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