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