ALSOS

n., Greek origin: 'grove/groves'
--

This grove could be a sacred place.
This grove could be a sacred place.
This grove could be a sacred place,
a place
where an angel announces unto a Mary
where a saviour prays
where some hymns are sung.
It could be a sacred place.

It is not; nineteen centuries
after the Saviour prayed, somewhere
here a serpent has come has slunk has entered
and wormed its way around
these hallowed grounds
leaving its brittle and oozing fruit
strewn about unbridled orange-grass shoots
of clumps and trees
undone by blights and bloated by unheeded
rainy seasons.

Somehow sometime somewhere
the hunger
of Daidalos has sunk its inbred roots in ancient leaves
once turned to sunlight and cool breezes
and here the fester blooms
in forms of algae mould and heat and stink entombs
these bloated trees;

this grove is a thousand mouths to feed.

Festering for ten thousand years, this grove
(called Alsos in the tongue-of-old)
has taken on its ingrown face,
a pock-mark decimated place,
and then
as Daidalos begins to sing the sun’s own hymn,
here the Alsos hears and calls upon him.

Somehow somewhere,
says hungry Alsos, I must say something,
lest the grove beside me overgrow me.
So it calls upon its selfish members
to beget in sodomy a messenger,
finds a partridge, stuffs and covers
it in its mould, sends it off
for getting Daidalos;

and Daidalos
upon arrival coughs
himself to Groves into a bog
and thereby swallowed
is the Alsos.


-r

LIFE OF AN HVAC TECHNICIAN

Black goes to orange, orange to brown, yellow to yellow, red to red, blue to blue, brown to black, and white to green. -Unless the predecessor wired heat and cool backwards, which happens to be the case with one out of every five thermostats polled. Then it's orange to yellow and yellow to brown.

Fun, no?


-r

Poetry, History, Daedalus

I stumbled upon a friend who'd stumbled fragments of the myths of Daidalos, Perdix, and Perdix/Talos/Calos, and during morning break I watched a special on the Manhattan Project - the people behind it, the personal objectives, all the beautiful and horrible and subjective motivations behind the fumbling with atomic energy. And the poetic/apocalyptic theologian couldn't pass up General *Groves*, whose name in Greek is Alsos, which corresponds with Operation Alsos (which fearfully sought, like Daidalos with Perdix's saw, to beat Germany to the punch). Thus, I've begun roughly plotting a mythological/poetic portrait of a snapshot in history. This means I'm setting out to do the same thing that just about every other boring apocalyptic theologian has done with fiction since Project Trinity's detonation of the atomic bomb; but the most inviting challenge has always been to do something that has been done many times, and do it well.


DAIDALOS (the prologue)
He stood in a soup-line for ten years,
for ten full years, trying to steer clear
of the flash of mustard-gas in his mind
and the smell of the trenches in August,
the rain and heat and silence and blood mixed with
rotting feet and the flesh and machine-gun-gutted howls of
the quiet portents of the maimed and blistered yet to come.
He stood in a soup-line for ten years,
for ten whole years, applying for art
in Vienna, hoping his twisted heart
and broken mind could find a central
whole in holy pre-ubermensch halls.
He stood in a soup-line for ten years,
for ten miserable years, filing patents
and working on his day-dreamed math,
when

finally
the Call flashed onto his doorstep,
YOUR HELP NEEDED like so many newspapers, his patent
and the oracles clearing the blind-eyed windows of the
circumstantial building, the building, the
building of tanks and gun manufacturing.

He's lived for ten thousand years,
ever become hunger, ever jealousy of his sister's
son with the fish jaw skill-
only, now his chains are broken-
now his hungry hands are almost on dark arts-
now he's almost found the lexicon of the Lamb's book-
now his time is come.

-r

TWO FROM TULSA

TULSAN, TOURIST
I like the smell of Tulsa,
the tan burn and
wrinkled forehead,
the crisp handshakes,
child of farmers and
Native Americans.

They use a certain brand
of shampoo
in the airport
on the carpet;
the old man
with the wrinkled lines
and eczema hands is boarding
to Seattle.


LANDING IN TULSA
There's a graveyard
buzzing by in its
bubble-wrap sanctuary,
butted up against
the supply docks
of a shopping centre.

They had the decency at least
to put the graves out back.
Then again, there've been no complaints
or phone calls from the tenants.


-r

HERE

It's that season of the summer
again, after the age of wander
wears off, having exhausted
the sprinkler systemmes et all the
pool parties; now, we seek for
new cardigans and bring forth
new circadian seasons in their time.

All in good time,
all in good time,
and all these things are great things-
only, now we plan our trips for Paris in the spring
around the time that Here has whispered promises to bring
the beginning of conversion of the soul,
that is, the gritty stationary first dawn of potential whole.

Wander,
wander-
Here's whispering has set our face like flint,
has sent
us wandering,

wandering,
wandering-
swinging energy, centrifugal
force, emits from all,
no centre at the centre, no
centre for the whole.

Wander,
wander,
wandering,
wandering-
in the back of our ear canals
we still scratch at the dust of it all.


-r

HEART-BEAT (AT OLDE WORLD)

Two old men crying memories,
two lovers sparking eyes-
all the sweet smell of earth.

Brook still,
dirt squatting happily-
all the heart-beat.


-r

MALE/FEMALE, WORKPLACE, GOD'S GRACE

To-day's conversation, synoptic translation:

FEMALE - 'You're late to fixing my problem.'
MALE - 'I never said I'd come in the first place. Please calm down, I'm here.'
FEMALE - 'Wow, you're a typically dumb and unfeeling brute, male. I've got a dozen guests who are without air-conditioning.'
MALE - 'Wow, you're a typically irrational squawker, female. My heart-felt desire here is to help you out, and you can't seem to see that.'
FEMALE - 'It doesn't surprise me that you're a selfish aggressor.'
MALE - 'I'm not sure I'm the only one.'
FEMALE - 'You're late to fixing my problem, and I'm pissed.'
MALE - 'I don't know why I'm the target of this inconsiderate abuse, and I'm pissed.'

[A single illuminated light-bulb enters from stage right, floats between the heads of MALE and FEMALE, and simultaneously:]
FEMALE - 'Hmm, wait - you seem like a halfway decent person, if ignorant, and I should give you the benefit of a doubt.'
MALE - 'Hmm, wait - you're stressed out, and I would be too, and I should give you the benefit of a doubt.'

MALE - 'Wow, wait, I remember that my co-worker did say we'd come around 10 o'clock. I'm so sorry.'
FEMALE - 'Wow, wait, you've been trying to be patient with my abuse. I'm so sorry.'
MALE - 'You were being irrational, but I would be, too, given your situation.'
FEMALE - 'You were being insensitive, but I would be, too, given my venting.'
MALE - 'Here, let me get started on the job at hand.'
FEMALE - 'I'll try to be patient.'


-r

BIRTHDAY

Two women sitting at JJ's
and dust passing through the cracks in the pavement
greet me in passing through these parts
otherwise empty and barren, tumbleweeds
overrated but otherwise accurate,
all mechanisms of the ages.

In the cafes, beside gas stations
dust drifts through televisions,
lingers in the two women's posturing,
in the social standings;
dust blows back and forth
in the exchanges courtships and wisdom
of this dead town.

I'm not old, to the contrary,
but this place, this era
is wilted and barren,
and to alarms in this body
I find a young person incongruous
with this dead town.


-r