Monday, January 31, 2011

finally a new post!

It's been a long time...

Sunday, July 1, 2007

Communion

The Reverend Lon Whiteside stepped out of his car to stretch his legs at the Chevron station while waiting for his gas tank to be filled. he happened to notice that his neighbor, Franklin Skefield, one of his parishioners, was at the pump in front of him. The Reverend casually approached the open window of Mr. Skefield's car with a smile of friendly recognition and then opened his mouth to speak, bit it was birdsong that came out; precisely the call of the Maine yellow breasted thrush warbler.

The two men looked at each other in a startled awkwardness. The Reverend opened his mouth again and found himself articulating the high-pitched thrill of excitement he had experienced the previous night as his wife's hand had touched the tip of his penis. the sound of his rushing orgasm leaped toward his frightened parishioner. The shaken Reverend tipped his head politely toward Mr. Skefield and weakly escorted himself back to his own car. His small king of consciousness shook on its tiny island.

He pulled out of the gas station hurriedly and headed toward his church, intending to go over his notes for the next sermon, but he couldn't get away from what had happened. He didn't know what to tell himself. He frantically leafed through the index cards from his left hemisphere for a rational explanation, but could find nothing that reduced his anxiety, the terrifying suspicion that he was having a nervous breakdown, that he would begin hearing that dreaded phrase, 'Mental problem' whispered politely among the congregation. The Reverend turned on the car radio and scanned for the network news to distract himself. There was a presidential address about to begin, “...and the President has just entered the room flanked by his Secretary of State and is approaching the podium.”

There was a short silence and then he heard, “ladies and gentleman, the President of the United States.” Reverend Whiteside listened through another short silence and then heard the slight but unmistakable sound of a chuckle come through the radio. It continued and slowly grew into a louder, somewhat awkward sustained giggle, which then turned into a deep, uncontrolled, bizarre laughter, which grew in pitch and intensity into something maniacal. It had a quality about it that recalled something distant but familiar to the Reverend's startled mind. Then it struck him. It was the throated malicious laughter of the hyena. The radio interrupted with a message about experiencing technical difficulties, and then there was the sound of soothing background music.

The Reverend drove right past his church and headed home. He just wanted to crawl into bed with his wife's familiar body. When he arrived home, the lights were out and he quietly let himself in and then gratefully headed upstairs to their bedroom. He went inside and felt a rush of relief and then excitement at the sight of her laying on her right side, peacefully asleep. He took off his clothes, eased himself under the covers next to her, and placed his arm reassuringly over her, letting his hand fall onto her breast. A sound rose slowly out of his wife, a harsh, rumbling growl, a fiercely muted, threatening hiss,
feral, savage and wild.

Resurrection on the Romance Express

You were radiant as a stained-glass Baptist window
when you held out the empty plate of your hungry eyes
for me to fill with the returned sign of my offering.
You said I placed in it only small change from the quarter of my heart,
trembling like a straw man before the risk-filled fires of desire,
not even enough to buy you one night’s lodging in a cold manger
“You’re not leaving me on a lonely cross for one,” you said,
handing back the nails with, “thanks anyway”
then climbing down from travail’s trite transcendence
to continue your search for someone who wasn’t
picking his nose during your 2nd or 3rd or next ‘coming.’
The heart must find the courage to make its choices.
Tonight I’ll rent ‘Trixie and Bubbles Fuck for Fun’ video
then go down to the Nob Hill tavern for
a fish sandwich and a plate of fries,
a meal I can afford,
that will fill me up without threatening,
because you were no angel either
‘counting the ways’ you needed me to shine
like your own private pearl.
But tears aren’t enough to fill anyone
and nobody’s perfect,
even Jesus found it quicker and easier
to resurrect the dead than the living,
besides there ought to be more signs posted
so you know where the hell the
church is and when you’re in it.

Rebuttal to e.e.

Somewhere I have unfortunately traveled, sadly beyond
any experience your eyes have their cunning,:
in your most frail gesture are things which implement their plans,
and which I cannot touch because they are too slippery

Your slightest look easily will undo me
though I have closed myself as fingers,
you open always wound by wound myself as the cell door opens
( slowly, cruelly, absolutely ) at first bell

or if your wish be to close me, I and
my life will shut very obediently, sharply
as when the heart of this prisoner imagines
the sharp blade above him carefully, descending

nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals
the power of your intense fragility: whose texture
compels me with the lethal beauty of its sweet hemlock,
rendering death forever with each moment your nearness has abandoned

( I do not know what it is about you that closes
and cuts; only something in me understands
the swift fury of your blade is death to all roses )
nobody, not even the rain, has such small, sharp, claws.

