Welcome to the Wonder World.

Welcome to the wacked-out wonder-world of photographer and sometimes poet, Kirk Jordan.  

Kirk writes ...  You wonder what you just read.

This site is not so much a blog, as it is a “CROP” – a Creative Repository of O-stonishing poems. 

In short, this site consists of three to five books, which in turn are comprised of poems,  journal entries, and assorted ramblings.  

Book One: To the Titan Women:  Poems to and about the significant  women in my Life.  2001 or so. 

Book Two: Bones in My Soul  Pretty much everything I ever wrote between 1972 and 2003, excluding the stuff from the breakaway "Titan Women."   Look for themes surrounding sex, death and time --  eyeballs and the Incarnation.  

Book Two-point-five.   Post Bones and B-sides. (Some extra stuff that either followed, or did not fit in my original three-ring "Bone" binder, including some creative collisions of photography and verse.  

Book Three:  Sin.   A book in the Works.  2004- 

Book fourish.... Assorted essays, and the remnant of a book about Origins,  that fell apart and may yet breath again.

As is, I have not written a significant poem in years. I keep thinking that that is about to change. A monster of a poem is boiling inside right now. One of these days the stars will align, the sea will boil over, and all that creative astonishment is going to pour out in a new big-bang of explosive force. Until then, enjoy the remnants of the storm.

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The Fatherland: In Memory of Dad

Stephen Edgington Jordan

August 4, 1932 – May 4, 2015

(Hob Glob Version: Take One)   penned, April 24 to May 7, 2015

My Dad died several days ago.

I started this poem before his demise…

I was not able to share it with him, though we did laugh thru many of these memories when I saw him last Christmas.

My first impulse was to write a chronological narrative.  But somewhere in the process, the order broke down.  The memories came in so thick and gushing that I just had to just plop stuff down; Order be flushed.

I have not yet solidified the voice, so I am using several.   The style ranges from immediate prose to flamboyant symbolism. I just started thinking about Dad and spitting verse. I am speaking to him, and about him.   I speak about the material world, and the world he helped create in me. 

This is a history I share in part with my mother, Ellie Jordan (d 2009) and my siblings Casey, Tien, and Jordan.   The poem covers roughly the first fourteen years of my life, stretched across three home states.   Life got more complicated after that.

The Fatherland   

My father is a land

Of burnt orange and umber

Tall grass, and wind speak,

Torrents and thunder…

My father is the smell of varnish'n
baccon, 

cedar sparks, trilling into the sky.

--

I am smoking a cigar to my dad

Not because he liked the things, nor because of life

He preferred the pipe --- And he is curled,

Like a skin and bone wisp

In a dying bed

No: 

This smoke is currency of time and place

I need the hour

And the tug of the smoldering earth

Thick on my eyes, nose and tongue.

I need to remember good things and bad, and things long forgotten.

--

It is hard, when harvesting the past to know

How much of memory is real

Or

How much is photograph derived.

I consider my first conscious thought:

You are swimming in the ocean with my Mom.

Only, I am not yet born.

Hmmmmm

Must be the photo. But I do have the shell.

Pastel and neon, swirled in abalone.

Next photographic memory shows me, age two, with hair of platinum silk.  I am sitting in a boat, packaged in a float.  I don't remember the name of the lake, but I do remember the blue, the white bobbled boats and spray, and the feel of your warm stubble pressed into my cheek.

I remember, riding in the back of cars.  The beauty of falling asleep to the purr.  Tubes of zinging light.   You wake me up and say… Look, that is Hollywood..  I look up, then lap back into dreams.

Later that night we pull into the drive.  Placerville.  Small farm. The crickets are ablaze.  A crisp Sierra-Nevada night shocks my skin:

My Father

Is a jump rope of stars

The milky way, arching overhead

Like a spangled rainbow trout…

How many little suns could there be?

I think now of our tepid skies

Could this even be the same universe?


(continued)

First Poem

To hold her hand,

          would be so grand,
          and meant for only a King.

