Oh, dear. What have I wrought ?
TERCE: THE HOUR OF WORK
...love and work... S. Freud
...ora et labora... St Benedict
The Trappists want to feed us. Cheese wheels, jam,
fruitcakes infused with bourbon, bourbon fudge,
and even beer. “Eat, drink !” their brochures bid.
We see ourselves reflected in their eyes,
cartoons of appetite. They want to lead
us to temptation, certain that we’ll find
our way there anyway: why not cash in ?
But when the Trappists eat it’s by the Rule
of frugal Benedictine rations -- two
cooked dishes at the sixth and ninth hour, one
scant pound of bread per monk per day, no flesh
of quadrupeds except in illness, wine,
a half glass tops, it raises HDL
and abstinence, though noble -- well, you know.
They live for decades. Then, eternally,
impeccable from years of work and prayer.
We love and work our way to early graves,
while hoping for forgiveness, unction, grace,
or, if not those, at least a premium
black walnut deep-lid casket, Trappist-made,
ordered pre-need. The cross is optional.
Tuesday, November 04, 2003
Transparency
The maples have dumped their leaves this week; the brown crabgrass of the backyard's hidden under a layer of yellow leaves and the kitchen window, without the partial screen of leaves, looks directly at the back porch and into the kitchen of the neighbor's house.
C's wood sculpture hangs from the top of their porch: a spiral sunburst on the left, rays spreading right, in an oblong frame, all in oddly dark red green and blue. The neighbor is a tall, pleasant man, with whom I've had two substantive conversations in our whole six years here. He initiated them both.
In the first, he asked whether we'd been satisfied with the yard work done by someone we'd hired after seeing them work on his yard. In the second he asked permission to trim some of the branches of our unruly Norway spruce that overhung his driveway, and said that his wife was quite ill.
I gaze out through C's dark sun and feel a heavy sadness.
Last July I heard singing from his house, hymns; I couldn't make out all the words, but was sure I heard "fire fall," obviously a pentecostal image. I was in the midst of writing a poem based on a snippet of conversation I'd overheard at the Fourth of July fireworks. The poem became a pentecostal poem.
JULY 4th PENTECOST
“Where’s the finale, Daddy ?” lisps the child.
“Finale means the end,” the man replies,
didactic, fatherly, “but there’s lots more
to come yet, son. Don’t worry. Lots, lots more.
Of course you’re right -- the grand finale’s grand,
grand lights, grand sound, but, still, a long way off.
Don’t worry, boy. There’s plenty left (a loud
report drowns out the shaky voice) I’d say,
at least fifteen or twenty minutes -- look !”
He points to something whistling through the dark,
and braces for the flash and blast. The sky
blooms with red flame round as a giant moon.
The fire fall whets his tongue. Half-drunk, he cries,
“Wasn’t that splendid, love ?” The wind rises.
Smoke billows overhead. “Thus we transit
the glorious mundane to the last days,
the grand finale and what lies beyond !”
The child covers his ears, presses his face
into his father’s thigh. Muscle and hair
repel the little cheek. “And so much more
has yet to come !” exults the father.
“I want go home see Mommy,” sobs the child.
C's wood sculpture hangs from the top of their porch: a spiral sunburst on the left, rays spreading right, in an oblong frame, all in oddly dark red green and blue. The neighbor is a tall, pleasant man, with whom I've had two substantive conversations in our whole six years here. He initiated them both.
In the first, he asked whether we'd been satisfied with the yard work done by someone we'd hired after seeing them work on his yard. In the second he asked permission to trim some of the branches of our unruly Norway spruce that overhung his driveway, and said that his wife was quite ill.
I gaze out through C's dark sun and feel a heavy sadness.
Last July I heard singing from his house, hymns; I couldn't make out all the words, but was sure I heard "fire fall," obviously a pentecostal image. I was in the midst of writing a poem based on a snippet of conversation I'd overheard at the Fourth of July fireworks. The poem became a pentecostal poem.
JULY 4th PENTECOST
“Where’s the finale, Daddy ?” lisps the child.
“Finale means the end,” the man replies,
didactic, fatherly, “but there’s lots more
to come yet, son. Don’t worry. Lots, lots more.
Of course you’re right -- the grand finale’s grand,
grand lights, grand sound, but, still, a long way off.
