cover by Tomm Scalera of Graphic Angels Design
[Below are the first drafts of the poems. More recent drafts of the full poem are collected here -
http://poetrycircle.com/files/muse.doc



Mon., Sept. 20

Take a ticket.
We started out three,
then swelled to nine;
you poets have no one to blame
but yourselves for this long line.
It's not like we can produce more
wisdom or beauty at will
just to meet an increasing demand.
Such things take time.
You understand.

The old-timers made liberal use
of the hemlock to ensure
access to one of us
three or four times a month.
By Zeus,
you're number 2,900,001!

If you don't swoon from the heat
or collapse from dehydration,
don't fear,
you'll finally get your audience—
the quickest, faintest whisper
in one ear
that only someone starved
for something never heard before
will hear.

Tues., Sept. 21

Once you make it to
the head of the line,
our customized service
guarantees that every
inspiration is a good
fit for your schedule
and life-style: hear it
on the spot or squirrel
it away for a once-in-
a-lifetime opportunity!

While most can't wait,
J. Langston Hughes
held tight to his chit
until late one evening
during his busboy shift
at the Wardman Park
Hotel when I dared him,
“Lay your 'Weary Blues'
down by the tea cup
of that grim Illinoisan
with the swell cowlick.”
This isn't apocryphal!
Halfway through his
pastry and the poem,
Vachel Lindsay had an
esophageal blockage.
After his wife swiped
out his gullet with her
index finger, the first
thing he blurted out
was, “Who wrote that!”

“Hank” Charles Bukowski
was a tough nut. When
we whispered in his ear,
he lept up and chased us
with a rusty fly-swatter!
Even his wannabe angel
he brushed back—until
we took a craftier tack,
urging Martin to mention
two bottles people had
given him, a teetotaler,
as gifts—that he'd be glad
to drive right over with.
"It's killing you," he said
of Bukowski's post office
job. “How much do you
need to live?” Rent, food,
Miller High Life, Pall Malls,
White Owls, child support—
$100 a month. “I'll gamble
that to publish your work.
I'm so sick of my own job
selling typewriter ribbons."

Muse's Advisory 1.2, Sept 22

You inspire us
who pander to posterity
successfully as Nathan Hale—

though green behind the ears,
displayed a present mind
beyond his years
when facing Extreme Unction
at the New York city gallows:
felt no inkling of compunction
about plagiarizing Cato
he'd just read at Yale,
“What a pity it is
That we can die but once to serve our country";

then Mr. Lincoln
several generations later
ripped a page
from old King George's playbook,
which magnanimously made decree
that every slave
held by his enemies in arms
should henceforth and forever be deemed free.
Wasn' it Christ who said,
"Strike not one cheek but two"?

You pulled out every stop
to borrow, beg or steal with all
the cheek that you could muster
ears of future countrymen,
your name applying to their lips
the luster of those duller souls
who had the bright idea
but didn't find a way to leverage it.

Thurs., Sept. 23

The lapse of judgment; the character ravine;
abysmal braggadocio; the moral turpentine
that melts away the flaking paint of piety;
these are the telltale signs of true renown.

Our exemplar: Admirable John Paul "Jones."

A Scot, young John Paul cut his sailor's teeth
on slavers King George and Two Friends
until he flogged one man to death,
then in Tobago ran a second through;
took "Paul Jones" as his alias, fled skittish
to plantations in Virginia where,
since the warrant for his arrest was British,
he threw in his cutthroat lot  
with desperadoes chin-deep in a plot
to throw off the Colonial yoke.
Captaining the Alfred to Acadia,
he pirated Liverpool's Mellish—
her cargo, woolen uniforms
for snowbound northern garrisons—
and penned a swashbuckling boast:

The news of the captured uniforms renewed
the courage of George Washington's army
and contributed significantly to his success
at the Battle of Trenton against the Hessians.

Put off by the his thirst for self-advancement,
the Colonial commanders tongue-lashed Jones,
who off to France sailed with his cocky pen:

After General Burgoyne and his army
were forced to surrender at Saratoga,
it was I who carried the news to France,
which determined the Court to recognize
America's independence by treaty of alliance.

Embraced by Louis XVI, Jones sailed from Brest
in a vessel having no external appearance of war
and resumed his pirate-terrorist career:

The morning of the 19th off the Mull of Galloway
I found myself so near a Scotch coasting schooner
laden with barley that I could not avoid sinking her.

Rowing ashore at Whitehaven to drink with his men,
they set a merchantman on fire before taking flight:

Had it been possible we landed a few hours sooner,
not a single ship of more than two hundred
could have escaped and the whole world would not
have been able to save the town from flames.

John Paul Jones had not yet begun to fight.

Bretagne's Bonhomme Richard beneath his boots
off Yorkshire's Flamborough Head,
its prey his native nation's Baltic merchant fleet
whose escort cannon-battered the French ship,
Jones's lieutenant sent a plea for rescue;
but when the English mate offered to take
the doomed French crew aboard before they sank,
Jones answered in defiance, tough,
No, I am determined that you should surrender first—
soon edited to I may sink but be damned if I strike—
still not the stirring rallying cry
posterity gave him credit for, but close enough.
When Jones's crew did finally board
the British man-o'-war, they commandeered it,
so that King Louis dubbed Jones Chevalier
with rapier and ribbon of l'Ordre du Mérite militaire.

Quickly consuming the goodwill of the French,
Jones next hired out to Russia's Empress Catherine,
changing his name this time to "Pavel Dzhones"
and sailing against the Black Sea Ottomans
until the Russians cast him out as well.

He was discovered lying face-down on a bed
in a Paris apartment, No. 42 Rue de Tournon;
buried in St. Louis Cemetery for Alien Protestants,

whence in 1906 an anonymous coffin was dug up,
shipped to the Annapolis Naval Academy, and replaced
by a costly bronze and marble sarcophagus
over which President Theodore Roosevelt,
as part of his campaign for Navy-building funds,
gilded Jones's reputation in a stultifying oration:

I thank our ancient ally, the great French nation,
that proud and gallant nation to whose help
we once owed it that John Paul Jones was able
to win for the Stars and Stripes the victory
that gives him deathless fame, and to whose courtesy
we now owe it that this hero's body is sent hither....

Thus, mes amis, is immortality earned.

Fri., Sept. 24

If you really had something
earth-shaking to say
would you put it in a poem?

Okay, no.

Einstein dipped into Baudelaire
but saw that Imagism didn't suit
e equals m c squared.
Kennedy thought the Cuban Missile Crisis
might fit nicely in haiku
but Jackie just said Jack,
and he knew.

Are you still there?
I haven't discouraged you?
Okay, move up in line.
You're now 2,868,232.

From up at the front,
Homer looks back blind.
The thing he's proud of most
isn't his Iliad or Odyssey
but his hair.

Sat., Sept. 25

I forget which one of the illustrious—
maybe Montaigne?—once said to me,
It's not my intent to compose history
so much as stick it with a carving fork
and see what I can get it to confess.
The good stuff's about three inches in.
The facts, reality, and truth—are skin.

    Jim Carter, Mike Douglas, Bill Faulkner,
    stop that squabbling over the flowers!
    The three of you are acting like babies
    and if you all don't cut it out right now
    I'm going to take the whole damn cake
    and throw it straight into the garbage!
    You will all get a slice with a rose on it!

As I was saying: Take the long tines,
jab them in as far as they'll go, yank
them out as smoothly and as quickly
as you can, put your lips to it and suck.
Don't worry about what comes out.

I'm back to the birthday party now.
This line would be shorter if we had
only inspiring to do, but we've other
functions—hand holding, ego puffing
alcoholism interventions, praying—
without which all the belles idées in
the world wouldn't be a hill of beans.

Tom, I salute you. Surely most of us post our poetry for the pleasure (and it isn't always pleasure) of the feedback. Of course there's more to it than that - there's the spurious, yet not entirely spurious sense of online camaraderie that places like this can engender. And I think I've genuinely made some friends in places like this. I just haven't had a drink with them yet, and that's the acid test. Not that we'd be drinking acid, but ... you know what I mean.

But this! This tireless posting of really very good stuff, in the absence of any feedback at all so far. This is art for art's sake. It's absolutely admirable.

If feedback is not frowned upon, I'd let you have some now, but I have to go out. (To have a drink with some real people. Cousins, tonight, mainly.)

But I'll be back, to respond, if I may.

Cheers

David

Oh, fine, go have fun with your "real" people, by all means. I'll just sit here in the dark of your computer screen, alone...
Of course feedback is welcome, thank you--but just don't let it get in the way your drinking life. We all know that can lead to.
Tom

I'm prone - don't say you haven't noticed - to making fanciful allusions, on (often) the slimmest of pretexts, to other works of art, based on the one I'm reading. Don't think I'm going to stop now.

Reading no. 1 here, I seem to recognise in the speaking voice of the Muses (so should this be Muses' Advisory? Pesky apostrophes ...) the tone and diction of Faust. Part 2, that is. The weirder one of the two. Is that at all, remotely, intentional?

Tom, I'm going to take these one at a time. I'm going to savour them. I hope you don't find the process too tiresome. (If you do, tell me.)

On, to no.2.

Cheers

David

David, thank you for directing me back to Faust! I have read it, and am aware of trying to echo or mock-echo that whole world of diction and cadence that Faust has, and Milton, both of them echoing Homer etc. And Faust II certainly is full of Muse-ic, as here in Kline translation of Faust's first speech in the poem:

You, Earth, stood firm tonight, as well: I sense
Your breath is quickening all the things about me,
Already, with that joy you give, beginning
To stir the strengthening resolution in me,
That strives, forever, towards highest Being. –
Now the world unfolds, in half-light’s gleam,
The wood’s alive, its thousand harmonies singing,
While through the valleys, misted ribbons stream:
And heavenly light now penetrates the deep:
Twigs, branches shoot, with fresher life it seems,
From fragrant gulfs, where they were sunk in sleep:
Colour on colour lifts now from the ground,
As leaf and flower with trembling dewdrops weep –
And a paradise reveals itself, all round.
Gaze upwards! – The vast mountain heights
Already with the solemn hour resound:
They are the first to enjoy the eternal light
That later, for us, will work its way below.

Sun., Sept. 26

I had one of my own nightmares
(a demented dentist, what else?)
and one of my sister's. Despair
swelling her voice, she cried out,
Bards love my little piccolo riffs
but completely reject my lyrics!

Funny, but true: we run the risk
in this line of work of becoming
more and more like our writers,
debilitated by desire to be loved.

In the dream I cooed: Euterpe,
you've seen how genres change.
Ever since Jethro Tull grew gray,
combining any wind instrument
with the human voice is passé.

You see that great brush heap,
bits of shrub and tree branches?
Look closely: a million snippets
planted in a million poets' ears
who couldn't summon stanzas
and so just tossed them there.

Go ahead, pick any five arbitrarily,
arrange them artfully and I'll bet
you and the poem will be extolled.
The path leading away from the
muse's plinth is strewn with gold.

I was thinking more of the sort of weird German vaudeville effect of F, Tom. The section you've quoted is, I agree, very Miltonic, and it's not quite the tone I was thinking of - that sort of strangely prefigured Weimar decadent vibe.

