*see also Daniel Craig as James Bondº
ºsee also Adele's^ song for said film
^see also Adele's dead ancestors†
†etc.
Wash your hands too little, you get infections. Wash too much, you mutate germs into superbugs and megaviruses -- radiation to komodo dragons; Godzilla crap, man.
Take too little aspirin, you die of heart attacks. Too much? Your liver fails.
Out of the frying pan, into the fire. Right Bilbo? Oh yes, look at what Mr. Tolkien did to cute, little, respectable, good, admirable hobbits: HE THREW THEM INTO A VOLCANO.
} so to speak {
There's coughs and wheezes, choking precautions, SIDS, cancer, saucers (the flying kind), terrorists, communists, capitalists who practice corporate assassination, oppressors, gangrene, poisoned tangerines, house fires, betrayers, cannibals and human filleters, wildcats, vampiric bats, bloody shats and molten vats of murderous liars.
Also guns -- machines made of still more twisted metal that use a single compressed explosion to propel pointed hunks of metal through the air at hundreds of miles per hour in hopes to find a heart (or other vital human organ, remember those internal water balloons?) to pierce and thus end the life of the father, brother, mother, sister, daughter, son,
grandchild
of another human being who's no different than you or me. Not where humanity's concerned.
"DAMNED IF YOU DO, DAMNED IF YOU DON'T," says my uncle and King points to the dance of death. It reminds me of that movie The Box. Push the button, someone dies. Don't push the button? You die.
Maybe pushing the button isn't the whole story...
It's not that we need safety, security, on the personal or national level. Even if we did, we cannot find such things in this world of barbs and barbed wire, guns and roses (NOW including free thorns with every purchase). Death finds us all, and we do well to "meditate on our deaths and the common circumstances which attend death," as Johnny Edwards said. Get rid of the button -- that was the moral of The Box. Don't kill somebody so your life can be better. Stop pushing it and chose to die. You die. You die. You choose to die.
Not them. Not those people. Not your neighbor. Not your enemy.
You.
Don't push the button so that you can be safe.
We don't need to be safe.
We need to be saved.
If saved, we get a chance to save others – Brandon knew that, wanted to go serve a nation far poorer than his own, push all-in with his own mortality that others might have life. Risky? Yes, but so is getting blinded out, letting your chip stack dwindle with every pass of the dealer button, letting your stack get smaller and smaller until the last two chips fall into a pot which will inevitably be a side pot (not the main pot), one that, even if you win, won't give you enough cashflow to carry you through to final victory. No, the slow surrender never suffices. We all must go all-in at one point or another, must risk to overcome, or we shall fade, some slower, some faster, into the loser's bracket, blind following blind after blind until the bubble bursts and we fail to make it into the money.
Duly noted, Brandon.
We hear your message and hereby sign this memorandum – let the record show:
One put Himself in harm's way for us.
We must put ourselves through harm that others might be
safed.
Infanticentric
We can't go to that party
cause of the baby.
We can't ride the subway
cause it's hard with a baby.
We can't fly anymore
with our newborn.
We can't take that road trip
cause of the baby.
We can't sail around the world
it's hard with a baby, you see?
We can't invent cheap space travel
or write our novels
or shoot our films
or save the planet
and forget sex
with the way our newborn cries.
I don't know how we'll make another.
We can't have parties anymore
cause of the baby
can't find unflooded shores
cause it's hard with a baby.
Can't breathe the air or drink the water
or end this war
what with how much time
these last few newborns take.
We can't live past thirty
cause of the baby,
must ride our rascals
cause it's hard with a baby.
Rot in nursing homes
cause of the baby
and you can forget about ever
trying what comes next
with the way our newborn cries.
I guess we'll just have to never die.
The alternate:
that baby dies --
would be unbearable.
We couldn't whine and cry.
Fall Into The
There's a gap in the platform
between the train and the earth
you can fall right through it
mind the gap.
There's a gap in the sidewalk
between the grate and the earth
you can fall right through it
mind the gap.
There's a gap in the windshield
between the crash and the reaction
you can fall right through it
clean into midair
mind the gap.
There's a man in the sidewalk
between the gap and the earth
you could fall right through him
you could wonder until you're blue
was he in some sort of
extra planar space?
a bag of holding placed
inside a bag of holding?
that didn't have room for bicycles
in front of B63 buses?