But alas...

          I am a pauper.




Note:   This poem goes first, cause its the first poem I remember writing.   Age 12 or 13  About a Miss Tammy Marrs. 7th Grade.

Titan Women: About this book.

To the Titan Women:

                    About this book (2003)

The work before your eyes is an outtake from a larger creative effort (Bones in My Soul) that grew too big and may soon shatter. (It did.) In sharing that work with friends, I asked what expressions they liked best. More often than not, friends cited the “relationship” poems. Now, this is hard. I like my “idea” poems, anchored in teleology and eyeballs. Girls write about relationships, Men about ideas and events.


At least I that’s how it seemed when I was part of college poetry class some years ago -- From the offerings in the class and the works in our anthology we recognized a bold pattern. I bet I could pick 10-to-1 whether a given piece of poetry was penned by a woman or a guy. As a man, I would much rather be known for my stupendous frontal-lobe than for the width of my heart. Which is somewhat perverse, and why we so need women.


There are other reasons men need women, not the least of which is that we were made to. Men are, for reasons anchored in the mind of God, made better for having loved women, and a particular woman at that. Beyond that there is the stuff of procreation, civilization, and the economy of heating fuel.


--


Truth be told, I do like writing about relationships. (Living them, now that’s a trick.) In fact, in talking with some internet friends several of us guys on the list came to a peculiar realization: Public wisdom has it that boys are okay with their moms until about age six, after which they develop the thought that girls are cootie-infested trolls, which holds until about age thirteen when the behemoth of testosterone kicks in and renders all women-flesh once again a thing of supreme enjoyment. Not so us. Given that we are all music types, the survey may be skewed, but we found that to the man, we have always cherished women – even as third graders!


This state of affairs has its counterpoint, especially among those who call upon the name of the Lord and wish our affections ordered under his light. We not only love women, but we are ordered to love them in the right way --Not as objects of lust or idolatrous passion, but as fellow travelers to the city of God.


Thank God for his Grace and the very beauty of godly women that would drive us to higher things. Thank God that he will not leave us to our lower selves, but pushes us into the realm of greater pleasure.


Thank God for my wife.


--


Note: While tame by literary standards, this work includes a spattering of sexual allusions that ride the edge of my comfort zone. I believe that these expressions are consistent with Holy Ghost liberty. If, after reading the Song of Songs or the Bible prophets, any one disagrees, I firmly apologize. I have attempted, even in my ardor to be mindful of the mature but celibate reader.






Next: My Dear Little Kayla

Back: First Poem

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My Dear Little Kayla

3/90

My Dear little Kayla,What deep joy
we find in a stalwart tap
as you,
our ballerina in the bag
poke about with fist and foot,
banging on the temple walls …
Lifting us to laughter as you reach
upward into elastic sky,
moving skin like a mole
churning earth
underneath.

Your mother would contend
that these are the antics of an Andrew,
and given that she has
both intuition and 
an internal seismograph,
I agree, paternalistically
to speak “Andrew” at her stomach
out loud.

But when the three of us go dancing
with the dish rag in hand,
I bet I hold two women in my arms,
and dream about the day
when feisty Kayla J.
leads a pack of younger brothers
through Yosemite.

Your first days of being
were an uncertain whim;
The rhythm that had marked
my young bride’s life with lunar frequency
was less predictable since marriage months before,
and we weren’t sure if the moon was late
or fallen from the sky.


Wonder led to double talk --
convoluted wantings,
with moments of “Oh Dear”
But when you turned our home kit pink,
we celebrated roundly
feeding you on egg rolls
intravenously.

(Kayla was born, in keeping with her father's foreknowledge in June 1990.  He did, however, goof on the brothers.)

next: Vertical Baby (Plus)

Vertical Baby (Plus)

Vertical Baby -- (a Lullaby with tune for the colicky kid.)

I am the vertical baby,

Don’t you ever lay me down.