Don’t worry, boy. There’s plenty left (a loud
report drowns out the shaky voice) I’d say,
at least fifteen or twenty minutes -- look !”
He points to something whistling through the dark,
and braces for the flash and blast. The sky
blooms with red flame round as a giant moon.
The fire fall whets his tongue. Half-drunk, he cries,
“Wasn’t that splendid, love ?” The wind rises.
Smoke billows overhead. “Thus we transit
the glorious mundane to the last days,
the grand finale and what lies beyond !”
The child covers his ears, presses his face
into his father’s thigh. Muscle and hair
repel the little cheek. “And so much more
has yet to come !” exults the father.
“I want go home see Mommy,” sobs the child.
Monday, November 03, 2003
Hermit (11.99)
ORATIO
... a thousand twangling instruments
I like to imagine an eremite
alone in his cell
wordless listening
supremely irrelevant
a crystal of the purest patience
while all night my radio
To lie down
To lie with
To lie
pits white noise against nuit blanc.
On clear nights we could pull Canada
straight down from the aurora
a map mostly white
dark green for taiga
pale gray for tundra
Cap-chat, Chibougamau
mysterious names and distances
a Frenchman in a dark room
Gone are the days of imperfect reception
Gone are the screens of hissing snow
Gone is the bull’s-eye socket
that opened on unspangled darkness
Gone is the pure tone of void and emergency
One ancient trope, anaphora,
has survived rhyme and reason.
Infinitely antiphonal, it says
Give us this day and
Eat, drink
image and metaphor, its goons,
the self, its god,
goods, its gross grace.
Now the air twangles with testimonials
ravishing ! wondrous ! splendid ! --
until you’d think the tongue had been
clear-cut and strip-mined of superlatives
shucked to its dumb root
but still it screams down sheer ironsides
on the latest machine
spitting in today’s most phosphorescent chic !
From deep inside the basement’s
freshly poured neiges d’antan concrete
Fido’s bow-wow bow-wow bow-wow bow-wow
joins the cricket behind the boiler,
and the fizzling smoke-detector
in an new arrangement of
O iambic tabernacle O pentacle
while upstairs Old Uncle Gulliver
squirms in his AM FM truss.
Oh, how he likes it.
What burns on the MC’s index card,
fruit or beast ?
Which of a thousand thousand savors will suffice ?
What’s the consolation prize ?
What info-perdition lies
between words between stations ?
And when will the smoke clear
so that I might rescan
the spectrum of the terrible
for the vanishing slit between BC and AD ?
In the desert parabolas reread
the zodiac sign by sign by sign.
What strange music, half faith half math,
will loom our new ear ?
... a thousand twangling instruments
I like to imagine an eremite
alone in his cell
wordless listening
supremely irrelevant
a crystal of the purest patience
while all night my radio
To lie down
To lie with
To lie
pits white noise against nuit blanc.
On clear nights we could pull Canada
straight down from the aurora
a map mostly white
dark green for taiga
pale gray for tundra
Cap-chat, Chibougamau
mysterious names and distances
a Frenchman in a dark room
Gone are the days of imperfect reception
Gone are the screens of hissing snow
Gone is the bull’s-eye socket
that opened on unspangled darkness
Gone is the pure tone of void and emergency
One ancient trope, anaphora,
has survived rhyme and reason.
Infinitely antiphonal, it says
Give us this day and
Eat, drink
image and metaphor, its goons,
the self, its god,
goods, its gross grace.
Now the air twangles with testimonials
ravishing ! wondrous ! splendid ! --
until you’d think the tongue had been
clear-cut and strip-mined of superlatives
shucked to its dumb root
but still it screams down sheer ironsides
on the latest machine
spitting in today’s most phosphorescent chic !
From deep inside the basement’s
freshly poured neiges d’antan concrete
Fido’s bow-wow bow-wow bow-wow bow-wow
joins the cricket behind the boiler,
and the fizzling smoke-detector
in an new arrangement of
O iambic tabernacle O pentacle
while upstairs Old Uncle Gulliver
squirms in his AM FM truss.
Oh, how he likes it.
What burns on the MC’s index card,
fruit or beast ?
Which of a thousand thousand savors will suffice ?
What’s the consolation prize ?
What info-perdition lies
between words between stations ?
