Recent Poetry

The Saints of Discontent

There comes a person now and then

Whose malice fairly cries to heaven,

Whose animosity’s a ten

Upon a scale of one to seven.

Who’ll never have a word to say

That won’t somehow demoralize,

Whose painful presence drives away

Who’d wish them happy otherwise,

Who make of life a living hell

For every woman, child, or bloke,

And for their sorry selves as well,

Until their lives go up in smoke.

When they approach, we run away

(Unless they're mother, boss, or child

And thus we can’t). But then one day

I learned their secret. Then I smiled:

These are, in fact, a breed kenotic,

Who cast their good name to the void,

To make themselves as idiotic

And save their fellow humanoid.

They’ve made a secret vow, you see,

To disregard their reputation,

To seem as spiteful as can be,

And bathe the world in aggravation,

Just to give the rest of us

A chance to see the fruits of hate,

The outcome of such animus--

To save us all from such a fate.

When they die they float above

This world of suffering in the air

From where their wise and selfless love,

Like syrup, flows down everywhere.

When we perceive their stratagem,

With deference we genuflect,

With heaps of gratitude toward them,

Which they regard but don’t expect.

Lost in the Stars

(after Kurt Weill & Maxwell Anderson…)

There’s an up and a down

To the Milky Way, as I imagine it:

A right and left, a north and south,

Based, amusingly, on the coordinates

Of this body of mine, sitting, as it is,

On a log by a Berkshire brook,

On this particular planet.

As it turns out, admitting

The emptiness of those conventions--

Of one place in relation to another place

Or of this moment in relation to any other--

Is all it takes to slip gently through

The gate of not-knowing’s blessing.

A salamander slips gently over

A rock, slithering blessedly 

From one place to another,

Lost, with me, in the stars.

Right Glory

Soon after crossing

The threshold,

I had a dream:

I find myself in a church

With a ceiling so low

That standing is impossible.

One can only kneel.

This nighttime vision

Recurred through the years,

The edifice morphing

From Alaskan village funkiness

To Byzantine glory and back again,

With the persistence of

A kind father waiting for his

Son to finally get something.

And I came to wonder

If that image was a sign of

The institution’s inadequacy

Or rather an instruction to humility--

Akin to the way the low doorway

Of a Japanese tea house

requires you to bend down

In order to enter it.

And that nothing was missing at all.

It became clear
Only as I stood at the threshold

On my way out:

Both were true.

I proceeded down the steps and

On to the street, the faint aroma

Of incense clinging to my shirt.

Re Jesus

That prayer he taught before he let

His hearers blithely wander off

Would later be to music set

By Mr. Rimsky-Korsakov.

The instrument so hard and cruel

His tortured body did bedeck,

Would be adorned with gold and jewels

And worn around a billion necks.

His radically kenotic act

Would later on become the theme

Of art, objective and abstract,

And of careers in academe.

Adventures of God #2:

On the Quadrangle

Sparrows sang as he made his way

Across campus, and hawthornes

Bloomed in gratitude as

He passed two sophomores

Named Kevin so fiercely engaged

In a discussion over his existence

That they didn’t even notice

Him come up behind them,

Set down his book bag,

And bend a divine ear.

“’He’s a remnant of tribal animism,”

Said Kevin 1, “A projection of one’s ego

Or one’s parents, an un-outgrown Big Imaginary Friend. 

For proof, imagine a category beyond ‘being’

And you’ll see this Supreme Being is left behind

With all the rest of the beings.”

“It’s that beyond-category ‘he’ expresses,”

Countered Kevin 2 . “Perhaps once a tribal diety

Or parental projection, yeah, but when those

Are exposed and discarded, a way of referring

To what can’t be referred to.”

“So why ‘refer’ at all?” demanded 1.

“So you and I can discuss the matter at all!”

2 exclaimed, only then noticing that they

Were being observed.

“I thank you sincerely,” God said. “You’ve both

Spoken well.  as far as speaking goes.”

And putting his palms together and bowing deeply,

He picked up his pack and departed, hoping

Not to be late for his ten AM class.

 “Who the fuck’s he think he is?” asked 2.