There's a Gap on Times Square, now.
They used to have commercials about falling
into them.
The man is wearing one of their shirts.
His blood's on the shards
in the gaps
of the street.
I have fallen into him
and no one followed me...
Sonnet # 0 K
to be read on infinite loop
Enough to still the movements no one sees
in statue, ice, or iron or the trees
which chip, melt, ring, sprout leaves. Presences still
. Presences having their fill – face frees face
freeze face (my worry in Unworried Will) –
of one another linked :: moment and place ::
lesser in Greater (greatest, then Greater)
until my lesser freezes. Enough to...
This is the way Ice Ages can conceive,
can by unmoving move the world to be.
They tell me, "Worlds can only grow so hot
before they burn out, ours will burn out soon."
Then, having fizzled, freeze amniotic.
Can I expend my energy to freeze?
To move to stop before I'm out of moves?
Megabus Moon Roof
The overpass eats, opens like a dark
To swallow the shuffle. See how the glass
Of our double decker darkens and the ear
Is silenced shuttered? Space comes to mind
Millennium Falcon's maiden plunge
In the belly of the beast. Back when Han
Was still scared of sharper teeth
And the bowels of bore worms the bounty king
Jabba will joke in jumbled tones
While out feeding them the faces of free Jedis
And rebel parsec runners and the Wookie
And these two droids. That's how a Mega
Bus will abide bridges that just
Barely brush the brink off the moon
Roof and render the row of ceiling
Windo
ws into weird, wind-up pixels
Whose fellowship flashing fetches dreams of
Broadway's bygone billboard lights
And their rickety rhythms. Remember then, I ,
How one of the panes offered its embrace
To some bad bridge that broke its trust
And shattered the shield of a second pane
Above the bunch. You bear up as
Luxury leaves below your fears.
New York Funeral
Put me with the pets. Pushing up daisies
Ain't easy in the environment shared
By eight-million owners and workers
And predators and prey, so prone are we
To leave lions to lay rotting
For the birds and beasts. So bag me (and tag
Me not for the news). I never want a tomb
Or a catacomb's colored glass to
Decorate my death. A dearth of rites
Wasted on withered wraiths of men --
Put me with the pets. Plows and dump
Trucks will take trashbags black
And filled with the fur of Fido or Milo
So that landfill is the last longing of the fury
Body and its brine of boiling maggots
Cause where can you bury a Wilbur or Charlotte
In the city that seldom sleeps or grieves?
Put me with the pets. Those purring, barking,
Corporeal powers, those purple flowers
In the Garden of God (who gives being
To each and every instant -- and existence
To contingent things). He thinks donations
And graces gives -- these good bits of the Soul of
God's Glory, these goodly painful
Summertime stories of song and its laughter
Of fetch and the fletcher whose flights have stricken
The liver or the organ of love and blood
Of one so the wind can whip in the ears
Of a spaniel's spring, or the snow leopard's
retrieving or a terrier's. The truth of the shared
Life and its loves -- of living being --
Put me with the pets. Put me in a bag
With the discarded dreams of America
And the souls it disposed of and summon the courage
To see me in the same image
And bruised body of the battered pit bull
And then put me with the pets and please weep
For them and their thankless thoughts and jobs.
Greenwood Cemetary Graves at Snowfall
Snow on the stones, salts and ices
That garnish the graves. Greenwood waits
For the day when dawn doffs the wrappings
And garments of granites, the garland of a robe
Or a blanket's mask on the bleak pillars
Like condoms or clasps of copper bracelets
Or the hood of The Grim. How will their clothing
Slip away like a summer nightie
Or an iPhone sleeve? I sing a
Dirge of laughter. Dream, I, a
Joke of tears. Just as the summer
Shatters after sunlight sears
And the great globe burns. For God will decloak
These old oaks, these overgrown pillars
Whose moss remembers the making of life
From our rotting rinds. And ruin is quickly
Impotent rendered. Import is the weight
Given from without. Graces make
The meaning mind. And a mountain of giant
Phalluses vanish before the Master's
Vanishing veil and the varnish fades
And the stone statues stand upward
As men of bone and mothers' faces.
