LOVE SONG (poem)

So, I'm never here anymore. I'm over at Wordpress - same screenname: anaxionus.wordpress.com. For awhile it looked like I was going to give up writing, but now I'm back at it.

Some of those whose blogs I read are still on Xanga and here, so every so often I'll log onto Xanga to copy a post from the 'main' blog; Blogger has gotten left out so many times.

I'm happily in seminary. Despite my general aversion to writing in the last year or so, the 'Francis de Sales' part of me (i.e. confirmation name and patron) and my schoolwork - getting those thoughts pumping - have been prevailing. Here's something I jotted last night, part of a slowly accruing pile of poems I hope to set mosaic-style in a collection regarding time, seasons, distraction vs. sacrament, vanity vs. meaning/purpose; this piece will be something like the introduction, I think.

LOVE SONG

In this bed you laid me, my love, in your perfect garden
between your peas and dry petunias; here, you have laid me gently
to the bottom and so forgotten me. Snow springs, and the roots harden
and proceed; barks shiver down to tubers, and your garden parties
remind you of the autumn before the last spring
and what those silly blackbirds should have been singing.

Not long ago you laid a soul nearby, who from here
I hear was much my better; here, we shall have years to ponder
how many souls lie at our feet or heads in these cold mornings,
not among ourselves but to ourselves, only listening.

Under here, I sometimes hear a woman wailing
and awake to mourners of those forsaking houses, weeping,
who are often paid not least at the garden parties
to preen their hair in their songs of startings.

In this tomb you laid me here, my love, in the garden.
Daylight dwindles in these cold leaves, ever in this snow season,
with the weepers seeking to make a something of each good intending.
We who die here may arise here, but blooming
seasons later for the orphans you're begetting.

-a

HE WHO HAS AT LEAST AN EAR LEFT

Puddles glint on the edge of night tattling
on the sprinkler systemmes grinning, concrete tissues
directing the excess from the temple to
the streets, excuse me excuse
me people coming through.

Somewhere above the drains rattling
sits the navel and below that the tohu
and the bohu below our grins and ginseng tea
gushing birth-control to tables and seas
where Mr. Fishy isn't feeling so great

nor himself. I tend my own little garden, growing
vegetables for my neighbours, no longer
concerned with my own self.
Friend, resist the tap-water.


-r

ANATHEMA SIT

Not a prick of blood or drop,
not an iron-maiden or thumb-screw-
in this inquisition the only labelled pricks
are the crazy Bonifaces burning books
evoking the responsorial dropped:
r.'SCREW YOU.' with blessed venom.
That'll do the trick.

Fragmented in the heart in the head
a zoo of virtues is loosed upon the world
feasting in love-feasts upon each other,
charity and truth juxtaposed. Justice
prickles to war-cries,
foaming at big mouths and belching,
humility having not been seen for years.
They not we will silence heretics.



-r

MYSTICAL EXPERIENCE

Had one recently. Have had one similar to it in the past, involving a decision to study theology instead of pursuing a career in graphic-design and/or marketing. I asked a few priests about these experiences, and they said it appears to be some form of 'contemplative prayer' experience.

In utter disregard for the prayer times in which I initiated the praying, this experience came upon me, not being consciously invited; I had a distinct feeling of something 'creeping up on me' of its own accord. What followed I can't really explain, other than it taking on some form of prayer/meditation for an extended period of time. Afterward the only way I can articulate it - not toward the actual 'It', so to speak, but with the self-referential, creaturely images to which we are often limited - is with the human self as a basin of water, the surface of which not able to be pierced by human vision. But in 'looking into the face of God' and beholding His goodness (i.e., contemplation), I could perceive ripples on the surface of myself, indicating Someone at work underneath the surface. At the end of the situation, I felt as though many things had been done, though what, I couldn't (and can't) really address clearly.

