Devotional ii

It is concluded. Exuent.

    He there alone,
    His finest Son

in that intolerable restraint.

Still in the mind the flags of pain

    flap red, and beat.
    It is complete.

Now comes the thunder, and the rain.

12.24.14

The Fat Lady Sings

When compasses are all aligned

    and needles point to truest north

    we'll celebrate the coming forth

of man's recalibrated mind

and hold our hands and dance with glee

    upon the grave that is the world

    and see the flags of peace unfurled

across the heavens' canopy

in melted colour, vivid, flapping,

    thwicking thwacking in the wind

    and cry with faces drawn and thinned

from lack of sleep and endless clapping—

and when the bells ring in the new

    and ring the old convictions out

    we'll beat the square pegs in a rout

to clear the field for me and you

to build our global village up

    and raise our kids to think like us,

    without the politics and fuss,

and with our overrunning cup

of happiness and health we'll raise

    a toast for uniformity

    and comfortable conformity,

all clean and pressed for salad days,

like tender fishes in a tin,

    we'll thank the godless heavens for

    the loss of poverty and war

and for the blissful state we're in

until the twinkling stars above

    the cattletrucks have waned away

    and all the cows are home to stay

stuffed full of joy and peace and love.

12.16.14 

Smoggy w/ a Chance of Fiery Death

My teeth are swords! My claws are spears! My wings are a hurricane!

the moon in the sky is an eye in a river it sees sliding

by or a skunk in the trunk of a cinnamon tree

he sd, we can't stop here, who's stopping ? Never

tell a tale that it's over or make it so tall that it shivers

and makes of itself an emblem of dynamization

in closed-eyed visions of ere and then and when

when timeternity's chains wheels seeds and gears

grind in black opaque revolve and winds wind revolving

the sky in the river a wing or a tail or a claw or an eye

by its shine and colour you see it's a thing for scrying

he sd, who are you, why are you here and you were trying

to hide but you couldn't because of the bolt of the fire

that from him showed him in all of his decadent glory

who taloned and vast laid waste, breathing, flying

10.19.14

Reynolds and Midway 50

     To cast in my lot with Jekyll, was to die to those appetites which I had long secretly indulged and had of late begun to pamper. To cast it in with Hyde, was to die to a thousand interests and aspirations, and to become, at a blow and forever, despised and friendless. - Robert Louis Stevenson, Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde

   O Jubilee, O Jubilee at last,

says Reynolds, laughing, raising his corded arms

as he goes dancing o'er the limen fast,

   shaking his booty. Midway's softer charms

are flattened in the captain's chair, his silky

satin smoothness squashed. Dante alarms

   him, yet he reads with zest, his milky

skin aprickle as the hairs stand up,

those few that sprout upon his erstwhile bulky

   thighs and calves. With mustard in a cup,

and garlic-tincted pretzels, he continues,

dipping each, with relish. Ransom's grub

   occurs to him and floods his withering sinews—

or, more correctly, his dendrites and neurons—

then sup, then sop. Most literary venues

   revere the master. Upper echelons

convinced Midway that to ignore the poet

for much longer would be the direst of sins,

   which brings us neatly to—I didn't know it

when we started out, you must believe me,

and still I think that Christ the Lord will show it

   at some point hence, unless my wits deceive me—

the topic of sin. As creatures, we are broken,

divided, Janus-faced, since Adam and Eve. Me-

   thinks, he says, to coin a rhyming token,

and there again, también a wee puníto,

that Genesis unto the world hath spoken

   truly and with might, that Adamito

lent his ear to a conning sibillance,

and tainted us; but Eve, remember, she too

   bent an ear, and lost our innocence.

We're in this lot together, sinners and salt

of the earth, and no man hath sole governance

   of body and mind. And yes, who is John Galt?

Good question that, for none of us are he,

and Adam's fault is everybody's fault,

   and no one's, in continuum, for we

are you are me and we are birds of a feather,

until that Kingdom come, triumphantly,

   when Christ returns and we all come together.         †

7.24.14

Reynolds and Midway 49

         This, as I take it, was because all human beings, as we meet them, are    commingled out of good and evil... - Robert Louis Stevenson, Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde

   When Midway finally arrived at fifty

he stood astonished in his shoes, and he wondered.

When he was young, imprisoned in the safety

   of innocent bravado, he had pondered

mortality and black Oblivion—

wherein the absence of his heart's beat thundered

   flatlined, static, eon after eon,

in his ear-conchs—when in a dream he saw,

in a white field with nothing else, a lion;

   but what that vision meant he could not know.

At four or five such things are mysteries,

brief gifts from One whose work inspires awe

   and seemly gratitude. Life's vagaries

would grip him then and shape his forward path

with fresh amazements and a slew of crises.