Well, then, yes, a slightly decadent vaudeville spirit, I plead guilty to. Been reading Palahniuk, whose spirit may have crept in there around the edges too -- and been thinking of picking up Vonnegut again.
Ah, muses.
Tom

Mon., Sept. 27

Zsa Zsa Gabor huffed
from the courtroom
spurting tears
when the prosecutor
scolded her for
craving attention.
She had smacked
the Beverly Hills cop
who stopped her
for expired tags
on her Rolls Royce
expired driver's license
and an open bottle
of Kecskemeti vodka.

She called the bystander
who testified against her
"a little punk
with a hairdo
like a girl”
and said of the
three-day sentence
she received for
assault and battery
on a police officer
“If anyone didn't
know who I was
they now at least know
that I'm white and rich.”

That last bit
I made up
for the sake of discussion.
Sue me.
If it goes down better
than what's on TV
you're a hero.
If not
just feed it to the pigs.
You'll find the courage
not in a swig
from Zsa Zsa's bottle
but on my breath
as quiet as crib
death concussion.

Mort Rainey? Nope, you've lost me there.

[P.S. Oct. 7, replacing the poem you refer to,

In the distant Pacific, Tropical Storm Malakas,
600 miles south of Iwo To, Japan,
is traveling west-northwestward.

Closer to home, Mort Rainey/Johnny Depp is
on the verge of doing Snoopy dances
or just taking a nap.]

oops. sorry.
shame on me,
one reader, and this is how i treat him.

Tues., Sept. 28

You want to buy some gum?
An empty-calorie hard-boiled private-eye
paperback to help pass the time?

A few extra dollars helps to make ends meet
and compensates us for our pro bono work.
We've got mouths to feed in addition to yours,
our children can't eat art
and, since we don't go anywhere,
can't follow in our footsteps--
so, there's tuition.
And we're about the only group
Obama's healthcare bill ignores.

Listen, I have to go up front and start my shift,
pricking the ears of those who've been so patient.
Good luck to you. Most writers say it's worth the wait,
although a few complain it's all hot air.
You can't predict. It may be short, but it's still shrift.

One of my sisters will grace you soon
with information about protocol—
how to address us when your number's called—
You don't touch us, we touch you—
that sort of thing.
Then: How to Make the Most Out of Your Wisp
of Inspiration.

I'd like to go back to school too
one of these days, but when?
Paid for, with what?
Our tenth of your royalty income, pre-tax,
not only shrinks each year, but buys less and less.
Some call her pleonectic and scorn her,
though if it wasn't for Mary Oliver
we'd be standing on soup lines ourselves.

But I try to believe in the future. You do:
a new Golden Age just around the corner, no?
It might even resuscitate rhyme!
Learn your lesson from Maya Angelou:
Tuesday's heir was Monday's mourner.

So, brother, could you spare a dime?

Brilliant.

Whew! Thought we had lost you there, David, with the Johnny Depp thing.
Seriously, thanks for looking. Tom

No, not lost me, but rather than go from the top and try to catch you up, and I'm going to start here and work backwards. Not that it's work, exactly.

Wed., Sept. 29

May I have your attention please.
Before I explain how things work
here on Mount Helicon, one stern
word about slipshod vocabularies.

According to the oracle Google,
1,650,010 usages of everloving
vie with 1,600,663 of everlovin,' 
without the g;  when you discuss
a woman, you're 65% more likely
to write about epochs of her life
than in it, than when you discuss
a man; after masculine pronouns
came under attack for unknown
genders, he/she, s/he, one, and
he or she  lost to a singular they.

A wild lexeme has to be tracked:
observe it; bait it; sniff its spoor;
discern how it hopes to improve.
If you don't know or care where
your word's sweet spot is, you've
no business putting hands on it.
Don't waste our time and yours.
We're busy women; mercy is not
what we dispense.

Absolutely right.

If there's an opening, I'll put your name forward! Thanks, Tom

Thurs, Sept. 30

I paraphrase
Diarium Actae Fidelis,
your almanac of little tests of faith:

I.   In labrum lava anus antes saeta.
     In the bathtub wash your butt before your hair.
II.  Promove infantum in via tanquam desinant aurigae.
     Push your stroller into the crosswalk as if drivers will stop.

If you believe, you act on the belief;
if not, nothing will cause you to stir.
Here you are
believing you're a true believer,
but waiting in line to be inspired
must strike you as a bit ridiculous.

I'm not supposed to tell you this,
but there is such a thing as self-inspired,
taking the bull by the horns
and shaking its head
until augury or gore rolls out.
Yes, yes, you might get gored yourself,
but even that, yea, even that
is preferable to sitting on your duff.

T. S. Eliot worked as a bank clerk
and Wallace Stevens in insurance
boring year after boring year,
but you could press the juice
from the work they produced
into Emily Dickinson's thimble.
I'm sorry, my dear voluptuary,
but really I'd prefer a symbol.

They waited here, you know:
they passed where you pass now
while in each district of the earth
ravines and chasms swallowed
bolder men who bolder wrote.

Fri., Oct. 1

On this day in history Mao Zedong unveiled his new People's Republic
and Henry Ford his Model T and it was a darn good thing
the Pacific Ocean interposed or World War III
would have gone nuclear

instead of one brigade in blue suits after a long march killing
400 Tiananmen students and one in its plain black coat
after a long drive pummeling a dozen unionists

on the River Rouge Overpass
before a desire for luxury
and options buried them both.

Sat., Oct. 2

Woodrow Wilson has a                                   stroke.
Bob Gibson strikes out 17 to begin the '68     series.
Earl Warren swears in the first black              justice.

The returns to England with Charles      Darwin.

So much happens each day around the Solar System,
a Chinese Zodiac radiating from the       Sun.
 
Stand in a wedge where all that date's occurences occur at    once:

jade-smooth bamboo bones, sugar canes and teenage Japanese     maples
dark shape-shifters masquerade as this or that to get better looks at      us
anchored in the river or diving off and swimming for the oozing           shore

unspooled ourselves, to unravel silk threads,                    snares
pretending to be entities in human history with faces,      emotions
and                                                                   futures.
                                                                                                        
What you don't know is that you're               free

Sun., Oct. 3

There's a poem in everything, I keep hearing. So where are they all, then?
I've nothing against white sheep, but the black ewe with the auburn ringlets
is the one I'll run back for if the mountain trembles or the Medes come.
The sooner you learn that a spark's nothing more than a spark, the better.

Is that lady behind you
driving you as crazy as
she's driving me?

And that serious young man
furiously pacing up and down
gesticulating and rehearsing,
what is he going to ask of us
if he can raise his eyes
from all that drama?

At least you're quiet.
With so many poets afoot,
that shows you've got
consideration.

It destroys me,
how much majesty is wasted,
people speaking
when they're being spoken to.

I realize I sound cynical. Please excuse me. Look at how much more
the deities with better attitudes have managed to accomplish.
How metalwork has progressed! Grain cultivation! Medicine! War!
Did you read, just today, about motion-capture 3-D imaging or
about Georges Charpak's multi-wire proportional tracking chamber?
But every poll shows large majorities who think that poetry is
in a steep, long, irreversible decline. Eminem's no Gershwin.

I shouldn't take it out on you, though.
Folks don't take the time to see that, in his day, Gershwin was no Gershwin:
they sniped, He reached the limelight clutching Fred and Adele Astaire's coattails.
Even Homer, when he blindly groveled at the campfires of the Greeks,
was poked at with the glowing-hot tips of the warriors' shish-kebob sticks.

Oracles are dropped and lost like nut-less husks
and I'm the only one who knows how many they are,
where they lie moldy and the greatness in them.

Mon., Oct. 4

• Abe Lincoln views a balloon ascension
• Sputnik in space, 184 pounds (your weight)
• Bessie Smith buried in an grave
  with no headstone
  till young Janis Joplin had one made.
• Janis Joplin dies from a heroin overdose.

• A white pine sprouts.
• A white pine dies.
• A white pine sprouts.
• A white pine dies....

• A gray pine sprouts.
• A gray pine dies.
• A gray pine sprouts.
• A gray pine dies....

Queen's coat eats &
Eurotium repens eats.

Now they're back
where they began.

Throw a wrench in the works,
thumb or index or middle finger,
bring the Wheel of Life to a halt
and trudge to the forest's edge
      to give piss to a red fir
and the rest of us a chance
      to catch our breath
      and look around a bit!

The very next bard
to complain

the wait's too long
or their ens insane

gets
nothing but tongue
in their ear.

            • I'm outa here

Tues., Oct. 5

My dear man, how does it feel
to be in line for our 2,780,826th
next sliver of inspiration?
What if it turns out to be a lemon?

What? Have I read Zen and the Art
of Motorcycle Maintenance?

Dude, he was one of mine!
I still remember that guy!
He was a trip!
He waited just like you
and then when he finally got to me
he said, “No thanks, don't want inspiration,
just want to stand in line
where I can have pure boredom,
want to sometimes write
and sometimes not write,
once in a while, have a good day,
once in a while, have a horrible day,
always have some kind of day
and not fuss too much about it.”
         Our father, Zeus, went right after him.
         Zen & the Art of Now Let's See What You Say
         When Your Dear Son's Been Stabbed to Death
         Right Outside Your Groovy Zen Center.
“Do you know Chris didn't like the book? He told me,
'Dad, I had a good time on that trip, it was all false.'”

Results matter.
Sure, do have fun waiting on line here
with all these other muttering nut-jobs
but would you rather walk away
with “Asphodel, That Greeny Flower” in your notebook
or “The Things that Make a Soldier Great”?

Put your ear close.
Both those writers got the same hint—
No. 41, one of the best.
We give them out in order,
so it all comes down to logarithm:
if every poet in front of you sticks it out
and no one cuts in line—
which happens,
Yeats once came barging in
and no one had the balls to stop him—
then, if we don't discard or add
new inspirations on a trial basis,
you'll get...let's see,
2,780,826 divided by 954...remainder is...
you'll get our No. 94,
which is a fine one, tried and true,
the same one Coleridge got
for “The Garden of Boccaccio.”

Enough idle shop talk, though.
You look like a man
who might reap something big
from a new service we're offering,
inspired by Disneyland's Fastpass.
We call it Trashpass:
it lets you riffle through discarded
inspirations while you're waiting.
I think of them as “near-successes”—
Coleridge's “Kubla Khan,” for one.
He couldn't carry it through to completion
but that doesn't mean the inspiration
lacked. It could just be
his opium ran out.

What does it cost?
You do a little job for us.

Wed., Oct. 6

This is a bit like Doctor Faustus, isn't it,
you rummaging the dustbins hereabout
for scraps of inspiration gods threw out—

but cheaper. We don't ask your soul,
only an ounce or so of ink,
a hour of your time now and again,
a snippet of information,

and get to paw the ash
of fires inexplicably gone cold.
Sign here; nobody ever has to know
you got the inside track; ah, good.

Now, go. Go start your work.
Would you like a peak behind Ralph Ellison's
"Three Days Before The Shooting..." first,
or John Keats's “The Fall of Hyperion”?