La Fin Du Monde
Read the world's ending
in a book again today
and I laughed
Determined:
laughter
helps us finish strong.
It's not the first book
printed whose themes
Feature the end of the world
Humans often transition from
fantasy
to
science
fiction
(from mythology to
eschatology)
by way of
apocalyptic modes of transit
and... here we are!
science
fiction
from
fantasies
my rich uncle
well-respected in my home town
preppin' with canned food
ammo enough to sow a million fields
were they seeds rather than shells
of broken things
the heirloom kind they buy
unlike those engineered
to die
three generations out.
buddy told me to buy-gold-not-buy-gold-buygold
after the Dinar revalues
(after the bitcoin exploded)
after they devalue the dollar
nevermind, don't buy gold again,
buy foreign stocks
from those countries America invaded
in order to have something worth investing
in:
Japan
Germany
Iraq (once they get theirs up and running)
because depression's a great
foe, great depression
is
and I
determined to laugh
so
I laughed.
Call me a scoffer, a cynic, a mocker
but I see the ashes, the cinders, the embers
and laugh
cause the fire, it keeps me warm
throw some Benjamins on it
I see the smoke rising and see
smoke signals
in billowing willows
and think: if Isengaurd burns
Ents are going to war
poisoned wells
I rejoice that half the world has no
clean drinking water
they could be like we who
sitswimmin in 16,000-gallon pools
of rotting water
while theirs at least reached stasis
Drink up, drink up together and
laughing and chugging
poisoned sacraments of the poor
while we die of thirst,
so I laugh too
because that's what my homeless friends do
and Rich told me
"He did not have a home"
so why should I?
The whole world belongs to the meek,
why shouldn't I?
Wounded wings mended
when kids giggle and bells toll.
Crashing planes
flown inverted
by drunk men
laughing
who say, "Hello, my name"
and laugh with others
who once nursed the bottle
in temperance movements
who readily admit:
we've all got some serious problems.
I see games to end hunger,
Givers,
people sick of taking The Stand,
game overs for Readied Player Ones,
all under Big Brother and I can't help
but laugh
because even O'Conner and
Anne Rivers Siddons
Straub
Shirley Jackson
dude that wrote The Walking Dead
McCarthy – these "southerners"
all can enjoy the sweet
tea
black and
refined sugar
meet
in
brown-iced-liquid
They laugh at dinner like the rest of us
if given half a chance
and good company
"friends," that is.
Don't believe me?
read Malin's recipe f
or "THE NEW AMERICAN GOTHIC:"
(1) setting: microcosm
(2) ...as image of imprisonment, confining narcissism
New trends make sense:
zombie,
bomb,
economic collapse,
or your run-of-the-mill invasion
(of the body snatchers),
because it's all as small
as claustrophobic
as the modern kitchen table
which remains woefully vacant
literally
(only one due to loneliness or
none due to fast food)
or figuratively
(only one due to worry or
many due to fast phones)
gather around and forget that this symbols communion.
And so we invest in
(1) microcosms of
(2) imprisoning narcissism
and let the wrappers,
status-updates,
preppers,
and divorce
leave us like the last man
in a prison of
living hells,
undead
but at least we got our guns, by God
and at least they have theirs, by God
hmm. [chuckles] By God
maybe not.
if "No man is an island" remains ignored
we convert
kitchen tables
back into islands
and the only way off the island
(Lost?)
is by building a land bridge
not in the Alexandrian way,
using the rubble of conquered cityscapes to
level the playing field,
but rather the rubble
of broken loves
broken kins
broken brokers
to rebuild a path from my side of the table
toward yours
and that sort of thing
starts with the sound of
kitchen tables,
starts with
a laugh.
Scared?
That's how you know where the courage is
in this brave, brave, brave, brave,
Brave New World.
So yeah, I laugh when you tell me the world's ending
not out of disrespect
but out of this respect:
laughter's the way out.
"But Lance, the world's really ending.
Like, for real this time."
I know.
[sound of laughter]
Trust me, I know.
Has been for two-thousand years.
Apocalyptic
literature
's as old
as Scripture
after all.
We humans've done this thing for quite some time...
and the best of us knew how to overcome and
laugh. Look at John, Zeke,
Bell and her Dragon.