   At some point Midway lost his native faith,

the clumsy grace with which he walked with God

in childish make-believe, when every breath

   was taken like a vision of a road

that rises on a graded plain between

two mesas where one day two men will ride

   up and through, mysteriously entering in

to legend, when the wind begins to howl

and someone sees them coming through the spin

   of dust, his own eyes peering through a cowl,

his belly gnawing, and his hand like leather,

reaching suddenly to sound a bell

   that brings the brave men of the town together

in loaded conclave: Ears prick, weapons cock,

and wives bolt doors, draw blinds, as if bad weather

   were on the way. Now in a tower a clock-

hand clicks, and with three more the hour

will strike, and madness overtake a flock

   of well-dressed mannequins and evil lour

like clouds, then blood will spill and whores bare skin,

their mouths agape for kisses, loosened hair

   flying like Salome's, corrupt with sin,

who, with sweet swivels of the pelvic carriage,

hypnotize their prey and lick them clean,

   and cast a wicked crooked hex on marriage,

that ancient rite more honored in the breach

than in the observance—but, lest we disparage

   the hen and spare the cock: Both sexes itch,

and rarely only given the lucky seven,

but from the first and ever after, each

   the other's too-familiar. Odd and even,

good and evil, dwell in everyone

and lust is ever present, never driven

   far from faith, and no-one is alone.

7.21.14

Reynolds and Midway 48

                  Like a tiger in the cage
                  we begin to shake with rage - Rob Halford

Yes, of the feet, for fourteen hours I walked

those small square tiles and eyed the chalky grout

where seeds and grains of salt and flour and spice

would gather daily, in that concave space

that made the plane a grid. To get it clean

and keep it clean required the utmost care,

my eyes directed downward, spotting flecks

of contraband packed in the soles of shoes,

the tiny rocks and specks of matter dragged

in from the outside. This is pure defeat:

to do a task and know that one is conquered,

a tedious and nonproductive toil

they pay you for, but not enough. My heart

goes out to every soul who ever worked

in similar futility: To fill

a belly, and to have one's labor turned

to shit, to gratify the basic needs of Man

with little recompense and scant reward.

Reynolds and Midway stand aloof and yawn.

They stretch their wispy arms and laugh at me.

My brow is sheened with sweat, my back aches,

my feet are sore from walking up and down

and to and fro, my shirt and slacks are soiled,

my fingers puckered, over-sanitized,

my pockets filled with scraps of sugar packets,

bingo chips, squashed peas, kernels of corn

I pick up from the floor. Not just for Christ,

but for my own wellbeing, and my keeping,

O, yes, for Him, I kneel and bend my head,

I scrape and gather like a scavenger

among the table-legs and tattered chairs,

wheelchairs, walkers, in the stink of cheap

institutional food, the clink of cup,

saucer and plate, and flimsy silverware,

for love of self, for love of these I serve,

and which is greater, only Christ will judge,

and only Christ can know; for when I speak

I hurt, and when I kneel my spirit aches,

and when I bow I show my spine that once

was crooked, and I hide a crooked heart

that, though it overruns with honest love,

and pounds with joy to honor God and Christ,

is yet a catacomb of jealousy,

a house of loud pulsating pride and hope,

for one who loves not me, an echo hall

of vanity and lust, a red devil

flapping in rage. Screaming in rage,

sorrow, and pain, it beats its cage.

7.12.14

Reynolds and Midway 47

                        "Take it away, Howard." - Woody Allen's Bananas
 
On the road he was on He came to him, and he
fell, as we fell, Reynolds and me (we should say 'I'),
as if down steps or stairs, and woke up wounded.
We felt it first, a deep ache in the side, 
then black and blue, then red, then multicolored.
For hours we lay in the emergency room
with no emergent physical trauma, triaged
fairly to a bright cold room to wait.

We slept and dreamed, and this is what we dreamt:
An Ozymandias, a monument

in some imagined past or future: Desert
civilized, but prehistoric: beginning
times, wound back to start, biblical settings.
We thought of Adam and Eve, of Cain and Abel,

a populous in utero, we thought

of Noah and his kin, but not the Flood.
 

Antedeluvian, the land was young

and ripe for husbandry,    yet not rife

with throngd humanity. Entwined with these

dream thoughts, or visions, were impossible

absurdities, my chair a captain's chair,

I had the conn, commanded with my clicks,

as ages happend past my ogling eyes.

Spirk at my hand and I a James T. Cock,
 

cook of the walk and riler of the roost,

an i am i, faux tetragrammaton

in silly miniature, a puppeteer

of myriads of poor Pinocchios

(his voice is dead for three days as I write)

and meaty marionettes who span the globe

to bring the constant variety of sport—

the thrill of victory,    andthe     agon

7.11.14

In Response to a Thread at the Sphere

              w apologies to Christ & RLS


Good and godless:
Both have spoken.
No-one's spotless.
Man is broken.

