NUMINOUS

(self-portrait)


The role of psychology is to entrap the soul in all its numinosity and to render it dull and lifeless, so that it can fit inside the box of what society calls normal

AMNESIA

(mixed media on paper)

amnesia

i try
to remember
i fall
into the blank place
where no thing
lives
where childhood is
still born
where i never was
anyone
to begin
with
where i became
many
rivers flowing
from
an unknown
source.

c.mva2010

BABY ON THE HALF-SHELL

(photograph)

"little children find a way
out, if they have to...
make a hole in the ceiling,
escape all the feeling..."

-from "Tell Me A Story"
by Marlene Azoulai

DISINTEGRATION

(photograph)


The center melts
It cannot hold
The ones in place
Like planets round

They are left
To make their own
Lives as such
As who they are

Or who they were
When being born
When being one
Was not enough

The center melts
Its armor down
To let the ones
Who died
Come back

c.mva2011

SOUL MURDER

(assemblage sculpture)

They call it soul murder
The boys and girls
who were sexually abused
by priests
That’s what they call
what happened to them
Soul murder

Some of the kids say they felt like
they were having sex with Jesus
like gravity stopped for them
They were in another world
They were making love with God
But it didn’t feel right
not like going to church
and praying you’d go to heaven
Even when the priest made you say
your prayers before and after.

Jesus said, “Come unto me,
the little children.”

A boy and a girl kneel at the altar
their mouths open, their tongues out
The priest comes along
an altar boy beside him
The priest says, “Eat this.
This is my body.”

They say that a priest
would go into a classroom
and pick out a child.
He would bring this child
to the rectory, into the bathroom
or into the confessional.

A priest who’s been molesting kids
goes to another diocese
where he won’t be recognized.
It is there, that he makes his confession.
Tell me, Father
What is the penance
for raping a six-year old boy?
What is the penance
for making him suck
your sacred cock?

In the Middle Ages,
the Church sold indulgences
forgiveness to sinners
who could afford to buy their way
into Heaven
For years, the Church has been secretly
paying out cash settlements
to families of children
who were molested
by priests
in an attempt to buy their silence.

During the witch hunts
priests would search
women’s naked bodies
looking for the Devil’s mark
a mole, perhaps or a scar
Something that would prove to them
that the woman had consorted
with Satan.
Tell me, Father
What is it you look for
on children’s naked bodies?
Tell me, Father
Who is the Devil?

And you, Pope
descendant of the apostles
mouthpiece for God
marionette with broken strings
presiding over the Catholic church
from your high palace of hypocrisy
and self-serving ignorance
You call for pastoral charity
toward victims and their predators
You retire priests who prey on children
to monasteries, where they will pray
for forgiveness

Tell me, Your Holiness
What is the penance
for soul murder?

c.copyright Marlena V. Azoulai 2002

THE WEIGHT OF THE PAST

(assemblage)

Age

There must be some mistake
I am not the Venus
of Willendorf
These breasts that hang
low and mournful,
do not belong to me.
This bulging goddess belly
is not sacred
My flesh is swollen
with unshed tears
Muscles and bones
scream with the memory
of past wounds
Crows circle my eyes


Crimes, violations, betrayals
no longer hide beneath
my smooth skin
They have surfaced
to weigh my body down
with their sad tales
The mask I wore for centuries
is now my face
The lines around my mouth
finally telling the truth
Where I’ve been
what I’ve endured
and smiled through

I want to carve my self
a minimal, silent body
One that can keep secrets
So that no one will know
I am not the prancing young girl
the hope-filled child

This is my body, I say
not ready to be crucified
on the cross of time
And if it must be so
that age conquers all
Then please tell me
that there is a place
I can go to before I die
where flesh melts away,
inconsequential
in the heat of some sacred light.


c.mva2005

THE FERRIS WHEEL OF WE

(14x20 mixed media)


When the body’s pierced
The mind can fly
Faster than the speed of pain
Out to the reaches of the sky
Never to come back again
To places where it wept and bled
Places where it died
Before the others came along
To wave the past good-bye

"the alters
they go
round and round
downside up
and upside down
the alters
they go
round and round
and no one here
to stop
them."

...a silly song the kids made up,
to the tune of
"London bridge is falling down")

BABY BLUE

(detail of assemblage sculpture)


they came to take you, baby blue
they took you far away
nothing i will ever do
will bring you back today

PSYCHOVAMPS

(16x20 acrylic painting)

EARTH WARRIOR

(16X20 acrylic painting)

BODY PARTS

She’s got a body that’s everywhere
Body parts to fit any landscape

She’s a nation, war-torn, with a man walking all over her
on the six o’clock news
He’s an American Goliath standing on a map of the world,
making a war accessible
“This is where it’s happening,” he says
standing on her navel
“They’re coming down from the mountains.”
(Even her secret hiding places, those tiny trails
through the woods,
are being ravaged )
He walks on
“We could bring American troops in here,” he says,
standing on her knee


A picture on the screen
of a child with no arms
of a man with one leg
of twelve year-old girls
strip-searched and raped
held down, penetrated
and sown by the enemy
“You’re mine,” says the soldier.”You’re conquered.”
His seed grows
She rips it from her belly
with her own hands
bloody and salted with tears.
“What do you want from me?!” she screams
“More land,” he answers

And when she cries,
this woman of body parts, like the earth ransacked
the tears only flow from one of her eyes
the one she’s been left with to cry from
a madwoman’s eye with the world in it
and fear looking out
Her left eye cries
a river of tears