Feast,
and when your eyes are glutted, announce.

Then I'll return to slice my pound—
no, thin carpaccio—of literary flesh.

Thurs., Oct. 7

You're no one's fool,
there's no wool on your eyes.
It didn't come as a surprise
to you when Erato said,
“Being a muse is more like Pandarus
than frolicking in bed.”
We have our yearnings too.

But cornering the market
isn't one of them. I admit
we wouldn't lose one wink
of sleep if Mary Oliver
were taken down a notch
in that regard,
but all we have in mind
is one or two great works,
no more than anybody else.

“Muses Inspire Selves!”
might be the banner headline
in the New York Times.

No harm in that.
Oxford's anthology of human literature
is already pretty fat.

And you—not only will your own work
join the rolls of the renowned,
but you can gloat in pubs
that if was you who acted as the muse
when the Immortals wrote.

Fri., Oct. 8

Writing by committee
is supposed to be
a bad idea
but

a committee we are
and we agree
our first attempt
will fittingly

treat
love-making
between a woman
and a god.

Our questions's this:

The god approaches
with an ave;
the human
drops her book;

does he then
seize her arm
like Zeus did
in Apollodorus,

or start off
with a compliment
like Gabriel
in Luke?

How does he
get her
to do it?
Walk us through it.

Sat., Oct. 9

So hard—
one hand restraining
her
so she can't flee

while lips
spread butter
on her all too mortal
ears?

“Hail, thou art
prettier even
than thy cousin
Elizabeth.

Be not afraid,
nothing
is impossible,
don't run away.”

Then the clasp
on her forearm
loosens and
becomes a caress,

and hand hooding
the microphone,
“What an
incredible dress.”

Like this one, Tom. Starts off with a great Ovidy Metamorphoses feel, then switches thrillingly into some sort of Vegas Gothic vibe at the end. Good stuff.

I have kind of lost the thread, though. Is there an overarching narrative here? Or just lots of little pieces of mosaic?

Cheers

David

Thanks, David, for reading. The sequence is ongoing, not done yet. Read in order, there is a writer standing in a long line for his turn to get an inspiration from the muses. the muses take turns at the head of the line dispensing inspirations, and when they're not on duty up there, one or another of them will sometimes chat with or give general advice to this writer. one makes him a deal: if he will help them with a poem they want to write themselves (sick of just being muses), they will give him access to inspirations that poets of the past failed to carry through to successful completion...they want to write about this god/woman seduction, and he's trying to give them info on how that might work from the human point of view...and stay tuned. Tom

Ah, yes, I think I had got that at one time - then I lost it again. Serves me right for dipping in and out ill-advisedly.

The scale of your ambitions is extremely impressive. I'll try to stay on your trail.

Cheers

David

Not ideal for this formal, but what can you do?
Am trying to make each advisory stand on its own feet too, so it can be read separately.
Thanks, again. tom

D'oh! This is a sequel to the previous day. Mea culpa.

Our questions's this ... ?

Actually, yesterday's is in the same ballpark as my recent Mary poem, n'est-ce pas?

Tell me if I'm annoying you by dogging your footsteps like this.

Cheers

David

Yes, the idea of Mary reading from the Duccio and your poem, which has really stuck in my head. Annoying? Hell, I feel like I should make you brunch, David! Tom

saturday October 9, 2010

http://writersalmanac.publicradio.org/

It was on this day in 1635 that Roger Williams (books by this author) was banished from the Massachusetts Bay Colony for spreading "newe and dangerous opnions." He left and founded what is now the city of Providence, Rhode Island.

These days Williams is considered a hero for the very reasons that got him banished. He was an extreme believer in the separation of church and state, in the rights of individuals, and he befriended and admired the Narragansett people, the local Native Americans, and spoke out against their persecution. Now he is admired as a radical, for his progressive religious and cultural tolerance.

But Williams' position was more complicated than that. The reason he believed in the separation of church and state was because of his extremely conservative thinking about Christian scripture, his belief that Christianity was always the ultimate authority and shouldn't be tangled up in the flawed decisions of human laws. He was adamant about religious tolerance, and other outcasts fled to Providence, including Quakers and even some of America's first Jews. He published A Key into the Language of America (1643) in which he wrote out dialogues, essays, and poems in both English and Narragansett, and in which he made the Natives generally sound a lot smarter and more moral than their colonizers.

It is this work that gave us English words like

squash (from the Narragansett askutasquash),

succotash (from msíckquatash),

papoose (from papoos), and

pow-wow (from powwaw).

He was a big advocate for the Narrangansett, the Quakers, and other religious dissidents who the Puritans thought should be persecuted for their beliefs. But he didn't question that they were all left out from the Kingdom of Heaven to which he himself was bound.

Had to log back in and tell you Oct. 8th is a smashing piece of writing, Tom.

Good stuff, this.  Maggie

Maggie, thank you for looking in, and I appreciate the feedback. Tom

Sun., Oct. 10

Look here—
the original line we put
in Dylan Thomas's ear
as he began his “Elegy”:

   Too proud to die; broken and blind he died
   The darkest way, and did not turn away,
   A cold kind man brave in his narrow pride

   On that darkest day, Oh, forever may
   He lie lightly, at last, on the last, crossed
   Hill, under the grass, in love, and there grow

   Young among the long flocks, and never lie lost...

We simply whispered, Dad is soft now.
Not a bad inspire. Unfinished, but one of the Welshman's best.

Dad is soft now. See what you can do with it.
It still has puissance, I think.
Thomas would definitely have finished this piece
had it not been for the excessive drink.

Your dad's dead too, isn't he? He's softening.

Don't just stand there. To ink!

Mon., Oct. 11

I'm on duty now up front.
Urania's coming; tell her
all about the motions
of flesh and blood bodies—
the friction, smells—
the hot and cold of it—
each sigh and grunt.

Where will we go with it?
We're thinking:
one particular prick of pleasure
opens the door
to a mid-coitus panic:
a memory that turns Zeus sick.

And she's just stunned:
an interruptus with a god who took
her where she'd never been before—

After that, we're not sure.

Maybe she's furious
and slaps him on the face;
or a maternal instinct
bubbles up
and she responds to him
with grace.

You know. “Words lead the poet,”
not “The poet leads the words.”
One of the greats told me once
about the reversal of her whole conceit
because, at the last moment,
of one felicitous consonance.

I'll tell you this.
Ever since we started our own tale
I'm much more cognizant of
everything that passes my lips.
I used to think, One glove fits all.
Now I glance at their fingers.

Tom i liked your Monday Oct 11 a lot !
silent lotus

Artie Kaplan Bensonhurst Blues

thanks, Silent. love that yiddische scatting in the middle! Tom

Tues., Oct. 12 (Urania)

Some call it heavenly
and some just heavy,
but my body lets you
know I'm permanent,
not subject to a wind
or whim. Substantial.

Did you say sensual?
Don't be impertinent.
That I have to listen
to you is bad enough
without your braying
like some randy ass.

I soar above all that.
I inspire the planets,
stars, and moons all
through the celestial
distances, and make
no time for dalliance.

Depravity isn't what
this body wants. Is it
so hard to appreciate?
My strength is gravity.
Reliability. Regulation.
My joy is competence.

Human women in rut
would stitch their legs
shut to know the pull
of imperium. I am not
so gauche as to envy
them their pleasures.

   On this date, silent cowboy Tom Mix
   crashed his yellow Cord Phaeton
   and broke his neck
   denting the aluminum Suitcase of Death;
   pilgrims to that dry gulch today
   find a small iron statue
   of the riderless Tony, Mix's Hollywood horse.
   And Christopher Columbus dismounted
   his Santa María and stepped ashore
   the since lost isle of Guanahani.

Wed., Oct. 13 (Urania)

2.7 million poets ahead of you,
God knows how many behind,

each busting with lines, drafts,
strophes, and minor revisions.

My job's keeping all those balls
up in the air without collisions.

Of course Rimbaud and Verlaine
had their notorious contretemps

with pen-knives
and pearl pistols

but those were not over poetics.

     So, out with it. I'm taking notes.

     Lewd Zeus is up to his old tricks;

     but in the virgin's case is the sex
     less about lust than a way to tap
     some quality that is inaccessible?

     Zeus butters her up, caresses
     her, tries to move her to do it...

     What's running through her mind?

     Take your time, you've got tons
     thanks to this interminable line.

     Just walk me through it.

Thur., Oct. 14 (Urania)

His human form
has a penis
that's erect
under his tunic.

Her nipples
erect too
and a stirring
centers in
her pussy.

Both smile, shy.
He gingerly
unlaces the front
of her kirtle.

Her lips are wet.

She says,
“Tell me
your name.
Don't lie.”

He says,
“You know
exactly
who I am.
Follow
your gut.”

You appear erect too,
just from telling the tale.
Do you need a place
to go and masturbate?
Don't be embarrassed.
Believe me, you're not
the first to be in this
predicament. You see
those porta-potties?
Third from the right
has an old Penthouse
taped under the top seat—
then hustle back and
finish your account.
I never said I was
inpervious, insensitive.

inpervious excellent  !

Thanks for the peek, Silent. You like the alternative spelling or are calling my attention to the typo? Tom

Okay, Silent, when the Spelling Popo come, I'm going to put it on you. Thanks, Tom

You saw it in the paper yesterday,
the man who claims he is a saint.

“I was a sandwich man for years in a canteen in an office building on Madison and 50th Street. I had a miraculous vision, the face of Jesus on the ceiling framed by colorful rays of light. I knew it was Jesus because it was just like in all the paintings. He pulled me up from my bed by my eyes, almost pulled them right out of their sockets.”

Don't laugh. A spirit is whom
we experience when others don't—
not much difference
if you take the time to think about it.

The warrior Victorio dies this day
in the Tres Castillos Mountains
south of El Paso, Texas,

Mata Hari,
before a firing squad
at Vincennes, east of Paris,

Nazi puppet Pierre Laval,
le Centre Pénitentiaire de Fresnes,
western Val-de-Marne.

The Cretan feels the tug—

virginal—vaginal
walls,
certainly spirits,

and thinks about
the distant morning
on Mount Ida

his mother delivers
a stone in swaddling clothes
for Cronus to swallow

and spirits Zeus away
to be raised by a goat
while a company of Kouretes
dance, shout, and clash
spears against shields

so his father never hears
the young boy's shouts—

it all comes back to him
at that fine moment in
the virgin's cunt
and he and his phallus collapse
in a heap,
and she,

she receives inspiration not to weep herself
but to lay his thick black curls
on her thin black curls
and stroke his cheek
until he falls asleep,

the only god or mortal
to ever see him weak.

Sat, Oct. 16 (Urania)

A sea gull said there's Borges
somewhere over by that tree;
its inspiration can't be far away.

I'm off now to bring night down

and a thousand other items
on a lengthy to-do list
that would leave one of your
supercomputers sparking.

Shit! You hear that lobster pot
of Language poets?
Not much wittier than barking.

   My gut says the virgin doesn't make
   it through the week: it'll look like an
   accident, a capsized dingy on the Black River
   beneath which a shovelnose sturgeon
   christens the seed of a mussel
   Obovaria olivaria didn'tmarryher

   or they find her Plath-like
   on the floor of the charcoal hutch
   as desiccated and as kippered
   as a mummy of the Nile.