A General Theory of Hate

Dear Gretel:
You took our bread crumbs
and left me in the forest.
Finally I understand why
you had to shit on me,
manure is necessary for growth.
You had to shove another child out of your nest,
get on with your new life of becoming a teacher
filling the off time in your search for the sacred text
by teaching me a lesson.

Now you won’t fuck me any more
and you don’t give a damn about me,
Helen’s face didn’t launch a thousand ships,
hell they were just trying to get away from her.
They’d learned their lesson,
those weren’t sour grapes, they were poison.
It really works doesn’t it,
this wisdom and growth thing.
Best Hansel.

Love in Five Easy Pieces

Love is a poem in rough draft,
a half truth in second draft

love is red in tooth and claw
a blind sea creature on an ocean floor
riding the ebb and flow of the nearest
body like an ancient urgent carousel,

an arranged marriage
of need and illusion
sent by a delinquent God
in cruel jest like
the miracle of life
He gave you that you
may stand before the broken crowd
and say, “Hi, I’m Joe and I’m an alcoholic,”
or ride into the village
naked on horseback with lantern
shouting, “The English are coming,”
only to hear the voice from the tavern
shouting, “This is England, you idiot.”
Love is a joke in final draft.

Rain

Rain, rain,
softly falling rain.
Strong rain, friendly rain,
serious rain, sideways rain,
September rain, October rain,
November rain, sentimental rain,
yellow raincoat rain, falling red leaves rain,
trolls under the bridge rain, wet sloshy earth rain,
lazy rain, busy rain, call in sick rain, stay in bed rain,
don’t go outside rain, let go rain, there is no hurry rain, do
nothing rain, have a shot of apricot brandy in morning coffee rain,
hold your sleeping cat rain, read book rain, watch Perry Mason rain,
think of others working rain, laugh rain, sing rain, make hot-soup lunch
rain, smoke tobacco rain, laugh at death rain, tell the truth rain, tell others
how you would never want to be stuck in an elevator with T.S. Eliot rain,
tell truthful lies rain, tell why you want to shoot the mayor rain, enjoy all of
your mental illness rain, invite someone soft over rain, whisper together rain,
look deep into each others eyes rain, I remove your blouse rain, you take off my
shirt rain, I kiss your soft lips rain, you put my hands on your breasts rain, I lower
your skirt rain, you unzip my pants rain, we lay down rain, release rain, lovely rain.

How to Make Love to a Woman

First you must alchemize desire into love
by changing molten lead into gold
(this will take a little practice,
some lying, and a sleight of hand).

Remember, she knows the lips of her closed doors
hide the generous delights you cannot resist,
that you need to return to, to open, to come
into again and again, till you come apart.

Let her know it is her face that draws you,
it is the face her face makes when you
cup with your hand the round mound that
parts her, far below her face.

If her intelligence is important to her you
will have to seduce her intellect's heart.
If not your responsibility will increase
to insure, solely, her heart's desire.

If she is a poet she will be taking notes.
If she is not a poet
your peril will increase,
she will be entirely there.

This is not a
class you can audit.
She is not a substitute teacher.
You are going to be graded.

Do not quote from the Bible
or have one on your bedstand
and do not mention
free introductory offer.

Reinforce her naive belief that
it's easy to have a penis,
that its prime virtue is patience.
that it's not a fire engine going to a fire.

Expose your jugular
(before your penis)
and let her be on top
to show submission.

When you enter her do not tremble,
she knows your fear but
does not want to see it right now,
or have you quote the poems of ‘Rumi’ or ‘Mary Oliver.’