That Shepherd of... what was it again? Hermas?
Sure, why not, the world's always ending.
So what's changed?
Nothing.
Wars
rumors of wars
not yet the end, but the end's in sight.
[sound of laughter]
Greatest man to ever live saw the end
and laughed,
scoffed, really, in the face of doom
(His)
and the world's ending.
Oh we could wax on with the appropriateness
of phrases eloquent-yet-cliché:
laughed his head off,
laughed it to scorn,
laughing all the way to the bank,
but really
the laugh's on him
cause he had the
last laugh.
Story time:
The other day my buddy was having a rough day
so we played chess after eating homemade burritos
at his kitchen table.
His world was falling apart
(he'd overstated a point)
My world was falling apart
(I hadn't got paid for an invoice)
His wife's world was falling apart
(she dropped twelve stitches on her knitting)
My wife's world was falling apart
(we are moving away from everyone and everything we know and love)
His son's world was falling apart
(he had to go to bed without milk)
His daughter's world was falling apart
(she wanted to stay in the living room and flirt some more
with me,
even though I won't flirt back--she's three
and I married the lady of my dreams)
and everyone I knew was falling apart
and everyone he knows was falling apart
and our everyones everyoned into everyone
until every one
fell apart.
The fragments spilled out on the table...
even on top of our chess game where he beat me with
hypermodern openings he didn't know the name of
He sat down a bottle of French beer named
La Fin du Monde
and he
Friended me
and I
friended him
over fragments
and started to piece together
a mosaic using glue found in the motherlode
running through all our
kitchen table islands
this natural resource,
this love-
glue
laughter.
We laughed
while I sipped,
some say nursed,
the bottle
of the end of the world.
Daylight and The Stand
...anyways authors arm their minds
With the rinds of ruined rights and their power
To bind black burdens of fears
That find them flailing in the ferret holes
Of vain environs developers dug
Out of stone or stock, steel or river
Like holes in holy hearths or the essence
of elements like earth. Earning your way
Seems a bit shallow when the sun dies
Or the power pines. Ponder what the writers
Who've taken the tunnel towards the Jersey
Line have learned: lay a system
On a system on a system, it soon burns
With a switch flipped off. The sea breaches
Stalone's lanes. And left cars
Corridors clog for King after
The flu vaccine fails and the mighty
Choke on their snot. Choose your way
Carefully, cousins, because cosmos collapse
Eventually, see? Vials of cures
And silos of surefire shots will bow
To the fate of future fights and rustings
And you'll yearn for the youth when the thought
Of claustrophobic conclusions to fictions
Seemed worse than the weather that warmed daily.
Dr. Robert Lowrey, In Memorium
I saw him call down fire from heaven
into young minds
primed for eruption
I heard him whisper names of things
secrets hidden in bittersweet scrolls
names, masteries, insights, mysteries, intuitions,
control over nuclei
of thrones, crowns, primeval beasts, modern call girls, flying scorpions,
red dragon
of the sea,
of the song,
of the seven thunders,
of the sacred surreptitious scroll
once buried under sand
I smell incense rising:
Nag Champa, Cinnamon, Egyptian Musk, Spikenard, Lavender Sage, Myrrh, Goldenseal, French Vanilla, Rose, Raspberry Crystal, Jasmine Flower, Juniper Breeze, Sandalwood, Super Hit, Coconut, Cool Water, Paradise – Le
t's Go!, Cotton Candy, Mango Madness – Think Vacation, Cherry Vanilla – #1 Best Seller, Pink Sugar, Polo Blue, Dream Catcher, Eternity – Is Forever!, and 77 other scents!
I smell prayers rising
once filtered out of our fresh air
I take the scroll
I taste the scroll
I eat the scroll
savor sentences
relish recapitulations, refraining
piquancies within consuming consummation
deep in our cores
inside we who heard him,
discovered with him,
absorbing along, the
man who acquired this taste for things
Can you feel him?
Can you feel him among the great cloud?
Hear him bear witness:
Ireny
Allegiance is bliss, on our irenic side.
Celestial envoy giv'n to John.
Bless all who keep it, they shall hold the tide.
Good John wrote epics hard to hide
The Word, The Witness - act upon
Allegiance -- it's bliss, on our irenic side.