   He's afraid to take the chance
   she's pregnant, carrying a male,
   he knows the old wive's tale
   that Cowper's fluid babies mince.

Sun., Oct. 17 (Calliope)

On this 5th anniversary of my 27th run
at permanent sobriety,
what keeps me alive is grit.
I'm known for wisdom and assertiveness,
which goes to show
reputation is a crock of shit.
Your sins are deadly just to you.
What I advise, do the opposite.

The soul you bartered to my sister,
bathwater under the bridge.
You can't get spilled milk back inside a breast
so steel yourself for two more weeks
of leakage from your chest.
You titillate with soft pornography
and imagine beads of sweat
on the raised brow of celebrity.
The glue that binds is selfishness.

Go home, wash your underwear,
wash your mouth out with soap
and the Book of Common Prayer.
I knew you when you scraped
the bottom of the bed, sniffing
the empties of screw-top booze
and I can tell you from experience
once the bloom is off that rose
you have very little else to lose.

The bonafide beggars are massed
just beyond that row of cypresses.
Real gods, real poets stir the pots
and dress the wounds. We muses,
you tappers on laptops? Wannabes.
The claim that chicken soup warms
better in the soul than in the gut?
Walk a vat of mush back there, see
who holds out their Paradise Lost.

I'm sorry. I'm burnt out, I guess.

This is no avocation for the sober
any more than Canada geese
should be flying north in October.

Mon., Oct. 18 (Calliope)

To keep sharp, we challenge
each other with think-quicks.

  You're a muse in St. Louis.
  Who do you pick to write
  the Iliad and the Odyssey—
  Mark Twain or T. S. Eliot?

Terpsichore likes tongue-twisters.

 Babies blow balloons,
  big boys blow bugles,
  beggars blow bum bags,
  baboons blow bog bugs.

But this passé Olympic sex theme
only makes us seem like dimwits.

No one believes anymore in gods
like Zeus, who prey on innocents.
Modern deities are straight-laced
single men, don't smoke or drink,
high-minded and grave to a fault,
not believable as statutory rapists.

That said—go on! His head is on
her lap; he cries himself to sleep.
The virgin thinks, What did I do
to turn this magnificent creature
into a blubbering boy? What will
happen when he wakes up? And
when my father opens the door?
She hums a local lullaby to him,
     O little town of Bethlehem
     How still we see thee lie
     Above thy deep and dreamless sleep
     The silent stars go by....
The smell from the charcoal ovens
of the collier up the hill is so strong,
she notices as if for the first time
as she tries to breathe in the odors
wafting up from her seducer's waist.
Then he just vanished into thin air,
leaving warm moisture on her hips.
She understood as if for the first time
he isn't of the ordinary run of men.

I'm getting carried away, aren't I?
Please, pick up where you left off:
He falls asleep on her fragrant lap...

~

When God Was a Woman

by Merlin Stone

Hardcover, 265pp
ISBN-13: 9780880295338
ISBN: 0880295333

Paperback
ISBN-13: 9780156961585

~

"A man's mind is elevated to the status of the woman with whom he associates." -Dumas

When God was a woman,
he enjoyed being a woman.
But first and foremost,
he was a realist.

Review
Get more information on this and other titles from Joseph R. Gibson and KITABU Publishing at kitabupublishing.com! --Zakia Gibson
Product Description
A few years ago I read a book by Merlin Stone called When God Was a Woman, in which she wrote that “in the beginning, people prayed to the Creatress of Life, the Mistress of Heaven. At the very dawn of religion, God was a woman…the female deity in the Near and Middle East was revered as Goddess—much as people today think of God…the original status of the Goddess was as supreme deity…the Great Goddess was regarded as immortal, changeless, omnipotent; and the concept of fatherhood had not yet been introduced into religious thought.”
As a critical thinker, I know that sometimes a lie is told when the truth is declared halfway or haphazardly. Stone, who happens to be a White female artist and college professor, never mentioned the racial make-up of the female divinities of the world’s earliest civilizations she wrote about. I don’t know understand how Stone could write a book about When God Was a Woman and then later write a book on Three Thousand Years of Racism, which focuses on uncovering evidence of racism imposed by Indo-Europeans after they conquered most of the same regions discussed in When God Was a Woman, and fail to connect the probability that the Goddesses she first wrote about were originally depicted as Black women. How can she admit that “historical, mythological and archaeological evidence suggests that it was these northern people who brought with them the concepts of light as good and dark as evil (very possibly the symbolism of their racial attitudes toward the darker people of the southern areas) and of a supreme male deity;” but not admit that the Goddess of theses Black people was also Black before they and She were conquered by White people (i.e., Indo-Europeans).
Whether this failing was accidental or intentional is irrelevant, yet one could assume that the Goddesses would originally resemble the people who worship them. According to Albert Churchward, “the earliest members of the human race appeared in the interior of the African continent about two million years ago, then from the region of the Great Lakes they spread over the entire continent. Groups of these early men wandered down the Nile Valley, settled in Egypt, and then later dispersed themselves to all parts of the world…As these early Africans wandered over the world, they differentiated into the various human subspecies that now inhabit our planet. The men who remained in the tropical and equatorial regions retained their dark complexions, whereas those that settled in the temperate zones lost a portion of their dusky pigmentation and developed a fairer skin.” Provided that the original racial profile of the Nile, Indus, and Tigris-Euphrates River Valley as well as the Aegean civilizations has been clandestinely confirmed as Black/African, then the female divinities worshipped in these civilizations should also logically be Black/African. Accordingly, in the beginning, to revise Stone, God was a Black woman.

No, I can't say why Zeus crumpled
in the middle of the virgin. Who in Boeotia
ever asked gods to make sense?

Tims wrote Olympians: Pastiche Psychology
about that sphinxish perquisite of gods,
freedom from rationality.

Maybe you think you could but you can't shed
too much light, either, on the girl's disposition.

Polyhymnia says our poem bridges
Ancient and Christian theology,

but how much firm ground is there
on either side of that river?

Zeus did get sons on human virgins,
and during the Hellenic occupation,
maybe Israel's god got some ideas.

But what good does it do,
as her Gibbs sang, if I ain't got you?

Another god-man settled for a deal
to make his mama an immortal too—

and that, poet, was the end of that.

Our own sexuality?
While we danced at the wedding
of Harmonia and Cadmus,
up on the dais he promised
to give her tribe an alphabet
and to desire her long
after he turned into an adder;

sensation wriggled on his brain
like snakes on Medusa's scalp;
but your ilk think we're fixated
on theories of fine government.

Guess the root
of Plato and Aristotle's
eggheadedness
and lack of vice.

That's right: head lice.

     What's Greek to us
     is how your race's lens
     of guilt, morality, and reticence
     refract licit viciousness and lust
     into dissatisfaction that pens
     its literature of self-disgust.

The virgin sits there alone
wishing her father was home.
She'll tell him everything.
He'll understand.
He'd said, Love offers
a 50/50 chance
for a half-decent man.

Her mom will rail and weep,
flush her with vinegar,
hustle her to the ritual bath
and slaughter two white doves
to forfend conception.

But maybe she wants
this baby.

Maybe he's her ticket
to a more startling life
than just becoming
another charcoal-maker's wife.

She kneels and asks the Lord
who carried Moses to Pharaoh,
Should I follow the summons
of  illogic,
or toe the straight and narrow?

He said, Miriam, a child articled
to terrible doom in seeded
in your heart; he'll break it,
and mine, if you bear him.
No one will blame you if a midwife
cleans him from your womb—
not a single soul will ever know.

Lord,  Miriam said, let not
my will but thine be done.
A sob caught in her throat.
If my lover wants to give
me his son, then let him visit
me again. I'm too young
to make this choice alone.

Joachim comes in,
sees the light
in the room has changed.
He'd dreamt, and knows.
He sees his daughter's tears,
presses her cheek to his breast
and whispers, Don't you weep.
He's not the one.

Fri., Oct. 22      calliope

2,645,762: that's you.
2,645,761:
the poet 7th from the front
just got cold feet
and showed Urania
his shoes.

The male Plath wannabe
she has her lips to now?
He'll be a one-hit
wonder, get a chapbook
published in July
that sinks like lead
but leaves a ripple
in the pond:

in sixty years or so
his grand-niece
rediscovers it,
and next thing everybody knows,
she has a sweet gig
teaching MFA's
at the University
of Southern Dakota,

one of whom
goes on to be
the more successful
suicidal author
of three desperate poems
in the August 2080
New Yorker.

You have to take
what you can get.
The reading public
only wants so much.
A Shakespeare
more than once
in a millennium,
and there's a glut.

Sat., Oct. 23         polyhymnia

My hair is fixed atop my head in scrolls, Madam,
in service of no beauty but concinnity. Memory,
Mnemosyne my mother says, resigns chronology;
and though you humans move from step to step,
immortals, like my coif, live in the simultaneous.
The virgin in our tale, my eight older sisters and I,
our mother, and other women, even you—if Lethe
and its amnesia are abstained—we're all attached.

The midwife proclaims the hymen partially intact,
and an elixir of bane herbs gives Miriam a bellyache
deep into the night—and that's that. She cries.
Both parents leave her be: Joachim respectful,
Hannah, punitively. The man-god hides his face...

Our Faust here has run out of juice?
What's prurient he gives us in detail,
then afterwards clams up like Zeus?

Just kidding! You did great.
I'm just afraid what's next
is going to be anticlimactic.

I actually brought you a gift—
something McPhee played with in 1998
that never saw the light of day.

The Graves chief vouches there's no trace of name, rank, unit, date of death for the four corpses dug up in the Aisne-Marne, Somme, Saint-Mihiel, and Meuse-Argonne boneyards. They're then draped with flags and trucked to Châlons-en-Champagne's city hall, where a Sgt. Younger circles the caskets thrice before placing white roses on one, then springs to attention and salutes the Army's new official Unknown Soldier winner, who receives one night in Paris and then by train to Le Havre and aboard the  Olympia for a cruise across the sea and reburial with high ceremony in Arlington National Cemetery. The three losing contestants are awarded a consolation prize of eternity buried in Romagne-sous-Montfaucon, and a bugler plays “Better Luck Next Time.”

Remember Rumsfeld, Zizek and all those NASA guys
with their known unknowns  and unknown knowns?
You think there's something there?
McPhee got the greatest little nudge from Clio,
the same one Chan Master Yunmen
farmed into perhaps his greatest koan:

     When the tree withers and leaves fall?
     My full body exposed to golden wind.


Zeus what?  He comes around again
a couple weeks later, and she whats?

Sun., Oct. 24                 polyhymnia

Hannah also wept.
Joachim's permissiveness
had led to this. Compassion—
all the rage with the Samaritans—
was neither godly, nor made sense.
It simply beheld bad luck
and made a bigger mess.

She confided in her sister Sobe,
“I promised an angel years ago
if he gave me a daughter
I would give her to God.
This is how she's repaid me!”