Dr Jeckyll
Mr Hyde
Who is outside?
Who's inside?

I have never
read the book.
I should really
take a look.

I am weak
and Christ is strong.
Turn your cheek
and sing along.

7.4.14

Reynolds and Midway 46

          KING

          Thanks, Rosencrantz and gentle Guildenstern.

          QUEEN

          Thanks, Guildenstern and gentle Rosencrantz.

"Sie ist der hellste Stern von allen, hier

kommt die Sonne..." hier I sit again—

tambien y Also, not as in as well,

but so , or thus, as in Herr Nietzsche's Buch

and Strauss's tondichtung, and not that Strauss

who made The Blue Danube, but Richard, he

who hymnd w his triumphant brass and chords

the Cosmos ere that cinematic wizard

Kubrick borrowd them and also made

those notes Eternal— Sing, then, muse of song,

Apollo, he whose son usurped the reins

and drove the sun across the vaulted dome

that spans the Earth, like Icarus, whose father

watchd him fashion wings: both vainly fell

for their ambition, like that fiend of old,

the brightest angel Lucifer, by Milton

glorified who told in his 12 books

of that archangel's ancient hate and fall

with his one third the populous of Heaven,

who warrd with monumental engines, strove

with futile energy and negative power

against the greater Seraphim and hosts

immeasurable, when One born in the Light

and coeternal with the Lord enthroned,

greater than Michael, mightiest of angels,

Him to be brought low and born of woman

in Bethlehem, that tender Nazarene

Who wanderd weakend in the flesh of men,

constraind to poverty and mildest temper,

Who, puissant on high and formed of might,

drove Satan and his hosts to depths of woe

and dark regret: Like that, he sd, and I:

There is a painting of young Phaethon

downtumbling from the sky, by Johann Liss,

and flabby bodies, nigh on corpulent,

watching in terror and astonishment.

Better the scene envisiond by Brueghel

and later immortalized by Wystan Hugh,

of Icarus, an object in the distance;

better that Rosencrantz and Guildenstern

should move to center stage and Hamlet brood

alone in wafty castle corridors.

But wherefor, is the question Reynolds puts,

and Midway: Few get saccharine violins

and windy music as the credits roll,

as teary-eyed invigorated viewers

rise and, clutching empty popcorn boxes,

walk the graded carpet to the square

of light that takes them back under the sun

and to the ordinary. Many pine

and everything goes foul; and every day

a question forms its curved, quizzical mark

in that Platonic plane where Absolutes

exist unquestionably and absolutely,

of that material of which the World

is made, or should we say, is in the making,

the Light, the Waters, and the Firmament,

and all that creepeth on the field One made

Who knows the field and Is its Knower, One

Who sees the salamander in the ground

beneath the stones we overturnd, the cool

wet soil where wiggld worms, where went

the multipedald centipede and ant,

Also observed and numberd, as the hairs

upon our heads, so warnd the lamblike Christ

Who was His Father's embassy on Earth—

O Word made flesh, Who also sees the scales

of fish flash in the Waters, and the spume

of whales, Who walkd the lake of Galilee,

and in the garden of Gethsemane

cried on the Father, Abba, Adonai,

and chastend Peter, who denied him thrice,

and, kissd by Judas, went to pay the price

of our salvation, bound, a criminal,

spat on and scourgd. O Lord, my Saviour, Christ,

let me be chastend also, make me love

all those that hate me, let me speak of them

who in this minute, while my fingers move,

are trappd in desperation's snares, whose hearts

have not Thee, who are in despair, whom hope

has left, who wear the woven shoes of Sorrow,

who go w soundless and w sudden feet

and over Goldengrove unleaving mourn

and live in darkness. Grant these, Lord, Thy light

and gentle hand, in Thee reborn.

7.2.14

Reynolds and Midway 45

    We must thus begin the chapter on the deceptive powers. Man is only a subject full of error, natural and ineffaceable, without grace. Nothing shows him the truth. Everything deceives him. - Blaise Pascal, Penseés.

Heigh Ho! let's go, hallooed the harried hare

that jumpd out on that road that we were on

all thinking angle, triangle, and square—

while listening to a devilish antiphon—

and diagrams, then something in the air

like lines along the blue dome caught my head

criss-crossing white like contrails or strung cloud

like butter dribbld over too much bread.

A dry loaf ? Reynolds whisperd, and a loud

array of stanzas we had often read

clamord | But let us think of Julian,

for we had spoke of Ocquonoctua,

now lost, sd Midway, in the merest span

of that Eternity whose wink brings awe

to us in Time who all were ancient whan

our Mother Christ had held us to His breast

before Mary had had the counsel of

that angel who had told in secretest

comforting words that she wld rise w love

and thicken with the Father's child. Unrest

had left her spirit then. Another angle,

sd Reynolds, as the creature made it safe

and hoppd over the curb, of our triangle.