On the ground is sore vexation,

Held upright is pure elation …

Oh, Daddy, Daddy if you please

bounce me on your horsey knees

I don’t ever want to sleep;

Stay with me all through the night

And lift me like a gentle kite.

NO -- I am not some asphalt

That I should be put down,

I am the Vertical Baby !

So rock me ever standing, or "tock" me

like a metronome.

Tyrannosaurus 2

That mouth

Would gulf the city if it could  -

Indeed,

Nothing is too sacred or too saline

For that tongue

Including

A rock, a sock,

A block, a cigarette butt,

Or little fingers --

wet with molten honey.

 

Peace, Happiness, and love...

(Guest Artist appearance by Kayla Jordan - then 10)

It all started on June 10th 1990. A little girl had been born that day. Two parents stood over her smiling happily. This was their first child. They named her Kayla. How do I know: Because I was that little girl. Slowly but surely I became a toddler. The world became more exciting and new. I could go more places and see way more. Just the same I missed the old world I had been in. It was a place I couldn't mess up. I was always happy. Now I never could have a chance to go back to that wonderful place, it was only like a happy dream. 

Life continued on. Several things happened. First of all, a new person was coming into the family. I knew something was going to happen because my parents acted weird. They talked to me about a strange person I had never seen. They said she would be someone very important to me. I thought they were reading the future. Later I did see a very strange person. I liked the person. The object or animal made weird noises and my parents seemed to treasure this creature more than me. My second world zoomed away as quickly as my first. Soon I developed a love for my sister. I understood her more and she was getting to be an exolent playmate. I remember one time when we climbed though our cupboard. We clanged lids together and pretended we were playing instruments. Even though I had such fun here my happiness would soon end. We moved to a strange place called Fort Smith, Arkansas. I would start something I never imagine then. I was going to start school

My world changed once again. Before school ever started now I had a new sister named Anna. This time I was not confused at all by her birth. I knew she was a human. When I saw her I knew only joy, peace, happiness, and love….

next: These Daughters of Mine

To the Titan Women (1)

(11/23/01)

Nowhere in all the land were there found women as beautiful as Job’s daughters, until … (Job 42:15 plus.)

I am the son of Titan women,

Born of water and of blood;

Born of Heaven’s will

and of the burning sod.

I am born of Terra

and of Sarah too,

A son of Adam, and

our “Father” Abraham, 

included in the loins of faith.

I am the son of strong STRONG women

and the sire of the same,

I have tasted fire,

and added to the flame of life.

Trace me backand you will find

Irish maids and Cornish lords,

scallywags and dumblewits,

pagans, saints, and tumbled hordes

mighty pillars, bloody swords,

and …a fire that burns back to Eve.


And now …what’s this?

Would I throw my little spears 

until I hit (as if by chance) 

some distant planet on the run?

I read some guy who says that we

are but the natural end

 of very natural means:

The sexual love of our earthly parents.

But, if he means no more than this,

I kindly disagree-

God works his artistry

through media of matter and the crave; 

He put this fire in our bones

and placed the beauty of my wife

within my eyes.

The fact that it was physical

or that our brains were blazing hot, 

would not delete His plan in anyway.

Indeed, 

We would borrow from an ancient code

lifted up like surging magma,

Ever breaking, splitting twisting

in this tree of man;

And we would join that twist and play, 

mixing like epoxy -information-laden parts until:

Three new Titan women stand, 

made of half a Titan, made of half a man; 

and the wisdom of the Master Artist.

And God steps back from his canvas pleased.

Kayla, My first born--

You came into this world 

with a perfect pumpkin face. 

And I can see that first-face still,

stretched and welling underneath,

Staring lovely like the moon at me

with timeless eyes of moss.

Ireland was good to you.

You wear her hair and spunk.

But does is seem 

that you were meant for different times?

I picture you in France 

beneath the brush strokes of Monet,

the little redhead girl beside the gate 

with water can … but No,

even that’s too current.

