Signs of Endings

That Toddling Town

Magnificat Mile

Here, where vendrenuit stalks vendredi, 

she's on display, skirts all the rage.

The outskirts, half-razed

to lofts and lowing fogbanks,

mix laughter, slaughter,  brand,

and brand.  She totters in her skirts

called by lights,

     You know what you want !

one link in the food chain of desire.

     (Who told you what you want ?)

Her glassy eyes slide up the glassy spikes

into the black-and-blueblood sky

where flightless deco buttresses allude

to nothing that she knows of.

She's starving, stilletoed, damp

as a newborn calf.  Her eyes

dart like shiners; half-

blind, allured and alluring cultivar, hot-

house Rose of Charon, disingenue,

lean on the hog butcher beside you

the bristled one who

is ever sans souci !

The lagoons of his pig paradise drain

into the cash green city ditch of Farm Tech,

where logos ripple backwards among

schoolkids learning

where our meat comes from

(and where it goes) 

She holds her silk purse close. Hermes

psychopompos, hog butcher

of the over- and underworlds,

guides her past the tempting lights,

telling her where to look,

and where not to, down,

to read the crayoned cardboard

homeless

pregnant

and meet the glance where favor, blessing drown.

8.27.13

 

Aftermathematician

I've just crashed over the threshold of vacation, bits of unfinished work still sticking to me; I stare up at the unfamiliar sky -- where's the suspended ceiling ? -- and blink in the glare.  No buzzards circling. Good. Must have survived.

My latest gig-within-a-gig nearly did me in. I'm squatting over the embers of myself, huffing and puffing like mad. Hello, hello -- are you there ? Am I there ? Is there even a there there ? 

Embers. And ashes. There is firewood, and there is ash.

In the midst of it, the phone call comes: a stranger, reporting a death. I was on a list of those to be called in the event of. 

The red, red sea parts for a moment, then crashes down, redder yet. The horse and the rider. Always the horse and the rider, always swept into the sea of someone else's dream.

I met the man whom I have always called the Reverend in 1971. The Rev was a Marxist, an angrily  lapsed Irish Catholic, a man caught between rough-and-tumble working class roots and intellectual aspirations. He was my first lover; we were together for years, misfit clinging to misfit, then drifted apart. I married twice, first badly then amazingly well, and undertook my most uncongenial career. (Vide supra.)

Years passed, marked by an occasional missive, and then, in 1998, the Rev re-appeared in person. We agreed to meet. His life had been hard -- backbreaking work with cruel and brutal coworkers, poverty, isolation, physical illness. But there was more.

In the woods surrounding a Buddhist temple in New York he'd had a vision -- tall white beings had appeared to him, radiating love; there were other experiences, out-of-body, transcendent, numinous, ineffable. He'd been led into a deep exploration of Native American and Celtic spirituality.

Frankly, he scared the shit out of me. And I fled.

We reconnected again in 2010. Packets of books -- Buddhist Sutras, Native American lore --  began to arrive at my workplace, return address indicating they were from a Chief White Feather; there was an odd little blip on my facebook page. Then came the emails -- from public library computers, as he was too poor to own his own.

And for the last three years we conducted the last phase of our lengthy relationship, the epistolary phase. We met once for coffee, but we mainly wrote -- over 400 emails from our correspondence remain in my cluttered inbox.  He became my metaphysical confidant, my spiritual guardian angel, sending me packets of internet printouts -- lectures, retreats, meditation centers -- and engaging us in far ranging explorations how to construe the existential anguish of Being.

Oddly, his visions -- which, to his chagrin, had never recurred -- no longer frightened me. They seemed part of the warp and woof of him. His insistence on JOY -- JOY -- JOY in the midst of his life of truly awful affliction was inspiring; his conviction that letting go was the highest of spiritual attainments was humbling.

Of late his health had worsened. He had developed, on top of debilitating rheumatoid arthritis, an indolent leukemia. He'd always hated the medical establishment. Fortunately, in the last year or so, he'd found some compassionate providers. Toward the end he'd weathered some painful procedures and treatments and seemed to be doing better. He talked about the fall and how we'd both be happier then -- me at the end of this miserable gig-within-a-gig, himself, Goddess willing, restored to better health.