Blissed the reader! Blissed the hearer's life!
This Oracle will thereupon
Bless all who keep it, they shall hold the tide.
Every stroke, note, letter, ledger line
Was written with a King's baton.
Allegiance is bliss, on our irenic side.
You must know there remains no time,
(Dear father time bears no more spawn).
Bless all who keep it, they shall hold the tide.
This vision escorts, let it be your guide.
You'll take a side (take one that won).
Allegiance is bliss, on our irenic side.
Bless all who keep it, they shall hold the tide.
Revelation 6
I've held the broken seals
As a man returning home
Revisiting his desk
Finding open envelopes
Red wax unsealing truth
Whitened pages bane pure love
Before each letter reads it
History's mourner's song is sung
The first, a tyrant strong
Yells a conquering, taunting chant
Upon his white-clad steed
His bow, war's stimulant
The rider's parallel
Quickly slashed his second seal
His horse the hue of hell
His extensive sword kills peace
Thrice told with broken wax
Blackened fur now rides along
Both horse and rider poised
Holding scales, earth's judgement song
A fourth! A paled horse
Bearing Death himself bareback
Hell itself still tails his course
Dragging plagues and famine's shack
And as I read the furied fifth
Martyrs' dirges filled my ears
Lives which seal the truth, their wax
Cries, "Vindicate our tears!"
Before my chance had come
To reread the open sixth
An earthquake snapped the ground
as an ice storm would a twig
A veiled sun behind
and the moon-man's bleeding face
Stars detached themselves from sky
Looked like ripened, shaken figs.
By then each king of earth
With the free and every slave
Each man of natural birth
Hid beneath each rock and cave
Could any man now stand?
(Even I at desk received)
I heard a mighty voice
"Who can open up the scroll?"
No man, nor angel came
Not in heaven, caves below
A lamb came limping forth
Looking long as if it had died
He gently took the scroll,
He glanced inside...
OH!
Revelation 10
He had a cloud
a robe
but a cloud around his waist.
crimson, apricot, gold, avocado,
navy, cobalt, lilac all swirled into one band.
one halo on his brow.
His smile blazed in light
Light from a thousand suns
Bricks built towers that made his legs,
towers flaming as a gasoline fire
between the two, he spanned the hemisphere
rising in the western sky
the land, the sea, his stool he straddled
on and over,
by and by.
His voice roared as a horde of lions,
a pride of giant, hostile cats
which quake the worlds ceiling
sounding the seven thunders.
of those, I can't write.
Maybe in the next compilation...
He gave a fling, a flick, an elevation of his wrist.
Raising his hand in solemn vow.
And winsome grin escaping now.
He swore his oath to heaven.
Resting on the elder,
The old man he swore by,
The was, the is, the coming one,
He swore his oath to heaven.
By the one who made the earth
With its rocks & muddy ruts
With its beasts & dummy ducks
With its birds of prey & honey nuts
Along with all them old trees.
By the one who made the seas
With its crabs & deeper depths
With its whales & lockness tales
With its cranberry toes & flotsam gulfs
All on this stormy sea
He swore that time was up.
That as the 7th blew his horn
One's mystery would come
& all would complete.
An angel spoke
In speaking, set me free
"Go take the giant's book
held open over the world,
He is the one upon the fence
Between the land and sea."
So I removed my pride
Approaching such a being
His book outweighed a train
Theory seemed so small
"Now take-it-eat-it" so I kissed
sweet pages & let free
taste of honey sweet
my stomach turned
vomit, scorn, a haze
Then left to prophesy
To the men in the vale.
Revelation 12
Sylph with freckled cheeks
Well she stood upon the moon
She, more than any, dressed in sun
Clothed in light
Robed in shining cloth
A fizzy form engulfed her brow
A crown, tiara, diadem
Made of twelve sole stars.
She was pregnant, pretty as she was,
But not for much longer.
Cries -- the cries -- that echoed in the night
For her child's coming
Another sign:
A Rabble, ruckus, caucus sound
flame & shadow, smoke & death
The first and only dragon.
All seven heads crowned in power
Ten horns more, still more for power
One flick, one twitch of His cedar-tail
And one third stars snuffed out
Falling, crashing to the earth
Shuffled by his tail's girth
Crouched before her child's birth
Poised to eat him whole.
