edward Geraci
the deep silent ones...
out of bounds of his
most vicious handlers,
be they men or demons,
...known only to you
God and inspired by
your Holy Spirit.
for green lacewings float
up like silent prayers
only to be devoured,
mid-flight, by
ravenous dragonflies.
Gary Edward Geraci
What’s this, new language?
“An emotional affair...”
You are joking right?
Gary Edward Geraci
Tongues are a special anatomical invention
venting and will-work-wagging with varying convention.
Cute, creep-crawl creatures slurp slick-soft slugs and shoot
sticky, slop-mass-mounds of evolved flesh: pounce, reboot,
repeat, then lick. Look, the sublingual solitude
of a berry sized seed buried and
booed
for being so bothersome to the lingual
advantages
of being rational and speaking several languages;
bilingual; slow, but with strong accents and sloppy bursts
of, oh yes, ‘yeast-yawn’ palatals, well rehearsed
but, well, with sub-par pronunciation. The tongue’s
highest use, I think then, is as throne: the Son’s
place of respite leaving one tongue-tied with Majesty.
No wonder it’s so wonderful but wandering south can be a travesty,
just west of wicked minded inclination,
puffed and gassy, it is “Glossitis,” the glossy, grassy nation
where sometimes tongues don’t work so well and messy faces
and fingers result and things are said that spoil spaces.
A beloved creature, the tongue is drawing immense
pleasure in the eyes and heart of Coherence,
a beaming and affectionate Countenance,
the fruit of his satisfaction and love for tongue parlance,
of which his Son took one when he became Man,
learning to lip with lap, love and chat with twelve chosen kinsmen.
Gary Edward Geraci
A kind of deficiency in my kind to be kind,
cravenness has bred cruelty, contempt of self the moldings of a misanthrope
and brutal loathing, lonesomeness - the liquidation of every liberty with impunity.
For we slapped each other’s backs,
congratulatory because we were all born under the dogma but now are no longer slaves, emancipated, no longer on parole, but unified in our discontent for fugitive pleasures, the rights to be free we have so dreadfully fought for. So what can you promise me with any lasting substance or depth oh fleeting liberty? The finality of an act with no encore.
Gary Edward Geraci
Their focus is on Shanghai, the way
They’re bustling back, once again living for the day,
While our own beloved streets here in the USA
Apparently ringing of suffering and death? but why? is it because? - hey!
Look around, everywhere we’ve traveled they
Are out and about, people bathing in Pagosa Springs, the lay
Faithful are trying to pack the churches while women bring offerings and bursting red colored clusters of dried green chilies in Santa Fe,
And there is dancing in the streets in Durango, Silverton, and Ouray.
A penitent nation flies through the fiery rhymes of Alexander Hamilton
And Feser’s five, foolhardy proofs for God’s existence (making more sense now than before the pandemic).
Small crowds are gathering to sing the National Anthem,
Looking each other in the eyes and searching for an end to it.
Filipino food in Clovis, RVs, railroads, and cattlemen...
The country’s blazing back while the media’s waxing poetic - pathetic!
Gary Edward Geraci
To trust in the power of a mental prayer
Said in faith and love is more than flat and bare.
To gather oneself in focus and with fixed stare,
Pray big and for peace in countries everywhere.
A mystery, this moving of mental substance,
Unheard to others yet flowing abundance;
Petition and praise; sins felt with reluctance.
Angels and saints and our Lord in the Monstrance
Have left a historical record of good,
Leaving no question about whether you should.
It’s well enough to know that God said you could;
Chosen to send prayer out if you only would.
Choose to set aside a fixed time and place,
Or take those times you’re prone to just stare in space,
Or run useless thoughts like you’re running a race,
And trust in the Lord and in His mighty grace.
Gary Edward Geraci
i’m so contingent,
born of two people, but i’ll
die in His image.
Gary Edward Geraci
(In memory of Edward Van Halen)
A hierarchy grounded in bass notes with crescendos of rapid-fire scaling thrust beyond the established confines of what was considered proper at the time, Mother’s warning ignored while mother and my brothers sit in the first row. As a simultaneous fall of four fingertips across the shoulder blades of a lover, rather a sequential falling and then a brush, a soft sweeping thumb caress across the high ridge of each blade - the slide of the tips, a sensation, a tingle - like finger tapping strings on a fret board and one making a living distorting electrified strings, bending and stretching both highs and lows, lows and highs, the sounds deafening our ears, ringing and the fog of smoke burning our eyes, tearing and the scent of cannabis filling our nostrils, inhaling - all the while realizing much later in life that all was grounded in the loving presence of the First Cause.
Gary Edward Geraci
Of the differences between man and
woman here’s one: these hands. Not to forget,
it’s a woman who births these manly hands.
A man’s hands to elevate your Body, to
consecrate bread and wine, yes, a man’s hands,
a man’s hands to hold her close, to keep her
forever. But a man’s hands profaned and
pillagers are imprisoned from their potential.
When I see his hands I see mine. What lame
cause of action has kept these hands barren,
his fruitful. A man’s hands meant to consecrate
to bear much fruit. I look at them, how I
have commissioned them, what true capacity
lie wasting, henceforth to be awakened.
Many manly hands have had grace slip through
the fingers, covered the ears, covered the
eyes, covered the mouth and never uttered
your Sacred Name nor lifted your Body
and Blood. These hands of mine I study them
closely, a reflection of what could have been.
Gary Edward Geraci
colored mountains Speak
while on our way to Ouray
hot coffee we seek
Gary Edward Geraci
Vivacious young believer
Glowing in her youth
Takes a veil, vow, and habit
And now loves us kindly too.