There were and are immediate and tangible side-effects, however. I could perceive things untwisted and untangled, though the articulation of what these 'things' are is not completely understood or understandable. I had been wondering about vocation, about various decisions, etc. - none of which were directly addressed in this experience - but the immediate question of whether or not I should go to CUA in the Spring is answered. An over-abundant Reality of patience has been hovering over and in me, whereas before (as was revealed) I have been being far too impatient. Even as I'd expressed to friends recently, 'I'm just ready to get started, to begin.' -whatever that's supposed to mean. I didn't hear a voice at all in this experience, but the effect of the experience anchored a notion deep inside me: Begin - begin what? What is a beginning? You have begun, even as you are beginning. You have people around you whom you can serve, you have debts you can pay. You have begun, even as you are beginning now.

This sort of experience shouldn't surprise a biblical theologian. God speaks when and as He wishes, about whatever He wishes, to whom He wishes; He is and will be who He is and will be. And what He 'revealed' to me isn't so much a revelation; it's an experience which left a simple decision about a next step: don't go to CUA this Spring. That has been clear enough.

As has been articulated on several occasions in my circles of friends, I see nothing in Church history or the history depicted in Sacred Scripture which indicates we should be feverishly running around trying to work up mystical experiences. Our Lord Jesus Christ actually remarks that such seeking is the sign of an 'adulterous' and 'faithless' generation. Partaking in the Sacraments is a mystical experience, one could argue the *most* mystical experience most of us will experience, embodying the over-abundant graces necessary for entering heaven - but typically that isn't 'exciting' enough for our fantastic and over-burdening/presumptuous expectations that we put on God. We want the flutters. Instead, we would do well to be prayerful, and meditate on God, and seek to do His [moral] will. That's difficult enough a task - one that might, incidentally, take a lifetime - without trying to have existentially-charged mystical experiences. However, with that caution and disclaimer lodged, when we are prayerful and meditating on God, we shouldn't be surprised if God decides to reveal Himself even in existentially-charged ways.

-r

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

'It was late at night and we were secretly baptizing a baby that had been brought along by Omatsu and two men belonging to the Tossama. It was our first baptism since coming to Japan, and of course we had no candles nor music in our little hut - the only instrument for the ceremony was a broken little peasants' cup which we used for holy water. But it was more touching than the liturgy of any cathedral to see that poor little hut with the baby crying and Omatsu soothing it while one of the men stood on guard outside. I thrilled with joy as I listened to the solemn voice of Garrpe as he recited the baptismal prayers. This is a happiness that only a missionary priest in a foreign land can relish. As the water flowed over its forehead the baby wrinkled its face and yelled aloud. Its head was tiny; its eyes were narrow, this was already a peasant face that would in time grow up like its parents and grandparents to eke out a miserable existence face to face with the black sea in this cramped and desolate land; it, too, would live like a beast, and like a beast it would die. But Christ did not die for the good and beautiful. It is easy enough to die for the good and beautiful; the hard thing is to die for the miserable and corrupt - this is the realization that came home to me acutely at that time.'

-From /Silence/, by Shusaku Endo (trans. William Johnston. New York: Taplinger Publishing Co. 1969.)

BACKROADS ARE OFTEN THE WAY TO HEAVEN

So I come to understand how hilariously meagre my debts are. Most persons seeking 'loan-forgiveness' for religious vocation do not owe family members a few thousand dollars. And yet in this situation, I'm ironically disadvantaged - like the reverse of seeking to bag groceries with a PhD on your resume - because the loans are all undocumented. Any vocational decision, particularly something like the monastic life, takes time in the lifestyle to 'succeed' - 'if the just man is barely saved', and so forth; and hesitance can equate to severe stumbling blocks later. Yet I may not have a choice but wait, and wait, and wait. Again, for the thousandth time, I'm at a crossroads in life in which it seems the route to meaningful-service/heaven - or, rather, what is perhaps my 'on-ramp' onto the highway - is blocked off due to my own decisions or other mitigating circumstances.

But it's encouraging to remember that Jesus Christ our Lord, our example, in the Gospel of St. Luke set His face 'like flint' toward Jerusalem, heading firmly in that direction - and then proceeded to be 'distracted' for the course of several chapters, healing sick people and helping the despondent. The 'distractions' were part of God's Revelation and His will. In this small reflection of our Saviour's journey, I see what seems to be a viable road for me, but my vision is limited; and along the long hard row ahead for me to hoe is probably some way in which I can serve Him meaningfully. The road (as the cliche goes) seems to be a part of the destination.


