Cypher Key
by Artice Upchurch
Conquered goals and helping others by one's purpose acheived
Many blessings upon you and for you to have received
Working on bettering self stepping towards the righteous path
Perfecting the soul through the self made wrath
Came to love one's self and everything that represents it
Some find the repair kit and others stay in the pit
Here to obtain peace and accumulate
Love to help others and demonstrate
The path and show that hope exist
For the reason to help you persist
Problems made for character building
Pushing you towards something
A divine being creating their story
Of how they obtained their Victory
By Lynn Fox
As someone who tried to teach English (and fails more often than not), Artice's poetry is a tough go. It's mystical, it's abstract and it points to somewhere beyond our experience ("Something beyond earth...".) It's built up from the connection between ideas, not images. Understanding his poetry is like trying to run in molasses. But, finally, it's worth the effort. Salvation is not easily won, Artice tells us. That's the promise and value of his poetry. A.D. Upchurch has seen the dark night of the soul and offers us his hand to lift us up from the pit.
Tall, slender, striking-looking, with wire-rim glasses and a facial expression--tranquil, unfocused--that suggested that whatever took place behind his eyes had very little to do with what took place in front of his eyes. For Artice, the worlds inside and outside met only at oblique angles, intersecting groups of light, time, love and language that didn't hang out together all that often. It wasn't that Artice lived, as the expression goes, "in his own little world." First of all, it wasn't "his own" world. The world Artice inhabited belongs - galaxy and gold fish, ocean and toilet water - to God. And to his credit, Artice recognized that he temporarily rented a small space here from the ultimate Land Lord. Artice knew Who was in charge because he knew it wasn't him. And that leads to our second point. For God's sake, there was nothing "little" about the world behind his eyes. Just the opposite, in fact. Artice's mind contained, as Whitman said, "multitudes." But Artice didn't think about all that much. He couldn't see the Star Gate on his forehead. Not even in the mirror. It's just that he had these strange visions that would startle him awake at night.
But I digress and drink some real strong coffee.