Scoffingly? We cannot here vouchsafe

for one whose ear may hear another angel.

6.25.14

Nota 4

Christ came to put an end to the past.

 - Savatie 47° 0′ 0″ N, 28° 55′ 0″ E

Reynolds and Midway 44

                                         for Gavin Douglas in Heaven

The durris and the windois all war breddit

With massie gold, quhairof the fynes scheddit.

With birneist euir baith Palace and towris

War theikit weill, maist craftelie that cled it,

For sa the quhitlie blanschit bone ouirspred it,

Midlit with gold anamalit all colouris,

Importurait of birdis and sweit flouris,

Curious knottis, and mony hie deuise,

Quhilks to behald war perfite paradise.

sd Reynolds, quoting from his pate as we

went wambling headlong in our revery

and reverént revéls, as Ian croond it,

not to ape good Father Hopkins, he

of that sprung rhythm, wich was taught to me

in mony a buik whose leaves instilléd glee

when I o'erturnd them w indéx and thumb

whan we were yonge and narrow, quhite and dumb,

but inky as a monk in a scriptorium.

Now what became of William's telling query

minds that grok in yrs not distant very,

wich to invert beyond what we'd expect,

and far beyond the good and necessary,

is but to lovely mimick one whose merry

lines in Yoda-speak made readers wary

and eyeballs tried and true and likewise weary

if not plain angry at such craft suspéct,

wich Dickey thoght, we thoght in retrospect,

but not w/o respect. Now w respect

to Bawby, wich is hér pronunciation,

who came from nigh on Pittsburgh there in Penn's

sylvania , where they tunneld through the mts,

as you can see when driving thro' the nation,

leastways that region [insert rime: think fountains,

think counting, think of Emmet who'd say countins]

close by those famous chocolate factories

whose smells were wafted sweetly on each breeze

that cloyingly wended. Bawby's skin is pale,

his Boddie° slender as a girl's, his wristes

narrow, knuckld bigly, but his fistes

never bunch to strike. He wld not wail

Medieval style on maiden nor on mail,

nor can he think a thoght that pugilistes

think when in a ring w other fighters

throwing hands like mony dicky blighters

taking waspies in the welkin.  Stale

the air of Bawby's close and small apartment,

wich May did open up when she wld visit—

she that she who hails from Pennsylvania,

whom we've written on above [revisit

stanza iv.] and have renamed w love,

whose eyes were ever on the stars above

the jagged peaks of brown and stunted hills

in something of a sort of astromania

(that of the astrological department,

not astronomy), whose cherry lips

did light on his that starry starry knight

when he did ope his mouth and shyly askd her:

May I kiss you , and she said, you may ,

wich isn't why I turnd her into May,

tho' you may think it. Such allowance taskd her

hardly, given God's Will to obey,

and man's; but none wld her deep love eclipse

come hell, highwater, or Apocalypse.

°for you, John, & thx.

- 6.18.14

Emmett Reckins The Road to Reality

When I was yonge some things were different than.

Wich is to say that I'm a different man

than who—or is it whom, or either or?—

I was befor. I herd that heretofore,

that God had up and made us out of stuff.

What stuff that is, I guest He had enough

to make a ball, and loads of other balls

Wich all strung up made His celestial halls

as bright as any diety could wish.

Let there be light, He said, and then some fish,

plus other varmints, sprang upon the earth,

wich was of vastitude and mighty girth

that some called Mother then, and do today,

but by some fancy name thats spelt this way:

Gaia. I learnt that spelling off of Bing,

wich is a kind of dictionary thing

like Yahoo, wich was long befor the age

of Goooooogle [note I splat there on the page,

like on my monitor, to many o's?

Looks kind of like a bowl of cheerios!]

See how I wandered off? My Pa once tolt me,

Emmett, pay attention!  Sure, he'd scolt me,

but I've a neck and shoulder stiff as any,

and I kin take a licking. I've had many

a boxing on the ear, plus a good whack

upon the nether part of this hear back,

as well as many a lashing by the tonge,

wich sometimes more than wallops often stung.

What I am on about is only that

the child is father of the man. Now what

that means is really simple. Just ask Wordsworth,

A poet who could tell you what a word's worth—

I know, I know! I stolt that rhyme, leastways

I think I might of. Might have?  Anyways,

the thing is, when your older, than you see

another version of Reality,

wich Roger Penrose wrote a book upon,

wich I in turn reviewed on Amazon.

I bougt it at St. Vinny's hear in town.

I mean that book of Roger's, who's no clown,

but is a mathematician and a physicist...

Hot dang!    The End.   [No rhymes for physicist.]

6.12.14