Sobe said, “My Beth's the same.
They both have one-track minds—
'My son! My son!'
I said, 'Elizabeth, you're young,'
and she said, 'No, my time has come.'
They're man and love and baby-crazed,
that's what I say.”                  
                        
“She doesn't see
that what she did was wrong.
I can't stand guard.
I have my shop.
But if she keeps it up,
I'll be ashamed to show my face.”

Joachim came in and cooed.
“Sobe! How nice you've come.
How is my favorite niece?”

“Keeps babbling about a man.
No, not a man, a demigod,
to hear her tell it.
Please talk to her, brother,
before it all gets out of hand.
She listens to you.”

“Oh dear.
Just what we hope for our children,
and then fear.
We've had the same
kind of visitation here.
Who are these phantoms
in the woodpile, men
we never see,
who leave our daughters
all with swollen eyes, or worse?
They're all the talk
down at the charcoal market.
The damn Romans claim it's Zeus,
but their girls have always been loose.”

“Joachim!  You think it's all a joke.
It could even be centurions!
What we need is a patrol of men
with good thick sticks
keeping an eye on things
when the rest of us are out at work.”

“Who thrills our daughters' hearts,
my love,
is not repulsed by staves.
I was a young man once
and you'll recall
did quite a bit of skulking too
both before and after
a cruel beating by your uncle.”

Mon., Oct. 25         polyhymnia

I'm writing as fast as I can!
Who knew you had such
a loquacious Inner Miriam?

Μεγαλύνει ἡ ψυχή μου τὸν Κύριον...
My soul magnifies the Lord,
Though my womb reject Him.
He has regarded the lowliness of His handmaiden.
Regarded her shortcomings;
And yet, behold, still holds her close,
Though from this day, generations may curse me;
For the Mighty One has done great things to me,
And His mercy is on those who fear Him
From generation to generation.
He has shown strength with His arm;
He has scattered the proud in the imagination
Of their hearts;
He has cast down the mighty from their thrones,
And has filled the hungry with good things.
He has helped His servant Miriam,
As He also hearkened to our fathers,
to Abraham and to His seed forever.

Okay. Stop. Hold that thought.
I can't just keep on scribbling
any longer without asking you
a question or two.

First: What makes her think
that her erotikés episkeptón
is a divine?
Is he the only man she ever met
who didn't reek of smoke?

And, two: What did he do or say
to give her such strong faith
he really loves her?

Or am I missing the point
of faith altogether?

Is it the lover who lingers
suspicious?

Tues., Oct. 26              polyhymnia

You're now number 2,613,981.
Please, let's not all talk at once.
No, lady, that makes you  982.
No, you can't help overhearing.
                  No, you can't help but imagine
                  reasons we're talking with him
                  and not you. No, you haven't stood
                  in line this long to hold your tongue.
But look at your ticket there:
is there a single word on it
promising equal opportunity
or in-flight entertainment?
                  This isn't Disneyland—
                  nobody's here for fun.

Don't blame me. Imagine Virgil,
Wyatt, and Morgan Earp
at OK Corral without guns
and without Doc Holliday.
                  The Clantons and McLaurys
                  run amok in Tombstone,
                  terrorizing Cochise County,
                  murdering, rustling horses—
now imagine yourself there too
with your walnut-sized heart
looted from a newborn baboon,
waving your little fist in the air
                  to demand cessation of hostility.
                  Do you see?

This is Last Chance Saloon.
If there was justice in the world,
not one of us would be here.
I'm talking to this gentleman
                  because the trigger at my ear
                  clicks once to ask permission.
                  The second's a big Bronx cheer.
                  Yes, I know I'm being rude,
but this is not the USO—
you have no cachet here
except that bake-shop ticket
pinced in inkstained fingers
                  and whatever amoebaeics
                  your intestines remember.

Thanks for looking in, silent. yes, sort of a poem-a-day project -- a Big City paper with a readership verging on 3! Tom

Thanks, SL. I'll up the ad rates! Tom

Wed., Oct. 27                            polyhymnia

She looks up
and there he is again,
entered so silently
he could have been
a stork, a shrub,
but his face shines
like polished jasper.

He's smiling,
his palms held halfway out
as if offering
an invisible stole
or unwound yarn.
Are you alright?
he asks her.

She cannot speak;
inside, she's liquified,
can only look,
as her heart flies
open into regions
so expanded,
she's in shock.

He says,
My absence was a test.
The role
I have in mind
for you
requires both loyalty
and submissiveness,
Those who have successfully laboured to inflame my people have meant only to amuse by vague expressions of attachment to the parent state and the strongest protestations of loyalty to me whilst they prepared for general revolt though to be my subject is to be a member of the freest civil society in the known world.as it did Abraham
in ancient times,
Jacob and Moses,
Rahab, Shiprah, Ruth.
If you accept,
come here, to me,
open your dress.

She doesn't think,
unclasps the ties
which bound her
formerly to sense.
She has no choice,
no fear,
no innocence;

and nostrils flared,
he takes her
right there
in her mother's house,
again,
right underneath
the nose of prudence.

Thurs., Oct. 28               erato

Girl, what's going on?
Urania has lost her cool
up front—
you're 20 minutes late!
Best get
your shapely asteroid
back up there now
before she launches
frickin' Jupiter
right up your cunt.

Now, who are these
two sorry specimens?
He stinks like he's been
eating too-ripe cheese,
and she,
she might as well grow fins.
Call me metrosexual
but if you don't smell nice
you shouldn't smell at all—
not if you ever want
to get with someone
who's not tapping carrion.

Oh yes. Poets. I forgot.
Look at the muscle tone.
Why couldn't we be fated
to dispense advice
to pentathloners,
chiton models—
someone that dresses nice?

Okay, then. Off you go.
Where are we here?
Let's see,...nostrils flared,
he takes her
right there
in her mother's house,
again,
right underneath
the nose of prudence.

P.H., you bitch in heat!—
and I'm way up there
at 103 with a daouli nut
who calls himself a Beat!
Vamoose! Scoot! Git!
This kind of thing's not
meant for high-falutin'
ears like yours—
much more my cup of tea.

Fri., Oct. 29                           erato

Stop right there.
You men!
You haven't even said
what the supposed adonis
looks like!
You think he's beaming
mesmerizing sex rays
at the addled girl's brain?
That isn't how it works,
I don't care who he is.
That you'd boff a dustbin
doesn't mean she would.

Put that lame-o inspiration
down.
What makes you think
the sow's ear
William Carol Williams
couldn't fuck
is going to gild itself for you?
That man had sweet,
sweet breath--I know.
Your pants could
turn a bonefire cold.

I want to know what Miriam
felt:
I want to know what his
hands looked like,
what he was wearing.
What sort of teeth,
what sort of eyes,
what sort of message
sent his hair?
A girl like that just doesn't melt
unless the heat
is searing.

Sat., Oct. 30 – Erato

I'll tell you what he looked like!
said the eavesdropping lady.

You wouldn't know it from who I am
today, but I once was that girl—
all young, naive—
and when that handsome guy
said just the right thing—bam!

It ain't so much the hands.
Hands is a piece of it, and so
is eyes and smiles and coaly curls
just like you said,
but no,
that ain't enough to get a girl in bed.

On my home isle Lemnos
in the time of great-great-grandmothers
there was exiled a poet,
a Sufi candle maker from Malatya,
Niyazi Misri:

     'I thought that in this whole world,
     no beloved for me remained.
     Then I left myself.
     Now no stranger in the world remains.'

Indeed no stranger remained to him
in our town. He had seduced them all,
fishwives, melipasto makers, children, goats, donkeys.
He was one of those men.
How did he succeed at this?
The women say he whispered in their ears,

     'Only the sight of you inflames me.'

The men say he whispered in their ears,

     'Only the scent of you inflames me.'

The children say he whispered in their ears,

     'O, you are special! I have treats here.'

And in the ears of goats and donkeys, he whispered,

     'I love you.'

What did he look like?
He looked like nothing, no one.
He was an ordinary looking man,
thick eyebrows maybe, nothing else.

If god or man has appetites omnivorous
all will respond unhesitant,
assured of love.
A narrow appetite
constricts response.
The lover in your story is promiscuous,
untruthful and remorseless—
irresistible—a classic sociopath.


Sun., Oct. 31 – Erato

Our father
was many things,
and fabled to be many more,
but Sufi and donkey-fucker, no.
I know he was adventurous,
and took a couple bestial forms
himself...

Dear,
your father
was a god like any other god,
and did whatever the hell he pleased.
Nobody judges him—
and honestly,
he didn't judge us either.
When he got angry
he got angry
but there weren't all these rules,
all this “You brought it on yourself.”
The self-styled Enlightenment
pulled far more wool
over the public's eyes
than any other bull
since the Mosaic Law.

Thank you, and I apologize for what I said
about the way you smelled.
You're a nice, smart lady, I can tell.
You seem to understand
that learning who our father is, and where,
is a big part of what we're doing here.
Some say he simply disappeared,
but others that he changed,
the woman made him
a monogamist
and then a celibate
who let his son become his face
in Christendom,
while Jews and Muslims
herald that his avatars
who come as swan or bull
and woo young women
aren't him at all,
but someone else, a myth.
The myriad each year
who say an animal seduced them
are confined in institutions
for the sexually insane—
no wonder we can't even find his name
on anybody's lips.
People have turned on him
and he's become a fugitive
who works on cargo ships
and plies whatever's left
of the Olympic trade
in ports of call
where everything except
the cast-iron bollards where tramps tie up
and the sagaciousness of hookers
has decayed.

And so I wish you,
as I know you wish him,
well.

Don't forget your own dictum—

to seek the truth
you have to shut your lids
and fit your ear
to a dead witch's rictus,
pinch your nose and squint
for daylight
through the ruined
housing of her rectum.

Girl, what's your name?
Why do you stand in line
with all these seagulls
squawking after fame?

Don't ask.
Suffice to say,
my reach
exceeds
my grasp.

Tues., Nov. 2                                         erato

I know you both think I'm crazy—
pacing like a wolf, gesticulating
raving, raging & insane—

but you doubt the point of poetry
& are skeptical that God above
sent us His Only Son?

Did you ever see this acrostic?
     P ractice
     O r
     E xhibition
     T of
     R free
     Y thought

That's why we write it,
& why it must be read.
The rest's entertainment
commentary & catharsis.
Think about Paradise Lost
Howl & e.e. cummings!

Then,
of what use is Christ?
Here's one more acronym.
     J ehovah
     E ventually
     S ends
     U s
     S alvation omething, anyway,
an expression of sympathy
almost an apology
     JIBTN—
Jesus is better than nothing.

Fine, fine, go on with you silly
discussions of aesthetics
& inspiration
& your little group-poem project.
No one heard Elijah
& no one hears me either,
not that there's a connection.

     I 'm not frittering my life away
     S tanding here for a mellifluous
     P hrase or mind-blowing trope.
     I 'm here because if I stayed
     H ome I'd have place my head
     I nside the teardrop of a rope.