Inundated with work, I replied only briefly to his emails. June bled into July; I noted his silence, wondered, worked -- and then the phone call came.

Shortly after he died, I had a dream.

I was in a library. The librarian told me that the Rev had left a message that, in 4 days, we would meet for a game of twister.

How could that be, I replied. He's dead !

Then I looked out the library window and there was the Reverand, wearing Ray Bans, walking away.

Away. 

Walking away, rowing away, this broken guardian angel of mine -- he was a grace which, like all graces, was utterly undeserved.

May the earthly wind

and the heavenly stars

sing you to sleep, old pal.

Joy Cubed

Still ?

Neither arch- or seraph-,

far too old for cherub,

more drone than anything,

he punches the guard clock

of his night watch,

pushing the allowance

of fatigue and indifference,

and hauls his yellowing

half-stripped scapulae

unflappable behind him

and over me.

Fourth Rapture

It was July 4th, far too hot with no break in sight, and I'd agreed (peevishly) to attend the town's fireworks.

"You'll love it. You always do, no matter how much you complain," said DK. I grumbled. He was likely right, but the prospect of braving the crowds of flag-and-lightstick waving celebrants was daunting. But I went. I would likely enjoy the display. Which he will undoubtedly bring up next year, and the next, and the next --

We parked the car our accustomed few blocks from the field and debarked -- into an oddly deserted landscape. Where were the roiling hordes ? The car-clogged streets ? There was only night and the heavy, humid darkness -- a few lighted windows, TV screens flickering, air conditioners humming.

It was overwhelmingly strange. We posited some theories. Too hot ? Crowds daunted by terrorist fear ? Had we got the venue wrong ?

We walked down the deserted sidewalk toward the main street. Our theories grew more outré -- zombie apocalypse ? The Rapture ? And we (the non-observant Jew and the Piskapostate) were Left Behind ? And all the beer-swilling, flagwaving, billed-cap wearing, Fox-News watching, fundaligionists had been whisked up to their reward ?

My mood lifted. The breathless night was no longer unpleasant, it was pregnant with strange, wordless promises, the promises of a space and time that were no longer ordinary. We were suspended between what was and what might be.  I was enjoying the twilight zone of my subverted expectations. It was a dream street, and I walked it hoping the mystery would never be unveiled. Or maybe it was a Mystery that had been unveiled whose strangeness I wished would go on forever ?

Well, of course, there was a pedestrian explanation  readily accessible via the pocket oracle of DKs iPhone: we were a day early. The fireworks were scheduled for July 5th. The real world flooded back. I sighed. There had been no rapture.

DK began immediately to plan the next day's expedition. I would undoubtedly, be peevish again -- more so for the thronged streets, the smell of perfume, sweat and smoke, the children screaming for lightsticks and glow-in-the-darkstatue-of-liberty hats.

The world of misread schedules and heat waves flooded back. And there, at the not-so-far end of my four day, ruined-by-the-heatwave holiday, was work -- smiling its grotesque, appetitive, drool-slick, I'm-gonna-get-you, clown-qua-Satan grin.  Or maybe it's simply a vampire, draining me to the last drop,   damning me to a bloodless eternity of the same quotidian dismay.

(Prose empurpling in the heat.)

Well, there are (thank Whomever)  air conditioned rooms, Nordic police procedurals, and Diet Coke with ice.

There are those moments when the day turns its other, unaccustomed face toward us and it and we lighten, at least for a few moments.

There's David Daniels and his other-worldly voice, and Benjamin Britten's heart-wrenching Abraham and Isaac --

There's DK who sees through my clouds of peevishness --

And there's always the hope of thunderstorms, and autumn, and winter.

And, in the hot woods (clouds of vampirish mosquitos and carpets of poison ivy notwithstanding)  the speckled Deptford pinks,

the ice blue, frost-speckled chicory,

and the Queen Anne's lace

go about their lives ignoring me so splendidly, so utterly, so absolutely --

that they dismiss all theology in one, wind-swept wave of the bloom.