Do not begin till desire's
thick truth is stronger
than fear or shame,
it's intention firm.
I was born in the Forties in Portland, Oregon, but I actually began the slippery career of life in 1948 in the maroon bricked, Shattuck School in Miss Lincoln’s first grade class. It was there and on the playground outside that I was introduced to the continuous shifting equation of joy, confusion and fear, the intricate stitch needle work of chestnut tree, dog, pumpkin, slug and street sign, and the ever-changing dictates of my personality, whose hidden center remained mysteriously constant. Eisenhower was my president, and the stiff, short, thick-necked, Mr. Bullock was my principal. The country was well-behaved and so was I, even in the 6th grade swimming pool when the difference under the girls’ wet swimsuits stung me over and over.I made the acolyte’s sacrifice at St. Stephen’s Episcopal. They stole me away from vacant lots and abandoned houses on empty, tempting Sundays and locked me in cold buildings of arranged stone. They dressed me in robes of their fear and told me things about a God and a Jesus I could not know they could not know. I lit their candles for three hundred and forty-two Sundays, in return for a little brown and red service pin. Then, on to high school and an introduction to the hidden curriculum, graduate work for Dick and Jane and Spot—further commandments on thinking, feeling, and behaving.Slowly my body grew and enlarged as if I’d swallowed a time-release magic mushroom from Alice’s wonderland. To the urgent brickwork of puberty, cars, clothes, school and money was added the rough masonry of love, death, sex, politics, religion and shopping.Thus I entered the high-rise cement world of grown-ups. Another Bush is president now and the country is still well-behaved.I’m still alive, I lust, lie, cheat, and steal—but only when it is the right thing to do.

Cirrhosis Motel

An Elegy
 
City of Red Roses Motel

It happened over the years. The T and the Y fell off our motel sign just after the Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy assassinations. We meant to get it fixed but it just seemed we'd misplaced our motivations somewhere. Then the O and F dropped shortly after McGovern lost that landslide election to Nixon. It just never got fixed and we sort of got used to it. And then the E and D stopped working, just suddenly wouldn't light up anymore. That was around the time that Hendrix and Abbie Hoffman and Janis all got lost.

Anyway all that was left for people driving by to see, besides the vacancy sign was 'Ci R ROSES' Motel. We decided to fix it and then the Reagan landside happened. That was when we realized our motel sign was really some kind of Ouija board from another dimension, some power greater than ours, a kind of alien cultural anthropologist probe taking the temperature of our human condition.

We decided to leave it alone, after all, we'd just lost Kurt Vonnegut and we felt this thing knew. Ever since then, we haven't gone near it.

Epigraph

“Jehovah has his Devil, Achilles has his Heel, Mohammed has his Mountains. Don Quixote has his windmills; and Sherlock Holmes, God bless him, has his Moriarty” (from Watson’s journal). Dr. Watson—“I assume you’ve met Prof. Moriarity face to face?” Holmes—“I really couldn’t say. The man is a master of disguise and so is everywhere. He’s the greatest enemy a man could have.” Watson –“you’re just like Don Quixote, you think every thing is something else.” Holmes—“He had a point but carried it a bit too far. He thought that every windmill was a giant. That’s insane. But thinking that they might be, well—all the best minds used to think the world is flat. But what if its not? And what if bread mold might be medicine? I think if God is dead he laughed himself to death! Because you see, we live in Eden. Genesis has got it all wrong: we never left. Look about you. This is paradise—it’s hard to find, I grant you—but it is here, under our feet, beneath the surface. All round us is everything we want—the earth is shinning beneath the soot. We’re all fools! Moriarty has made fools of all of us.” “But together, you and I can bring him down“ from “They Might Be Giants” by James Goldman

Introduction

I was born in the Forties in Portland, Oregon, but I actually began the slippery career of life in 1948 in the maroon bricked, Shattuck School in Miss Lincoln’s first grade class. It was there and on the playground outside that I was introduced to the continuous shifting equation of joy, confusion and fear, the intricate stitch needle work of chestnut tree, dog, pumpkin, slug and street sign, and the ever-changing dictates of my personality, whose hidden center remained mysteriously constant. Eisenhower was my president, and the stiff, short, thick-necked, Mr. Bullock was my principal. The country was well-behaved and so was I, even in the 6th grade swimming pool when the difference under the girls’ wet swimsuits stung me over and over.I made the acolyte’s sacrifice at St. Stephen’s Episcopal. They stole me away from vacant lots and abandoned houses on empty, tempting Sundays and locked me in cold buildings of arranged stone. They dressed me in robes of their fear and told me things about a God and a Jesus I could not know they could not know. I lit their candles for three hundred and forty-two Sundays, in return for a little brown and red service pin. Then, on to high school and an introduction to the hidden curriculum, graduate work for Dick and Jane and Spot—further commandments on thinking, feeling, and behaving.Slowly my body grew and enlarged as if I’d swallowed a time-release magic mushroom from Alice’s wonderland. To the urgent brickwork of puberty, cars, clothes, school and money was added the rough masonry of love, death, sex, politics, religion and shopping.Thus I entered the high-rise cement world of grown-ups. Another Bush is president now and the country is still well-behaved.I’m still alive, I lust, lie, cheat, and steal—but only when it is the right thing to do.