The dragon's mouth was shut
Boggled by an iron rod
Wielded by the new-born god
Son of sylph, the woman
Racket of nations soon will still
For he will rally yes he
Will fill the earth with his renown
/> Green the snake shifts
Sick from the truth
As the infant king arose
Snug & tight in the sight
Of God himself
on his throne on high.
Sanctuary.
Protection, haven for a time.
In the Desert, safety
For 1260 days to be precise
Waited on hand, side, and foot, she was, mother of the King.
Weighted dawn tanned sky, afoot, to cause other love to bring
Hope.
WAR!
(Like never before.)
War is hell.
Especially war in Heaven.
Heaven was at war.
And war is hell.
∴ hell invaded heaven.
Hell'd forgotten about angels.
Dragon's angels forgot Michael.
Who can withstand Heaven's host?
The armies of The Lord know no match.
Dragon worked from every angle
Breathing fire and death in cycle.
None can stand.
None are strong.
None can pluck the cord they need
to sing the master's song.
None are Him.
None but Him.
And Nothing holds a footing facing all of heaven's throng.
∴ Asp fell
devil-king of cobras
And morningstars
Hurled to the earth
With his messengers
The enemy of mirth
inhale
booming voice before a gale:
"Salvation,
All power,
Kingdom. and
Authority
Have now come to us
Through Cristus
Victor
Prosecution of our brothers
Rooted in the one who
Persecuted all the saints
Accusing all our people
Now is heaved
Our brothers overcome
Standing Heaven's ground
By blood
By proof
They loved to die for him
More than to live for themselves
REJOICE, O HEAVEN!
SING DEAR SKYS!
CELEBRATE UTOPIA FOR DOOM OF HIM WHO LIES!
Woe to you, poor earth
Cry temporal tears
Fill the deep, turn to sea,
through lowly mourner's cries
For he who lies is here,
And know that he is RED
His anger mounts, you'll be his sport
And now he knows his time is short..."
As Dragon saw his fate
Having crashed into the earth
He chased the woman great
(Yes, the one who'd given birth)
Great Eagle's span shall bring
Her a haven for a time
Times
Half a time.
Beyond the dragon's reach.
From deep within the eel
Within the sea-drake's throat
A river cursed by pride
Sought out to torrent zeal,
To smash her hope, which floats
Earth helped her
By swallowing the flood
The Dragon raged, ticked by failure
Stormed to murder her sons,
Command keepers and
Holders of life.
Revelation 13
Dragon stood on the seashore.
Lonely and alone.
Wondering why his lonesome pride
Had furnished him no home
Feel not for him, nor pity
Pity's no game
Bilbo's pity ruled the fates
dragon stands
On edge of our divide
And from the sea, he calls another
"Blasphemous" from "Pride"
Ten Horns sprout from his face
Or faces, if we see
All seven – sheer disgrace
For both beasts by the sea.
Leopard?
No, the feet of a Bear.
But that's a lion's mouth...
Well, whatever it was it came from the deep
Dragon gave the beast his sword
And with his sword, his blitzkrieg crown
And with his crown his tyrant's scepter
Stained in blood, bent from drowning babies
The struggle, the wrestling, that ends in his taking
Even our names.
Precisely the opposite of Jacob.
One head of seven had a scar
No lightning bolt, nor pirate patch
A blow that almost killed him
World followed him, enticed by charm
Captivated by his words.
Men soon bowed for the Dragon.
For he had given sword, and crown and scepter
To the seabeast
That damned beast was worshiped too.
"There's no one like him."
They said.
"Who can stand against the Beast
who holds the scepter in his hand?"
They'd regret that...
He never shut up
Never closed up his mouth
His arrogant boasting, and blasphemous bout.
Beast did what he pleased
(for forty-two months)
Spitting, Swearing, Scoffing at God
Bedamning, Blaspheming, Excreting his curse
Upon the Name, and His Church
Mostly to those in Heaven.
Permission came for his bedlam and din
For conflict, for bloodshed of saints worldwide
For War and for mayhem, for sowing in sin
No tribe, Nor voice, Nor kindred could hide
From the Beast who sucked them in.