-r

SLOWLY, ROME GLOWS

Slowly, Rome glows
and while alight
we knock on our neighbours' doors
easing them all into breezeways
away from the danger.

In tenements
two-ply wide
they've berated the
edicts, this
flayed waste
of time ticking
next-door where one whore
reads her theses
in horoscopes;

next-door to her come more
edicts, feverish scholars
reading into these two books:
Hydrolistics, and Fire-
hydrant Maintenance and
Operation, greyed
by fire tides, sounds
of the whore's horoscope
exegesis.

We've no need for these
scholars hurry hurry hurried
fire licks and quick smiles
through the two-
ply dry-
wall.


-r

Excerpt from Part III of Novel

Monday morning was a blinding white, a 45-degree-angled snowfield shooting straight into the sun. Blinding white - for the first time in a year-and-a-half, something moved me. It wasn't quite the old sense of wonder, as I'd known it; maybe it was wonder, but there was something new to it and not quite put together yet. I still felt tired in the bones. Strange old disjointed memories flickered in the back of my skull. Not quite put together yet. 'Sunburn in November' - the words came to mind, and I couldn't remember where I'd heard or read it.

'Are ya gonna stand there daydreaming all morning, Professor, or are ya gonna pass me the torch up here?'

Monday morning was a blinding white tile; I knew I'd be seeing purple upon climbing down from the roof - 'snow-blindness in August' was more like it. Already drenched in sweat, I braced for the weight of the soldering torch and climbed toward my co-worker's operation table. He sat on the edge of the white snowfield with legs dangling over a flatter surface, and he had already thoroughly gutted the 20-tonne air-conditioning unit in front of him.

He dropped the new compressor into position; he shook his head in disgust, 'College.' (I braced for his occasional liturgy) 'Yaknow, it's like I always say . . . ' (and to his credit he did always say it) '. . . too much education makes ya ign'rant.'

I had nothing to offer him - I never did, for such liturgy - and suddenly remembered the fictional images of Dr. Osterman reassembling himself from the sub-atomic level upward, fierce, analytical, self-reliant - 'sunburn in November.' That's where I'd seen it.

'Always lookin' down at the ground, stoppin', holdin' all us normal people up.' He dropped a screw into a compressor mount, 'Yaknow, I'd an ex-wife once - my first one - who had multiple doct'rates and master's degrees. She didn't have a lick of sense. Hand me the ratchet - no, no, the three-quarter-inch.' He shook his head again and dropped another screw into place, 'College.'

That morning in the meeting in the break-room, someone had turned the television onto the History Channel, and there was a show about some mediaeval scandal or another. Pointing at the screen with a smug look on his face, Bill postured, 'See, that's how the Catholics baptized, and that's how they baptized when I was growin' up, and that's how they still baptize: a little splash here and there.' He'd shaken his head as he always did, a sudden hair-pin but purposeful, 'See, I'm surprised after all that fancy studyin' the Bible at college that you didn't become more of a man like myself. I don't see how someone studies the Bible - really studies it - and still's lookin' into those Cattolics.' I was silent then as I always was.

Halfway through the soldering, Bill got a chirp on his work-phone; he was called down to the office. I sensed a storm coming. I was silent as I always was.

To say he seemed nervous would be an understatement, 'You got this now?'

'Yeah,' I said.

'Ya sure?'

'I got this. I've done it before.'

He nodded dubiously, 'Okay. Be right back. Don't screw it up, Professor.'

I nodded and got to work. The heat from the torch added an easy twenty degrees to the already smoldering environment of the roof. The flame and solder and copper and I had been brothers for several months now; that morning, my sweat had reached the point of a cool and constant film coating every fibre of me.