And when will the smoke clear
so that I might rescan
the spectrum of the terrible
for the vanishing slit between BC and AD ?
In the desert parabolas reread
the zodiac sign by sign by sign.
What strange music, half faith half math,
will loom our new ear ?
Rosa Rosa Rosa Rosa
I walked down Main St just after dark tonight to pick up some prescriptions at the pharmacy. The evening traffic seemed overly fast, dense and menacing, an impersonal collective phenomenon horridly devoid of care. A big encroaching mismanaged machine.
Oddly, among the wet, fallen leaves of the sidewalk, there was a decidual trail of family photographs and cards, leading to a broken-backed photo album splayed in the gutter. I was tempted to collect them, peruse them, interrogate them: how often does one find such treasure ? But my neck brace -- and I'll need three full months of it I learned today -- makes the ground a relatively inaccessible part of my world, so I let it all be.
DK dreamed our Cat Billy was telepathically reading him a book about dogs. What a fabulous dream. He said it was unpleasant, though. Not a nightmare, but one of those going-nowhere, annoyingly obscure dreams.
My father once dreamed of a row of boy scouts playing flutes.
(Alienist ! Where are you when I need you ?)
So I walked to the pharmacy, past that silly, pseudo-colonial hamburger restaurant whose name always escapes me -- Captain Something's Tavern -- and saw that their sign, with its series of red neon messages, was boasting of "thireteen televisions" and "nine satellites" and "trivia night" and "karaoke." In the parking lot of the pharmacy I watched a young woman get into her car, light up a cigarette, and turn her stereo up to window shattering level. The pharmacy was overbright with fluorescents. The first thing I saw was a display of at least three shelves worth of pink, shiny, grinning ceramic piggy banks.
Then I think I blacked out.
Just kidding.
How do people stand this life, I wondered on the way home, passing St Jude's weirdly protestant appearing white clapboard colonial church, gazing at the pretty statue on its lawn. I counterpoised the idea of a saint to the whizzing, loudmouthed, pig-pink, multi-channelled, meat eating world I was passing through. And, the idea of hermitage.
Then I thought of "Christianity" and it seemed as remote and unhelpful as the ranks of porcelain piggies in Walgreen's, except at its outermost limits of darkness, silence and unknowingness, where even Christ doesn't matter, doesn't figure. Transchristian realms. Christ is like the Zen trope of the finger pointing at the moon. He's the finger. He's what comes into speech, the Logos, a way of talking about the Unspeakable.
But as remote as it seemed, part of me wanted to go into the church, for the silence and simple acknowledgment-of-mystery that it represents.
Our new orange kitty might have another name. Gertrude has seemed just so ponderous. The kitty is cross eyed. I thought: rosicrucian, then I thought of Henry Miller's "The Rosy Crucifix" -- so maybe Rosy, or even Rosa after Andriessen's opera.
Billy's dream dog book was probably a god book, or a bible: that's why DK found the dream so annoying. Of course, free associating to someone else's dream is not exactly kosher, Sigmund.
Rosa rosa rosa rosa rosa !
Oddly, among the wet, fallen leaves of the sidewalk, there was a decidual trail of family photographs and cards, leading to a broken-backed photo album splayed in the gutter. I was tempted to collect them, peruse them, interrogate them: how often does one find such treasure ? But my neck brace -- and I'll need three full months of it I learned today -- makes the ground a relatively inaccessible part of my world, so I let it all be.
DK dreamed our Cat Billy was telepathically reading him a book about dogs. What a fabulous dream. He said it was unpleasant, though. Not a nightmare, but one of those going-nowhere, annoyingly obscure dreams.
My father once dreamed of a row of boy scouts playing flutes.
(Alienist ! Where are you when I need you ?)
So I walked to the pharmacy, past that silly, pseudo-colonial hamburger restaurant whose name always escapes me -- Captain Something's Tavern -- and saw that their sign, with its series of red neon messages, was boasting of "thireteen televisions" and "nine satellites" and "trivia night" and "karaoke." In the parking lot of the pharmacy I watched a young woman get into her car, light up a cigarette, and turn her stereo up to window shattering level. The pharmacy was overbright with fluorescents. The first thing I saw was a display of at least three shelves worth of pink, shiny, grinning ceramic piggy banks.