Rue! Woe! And Rain to all whose name
Hides not in the Lamb's book of life
For they, as worshippers, must bow down
All remain fall face down in time
All kiss toward the Beast
Are you deaf ?
You're deaf, aren't you?
Because if you aren't
If you really wanted to hear,
You'd listen.
You'd take it in.
If you set yourself up, tighten the trap –
It's sure to spring on you
If you're tagged for chains, tighten the cuffs –
You're sure to be tied down.
If you're locked in battle, loosening sheaths –
You're sure to be slain in war.
But if you're of God
And if you're of life
And if you are chasing like madmen after Christ
And if you have passion
And faithfully stand:
Sacrifice
Saves every man.
Ground broke.
No golden shovel
No red ribbon,
The ground split all on its lonesome,
Crumbling as it rose, that Beast of the Earth.
Two horns for him, two like a Lamb,
he isn't our Lamb
One voice for him; voice like the Drake
A marionette of the sea-Beast's expense
A slave, a herald to spread sea-Beast's fame
Pseudo-Lamb, false-Ram forced everyone
To ki
ss towards & bow'fore
Sea Beast's wake.
He looked with a taunting, tempting grin
Supporting sea beast
Who's mortal cut now scarred...
Puppet – Beast performed enticing signs
Calling judging fires forth from sky
Using power given from Sea-Beast
False-Ram rocked our brothers to sleep
Soon they forged a golden effigy
Bowing down before a gold Sea-Beast
He who took the deathblow stood alive
False-Ram mobilized his golden form
Woe aroused in shape of idol bold,
Ventriloquized by the puppet-beast
For all refusing bows to the Beast
Stood steps away from their brink...
They coerced all public
All society.
They strong-armed nations
Forcing citizens
(Ranging from the lesser trivial -
Toward all the weighty, men of note,
Spreading from the wealthy comfortable
En route to meager penniless,
Stretched between those chained to someone's floor
And those permitted rampant liberty)
All to wear a brand.
Tattooed on their hand or brow,
Their name is shadowed over.
For those without a brand
For those without a mark
For those who kept their name
Nothing could be bought
They couldn't sell stuff
A labyrinth of a questions fills our minds
One veiled in truer mystery
Only all together will it show
(Revealing only comes through unity.)
To know the number of the Grounded Beast
We must know that he thrice has fallen short
Dear sevens, you are whole
You've earned rapport
But Beast has fallen short of seven's par
Once he took a floundered blow
But healing now he has a horrid scar.
Twice more did he decline, run us aground
Miscarriage of his "truths"
He truly failed.
Thrice has he fallen short of we, God's 7-star rated
Thrice he has amounted to only a 6-star safety rating
See his horrid number, turned upon God's heavens
Hear his number slowly:
666.
Whatever that is, it's not a jackpot
Down at the slots.
Ash Wednesday
It was the palm's power to pick the one
Who would have the honor. Healers and kings
And prophets and priests enpalmed like the actors
Who ready for the road of red carpet
And the fanning of fans' fingers and extra --
EXTRA! -- Excerpts from the excess paper
Runs The Register or rather The Times
Printed for critique: petty to be used
As a cooling device. The carpet and the fans
We used to hail him, but even kings
Our loyalty lose, leave we the healers,
The prophets, the priests. And the palms either rot
Or burn and return to the black ashes
In which they once weathered the sowing
And the deluge of planting. The Dominican or the friar
Or the priest thumbs the powder and marks
My mind's meat -- Remember, my brother:
You are dust and to dust you do return.
Black Sabbath
Brief Intro
Sometimes coincidence happens. And sometimes providence strikes.
And sometimes the statistical anomaly of the universe's mathematical equation and the providence of God time out to make something truly, deeply odd. These two poems are the latter -- a wedding of statistical anomaly and providence -- and therefore they, as a unit, need a special sort of introduction.
One of my best friends in the world is the soon-to-be Dr. T.A. Giltner. Other than my wife and perhaps Mark Neuenschwander, no single person has talked me off the ledge more often when I've thought about quitting, hanging up my poetic spurs, and trying out... I don't know... gaffing or fletching or cobbling or cooping. Candlestick making. Whatever. Point is, I owe a lot of the doggedness of my literary career to this guy.
