Joey Madia, Ornithomancer Masquerading as Playwright

Soul Sutra

Hunkered down
In the mid-winter clay
My soul aligns
With the fire-pit flame.


 A Poem for Proserpines

The ragged stone angel
patiently at prayer
looks homeward
and away
from the patiently prowling wolf
rabid at her feet.

Its psychic stare
no longer piercing
its slack-jawed patty-cake
within the sanctuary
of her plump
and plastered
thigh.

She moans in Heaven's rapture

Sighing.

sighing…

ever, ever sighing.

Then sighing
Nevermore.

She turns her marble gaze
to the Proserpines
of pomegranates.

To the Beatrices and Magadalens
to the Annabels and Helens
(only Goethe's—
never Faust's)

To the Lolitas and Lauras
nursing sanguine wounds.

She flutters her pitted, seeded wings
in the subtle motions of stone
and gazes onward
toward the temple of the Mystics
New and barely known.

Where Anastasia awakens
to the mind-locked remembrance
of a mad, en-trancing monk
tracing whispered mantras
upon her sanguine thighs.

Is she weeping for the child?
Will the child weep for her?



Alchemy IV 

Passage thru to yellow shores.
Coves resplendent. Irregular. Transcendent.
 
Descend.

A traveler on island plains awakes.
He will once again arise, un-nesting the new mystics—
a baptism in branches—
Elliptical. Concealed. Re-formed.

Borne on high, the eagled, ancient hawk-rite
dances a glittered shaman’s trance.
Icarus in a wax stance.
Constructing molten mantra magic for the meek ones,
Westward falling.

The candles which they lit.

Worlds within a carbon tip.

Clean to burn.

Immaculate.

Messengers carry the birth words on smoke wings
to the far-earth islands, seeking new rhythms,
tribal meanings.
Rituals elaborate. Convex. Tantric
in their bean/corn/cocoa symbologies.

The simplicity of birth
 is a breath    a wish      a death.

Kali, in her manner, lends the love blade to carve the optic wound—
(a thought     a bird      a groove).
Imbedded/emplaced remains embrace brain-game embolisms,
fraying in the air—
Wistful and Alone.

Fast, but eat the Logos.
There is no scent but cinnamon;
no fatted calf
but you, yourself, sacrificed.

The tangy sting we taste is winter ginger’s folly.

Gone at last are the sickly, whimsical wishes of elder enemy kings.
The Regent’s humble design is neatly knotted pine—

Resplendent. Irregular. Transcendent.

Ascend.

The stone road offers clues to sacral, yellow shores.

A crow’s mask guides the mast.

Soft, to pay for passage.

Time now to Embark.


Joey Madia is a teaching-artist, writer, director, and actor. His poetry, essays, and short stories have been widely published and have earned him several awards. He is the Artistic Director/Resident Playwright of Seven Stories Theatre Company, Inc. (which just celebrated its tenth anniversary) and Resident Playwright at Youth Stages, LLC. Although he has written several main stage musicals and dramas, he specializes in social justice theatre and participatory plays for youth. His 17 plays for young audiences have been produced across the United States and he has two plays in the Dramatic Publishing catalog. He is the author of four books on using theatre in the classroom (The Stage Learning Series, Accompany Publishing, 2007). He has written and performed pieces about Civil War captains Louis Emilio and Thomas Maulsby and is a Chautauqua Scholar for Voices from the Earth, which does symposia and performances on the African American experience in the Civil War.  As a teaching-artist he has taught and mentored thousands of students in both theatre and creative writing and has spoken at many schools and national conferences. He has worked with organizations including The Epilepsy Foundation of NJ and Camp NOVA to bring theatre to students with disabilities and has won three writing awards from Very Special Arts of NJ. He has appeared in or directed over 100 plays and in a dozen projects on camera, including the 2014 remake of White Zombie. His first novel, Jester-Knight, was published in February 2009 (New Mystics Enterprises). His second novel, Minor Confessions of an Angel Falling Upward was published in September 2012 (Burning Bulb Publishing). He is a book and music reviewer and the founding editor of www.newmystics.com, a literary site.