Drilling Down

Lam of God

In my metaphysical Tarot deck, the Hierophant has been replaced by the Inspector. Since my self-exile in the outer darkness, things that formerly aroused my interest -- nuances of theology and religious metaphor, matters of religious practice and expression -- no longer do, or, at least, not in the same way. I am content to go along with Wittgenstein's famous statement:

Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.



and occupy my evening with reading police procedurals, preferably those set in unforgiving northern climes and whose chief detective tends toward melancholia and reclusiveness.



A crime is something to be solved. There are procedures and techniques, well validated by science and practice, that can lead to this end, especially when utilized by a mind that combines logic and intuition. I suppose I have a vestigial hope that logic and intuition can be applied to the crime scene of being and, after a penultimate scene of shocking violence and peril, God will be lead off in cuffs in the ultimate perp walk.

"An unhelpful hypothesis, which must be discarded," mutters the detective, a former monk, staring out the precinct window at the night in which snow seems always to be falling.



"The world," says Wittgenstein elsewhere, "is all that is the case."



The coldest case of all.

The Root Of The Problem

"Loving the humour, rigour & fierceness of Hokai Sobal. Buddhism without balls is just Lameism," tweeted Some Dude whose tweet somehow landed on my twitter stream.

I sighed. Loudly. You probably heard it. That was NOT the wind in the trees.

And all suddenly became clear, my whole dystopic, life-long attempt to sojourn amidst the doctrinally religious was doomed from the start.

Because I have no balls !

I and my kind are, therefore, spiritually, religiously, intellectually and doctrinally Lame. With, no less, a capital L.

Devoid of "humour, rigour & fierceness." Which are, apparantly, ball-related characteristics.

OK, religious dudes, you win. I relinquish all further attempts at entering the vast man-caves of the major religions. Take your altars, your manly lace and brocade, your hierarchies, your robes, your Asian names, your bread-into-flesh magic.

Knock yourselves out.

Apostasy Poems

Guiding Narrative

I don't need to tell you, oddsong, that
defense from all perils comes in handy
in whatever forest of the night you find yourself,
so sing on and on, even (or so it goes)
at the grave, even if (as is likely)
there's no one to hear either you or the tree
that will fall on you and crush you, even
before the birds have eaten all the breadcrumbs, even
before you reach the Big Rock Candy Cathedral
where the curate has prepared a supersaturated solution
to all your problems, hope
after hope after hope, my beloved.


Procedural

In the end, all that remained
was an unused set
of agrarian allusions, mint,
and ashes in the grate.

What did they make
of the few uncharred syllables ?

ove od ominatio oil

as if there were ever perfect sense
in the sparing and the unsparing of things
just a vague shape and then
some local perdition


Office

It was like sitting on phone books
seven times a day
which were all talking back
in unison orison venison
babbling random numbers from beyond the glue-green horizon
no words in edgewise lengthwise ever possible

for all the genealogies, parabolas, billets-doux, tales
from the cryptographers, loose canons, lawn
mowers, telegrams, synopses, harbingeries,
homophonies, communii, ligatures, nomenclatures --
all the motes, motes, motes --

plastered lash-deep on the clockface
cast upon the rolling rolling river
stuck like post-its to the hovering wavecrest
like the lost masterpiece of a Tang
dynasty quantum mechanic

outside 9 am
chick-a-dee-dee-dee-dee
no one to hear


Collect

O, in thy fivefold splendor, W,
grant what ten Us or twenty half-Us can't,
a waiter, hovering, malarious,
a whiff of temps perdu on autumn air,
outlandish wasteland landfills, self-renewed
where winter's always coming on, windows
all painted over, nails quick-bitten; through
the Word, that freight bum which is all we've got,
and he won't spill the beans. No matter. That.



Life Without My Hat

A Roman candle going off
somewhere beneath the dome --

you could mistake it for almost anything,

sun on a gnat's wing, your lost
dime, your regular table

where lace between slabs of brocade
serves as a feasible sandwich
board

In times of plague, boil the vestments
in their own milk

As to the wine, well, recall
that saying makes it so

and then, incompletely shriven,

unmask the majordomo, and enter
the ordinary, if bleached, day


Sounds Of A Summer Night

Hammer and prey, hammer and prey --
the surround sound
of hearts
the bulk-bought, disposable kind
going out
out like an auto-pilot light

when the hoarfrost grips thy tent

sleepless, composing
casseroles

sweet pity, and a fox fight



Revival

The minute you open your mouth
whether it's in red or black

the minute the iambs ratchet up
the apparatus of rack and rank

the minute you feel your face
stretch taut on its well-oiled struts
and you feel yourself either icon or advertisement
(lingerie, burger, actuarial services)

the minute the music

the minute of the unscripted glance toward the bored
organist or archangel
(frozen like a lost expedition)

that minute

that very, very minute



Body

Claims and a strict grid
or glasses for spying the neighbor
(the proverbial one) at whose genuine
flecked rail I have, of late, eaten,
drunk, always on behalf and under
a fugitive red drop, that time-
traveler, who, exhausted, speechless,
nonetheless --

One more drop
and this skin bag shall burst
as the other
(the proverbial one)
can't. Which is
(according to the Hubble)
the whole problem.

Unglassed, I proceed by ear
along the crumbs the ground dove spills
six by six by six