You were made for castles and for knights, 

or for some distant timeless time, 

kinder to small kids 

who walk around in dreams, 

and nurse heat-dazed hornets back to health,

even as you pour compassion

on a worn-down mom and dad.

Indeed, we sometimes wonder where your mind is,

half-an-hours’ homework pressed into two hours!

but, when you place your pencil to the sketchpad

weave poetic line, or put your heart to ivory

I think we know where

your brain’s been…Between the stars!

And now,

My beloved Ede:

Your name, colored in the essence

of three women:

Edith, mother of our Charles -- Granddad McGinn,

Edith, wife of Francis S., a hero in my life,

and Edith, a little Mennonite girl whom I remember

with fondness, as she laughed

in her long dress and bonnet.

It appears, there is only one thing

that may eclipse your very direct beauty

and blue eyes …

A mind that races quick

and dishes whit, even as you live with

nose buried in some five-pound book.

We call you the brain kid,

but I know an even bigger heart

that drinks in love

or spreads it like a mop.

(And now, you stand behind my shoulder 

reading, wondering, will you get your fair share? 

Did I say, more or better things of you, 

or what can you run off with, to rub in?)





You are our queen of drama,

Quick with verbal sword, or quick to take the hit,You cackle, laugh, or weep,command, charge, or screechwith Shakespearean ease.May I recommend a future as conductor?or (as often joked), the President.

Or better yet (my dream)Missionary for the causeof Christ.

And now

I turn to Anna,our banana (sorry)our little muscle kid.

You know we sometimes saythat Kayla and the Ede, got the genes of mein thicker distribution, ButLittle one, my love… you got your Mom.

You are strong and tenacious, pretty and vivaciousstubborn, and alive and witha tough sense of “funny” to boot.

You find humor in the black/white of languageand demand we mean what we say.“Okay, One seconds up!”

Who taught you to tease, or to climb the rope with ease?Charge the soccer goal with fearless speed.

Who taught you to be stubborn?or enduremost every knock (or missing teeth)without a tear.

My only fear for you is that you makeit to adulthood in one piece.

My only fear for “them”(These men of tomorrow)is that they survive their broken hearts.



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On the Treachery of Women

On the treachery of women (from the journals of the Kirk) ‘83

In talking with Steve C. the other day I proposed what I thought was a big problem for the model of evolution as advanced through survival of the fittest. According to the model, things mutate at either slow or gargantuan rates. (Remember Stephen Gould and the Hopeful Monster Theory?). Accordingly, the mutation must be beneficial, or at least neutral, so that some differentiation takes place from the parent stock. The mutation must then be isolated, then transferable, to the next round of offspring. Finally, the mutation should render the species more capable of survival. A halfway mutation just won’t do. But these weren't my thoughts to Steve.


It seems strange to me, I said, that woman should be at the top of the evolutionary pile. Given the model, things with thicker shells, bigger teeth, and tighter muscles should force their way to the top … unless, I guess, you consider the virus or the cockroach the pinnacle creation of a self-made cosmos. Nonetheless, or unless, you think of the cosmos littered with other forms of intelligence … it seems in my mind that woman must be highest thing on the ladder – be she material quest, or breathed into life. But why something so tender? And why the beauty? I might expect Godzilla at the top … or at least something a bit more horrific. Give me a jelly–fish with tendrils that leak radon, or a rock monster that defecates atomic bombs in its wake like an octopus squeezing ink. Give me a universe of lichens with prickers like a man-of war cactus … Give me the lobster man with machine guns for arms -- Or a mouth that’s only a mouth eternally feeding itself in a cast iron loop. Give me something hard and scarred – chunked from the smelter of "eat or be eaten." But after all that clash and kill and competition, why some soft bodied target with children that are all but ripe for the eating?