Sometimes we go months without talking to each other but when we finally touch base again, we always connect on multiple different things and find that our minds have, more or less, gone deeper and higher in a similar trajectory. Even if we have studied completely different things. One such occurrence happened after a six-month span without reestablishing contact with one another. It resulted in these two poems.
I had spent time meditating on death, the abyss, suffering in the world, the death of the species, the death of the star, the heat death of the universe, gravitational decay and dispersal, entropy, and other things of that cheery brand. The abyss. I was staring into the abyss while chewing glass, as Mr. Elon Musk once put it, though it wasn't a metaphor for starting a business. I was doing it literally. And literarily. In the process I came again across an old Fred Craddock sermon in which he said, "Evangelicals love the crucifixion and they love the resurrection, but really they're like a bunch of mobsters caught red-handed: they don't know where to put the body. The body of God." When you add that to Nietzche's statement that God is Dead and Holbien's painting of the Dead Christ which he painted after he literally fished a body out of the Rhine river and used it as the subject study for Jesus -- a painting about which Dostoevsky claimed in The Idiot, "It could make you lose your faith" -- you get into the deepest, darkest questions any atheist could throw at you.
I began meditating on all of the Dead Christ paintings I could get my hands on and then started reading up on the Catholic idea of Holy Saturday -- and how Christ dead in the grave mirrors God's choice to stop working on the Sabbath even though he has power to create again. It turns out the Jewish idea of resurrection isn't like our idea of life after death but something like life after "life after death," as N.T. Wright says. Their whole idea was that if God created gravity and superstrings and black holes once, he holds that same power to do it again.
I then realized how much of my life had involved a deep obsession with the macabre -- how many horror films I had seen as a young boy, how many dead bodies I had encountered before college, how much animal blood my hands had shed. Even though I went vegan for a small season just to push closed-minded folk around me to reconsider their choices, still the vegans themselves gave me no respite: plant life is still life and therefore we must kill to live or else die to give life. I went into a deep dark hole, talked to my buddy Jordan Wood about nihilism, wrote a nihilistic children's book, listened to a Ben Quash lecture, and came out the other side with the long form poem Dead Christ.
Then T.A. Giltner called. It had been six months, as I said.
Somewhere in that conversation, I mentioned the dark process I had gone through and how I ended with this poem and how I was proud of it for reasons other than everything else I had written in verse.
"Who have you been talking to?" T.A. asked.
"What do you mean?" I asked.
"Who told you about my work?"
"Um..." I said, "I haven't really kept in contact with anyone in your circle, man. What's up?"
"I've spent the last few months doing the same thing and I just finished a poem too. It's called Holy Saturday."
We read one another's poems. The arguments, and therefore the trajectory of the poems, work in parallel. It was both coincidence and providence, dovetailing in ways only he and I can really get in the company of one another. I didn't really feel right publishing my poem without his beside it, so I purchased the first serial right
s from him to publish it here. His poem is the twin of mine and the medieval folk believed that twins shared a special sort of power when they collaborated. The truth is, his is a far, far better poem than my own -- I only include mine because I think they illuminate one another. T.A. is much bolder with his language than I am with mine, as you'll see, but his harsh and even crass language has a very, very specific point that's incredibly important. Remember: Geoffrey Chaucer was a Christian who critiqued his culture with the exact same four-letter words that T.A. Giltner uses in Holy Saturday. If you don't believe me, go read the article by C.S. Lewis entitled Four Letter Words.
With that, I give you first my Dead Christ and then T.A.'s Holy Saturday. I always save the best for last and his is the best poem in this entire compilation. I'm honored to include his work because it raises the value of every fumbling attempt of mine that came before it.
Dead Christ
For Jordan Wood and Ben Quash
I. The Magazine
Holbien fishes bodies from the Rhine
stone or marble forms a slab
he clears green mold, seaweed, the guts
it takes to paint a Chrorpse,
and spreads them out to prompt his work.
Oh yes, he thinks, this one will do,
emaciated brawn like chicken legs,
Oh yes, he thinks, this one works nice
and from decay paints Christ.
II. The Meal
(Dig one out of that sink for me. No that one, the one that's getting sour. Yes, that'll do, I need brain food before I start this thing... thanks.)