Wed., Nov. 3                                                    euterpe

Erato, it's your turn up front now.
I'm here,
and bearing better gifts
than Sinon, earless, noseless:

bushel baskets of rejected inspirations
for our ambitious poet friend;

a triton shell for the young ladyl
from balmy Moudros Bay
within which, if you listen close,
you hear the sea god moan;

for our mad-driven scrivener,
news of a guy back at 1,700,009
who looks an awful lot like Jesus
in a Greek-house tee shirt
lettered ἸΝβἸ;

plus my sea-rose baklava
sodden with yellow holm-oak honey:
even nutritious misery
can take a break
to taste Euterpe's pastry!

Now, yes,
back to the lovebirds:
this time the goat goes through with it
and she really does get pregnant, right?
That's all Dad wanted, from the start—
his brat'll look for him his whole life,
though there's no indication
Dad ever gives a thought to him.
He fantasizes, He's a millionaire.
He's someone famous.
He's omnipotent, omnisicent.
It's never, He's a spineless rat.
What kid's going to imagine that?

Okay, I know,
it's Miriam whose thoughts
I need to plumb, not Zeus.
He's a bust,
but the fruit she finds inside her womb—
why, she'll devote herself to him,
he'll prove the critics wrong
inside her head
inisting she was hoodwinked,
threw away her life,
disgraced her family—
all due honeyed words
and an enchanting face.

Her father knows a man
who builds the market stalls,
who lost a beautiful young wife
in stillborn childbirth
thirty years ago,
and offers him a child and madonna both.
And Miriam agrees
to be a modest and dutiful wife,
adoring mother.

Does that sound right?

No way.

Why such a model of passivity?
Human women are no more
tractable than goddesses,
and you must;ve read 'Medea.'

Miriam bears the baby, yes.
And then she raises
so much hell
poor Joseph has no choice
but lash her to a mule
in dead of night
and drag her and the child
down to Egypt
to his aunt's,
who's old-school:
maybe she can beat
or starve or scold
some self-control
into the crazy bitch.
The so-called Wise Men
he'd called in
had struck out
with their bag of tricks;
and then the aunt, too,
quickly quit.

The little strumpet
wants her daddy,
wants her daddy.
Joseph's having none
of that:
the purse that daddy gave him
came with strings,
the biggest one of which
was that dear daddy
and reproachful mom
were shed of her,
no longer on the hook.
They left town
with no forwarding address
and last were seen
passing through Kirkuk,
on the road to Tehran.

And the kid!
Good Lord, from birth
he made his mother seem
like a second Penelope—
told everyone to fuck themselves,
thrust a playmate from the roof,
declared himself above
the laws of men—
and his mother defended him!
She egged him on, adoringly.
The last straw
was when Yeshua ran away
and was found at the Temple
upbraiding the high priests.
Joseph was long-suffering,
but that stretched his mettle
too far.

Where had the sweetness gone?
What poisoned Miriam?

What do you think?

She knew 'Medea' pretty much
by heart,
and making the deity
whom she thought was her boy's father
squirm
was all she thought about.

Thurs., Nov. 4                            euterpe

Damn,—

No.

—you nine imaginary sisters,
figments, ghosts at best—
colonizers—

Stop.
Don't get yourself
all lathered up
over a molehill.
Go take a walk.
I'll hold your place
in line.
A little solitude
and mountain air
will clear you mind.

—slave-shacklers
who whisper in our ears
not inspiration,
but diversions
while you pick our pockets!

Poetry “free thought”?
It's free, alright, for you,
the oxidation of our lives
to waft ghouls incense—

Tom,
you stand here
of your own free will.
Why shouldn't we enjoy your offerings,
the burnt fruits of our fancies?
It's dishonest to provide
a product one thinks worthless!

If you think the price is steep,
you're free to walk.
We're not by any stretch
of the imagination
the world's only source
of gold-tongued talk,
and the soup line
beyond the cypresses
is a popular destination
too.

—all a trap,
behind each veil
another mirror.

Cliché.

Better to fail at understanding
than belly to a vampire's boot
and beg for a blood transfusion!

I have no dog in this race.
Our new “Song of Miriam”
will find its way
without your further help.

It's pretty obvious
she's thrown her lot in
with our quasi frater,
the rebellious whelp
she hatched with Zeus.

You'll sell her short.
You don't know what a woman is,
and never will.

You're so impressed
with this procession to your lips,
two million strong—
but you should see the billion
wading through a field of thorns
to touch that whelp's worn hem!
Who's maternal influence
do you think made the difference?

He doesn't just inspire
with well-crafted turns of phrase,
he put his money where his mouth was,
walked the earth
and let the chips fall where they may.

Got himself killed, you say?
Then rose,
supposedly,
on the third day
and floated into heaven?

You find that stirring? Good,
then go that way yourself.
Stand up, go to the mat
to fight injustice and iniquity.

If you're lucky as he was,
someone who knows their way around a pen
will tell you story to posterity.

Fri., Nov. 5                                euterpe

Guy Fawkes Day—
the exquisite sensitivity
of heads of state.

King James:
If he will not other wayes confesse,
the gentler tortours are to be first used,
et sic per gradus ad ima tenditur,
and so on step by step to the most severe;
and so god spede youre goode worke.

George Washington:
I learned of plans for the observance
of that ridiculous and childish custom
of burning the Effigy of the pope,
by Soldiers so devoid of common sense
as not to see such actions as improper
at at a Time when we are seeking
the alliance of Canada's catholics.

You upbraid us?
The line's too slow;
your shortcut,
the unfinished works of writers
greater than yourself,
yields nothing;
you can't quarantine ambition
in one quarter of your brain
resolutely enough to create
something to chase it with?

We play—
no sticks and stones,
just whispers, figments,
as you say,
poking a hole or two
into diaphaneity.

What wouldn't you force on a maiden,
and what rationales twist to excuse it,
to become your nation's leading poet?
 
Zeus facing obsolescence
thanks to moral niceties
used charm and eloquence
to concoct a new identity,
a kinder, gentler, people's god
more Florentine, less Norse.

So dismount your high horse—
you'd gouge out your dying father's eyes
to gain the shortlist of the Pushcart Prize.

— splendid, Tom
silken to the eye
and well for the thirst.

Appreciated, mucho
d


.

Dax, thank you for looking in and reporting out! I'm happy you've enjoyed. Tom

All these ideals he touts—
at least, his zealots tout—
are sad, a crock of shit,
she says. Leave it to kids
to do the opposite
of what you teach them!
Turning the other cheek
will never stop a bear.
Without survival of the fit,
we'd all be livestock
for Parthian lunatics!

She takes a sip of wine.
He takes a slice of brie.
The cats purr lustfully.

He's young,  Zeus says.
Give him a few millennia
and he'll come round.
So will his followers,
if they haven't run
civilization into the ground.
First mercy to each other,
then to beasts—
where will it end?

The sun has started
to condense,
grows redder, smaller,
rounder as it draws
near Sea-goat Sea
where Zeus once
in his youthful virulence
swam bloodthirsty to kill
the dragon Kampe.

Eventually, Miriam says,
the wheat-heads bend
unharvested in autumn wind,
the grape feeds crow and fox,
as their sect weakens
and dies, hoping to resurrect.
Asking your foes for love
is absolute psychosis.

Both so naive.
2000 years and Christians still hold sway,
their ingenuity
to swear off savagery and do it anyway.

Dax, thanks for looking in and the encouraging word. Tom

Sat., Nov. 13                                         terpsichore

Zeus said to John,
You seem to me
to be one of the epicenters
of all this upheaval
and ferment.

Where does it come from?

People bandy
the idea about
that gods know everything
and are omnipotent

but change
still always seems
to come from without.

I know you
don't know either,
you've been driven
mad because
the lightning struck

your brain
like a hawk
a dove.

Everyone says
it comes from above,
then bubbles
inside the subconscious
until, finally,
to the light of day,

but all that
strikes me as another way
of saying

someone's heart
one day gave birth
to thoughts
that shook the earth.

I know I was static:
nothing ever changed
by my decree;
that's what omnipotence
meant to me.

Humans came up
with the mischief
and I only reacted,
and barely kept pace.

Sunday, Nov. 14 – Terpsichore

“The one thing Miriam
was sure about,” Zeus said,
“was that some figment
of her own discontent
found its way into him.”

He wanted John to know
that Yeshua had not
sprung from the deosphere
self-made
anymore than John's own
divinations came verbatim

from a god who
couldn't find another way
to state them.

The muse's seed
came tumbling from
a basket,
idly strewn
by a young rustic
with a girl on his mind,

fell,
buried in the scat
of a bird fleeing the claws
of a karakulak,

or was as tiny
as the seed of su teresi,
Turkish watercress,
that had escaped
a parent's brook

to mat, as if miraculous,
a hillside runnel far
from any ancestor.

“She felt herself in him,”
he said,
though John ambled ahead
as if unhearing.
“She felt as if
he undertook her pain.”

My mother used to sing:

     “Terpsichore, Terpsichore
     Unclip your frizzy hair!
     Don't think the earth is just
     Or that there's gold in meek!
     The only way to savor life
     Is to unclip, unclip
     Unclip your frizzy hair!”

I had a man once too,
well versed in trickery
like Zeus.
He made a big deal of my hair
and said, I know, I know,
when I complained about my dad
seducing this, that, and the other
woman, none of them my mother.

My big complaint, though,
just like hers,
is that it's gone.
The wool pulled lovingly
over the eyes is gone.
My beef is not with being courted
by a man that devious,
but with the courtship's end.
The days I live now,
in comparison, are tedious.

Though she was one
of those who usurped Mama's place,
I envy Miriam.

You mean, the Miriam here in your poem?

Do you suppose I've made her up?
Oh no! She's real, alright!
I envy how she got her lover back
and now she sits with him
all afternoon and watches
the baghlahs and triremes
come and go.


My lot
helping the poet
find a handhold

isn't exactly
a cat
on a hot tin roof

nor is it
the warm orange
rays of fondness.

Terpsichore, you're
lost in self-pity again.
Nobody's here on line
to hear you second-guess
your life.
That's what the pub's for, afterwards.

In any event
Euterpe needs to pee,
so pull yourself together
if you can
and go relieve her
up at inspiration's fountainhead;
I'll spell you here.

Dies, freund, ist von Clio:
a draft she fished
aus Josef Goebbels's wastepaper basket.

The yellow star each Jew must wear is remarkably humane on our part, hygienic and prophylactic, since there are Jews one cannot recognize by external signs. As Jews first appeared on the streets of Berlin, graced with their stars, what a surprise! Who knew there were so many? Everyone suddenly saw someone in the neighborhood who had seemed like a harmless fellow, perhaps complained or criticized a bit more than normal, but whom no one thought was a Jew!
One began to see Jews on the streets of the west side of Berlin walking with non-Jews. Their excuse? The Jews are human beings too. We never denied that, as we never denied the humanity of murderers, child rapists, thieves and pimps—though we never felt the need to parade down the Kurfürstendamm with them!
They have a new trick. They know the good-natured German Michael in us, ready to shed sentimental tears for any injustice; so now one suddenly has the impression that the Jews are all little babies and fragile old ladies! They send out the pitiable, but we know exactly what the situation is. When Mr. Bramsig and Mrs. Knöterich feel pity for an old woman in a Jewish star, we remember that a son of her distant uncle is a warmonger named Baruch or Morgenthau or Untermayer who stands behind Mr. Roosevelt, driving him to war, so that a U.S. soldier may one day shoot the only son of Bramsig or Knöterich dead.
If we have a fateful flaw in our national character, it is thinking everyone as good natured as we are. That’s how we Germans are. But there are differences between people, just as there are differences between animals. Some are good, others bad. That the Jew lives among us is no proof that he belongs among us, just as a flea is not a household pet simply because he lives in a house. Nor is he there because he loves us.