Though we’ve seen our better days
And walk with slippered feet
Sister Mary cares for us
And assists with the food we eat.
We might be cross and angry
Longing for visitors
So she makes the sign of the Cross
And takes us on Heavenly tours.
Each night for us we end in prayer
Her voice so soft and kind
Some of us will not wake from sleep
But it’s sure, Heaven we will find.
Gary Edward Geraci
In prayer and in my deepest
reflections, I don’t have to
map out the wild waywardness
of this poor, bent, beating heart,
a road marked by potholes, dips,
hairpin twists, turns, and hazards.
Needing not the turn by turn
toward this torn and tormented
self-assessment, You love me;
this journey You’ve rode along.
Gary Edward Geraci
Here among us
Everywhere above us; fate,
You do so create.
Gary Edward Geraci
Black mulch is better
It gets blacker when
It’s wetter the black
Ground backdrop becomes
Fused to the fuchsia
Flower dust where the
Eruption of a verdure
Emerald fern mound
Is punctuation
For a well crafted
Creation sentence
Whispered by our Lord.
Gary Edward Geraci
So like the rainfall
A physical thing
Watering the earth
A purposeful thing
So it is with me
A physical thing
Sharing the Christ’s Love
A purposeful thing
Gary Edward Geraci
While I listen to all the grumblings in the pew, old women intent on inspecting my behavior, whispering, sunk in gossip, wiping, righteous wicked women, demonize me after every Mass, realize, loose the essence of the service, focusing instead on how they’d go about wiping my seat because I’ve refused to wipe it. I don’t know which is worse but Mary is their Queen.
Blow-ups, blowing by blown marriages, mine is bad, it’s our second, betrayed, she’s left me again, loving son more than me and he’s four past twenty three, hers is a sickness, it’s for good, so she claims, but we’re Catholic but not in this case and so I cut the beard for her favor but should have kept it but it’s crept back before and so I surrender our separation to the Sovereign hand of the King, Mary is my Queen.
Faithful but cynical sons celebrating the kill shots of militant vigilante gunmen this crisis, consigned to Hell, video loops of small pockets of fire and flare ups played over and over you’d think it was the whole world, streets stripped of saneness, senseless, something is amiss, police missing from the scene, to be there a great risk, what to make of this sin, how to handle this sin, charges of systemic racism, defiant young men doomed to hell, indecency their bloodline except Mary is their Queen.
Ladies using exercise mats move into parking lots like flash mobs gathered to flex muscles and a junked up junkie bunking on a street bench doesn’t know what’s going on next except I drive by and she’s gotten up to walk and so we see each other’s faces and it’s in that moment when I pass her that I say: Mary is your Queen.
Gary Edward Geraci
Like a landscape that changes only in
Plantings there is permanence, favorite
Corners, where shelter, sound, and smell collide.
Colors are textures of flying things landing
Then alighting in flight. Yearly, fresh lite
Mulch, small renewals, death then replanting,
New growth. Inevitable attacks of
Invading army ants menace and men
Threaten my guests. Biting flies and blood-suck
Invaders bent on bending Truth demolish
Trust with gray heat waves of deprivation.
Armed with hose and spray I regain lost ground,
The upper hand. I’m not going anywhere.
I do not change house every ten years.
Gary Edward Geraci
I watch you get a running start and then unload upon an injured man sitting in the street. A broken man beaten, hurting, and in shock - your kick from behind, orchestrated, a running start, a foot planted squarely into the man’s jaw, knocking him flat, knocking him unconscious, yet you knew all along, you knew you were being filmed.
Your blatant disregard is for His image.
God’s image, written into this very man. But you carried out your attack as if your foot was engaging a football, a mere object of recreation, rather than the reality of a delicate head and face, already suffering injury, a head and face cradled by a mother, kissed by a wife, caressed by a child.
“You’re a coward, you are a coward!” screamed a girl to me sometime later after learning that I had followed the coaxing of my seventh grade peers and had lobbed my fist into the head of a boy, the twin, Alex, I think was his name, giving him a bloody lip. And when he turned around to look at me, his attacker, he looked
pained, not from the cowardly blow I had inflicted while his back was to me, but pained from the fact we knew each other and I had chosen to betray our friendship. For what? For the shallow glory the mob would give me. For joining in on “the fight.” Whatever the hell that meant I never figured it out.
Gary Edward Geraci
Virus, protestors violent, race riots and
It’s just July, outcries, the demons would have
Me write about this surge of house flies, I stand,
A dried brown scorpion corpse on the floor, halve
Here, harmless severed stinger there, away, grand
Guardian angel keep me, I look up and laugh
For Christ’s Cross keeps the devil’s face under,
Over watchful eyes of my heavenly Mother.
Gary Edward Geraci
Joy, joy, joy oh tripartite joy!
On winged insects bathing plumage feast,
Flown from forests, over fields of beast,
Drawn to gurgling fountains falling, toy
Landscapes of castled estates a boy
Dreams of sharing, her laughter his peace.
Requite love, pure and free, not to cease,
Not to flicker, nor to fail - enjoy!
One Whom time does not diminish
Unites their souls, bodies transfigured,
Weary no more, without depletion,
Life springs forward in form and finish.
Highborn, transcendent at Tabor, fed
By Christ and through Christ, take completion.
Gary Edward Geraci
Matter is the stuff made Holy
Space matter mattered
Now no matter what
Matter is the stuff made Holy
Creatures of matter
Not by their merit
Matter is the stuff made Holy
Our mothers matter
Christ’s Mother mattered
Matter is the stuff made Holy
Logos now Matter
The Master Maestro
Matter is the stuff made Holy
Man mocked yet atoned
Misfortune matters
Matter is the stuff made Holy
Gary Edward Geraci
