New Poetry, September 2014

Makyō

Beware the angel

Who arrives to
Inform you of
God’s will, if
That will requires
You to move to
Cleveland next month
In order to accomplish
The important work
For which you were born.

Welcome the angel

Who arrives to
Inform you of
God’s will, if
That will requires
You to let
Honesty and kindness
Guide your actions.

But don’t let this
Heavenly apparition
Go to your head.
You were pretty stupid
To need it.

Exercise #2

Imagine that everyone in the world

Has conspired together
To educate you;

That none of their sins against you, whether petty
Annoyances or heartless cruelties,
Was ever unconsidered.

But that they met together while you were asleep,
Sacrificing their own much-needed rest

To decide among them

Who would be next to suffer for you—by going against

His nature and blighting his own reputation—
To use unkindness skillfully,

In an effort to nudge you aware of the neuroses you’d have been

Blind to if they hadn’t revealed them to you,
At great personal expense.

Collectively, patiently, they were willing to be seen as foolish,

Selfish, thoughtless, unkind, for no other reason
Than to enable you to see

Your foolishness, selfishness, thoughtlessness, unkindness.

And by the time this imaginative exercise
Has had its effect, you’ll understand

That it wasn’t an exercise at all, you weren’t imagining it,

And that the gratitude you owe them is as real as love.
Though they’ll look away shyly as you offer it back to them.

Post-Ascension

The instant he was gone from view
Two Christs emerged within our mind,
Because that’s what we humans do.
It is the habit of our kind.

One wore his weakness like a veil

Beneath which, tense with indignation,
He intended to prevail
O’er his profligate creation.

The other, quiet, less athletic--

Not the type for God’s anoint--
Seemed suspiciously pathetic.
But his weakness was the point.

The former rises as a hero

For whom armies are deployed.
The latter’s something  less than zero,
But he’ll never be destroyed.

Netflix Login Prayer

May I have the joie de vivre
Of Stanwyck in The Lady Eve,
And--unlike for the folks you’ll see
In Les Enfants du Paradis--
May my love be well requited.
May I never be short-sighted.
May I question everything
Like Töre in The Virgin Spring.
And may I tread the straight-and-narrow
Imitating Mia Farrow
When repentance in her grows
Late in Broadway Danny Rose.

And may each being in my view

Seem so absolutely marvy
That I’ll love them through and through
Like Jimmy Stewart did in Harvey.