I threw my idea at Steve. He saw where my thought was going but said I was wrong because I didn’t understand just how dangerous and conniving woman-thought can be. The soft body is just part of the "bait." Something like the snapping turtle tongue that waves like a worm at advancing fish. No other has her entrapment arts or can make a whole species swarm in war and whirl swords or bombs to further her protection. She has the most advanced skills at manipulating minds and matter, often through the brute service and secondary skills of man. Man does not have armored flesh or tearing talons, but given some millions of very precarious years, man has acquired these things on the side. The cosmos took a gamble – like selling below cost … and won in the long run. (But maybe not.) In as much as man does most of what he does in pursuit of the beauty of woman. Beauty, rather than monster brawn is the pinnacle advancing trait of billions and billions of years.


I must admit, I’m not convinced, at least as pertains to evolution. But it is a weird thought.


Do billions and billions billow in her breasts, beauty from the battle of the beasts?

Love Notes, Age 10 Up

the note:

(5thGrade) to a Miss Wendy Wayne , whom I gazed at relentlessly for a period spanning three years. She was utterly beautiful, blazingly fast, and did back-handsprings during recess. I joined her. One day, when the ardor became too much, I decided to declare what everyone could see. I would confess my love and seek her response. When everyone was out of the classroom on a break, I snuck back into class to place the “woo-note” in her desk. I’d prepared it the night before, diligently decorating it with many hand-colored flowers. I even brought along a little necklace, pillaged from my sister. After checking to see that all my classmates were gone, I pulled a book from her desk to insure the right place (We had switched desk spaces that same day.) Wendy’s notebook was right on top. I placed the note in the desk and left with a thudding heart.

The next morning, Girls in the hall began to snicker. Outright laugh. Then one girl, who knew me and was kind, came up and queried: Kirk, did you really mean to give that note to Wendy Harnage?

Wendy HARNAGE! Oh dear, . NO OHHHHHHH No…

no owhat a jerk…that note that was for Wendy Wayne .

Dear Wendy
I love you. Do you love me?
Check box yes or no.

Soon after, and against my protests, my protector (who was experienced in the stuff of fifth-grade romance negotiations) declared she would Go to the two Wendy’s and correct all. The incorrect-Wendy took the news well and even granted me the privileged status of “a friend who is a boy but not my boy-friend”

As for the most beautiful girl in-the-word-Wendy, all she said was :

Go to Hell.







Porcelain Girl
(In honor of Cindy O., now Cindy E.) ‘84




Simple
Clean,
gentle luster
Muted line,
(a model for the master’s brush)


With the firm – fragile of a fine china vase,


Stark attending soft.


Strands of flaxen brown fall


still,
Down,
Delicate on ivory.
(A fresh stirring within.)

She stands lovely
In the force of sculpted line,
Flowing
Taunt,
then eased
In splendid turn.


(I stand a bit enchanted)


Whispers wash
across her neck
Hair in dull illumine,

THEN,

Treads of fire - Catching
In the setting day.


Her eyes:
A coral sea, ablaze
In Tropicana’s heat
Emerald and aqua
A Dancing spark.


Her eyes:
A Nordic sea,
Silent in the mist,
Forrest with iceberg,
A quiet storm.


Our eyes search – share secrets.



Note: My wife upon review wonders just what secrets our eyes shared. Well … her right eye said to my left eye…Let’s just be friends. But while her right eye was busy her left eye blinked. Which in turn, did look rather like a full affirmation of “our” love.





Half-baked (Cathy S. now Cathy J.) ‘84

Cotton Cathy, cornbread and cream
You would be my life-long dream.



(Sorry Cathy for calling you some twenty times in a row one night when you didn’t answer the phone. Who was I to know that you were sick in bed and ignoring me! Boy was I embarrassed.)






Equinox (Karen H. now Karen B.)/85


Fall entered in
overnight,
to both wind and heart.


It came
the passenger
of a great gray motorcade,
A mass
born of equal-night, and artic high.


It came with rain
At the beckon of our Lord,
to the trees of our Lord,
and man.


It came with chill
etching
dusted leaf
and breath.

And though the trees
have yet to flame,
My heart is warmed in anticipation
of
spiced cider, mittens,

wool color, and
and our eyes.



