Startled by Existence

Sept. ii (Sept 12/13-01)

A totally inadequate poem

From the Journals of the Kirk--Why do I take pictures 1985:

So, here we have it. I want to share with you a world. I want to tell you that the world is at once an unapproachable glory, the outlands of heaven in our midst. I want to tell you that the world is alive with ongoing miracle and that the trees are like hard seaweed on the bottom of the Numa Sea . (Where did that come from?) I want too, to tell you that the thing is broken, the world has veered, and the code has been rewritten. I want you to sell your car or house, Finally, I want them to tear down the World Trade Centers… or better yet, convert them into apartments for the poor, or if not that, build some huge barn between them and make them into the front spires of a very grand cathedral.

I’ll admit,

this thought isn’t safe

or a thing I say too loud (but hear me out.)

 

I have seen them with a foreign eye

like turrets on a godless-church,

silvereen, and soaring high

But missing the cathedral --

 

Testimonies to the arrogance of man

against every rule of nature,

TALL with vertigo and force,

streaming upward like

welded boxcars --

Two silver fists

in the face of God:

Like spikes in a rotted apple.

 

 

But today, I weep

and if you will, let me

with imagination

bleed.

 

Bleed for pagans

and believers,

the bearded business men, the

brokers and the broken,

the silent mimes and firemen,

sisters, daughters, mothers, fathers, and

these ever-feuding sons of Abraham --

 

Indeed,

Father Abraham

has many sons --

those who walk in faith and seek

a city

made by God;

But don't we weep to see

Faith twisted into obscene forms.

 

---

Today,

I see with different eyes,

and I repent .. for wearing monocles.

 

Could it be

that a THING might be

MORE

than any ONE thing

at once?

 

Today, I see what were

twin trumpets,

Blasting out a tune to

to the majesty of man.

 

I see

two trees

mightier than redwoods,

brushing stars

and brushed

in lemon light

like a sky-house hotel

for Leprechauns.

 

I see

mighty rivers decked

in vivid commerce;

Old-world villages

replete with jugglers and silk –

boats on ropes whizzing up the ditches

laden with exotic wares from foreign lands

like some grand-market

tipped upward.

 

I see twin

Towers, like thin lanes of light,

Bars of gold, beacons on the rim --

shining out a tale of

industry and might

and incomprehensible blessing --

leading a parade.

 

I see within,

and on each floor

(stacked above each other like coins)

a little town from Arkansas

complete

with hatted men

and football teams,

the smiling bells (now wearing jeans)

and the bee-hive ladies yakking

at the hair salon.

 

I see faith in the 24the century.

 

Indeed,

We saw a universe

with fifty-thousand centers

anchored in a common block.

 

We heard the twine of beating hearts

like a ten-thousand drums, and then

the lull,

and now, the tortured

patter of the few,

 

And we felt within ourselves

the stuff of horror.

 

Veins, and brains

and towers like slit arteries

collapsing into bloody dust

before our eyes.

 

..

They say, on the radio today

that this is a different country.

And we believe it.

We will never feel the same.

We are all new Yorkers, wearing black.

 

***

 

Once there were two towers

Tall as titans

Full of grace

She wore the moon within her hair,

He wore the sun upon his face,

and they walked with the I-AM

in the garden

without shame.

Then some devil of a serpent

slashed the air,

One tower fell, and then…

 

 

 

 

9/18/01

Lord

Don’t hear me wrong:

But how do You hold humming birds

aloft, or blow

feathered clouds

across the azure skies –

Even as the panther pounces

Even as a baby bounces – in his little bounce machine

Even as -- 200 feet of flying tube

frays into

a deafening array

of steel and boiled blood?

Again

And again,

And again.

 

I would have thought

the Universe should flicker

Like a drain upon the sun,

I would have thought the birds would drop

like tar from the sky –

I would have thought to hear each

voice,

lag behind the mouth with tape d e l a y.

And,

I shouldn’t have been shaken

if electrons died.

 

But Lord

this ability of yours

the hear one mother giving birth

with joy,

then watch

another broken in a smash of glass and heat

600 mph to 2, in a blink

 

Is break-

ing me.

I know this feeling can’t be new,

 

Moms have pulled their sons

by the tons from ovens, cars, and rivers

or this foul aftermath of war ..

And yet the flowers bloom.

And lovers kiss a world away,

in the heat of your blessing.

 

And stupid children laugh.

 

I have played these games before.

Once there were too many stars for my local God.

Ten-thousand stars is one thing, but what about ten billion

in my cluster, with some billion clusters more.

 

I doubted You, but found

You grew bigger than my doubts,

And I swooned beneath the breadth of Your enormity.

But Lord, do you mean to stretch

my mind, till there is nothing left to stretch?