She’s a tenement in the ghetto with her windows busted out
and torn curtains flapping, like bandages in the breeze
Her cunt, a crack palace-smoke-filled
with dreams by the score
burnt into ashes
She’s knee-deep in death, with an arm full of holes
and the Lord’s prayer in her veins
Thy will be done, Thy kingdom is come
wet and slick
And her body, the street, silver-edged like a switchblade
cutting the night into bite-sized pieces
She’s for sale, her body parts hollow
empty of wishing that there’s anywhere else to go

Her children are shipwrecked in the waters of Lethe
that place in hell, where lives are forgotten
and souls rent asunder
like a face in the mirror with one fist shattered
too many pieces to fit together again

She’s a lit slit of neon strip in the Las Vegas desert
a slot machine jackpot of possibility
a hot swollen clit, with a G-spot inside
They’re coming in droves, looking for it,the big score
Strip-mining her dry, as she glitters and writhes
side-winding her way through the Las Vegas night

She’s a flame-throwing, sword-swallowing, mirage of a woman
Her blood flowing down the boulevard like abundance itself
She’s the Red Sea parting
complete with fishes and multiplying loaves, there for the taking

She’s satisfaction guaranteed and topless tonight
with tassels on her teats,swinging this way and that
like planets rotating, out of sync, for ten cents a pop
while coins, like chains clanking, clinking---fall into cups

She’s big and round and packed solid like a fortress
with a wounded child inside
wearing three year-old shoes
a six year-old blue dress
and eight year-old panties
with the days of the week sewn on
And she doesn’t remember the days
that she lost
Where she put them
in the dollhouse she lived in
too tiny for words
curled up like a snail in a shell
in a box, in a drawer

And now she’s huge-a fat circus lady
with memories of Hiroshima and Chenobyl
Nagasaki and Bhopal, in the folds of her flesh
If you listen close, you hear children keening
like women wailing the dead

She’s the last breath taken by the last of its kind
Extinction--- a song never heard again
She’s the hour between night and dawn
when the earth stands still to mourn her loss
the decimation of whale wolf rhino
elephant eagle
of virgin forests, highly prized
slashed and burned
their body parts sold to the highest bidder

She’s a spider-woman, with eyes all around her head
looking to the past, present and future weaving her web of Fate
On the edge of a cliff, on one foot balanced
she’s one woman dancing, her arms to the sky
One woman dancing to the beat of the drum
at the heart of the earth
spiraling in, to gather her selves
her body parts together
Reclaiming her landscape


c.MarleneAzoulai1999

MY NAME'S ROADKILL

(oil pastel)

i guess I’m just one o’ life’s casualties
Real damaged an’ all
How ya see wild things layin’ dead
on the side o’ the road right in the position they was in
when they got hit
their mouths open
an’ their legs in the air
like life slammed ‘em
an’ everythin’ stopped right there
It isn’t like they had anythin’ to do with it either
They’ didn’t wake up that mornin’ an’ say
“I think I’ll be roadkill today”
It’s just somethin’ that happened

c.MarleneAzoulai2001

once upon a time...

www.sacredmonster.com
(assemblage sculpture)

Dream

She lived in a dingy place.
Broken-down shacks all around...
There were old men, carrying broken dolls...
Dirty, old dolls they had found in the dirt.
There was a pool of water
with a lot of garbage floating in it.
There was screaming everywhere---
big people shouting, and babies crying.
Her mother kept saying that some day,
they would move to a better place.
There was a better neighbourhood,
just across the way.
The little girl could see it,
when she stood in the middle of the pool.
She turned around and around...
Standing there, on the water,
she could see it all.

c.MarleneAzoulai2004

PINK GIRLS

The world eats pink girls for lunch
cuts them up into heart-shaped
bite-sized pieces
Pink girls are best consumed while still raw
with nerve endings close to the surface
and salted with their own tears

The world ties up pink girls in tight corsets
and lets them breathe just a little
binds their feet, so they walk not too far
cuts out their clits, so they feeL not so much

Pink girls are the soft center of hard candy exposed
their mouths filled with honey promises
sweet, like nothing real

While plump pink cherubs fill the sky with roses
pink girls take moonlight baths in rose water
thinking silk and Victoria's secret, worth dying for

Pink girls are pierced forever too soon
given away by passionate fathers
wed-locked in white
their arms full of vulva pink roses

Pink girls give birth to sadness
cut the cord and pull themselves back together again
piece by jagged jigsaw piece
of love's ragged edges

Pink girls are crazy quilts
stitched together with hope

The life span of pink girls is very short
They must learn to protect themselves,
and are often asphyxiated, or starved to death
trapped within their own armor

Pink girls are nearly extinct

Those who survive are found in regions closest to the sky
where the winds are bitter and the soil rocky
where girls bloom like rare alpine flowers
pink---the color of wishing


c.copyright2004MarleneAzoulai

DIS-INTEGRATION

The center melts
It cannot hold
The ones in place
Like planets round

They are left
To make their own
Lives as such
As who they are

Or who they were
When being born
When being one
Was not enough

The center melts
Its armor down
To let the ones
Who died
Come back

c.MarleneAzoulai2011

LACUNA (detail of assemblage sculpture--work in progress)

My childhood and years of my life are shrouded in amnesia. In this piece, i begin a dialogue with the Forgetting, through LACUNA, GODDESS OF AMNESIA---a figure from my personal mythos.