Writers write to sort puzzles out. On July 31, 2024, Dr. Anthony Lee, a neurosurgeon, performed a craniology and removed a benign tumor the size of a golf ball from my brain. Two days later, after I was released from ICU, I had visions for four days and four nights. The visions came every time I closed my eyes. They were incredible, spiritual, and realistic, as if I was there in the vision. The last two nights at home I wrote about the visions. Then I begged God to make them stop and let me sleep.
Several years before brain surgery I had night terrors. (I still get them.) After several nights of night terrors I wrote a sestina, "Did Ezekiel Wake Up Screaming?" Prior to this, when I read about visions and prophecies in the Bible I only focused on trying to make sense of what they meant. After I wrote the sestina, my focus shifted to wondering what the people in the Bible felt like and thought about concerning spiritual phenomena they encountered.
After the post-surgery visions, I turned again to poetry to try to make sense of my own experiences and tell about the visions, both mine and those in the Bible. I focused on the people and not the meanings behind the prophesies. There was good reason for angels throughout history to say, "Fear not," when supernatural beings visually appeared. Imagine seeing seraphim with six wings beside a throne in heaven. The heavenly beings chant, "Holy, holy, holy," to the rhythm of their wings fanning God. What must men like Isaiah, Ezekiel, and John the Revelator felt? Pretty indescribable, but unforgettable. We are privileged they didn't keep the images to themselves, afraid of being called crazy, and wrote the visions down the best they could, bounded by language. A Voice of Visions: Poetic Meditations is my humble attempt, with limited descriptors, to pay homage to these brave men and women who dared tell about spiritual visitations and visions.
To write an exhaustive collection of poems about all visions and prophesies and paranormal phenomena in the Bible would be impossible. Instead, I wrote about what struck me, even how John the Baptist did not get a vision, or angelic visitation, or a sign while in prison.
Of the forty poems, I wrote nine in free verse about the visions I had after brain surgery. Five haikus balance the pace of this collection. Four are sestinas—two Old Testament and two New Testament. Two poems are Villanelles, and the rest are free verse.
Besides the biblical theme of visions, prophets, and spiritual phenomena, in the last half of the collection are several poems about the cyclical nature of man and God. We say that God is the Alpha and Omega, but he is actually without beginning or end. Reading the Bible in the manner I did while contemplating these poems, I could see clearly how Genesis and Revelation are like mirrors, reflecting each other in themes and spiritual beings and happenings. The threads from Genesis weave consistently throughout the entire Word. It reminded me of writing a deconstruction literary criticism of how James Joyce illustrated the cyclical nature of all things in Finnegan's Wake. I conveyed these ideas in poetry form.
When reading these poems, try putting yourself in the person's frame of mind. What must it have been like for Ezekiel, Daniel, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Habakkuk, John the Revelator, and dozens of other prophets, to see fantastical visions? Or for Joan of Arc, feeling the urgency to make people believe her, and fight in battle? Or how emotional John the Revelator must have felt to see his brother and disciple-friends in heaven after they had been martyred? My hope is that after reading A Voice of Visions: Poetic Meditations, you will read the scriptures with renewed vision.