 

I like my lines of pleasure, clean

against the evil world –

But they are swirled and jabbed and glued

and I must close down now

Or find You bigger still, till

I have no place

left to hold You …

 

So will you please hold me?

 

 

 

You’re like some great dead planet

Scarred by rifts, ruts and cracks, from all the mighty collisions

And knives in your back, still there’s ambrosia on you surface

And manna for the hungry, food for the beggar

the poor for your money…

There is argon and neon and fire in your hair.

Your blood is methane and ammonia

Your soul is tumult and despair

Still you will be brilliant, You will be brilliant

A reflection of the sun above

You will be brilliant, you will be brilliant,

Predestined for the sweet work of love

_{(Lyrics to one of the top ten songs in the history of the Universe; Sweet Work of Love – Terry Taylor}

They say

the Titan woman sleeps ---

albeit nervous

nearing dawn,

And all little valleys hunker up

lest she

roll

and crush them in her pleat.

But, when

TERRA towers up

to meet her Lord

Her skirt

of tarnished sequin

spread

alluvial across the plain ---

or draped across

curvaceous mountains,

covered in the sediment of centuries

Will rush up vertigo upon her rising form,

and all the little people, in their little cars

and factories

and nations

will fall into space

like old dry

grass.

8/8/2001

An Odd Thought That I Entertained While Driving My Car to Work Along the Peaceful Highway

I feel beneath my whirling wheels
the stuff of righteous dinosaurs.

A trillion strong, and laced with diatoms;
They waded into bogs and pitch
lip to hip, thick on thick:
Sun burning down on a cold-blooded cake -- black crude;
Oil, that is.

There is about this place, the perfume of life
sprinkled on the Coliseum floor.

We are roses, rooted in the catacombs

We are restaurateurs, dining on a layer cake of death.

Death in my engine
Death under tire,
Death ever passing down my throat.

How can I begin to celebrate the cost --
of all this post-life, living in

or under me.

I cite
my gasoline and street:

(fossil fuel derived)

-- I rev a Rex, or run

Eoraptors out the pipes,

Even as I steel down roads of rotted clams.

I cite the sod,
the dirt made living at the cost of trees and worms and germs
and millennia of dead stuff, folded back
into the humus of

humanity.
I cite the corn, rising on the broken cobs of yesteryear,
I cite the barns, the chicken coops and mills…This strange,
STRANGE industry of death.

I cite myself, alive at the end of the slaughter.
Some of you will say

We shouldn't do it …
No butcher blocks or Burger Kings,

Chicken soup or Jimmy-Deans for any noble soul!”

To which

I drop my jaw, finger an incisor,

and go packing with the wolves.

Come with me and part the baleen of the whale,

unmask the krilling fields, or…(If we really must)

Pull a microscope and shudder

at the carnage in a drop.

Then,

with telescope survey

the battle ground:

clashing armor

camouflage and sting,

exploding hooves-- the roar,…

the slash and

TUMULT,

tooth and fang

of this our warring planet.

(Vegan, if you will, appeal to God - but never nature
For your thoughts)

Then .. (as if to aid my troubled mind)

He cuts the lamb.
Robes my nakedness in sacrificial skin.
Cooks the fish, says “Come and dine."
Will I scorn his gifts? Or rather,
Celebrate the present

Even as I wait

the finish of this bloody dispensation.

So ….
Let me celebrate
The dead and dying saints

Let me count the cost (in calcium)

Of this unrivaled freedom;

shadowed in the monoliths of Arlington;

I feel their blood on distant shores

Pooled like oil pools, buttressing
the borders our somewhat civil government;
I feel the clean bright air, purified on beaches

in Normandy and
Nam.

I feel my freedom, twined with Billy clubs
and those who caught the bullets, that might have been mine
I shift, and feel my ease, riding on the backs of slaves,

and freemen

Confederates and Yankees

Yanks and tanks and the seared Japanese,

Chinese building railroads for dirt wages,

And all those communal-doves

Shot down by Lenin.

I need not be assigned with the victors to win,

I find my bounty, like a castle built

On a mound of horror,

stupidity and error, bravery and love,
tragedy, and triumph,

cowardice,

and —

the willingness to let blood flow.

Speaking of horrendous:

I see the incarnate Jesus
(in the meat), riding through this funnel with us --
The corpse of God lifted high:
I see his drained and lifeless limbs,

the bruised obscenity

I see, The

Death of Life.

And Now …

I feel another heart pounding over mine,

the light of resurrection shining through my eyes.

I know that my Redeemer lives;

and I will find my life

Inside of His.

IN

And ON,

And AFTER

This grand mountain of death.

How great the Fall

Yes, how great the Fall.

Was anything forgotten, was anything left whole --

Oh,

itch on bite

The mortal rite

Weed and wheat confused

My memory’s abused

By the things I’ve been.

Oh when, when, when,

Will You come again, and save me

From my sindication.