It has the makings of comedy,
do you agree?
The Jew, the goy, the dog, the flea,
the pimp, the U.S. president?
The yellow star like Tinkerbell
or like that little ball that bobs
over the notes you have to sing?
Maybe a sort of karaoke thing.

No, that's been done, no doubt—
Mel Brooks, Kurt Vonnegut.
I think the thing to do is stress it,
play with word-replacement.

I'm being ridiculous?
Insensitive?
You don't want to reheat
what inspired a Nazi?

Fine.
Just 2,415,356 more steps.

     Your dam dropped you in a cave,
     then fashioned a stream to rinse
     birth's soilure from your scalp,
wrote Kallimachos.
     Then your umbilicus fell away
     on the plain Cydonians call Navel
     as nymphs sped you to Knossos.

In other words, you were a little squirt
once too, Zeus,

unless Saint Paul was right
when he wrote Titus
     One of their own prophets
     called all Cretans liars, evil beasts
and the bolts that lit Mount Ida weren't
the same ilk that knocked the cocky
Saul of Tarsus from his colt.
No one suspected you!
Why would you strike the scourge
of a new sect disputing your supremacy?

No one sees how sly you are—
how much you worked
behind the scenes to advertise your son
and earn your current ease.

Who else
parted the clouds by Jordan's bank;
perched Yeshua on the pinnacle
and offered him your throne,
which cup he pushed away
until a time more opportune;
offered oreads' feathery hands?

If you were not a sexist goat
you might have long ere offered me
your lightning's keys.
No, that's a cheap shot.

It was that Miriam had taken root
and for the first time in your long career
you thought about an heir.

But you didn't think
enough. You let him think
he was your only son.
Where did that leave us
who made our livings
as your underlings?

We nine are stuck here
garlicking word-sausage,
conceivably retrainable
but feeble by long praxis.
And our half-sisters and
brothers are...where?

The last I heard about
any of them was Klotho
making headlines
when she sold her spindle
to the Dr. Edwards and
Dr. Kevorkian syndicate

and the next morning
when it was disclosed
she'd taken bribes from
John the Baptist's mom,
one of Heinlein's and
one of Mosley's heroes.

Yeshua seems so lonely.
There's this sweet idyll
of him lolling in the clouds
with you and Miriam,
apostles, saints and angels,
but you and I know

you hung him out to dry
and like a gay sex addict
he haunts leafed-over
country crosscuts and
black alleys, whispering
love to adherent minds.

I don't want you two
to give up your retirement;
quite the opposite.
It puts a warm glow
in my heart to see how
stable you are, finally.

I just think finishing
unfinished business with
your kids means more
contentment all around,
especially for Miriam--
he's all she's has, as well

as your last. None of us
are hungry young gods
anymore; our famous
infighting over dominance
is a thing of the past
and there's a good chance

we could have some fun
if you and Miriam just
passed a pipe around,
made the introductions.

The Vatican finally releases the authentic version of the painting... before they asked Michelangelo to make some changes.



~

Even back then, "the four sons" caused a lot of finger-pointing!

I'm called the queen of comedy
but what is that
but tragedy by other means?

Instead of Romeo and Juliet
one finally in druggy death,

the gere that speeds them into bliss:

Before milk-white, now purple with love's wound,—
And maidens call it love-in-idleness.

All those shipwrecked, worshipped,
nightmared and romance-marooned
in Shakespeare and in Aristophanes

are candidates for fatal madnesses
hijacked by a messiah from a crane.

So, yes. The pun. The turn of phrase.
The swish and twirl of a magic wand!

I am your girl.

I know 1000 ways to mock a blonde,
belittle country folk
and satirize the Sapphic dike;

I know That Nigger's Crazy
in and out

and recipes for Love Potions
from 1 to 99

and every wedding dance,
"Bésame Mucho,” the “Tarantella,”
“Hava Nagila,” Etta James “At Last”;

can stretch the tales of Scheherazade
and glue his eyes to me
for one more night;

but the funny thing?

It's only silly fantasy.
There's death
by blade or love at first sight.

No happy ending.

But this
unending afternoon-lit
interlude above colossal Ephesus
whose house of Artemis
raised high enough by Croesus
had earned Zeus's
never-dying fondness—

this—

beyond what dramatists
could ever dare insist
were possible, its
labyrinth
of story twists
and pure coincidence
enough to overtax
even those innocents
addicted to theatric
feasts where the antagonists
are paper thin
and Cupid's
toxicology accomplishes
his far-fetched couplings—

unless
the maelstrom
gusting sweet John's brain
had neither been psychosis
nor Yeshua risen
but Zeus devious
inspiring the apostle
of delirium to pander

and no sooner left
the salt-eyed Miriam
behind on mount Koressos
than Zeus rose
from granite throne
and quit the cave
to take his evening
constitutional

and looking more like
goatherd than the handsome goat
she once had known
he came upon her
as she sat and wondered
what to make

of cats and gurgling spring
and the extraordinary light.

Tanha—desire, attachment?
Did it tempt Zeus
from his godly dharma
and leave him drowsing
by a humble hillside hearth?

We taste him in our veins,
religously follow his epics;
we know him;

and we know
the modus operandi of being
eternal is, You never change.
Change is the author of time,
whether the rising of the sun,
the drip of water or of sand,
or the vibration of casesium.

So it's a pretty tale—
wishful thinking, syncretic—
but unless he's setting Miriam up
for some grand new victimization
that goatherd warming his toes
in bed with her is no more Zeus
than Hayley Mills is Lenny Bruce.

Sat., Nov. 27 – Clio:

            We are the pride of the army
            And a regiment of great renown
            Our name's on the pages of history
            From '66 on down

            Hurrah for our brave commanders
            Who lead us into the fight
            We'll do or die in our country's cause
            And battle for the right

            'Tis the gallant Seventh Cavalry
            It matters not where we're goin'
            Such you'll surely say as we march away
            And our band plays "Garryowen"

Col. Custer, Nov. 27, 1868
before butchering Comanches

          I, Urban, chief bishop and prelate over the whole world by the command of God, come as His ambassador to all princes and subjects here in Flanders. You are the salt of the earth. But if you fall short in your duty, how will it be salted? O how great the need of salting! How great the need for you to correct with the salt of wisdom this foolish people, lest the Lord find them putrefied by their sins unsalted and stinking. For if He find worms in them because you neglect to salt them, you  be fiercely overwhelmed in hell, the abode of death.

          Turks and Arabs have attacked the territory of Christians as far west as the Hellespont, and overcome them in seven battles. Oh, race of Franks, chosen by God! From Jerusalem and from Constantinople, a horrible tale goes forth that an accursed race from the land of Persians, utterly alienated from God, depeoples the lands of Greeks by the sword, pillage and fire. They circumcise captive Christians, spread the blood upon the altars or pour it into the baptismal font. To torture people, they perforate their navels, dragging forth the intestine, and bind it to a stake; then flog the victim around and around until the viscera gush forth. And what shall I say of the abominable rape of the women? To speak of it is worse than to be silent.

          Of those who make pilgrimage there, the Saracens examine the callouses of their heels, cutting them open and folding the skin back, lest they had sewed money there. They give them scammony to drink until they vomit or burst their bowels, lest they swallowed gold or silver; or cut their bowels open with a sword and, spreading out the folds of the intestines, with frightful mutilation disclose whatever nature held there in secret.

          Whose is the labor of avenging these wrongs, if not you, whom God gave great courage, bodily activity, and strength to humble the hairy scalp of those who resist you?

          Deus volt! God commands it!

          What veneration deserves the tomb of the ground whereon the blood of the Son of God was poured forth, and His body, its quivering members dead, rested? O what a disgrace if such a base race, which worships demons, conquer a people blessed by the name of Christ!

         All who die en route, whether by land or by sea, or in battle, shall have immediate remission of sins, through the power God vested in me. If you are hindered by love of children, parents and wives, the Lord says, "He that loveth father or mother more than me, is not worthy." Nor let possessions detain you, since this land you inhabit, shut in on all sides by seas and mountain peaks, is too narrow for your population, and furnishes scarcely food enough for its cultivators. Instead, take the road to the Holy Sepulchre, wrest that land from the wicked race, and take it for yourselves, which floweth with milk and honey given by God.

          But if it befall you to die, Christ shall find you in His army. God pays with the same shilling, whether at the first or eleventh hour; empurpled with your own blood, you have gained everlasting glory! For such a Commander you ought to fight, one who lacks neither might nor wealth with which to reward you.

          Gird thy sword upon thy thigh. Who chooses this holy pilgrimage, let him wear the sign of the cross of the Lord on his forehead or on his breast; and when he returns, let him place the cross on his back between his shoulders. Let this his clarion cry be:

          Christus volt! Christ commands it!

Otho de Lagery, Pope Urban II, Nov. 27, 1095
proclaiming the First Crusade

May I speak again?
our would-be Byron says.
I'm at the center
of all this chattering

but no one
really seems too interested
in what
I have to say.

If I trade
little bits of what I know
about a woman
when she loves a man

for little bits
of literary history
whose business is that
but my own?

You Social Revolution poets
need to get a life.

With all the Buddhist-isms
being bandied about
you should know

a lot of people do worse things
than stand in line
because they want to write.

Sure
I could be more like Jesus Christ
and try to feed the poor instead

but why attempt
to stand the natural order
on its head?

Jesus said
the hungry
will always be among us

so why not share a tip
along the way
about how we once

got some good Catholic girl
to kiss us?

What's wrong with metrical
good-natured entertainment

given how fond
bodhisattvas themselves are
of cherry-blossom
arrangement?

If this Take-A-Number
offends you, go away.

Not only is the soup line
over there,

but random, lost, miraculous
jade chips
from Shangri-La itself

are buried
in the mini-cemetery
of James Hilton's underwear.

Truth is,  Zeus said,
I wasn't crazy
about mountain-tops.
I wandered in disguise
along the wharves
at each Aegean port,
alongside rivers, lakes—
as you can see,
I like a water view.
The day I first laid eyes
on you

I had gone hiking
from the Carmel
up the Kishon river
through Besara

poked my head
into the basalt caves
where a acquaintance
or two lived

when I saw a sign
for Nazareth

and one of those voices
in my head
urged me to have a look.

What drew me
to one particular girl
I caught a glimpse of
sitting at a sunny window
immersed in a book?

Oddly, it was the book.
I was seized by
a powerful curiosity
about what put
that particular look
on your face.

I wondered if I
could do that too.
I was supposed to be
omnipotent.

The saint climbs the path
with his fishy-smelling sack
oblivious both
to the boot in front
and the boot in back.
One scroll unfurls
inside his head
and one beneath his feet,
the third a kompolói
of strung olive stones
from the grove Gethsemane.