(Thanks Karen for giving me my first taste of requited love. Undoing a heart that had started to graft with yours hurt as much as anything in life. But I would not trade the work God did through you, for me, for anything.)









The eye-man strikes again. – to Dianne W. now Dianne L. /88

Tangerine, ruby, and fire:A frame for the forestHe poured in your eyes.

(Thanks D. for refusing my kiss, it made friendship that much easier, and I can look your husband in they eye.)

Poem to a friend

Paula trods
With pollywogs
And packyderms
Her dermis, near the dirt.
And though the Paraclete
Lives in her heart,
Don’t look for her to sail
Like a dove into the sun …
No …. she’s an earth bound saint
Feet firmly planted
On the sod,
Heart next to God
In the everyday.

Ordinary,
When it comes
To love, and sense, and service –
Ain’t

(2001)


This poem came much later than many of the former.   It is not a love poem per say, this woman was part of a music-based internet group of which I was a part.   She was not really comfortable before a camera, and not as colorful as some of the other members... but when it came to old fashion good sense, she eclipsed us all.

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The Cry

The Cry – A plea to God from the journal of the Kirk (1987)

Today I think of myself as Adam. What would he look like? 

For some reason I have always thought of him looking like me – but a whole lot better. Or something like what I will look like in the New WORLD. He, or I – Look like a kind of Robin Hood or Viking Lord. We are muscled and stand tall with rounded chest and washboard abs, and when we laugh the cedars shake. My face is ruddy with sun and my beard big-red. I saunter with hair all over and look like some Viking Lord apart from clothes and wild with sun and sand and salt. I behold my bride. Does she look something like the woman that I should marry? 

I see her with my minds eye. I don’t see her so much as Anglo. After all, we should in time need to spin out skin as dark as midnight tar, or skin white like porcelain. I see her somewhat olive, eyes leaning brown and hair a redded-black, kinked a bit but flowing. Maybe she has a nose that is sharp and thin like some of the women from India, or maybe it is broad and Polynesian. Maybe she looks like a black Mariah Carey! Her eyes are big like cows eyes – How is that for a description? It reminds me of the time at Booker T. (my Tulsa High School) when we closed out our senior year with a description of the perfect woman. She would parts of all the different popular girls at school… She had Natasha’s nose or Heather’s eyes, or Yo-Yo’s legs. Of course by the time we mixed all the parts, not to mention hues, the thing created would be quite peculiar.

So I consider my Eve. Her breasts are full of life and she has more weight on her than our gaunt models. Her hips are wide … but Dear, I pay my respect to those Victorian vices; Her waist is small—or maybe not. Perhaps her belly pours like a belly dancer or the woman of the Song of Songs, all round like a goblet. It still think those Old World painters and folks in India have something on us. She laughs and grins and looks like she should pull out of the water with dripping …

Oh when, WHEN will I have a bride?

She doesn’t need to look like this thing. That woman has vanished and filtered out. And maybe even faded in her force with the Fall.

On one level I am amazed that we continue on any level to be handsome or beautiful at all. The Fall has marred us, not only in our souls, but I imagine in our genetic profile. Even so, I marvel at Eve – poured out in Irish queens with pale milk skin and red hair and long with freckle … Or I consider skin as dark as night with teeth that shine like the new moon. A shadow waiting to infold me.. So – What will it be? Will I marry a woman who looks like me, or stands against my skin with another kind of loveliness. Will her hair fan up and out like coral, or cascade down like a cataract? Will the grace of her skin and form be fragile and oriental, or will her stature be firm and heavy, even Germanic. What is this thing in me that is continually moved by Beauty? I want to poses it. I don’t always want to live in these dreams of holding. When will I hold real flesh, or feel her curl with her warmth into me.

Dear God… You know this longing of my soul. I so want to be married. I’ve given You so much latitude. HA! Call her from any race or culture. But then, where do I belong? I can’t even figure to what world I belong. So, will my bride where a covering, or will I myself where the jacket and the hat?