9:30 rolled around - break-time - and Bill still hadn't returned from the office. I sensed a storm. Throat-skin blistering and itching in the salt of my sweat, I enjoyed the notion of climbing down from the roof and going into the air-conditioned building below my feet; but for now I was transfixed: the roof had tried and seduced me.

The white snowfield fell away as I dropped down onto the flat inner roof, where the A/C units and corresponding equipment sat. It struck me as a distant memory, the rocks crunching under my feet, the desolation of tar, the shimmering heat off the flat waste. I had returned to Red Rock, if only a little piece of it, a doorway, an ikon.

After the morning break, before I'd finished soldering, my boss's boss chirped me to come down to the office. There, they told me Bill had been fired due to failing the drug-test they'd administered a week ago; I noticed the disembodied phone, keys, and clipboard lying off to the side of the desk like so much of a reposing corpse politely-enough covered.

Upon finishing the soldering job, I flushed with nitrogen, vacuumed the line, and filled with refrigerant. I was clock-work and efficient and generally in a good mood that Monday. The image of Dr. Osterman had lodged in my mind, the one of him spread-armed and hovering: sunburn in November. He had been taken apart to nothingness; he had persisted; he had lingered in the nether regions of the universe trying and trying to rebuild himself. He rebuilt himself.

I knew it was all fictional and furthermore bullshit. By then, of course, I'd long since known that there are some things sheer will-power can't fix. Hell, okay, most things. But you can't help what images lodge in your brain.

Bill called me a week later; I wished him the best and got back to work.



-r

NEAR SCARRITT-BENNETT AT NIGHT

Moist the tree boughs dangle
laden on the steam
cicada frog croaks,
and old oaks enshrouded lay
the cornerstone for summer,
crickets singing one last hymn
at supper.


-r

VOCA (or, DESERT OF HOPE)

In the Weary Land
slow-beaten by sun and
hedged betwixt burnt twigs and
shimmers: love normalcy 'choice'
blister twist crackle as destiny of some other regions;

lips cracked, all reasons legion,
amid boiling blood and
the burning sand we here hope for the Voice
from some ancient Promised Land.

The Voice - Vox, Voca, Vocis -
is He
here? does He ever
come by here anymore?
can You hear us, hear me?

O come let us reason; O please come
to me as You've come to some,
O Gentle Breeze, O Laughter; but how
terrible You come to this region, how
terrifying these my intended brothers,
O Voice-Who-comes-in-the-burning-scrub.


-r

SURELY

At the airport a
woman waits for a
someone, The Someone, grey
eyes waiting; we all faceless pass
her expectant brow, and
the sparks shoot from her
eyes to her long-awaited lover

-licking asides elsewhere, I'm ever
eternal told by others
that I'm a cistern
of sweet waters
able and dependable, and so
endless praise and cold
lonely spaces translate: you're stock photos,
an excellent extra, priceless stand-in,
worth a little a little open,
a good swig for the open
road while we all wait at airports
for our lovers.


-r

KUNIKOS (reflections on numerous recent comments)

Brother Bernard
of the Order
of the Benedict,
in the crypt
he is
lighting candles
and praying for the souls
of all men,
one gland in an organ,
one small mystic in
one Mystical Reality.

Meanwhile back
at humble ranch
called the Holy Hostel
of the Goddess Beauty
in old-new cacophonic City
in the ancient-future near-East,
from one meek tower
minnaret hard-cast citadel peering down
quite ugly on
Brother Bernard
comes the edict:
'You, sir,
'are irrelevant.'

Sister Frances
in the City
wonders at the
hymn she's hearing
from the Hostel:
'I'm bringing home a baby
'bumblebee,
'won't my Mommy . . .?
'I'm bringing home a baby . . .'

Father Athanasius
opens thick oak doors to these
ancient kuniks, but these
recent smaller breeds have disavowed
the arbitrary orders
of Chihuahan border,
nipping at his heels
in all humility,
beauty, and complexity;
he meanwhile has
a Mass
to get to.

'I'm squishing up my baby
'bumblebee,
'won't my mommy be so proud of me?
'I'm squishing up my baby
'bumble-bee . . .'


-r