  I on the isle of Patmos
  heard a trumpet unto Ephesus
  and unto Smyrna
  and unto Pergamos
  and unto Thyatira
  and unto Sardis
  and unto Philadelphia
  and unto Laodicea!
 
Ahead of him
the face of Miriam
floats, pale.

  His eyes like flame
  searched reins and hearts
  and his feet like brass
  tred pavingstones
  and stumblingblocks!
  The last is greater
  than the first
  until the vessels
  of the potter break
  to shivers like
  the evening star!

He tries to smile
but finds a smile already
seated on his lips.
She reaches out a hand
to bless his.

I come quickly!  John cried,
ascending the hill with his sack.
Flies buzzed around his head
and straggled in his hair;
four swifts did acrobatics in the sky.
The first beast is a lion,
the second a calf, the third a man
the last an eagle with inward eyes!
The sun flared. His dry lips cracked.
A wary yeoman and bone-thin ox
passed by on the narrow track.
Behold a white stallion!
My Lord, how long, how long?

A deathstalker blocked his way,
barb poised and claws spread wide.
John stooped and cupped his palm,
raised up the scorpion to within
striking distance of his eyes
and prayed, Lord, here am I!
It arched its six-striped back,
stretched forth its mighty tail
and took its barb to strike
but hesitated and was stayed.
Not my will be done but thine.
I hear thy voice, which I obey!
He opened the mouth of his sack
and dropped the scorpion in. Amen.

He can no more contain himself
than the torrents rushing down
rock gulches after cloudbreaks.

Stars of heaven fall to the earth
like a fig tree casting untimely figs
when shaken by a mighty wind!
The heavens depart like a scroll
when it is rolled back together
and every mountain and island
rooted up from its foundations!

The blue sky and white sun
are concealments, illusions;
all the flies and birds more
of the Evil-doer's diversions.

They shall hunger no more
nor thirst any more; for
the lamb shall feed them
and lead them to fountains of balsam!
He shall wipe all the tears
from the glass of their eyes!

Behind the veil of his own face
John is blinded by the lightning
and deafened by the booming of
thunder like roaring behemoths.

Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani?
And behold, the curtain
of the temple was torn
in two from top to bottom;
and the earth was shaken;
and rocks were broken open;
and vaults also were cloven
and many bodies of the saints
who had fallen asleep arisen
and coming out of the tombs;
and after their resurrection
they hastened to Jerusalem
and they appeared to many.

John stumbles. The string
binding his sack is broken
and the foul octopus inside
slides out on to the path.
He thinks in his delirium
it is Belial's stillborn son:
his fingers burn as he lifts
it back into the flaxen sack,
then continues up the hill
to make his visit to Miriam.

an angel
smoke ascending from her head

lightnings
of hail and fire mixed with blood

trees burnt
green grass
a mountain burnt

sea creatures burnt
the sea made bitter

by the damned star Wormwood

a young man leads a white goat
down the hill

its horns
cedars of Lebanon

two thick legs
like the thief who asked Yeshua
to remember him

John praises god

the goat bleats
with the voice of Gabriel

the yeoman takes
from underneath his coat
a waterskin
and offers John to drink

this day
you'll be with me in Paradise
John says

Father
the yeoman says
look at the silver sea today

takes drink himself
puts back the waterskin

continues down the path

John hefts his sack of food
for Miriam

resumes his climb

and the fifth angel was given
the key of the bottomless pit
and he opened the bottomless pit
and there arose a smoke

and there came out of the smoke
locusts and scorpions
and it was commanded them
that they should not hurt
the grass of the earth
nor any green thing nor any tree

but only those men which have not
his seal on their foreheads
that they should but be tormented
five months as the torment
when a scorpion striketh a man

and in those days shall men
seek death and not find it
and shall desire to die
and death shall flee from them

and the shapes of the locusts
like horses prepared unto battle
and their faces as the faces of men
and their hair as the hair of women
and their teeth as the teeth of lions

and breastplates of iron
and the sound of their wings
as horses running to battle
for the king of locusts' name
in the Hebrew tongue is Abaddon
and in the Greek tongue Apollyon
and the Latin tongue Exterminans

one woe past and coming
two woes more hereafter
for their power is in their mouth
and in their tails like unto serpents
and with them they do hurt men
unrepented of the works of their hands
nor of their sorceries


[*This and most John's visions/rants are “found passages” from his Apocalypse.]

An ivory angel
clothed in cloud appears,
a rainbow on his hair,
sun on his mouth,
his right foot on the sea
and left on solid ground.

John hears a lion roar
and seven thunders say,
“Seal up some things
and write them not.”

In the shadow of his brow
John sees the olive trees,
the roundstone hut where Miriam
Yeshua's mother is.

He has fish in his sack
to nourish her
whom Yeshua entrusted him
as he expired on Golgotha,
which keeps him
rooted to the earth.

“I'll seal up every thing
the thunder says
and write it not,” he thinks.

“Good man,” Gabriel winks.
“Sinners need help to see
wonders believers dream.”

And was given him a reed like a rod
when the angel stood, saying, “Rise.
These are the two olive trees
standing before the god of the earth
and if any man will hurt them
these have power to shut heaven
and smite the earth with all plagues
that dead bodies shall lie in the street
of the city where Yeshua is crucified.”

“John,” Miriam says. “Come,
sit and drink, first water
and then wine.”

But  there appeared a woman
clothed as with raiment of the sun
and the moon beneath her feet
and upon her head twelve stars
and she cried travailing in birth
and pained to be delivered until
there appeared first a red dragon
having seven heads and ten horns
to devour her child as soon as it
was born and then brought forth
a man-child who was to rule men
and she fled into the wilderness
to that place prepared of God
that he should feed her there
and hide her child from the dragon
for a thousand and two hundred
and threescore days whereupon
the earth were delivered of illusion.

John seats himself
and beside him seats himself Yeshua
arisen.

“Shlom, Miriam.”

“Shlom, John.”

“The beast who bided here with you
has spoken to me on the road
and blasphemes your son Yeshua.”

“No beast, John. It's Zeus, Yeshua's father.”

“John, she cannot hear you,” says Yeshua.

“Lord, with what tongue shall I speak?” John asks.

“Drink, friend,” says Miriam,
and passes him cool water from the spring.

“The beast impugns your purity,” John says.

She laughs softly,
like unto the voice of the cistern.

“Though she be my mother,
she heareth me not,” says Yeshua.

“Lord, give me words,” John says.

“Your words, John, always comfort me.
Your voice reminds me of Yeshua's voice
in childhood
which delights me.”

“He is here, Mother!” John says with zeal.

“Is he?” she says. “Would that I could see him!”

“Only open thine eyes,” John says.

“It's time to go,” Yeshua says.
“The Greek boat waits; the ebb
tide changes its devotement.”

John stands and casts about his eyes
down on the cast that paw the sack of fish.
“I bring you squid and octopus,” he says,
“forbidden to the Jews
but which Yeshua places on our plate,
saying 'Take and eat all that my father
hath provided for thy sustinence.'”

“Friend, thank you,” she says, standing too.

“Whatever beast it is
that you call Zeus,”
John says,
“seeks only to corrupt you.”

“Oh, that ship has sailed, John!”

“She cannot hear,” Yeshua says.
“Go now and return thyself to Patmos.
I await you.”

“I really had to leave,”
Zeus says to Miriam.
“The last time Patmos visited
I thought I heard an echo
of the seethe of angry thought
I buried deep
beneath the ocean
where that isle once lay
before arising to the light—
now, not an echo, but a roar.”

And he shall see an angel crying
and calling forth, 'Babylon is fallen',
and sitting on a white cloud thrusts
his sickle on the clusters of the vine
whose grapes are fully ripe;
and a sea of glass mingled with fire;
and a noisome sore which is the blood
of the dead and number of the beast;
and frogs come from the dragon's lips;
and every island fled away from air;
and every mountain disappeared...

“It's not your fault,”
she says. “Even when
he was young
John heard and saw
what others could not.
The afternoon Yeshua
wandering the shores
of Kinneret
hailed Zebedee
and those two boys
whilst they repaired torn
nets inside their fishing-boat
John glimpsed reborn
in my son's face
the Baptist they had loved
and father Zebedee
asked brother Jacob
to go with little John
and try to keep him safer
than his namesake.”

     When Herod heard Yeshua's fame, he said,
     'It's John the Baptist risen from the dead.'

“Ironically,” she says,
“it wasn't Zebedee's frail John
but sturdy Jacob
whom a Herod beheaded
eleven years afterward.”

The sea rears up at Arki's Knob.
The celeusta unclips a rowers' whip
and scowls at the Galilean raving,

Come hither! A great whore sits
on a scarlet beast with a cup
in her hand brimmed with filth!
Her forehead is named Mystery!
Great Babylon is fallen, fallen,
become the habitation of devils
and the cage of hateful birds!
Come out of her, my people!
Double her double in the cup
for she hath lived deliciously
as a widow who feels no sorrow!
Merchants of the earth wax rich
by the abundance of her delicacies:
of merchandise of gold and  pearl,
of fine linen and purple and silk,
of scarlet and all thyine wood,
of vessels of ivory and of brass,
of iron and marble and cinnamon,
of wine and oil and fine flour,
of beasts and sheep and chariots!

Oh, to take his sword and air
that Jew's malodorous brain!

Four more leagues to Cape Crane.

John approaches again.
Miriam sits alone.

Her smoke rose up for ever and ever
She made herself ready in fine linen
And his eyes were flame and his feet
Treadeth the winepress of fierceness
Clothed with vesture dipped in blood.

I fell at his feet to worship him
But he said  Don't
I cried out to all the fowls that fly
Come and gather and devour the flesh
of kings and mighty men and horses

And they flew down and delivered up
The dead which were in them and the sea
Delivered up the dead which were in it
Until there was no more sea

She rises
and opens her palms in greeting.

Alleluia
Alleluia
God shall wipe away tears from their eye
Until there is no more death nor any pain

Her smile is so complicated.

On the east are three gates
One jasper and one sapphire and one chalcedony
On the north three gates
One emerald and one sardonyx and one sardius
On the south three gates
One chrysolite and one beryl and one topaz
On the west three gates
One chrysoprasus and one jacinth and one amethyst

The street of the city is pure gold
Transparent glass which has no need of sun
For he that is unjust let him be unjust
Filthy let him be filthy
Righteous let him be righteous

Dogs and whoremongers and idolaters
Whosoever loveth or who maketh a lie
Let him take the water of life freely from my hand

In John's own palsied hand
a knife.

Zeus steps out
from behind the house
and issues forth
a lightningbolt
more feeble even
than the stroke
that he produced
although disastrously
on Semele's demand

and John's fingertips
burn away to ash
and with them
the last remnant
of his intelligence.

Blown away by this image T:

"and John's fingertips
burn away to ash
and with them
the last remnant
of his intelligence."

Glad to hear it!
In my own head anyway, Rob, the long stretches of apocalyptic palaver seem to heighten the bits and stretches of narration, sort of like that pleasure when you stop hitting yourself with a hammer or something.
How do you experience it? The apoc stuff readable enough? not? Tom