Then I think I blacked out.
Just kidding.
How do people stand this life, I wondered on the way home, passing St Jude's weirdly protestant appearing white clapboard colonial church, gazing at the pretty statue on its lawn. I counterpoised the idea of a saint to the whizzing, loudmouthed, pig-pink, multi-channelled, meat eating world I was passing through. And, the idea of hermitage.
Then I thought of "Christianity" and it seemed as remote and unhelpful as the ranks of porcelain piggies in Walgreen's, except at its outermost limits of darkness, silence and unknowingness, where even Christ doesn't matter, doesn't figure. Transchristian realms. Christ is like the Zen trope of the finger pointing at the moon. He's the finger. He's what comes into speech, the Logos, a way of talking about the Unspeakable.
But as remote as it seemed, part of me wanted to go into the church, for the silence and simple acknowledgment-of-mystery that it represents.
Our new orange kitty might have another name. Gertrude has seemed just so ponderous. The kitty is cross eyed. I thought: rosicrucian, then I thought of Henry Miller's "The Rosy Crucifix" -- so maybe Rosy, or even Rosa after Andriessen's opera.
Billy's dream dog book was probably a god book, or a bible: that's why DK found the dream so annoying. Of course, free associating to someone else's dream is not exactly kosher, Sigmund.
Rosa rosa rosa rosa rosa !
Sunday, November 02, 2003
Nones: Outpatient
Only two of the divine hours remain unwritten in my series -- terce, nine AM, the start of the workday, and nones, midafternoon, the slump, the cluttered worldly dregs of time. I think an old poem, circa 2001, fits the 3 PM slot perfectly -- a poem I wrote after I saw a group of young men wearing work clothes hugging each other and wailing in the parking lot outside my window at the hospital. I later learned that a fellow worker had died on the job of some awful injury.
I've been too distracted of late to write. Maybe this fits.
NONES: OUTPATIENT
The sound, convulsive, musicless, disturbed
the clinic’s drone of paperwork and care,
and, summoned, we attended. It was woe
that froze our pens and stethoscopes midflight,
a woe so whorled and intimate it seemed
our ears were die-cast complements. And then
it stopped. We knew it would, of course. We knew
the chaplain would sweep down ex machinae ,
ex beeper, cell phone, elevator, stat,
and do whatever thing it is he does,
while we got back to doing all we could,
which isn’t much. And, all that afternoon,
amidst a crowded service of dull noise --
heat’s shuffle through coiled corridors, the cough
and spit of sleet and wind on the gray pane,
the hiss of the flickering overheads, the grave,
determined data rattling into banks --
my ears kept picking up that note of woe,
as perfectly attuned to its long wave
as a maternal ear to one child’s cry.
But then a keener sound crescendoed near,
two sirens bawling in and out of phase,
a lullaby, a ululation, then,
outside Emergency’s tokenless gate,
an ear-from-cosmos splitting unison.
I've been too distracted of late to write. Maybe this fits.
NONES: OUTPATIENT
The sound, convulsive, musicless, disturbed
the clinic’s drone of paperwork and care,
and, summoned, we attended. It was woe
that froze our pens and stethoscopes midflight,
a woe so whorled and intimate it seemed
our ears were die-cast complements. And then
it stopped. We knew it would, of course. We knew
the chaplain would sweep down ex machinae ,
ex beeper, cell phone, elevator, stat,
and do whatever thing it is he does,
while we got back to doing all we could,
which isn’t much. And, all that afternoon,
amidst a crowded service of dull noise --
heat’s shuffle through coiled corridors, the cough
and spit of sleet and wind on the gray pane,
the hiss of the flickering overheads, the grave,
determined data rattling into banks --
my ears kept picking up that note of woe,
as perfectly attuned to its long wave
as a maternal ear to one child’s cry.
But then a keener sound crescendoed near,
two sirens bawling in and out of phase,
a lullaby, a ululation, then,
outside Emergency’s tokenless gate,
an ear-from-cosmos splitting unison.
Saturday, November 01, 2003
NPR, Buffy and Boffo, Stokey and Phelps
It was all so too too very I nearly puked into my DeSalvo Collar.
NPR did a piece on gay marriage yesterday. The second half was an ultra softball interview with a couple, he some prof of "ethics and moral philosophy," she some chick with an Oxford-related theology credential, who took the "con" side. These quasi-academic pieces of work had posited three sine qua nons of marriage -- complementarity, a public contract and procreativity -- which, QED, ruled out gay "marriage," although some of their best friends, etc etc.
One would think that such overly PhD'ed entities would not insist on such a literal and exclusive reading of complementarity: insert penis into vagina, tab A into slot B, and that's that. They evoked, of course, centuries of History and Tradition, and the Sanctity of the Institution of Marriage. They weren't quoting scripture, but Leviticus was lurking in the background. One could mentally morph the argument into one for slavery, white-supremacy, anti-semitism, the oppression of women. The ugly prejudice is prior. The rest is ugly rationalization, cloaked in college degrees, religion, tradition, history, you name it.
These are the insidious hate mongers, the insidious segregationists, the insidious separate-but-equalizers.
And again it's the old "we must respect and tolerate their opinion because it is their deeply held religious belief blah blah blah." Well fuck that shit, as the phrase goes. Bigotry is bigotry. I mean do we "respect" the fundamentalist Islamic "law" that provides for women to be stoned to death because it's a "deeply held belief" ? Hell, no.
I would imagine Profs Buffy and Boffo would be surprised -- and offended -- to be placed in the same category as Topeka's infamous Reverand Fred Phelps. "Moi?" they might cry, in unison, or perhaps, "Nous ?"
Yeah, vouse guys. I'm talkin' to you. High-end fundamentalists. Creepy homophobes in sheepskinned clothing.
I have a great Phelps story.
We were visiting DK's folks in Topeka, and decided to give their late, magnificent and placid poodle, Stokey, a joyride in the car, windows down, truly dog heaven. We tooled about for a while, the beast having the time of its life, until we came to a major intersection where a gaggle of Phelpses, adults and kids, were waving their virulent horrid signs. Stokey -- normally a placid, silent, amicable animal -- spotted them and suddenly began to bark like a dog possessed.
Good dog. Very, very good dog.
If he'd been there last night, I bet he'd have barked at the radio.
NPR did a piece on gay marriage yesterday. The second half was an ultra softball interview with a couple, he some prof of "ethics and moral philosophy," she some chick with an Oxford-related theology credential, who took the "con" side. These quasi-academic pieces of work had posited three sine qua nons of marriage -- complementarity, a public contract and procreativity -- which, QED, ruled out gay "marriage," although some of their best friends, etc etc.
One would think that such overly PhD'ed entities would not insist on such a literal and exclusive reading of complementarity: insert penis into vagina, tab A into slot B, and that's that. They evoked, of course, centuries of History and Tradition, and the Sanctity of the Institution of Marriage. They weren't quoting scripture, but Leviticus was lurking in the background. One could mentally morph the argument into one for slavery, white-supremacy, anti-semitism, the oppression of women. The ugly prejudice is prior. The rest is ugly rationalization, cloaked in college degrees, religion, tradition, history, you name it.
These are the insidious hate mongers, the insidious segregationists, the insidious separate-but-equalizers.
And again it's the old "we must respect and tolerate their opinion because it is their deeply held religious belief blah blah blah." Well fuck that shit, as the phrase goes. Bigotry is bigotry. I mean do we "respect" the fundamentalist Islamic "law" that provides for women to be stoned to death because it's a "deeply held belief" ? Hell, no.
I would imagine Profs Buffy and Boffo would be surprised -- and offended -- to be placed in the same category as Topeka's infamous Reverand Fred Phelps. "Moi?" they might cry, in unison, or perhaps, "Nous ?"
Yeah, vouse guys. I'm talkin' to you. High-end fundamentalists. Creepy homophobes in sheepskinned clothing.
I have a great Phelps story.
We were visiting DK's folks in Topeka, and decided to give their late, magnificent and placid poodle, Stokey, a joyride in the car, windows down, truly dog heaven. We tooled about for a while, the beast having the time of its life, until we came to a major intersection where a gaggle of Phelpses, adults and kids, were waving their virulent horrid signs. Stokey -- normally a placid, silent, amicable animal -- spotted them and suddenly began to bark like a dog possessed.
Good dog. Very, very good dog.
If he'd been there last night, I bet he'd have barked at the radio.
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