Startled by Existence

2000?

(A meditation on the difficulty of communication)

We are like that sci-fi guy speeding through galactic sky

In a ship shaped like a phone booth,

All phone booth-sized upon the hull,

But bigger than a house within.

Indeed,

We are all like grand-inflated ticks … arms

Waving tiny from our grand inner-selves

We are Macy-Day clowns the size of icebergs,

Jammed into our skin like a Jack,

And there, up in the distant sky

A bitsy-valve of a mouth like a distant dime.

They say

the tongue is a fire,

a rudder on a ship,

and Oh, …..the things that slip,

but you should hear

the things

It doesn't say.

If we could flip our innards out,

WHAT a mighty-megalopolis we'd see …

You hold inside your unseen head

A map of a thousand streets

In a dozen different towns,

You are

a trillion trivial pursuits

A hundred books, a billion dreams,

You hold ten-thousand faces in your head

No face within my face has ever seen.

For all the records in the store,

many multi--millions more, never found in print.

For all the paintings on the wall,

A planet spinning like an eye-ball bank,

With Optic tubes and vacuum brains

Ever draining and detaining the outside world.

INDEED, we are

The geriatric planet

Active inner selves … clamped shut like the Dead Sea,

Hanging on a rope

Our passions,

Dammed, by inability

and stroke.

Or …. (Even better image.)

Six billion souls

In a mammoth prison - call it the Walmart-Hilton,

each person in a private cell

all decked in shag and stereo,

wall to wall computer,

Smell-a-vison, Panavision, taste-a-meal, Terra-feel,

Streaming video, thermostats, and dials,

Memorex,

EGO-REX,

AND

A tin cup for banging on the walls.

2006

Any word I use is an attempt
to dress some larger concept down
into a parcel I can hold ...

But You do not need ships, or pre-packaged symbols to hold your thoughts.

You do not struggle to affirm what you mean,
even to Yourself.

You precede all things
and You could not begin to search for words
to convey what You mean, when You KNOW everything You mean,

and can only mean less of it, by telling it to us.

NO--

Searching happens in Your wake, when and where You grant it.
And these words that tumble from our mouths
must be like trinkets, given to the sightless dumb.

I say “tree”
and see a jagged outline from a photograph I took last week ...
You say “tree” (for me)
and see every tree
with every twig, at every stage of growth
holding every bird
or syrup molecule ---
bent into every stair-rail or piano
that ever is, or was, or will be
as they exist, inside of every eye---
or reconstituted into termites of the world ...
(or something like that)

So, God ...
Do You need words to talk? Or think?
Can You hold a conversation?
(Not so much with us, but with Yourself,
when You commune among Yourselves)
in blessed Trinity.
in perfect unity.

No disagreement, no misunderstanding,
nothing to learn about Yourself,
or grow into(?)

When You speak to us,
do you translate down
into Hebrew, French, or cow?

From What?

Do you teach whales to speak?
Are you fluent in all languages at once?
Are Your words so big
that they would split our heads;
or is every tree or man or word or germ,
something like a thought from your mind?

And, How is it that the Holy Spirit groans?

I know that You are not the World
nor the son of a World
that it should take a world
to hold You.
But does it take a world for You to speak
the language of Your heart?

--

In the beginning was the WORD
And the WORD was with God
And the WORD was God

And the WORD was made flesh

And dwelt among us.

-

Dear Lord ...

You know that I am puzzled;

You know I am not well;

You know I bruise my mind on the language of Hell ...

But teach me as You speak
to hear Your WORD.

And may Your perfect Words
to my imperfect ears
fill my mind with worlds
I never could have imagined.

Paula

trods

With pollywogs

And packyderms

Her dermis, near the dirt

And though the Paraclete

Lives in her heart,

Don’t look for her to sail

Like a dove into the sun …

No …. she’s an earth bound saint

Feet firmly planted

On the sod,

Heart next to God

In the everyday.

Ordinary,

When it comes

To love, and sense, and service –

Ain’t

Note:  this is a poem to hear.  It is in fact, a phat bad rap.

 

I be whirling

like a dervish of tornadic hue,

feeding a brain storm

flinging the blue.

I be spinning like a turnip

Turnin'in my grave ..

 

a blithering basket,

taking a catnap,

burying hatchets,

catching the catnip,

crying in my soup ..

 

cutt’n the rug

 

I be

barking at the sunset

croonin’ at the moon

yapping like a lapdog

singing in tune.

 

I be zoomin

my zoom lens

shout’n down mimes

paint’n the town

with turpentine and wine

 

I be

mad as a hornet

playing his cornet

dancing in the torrents

of fire and hail.

I be

happy as lark park

singing in the grey dark

outside a Wal-Mat,

holding a pierced heart…

oddly in love with who knows who…

 

I be jubilant with twitter,

half-baked and fritter,

flinging and singing and loosening screws,

I be ….

hopeless and haunted and dancin’ in the pain

 

I be

riding the manic swing.

Dear Anne

It may be

that you,

Living as you do

in the radiance of city din, or eating

underneath His chin,

Are not quick to hear

Poems from half dead lips,

or peer

into the dark abyss from which you

are so greatly liberated.

But,

if our Brother would consent

I pray he pass a fond hello, or

let you know that one

Who labors under sun with double heart and dusty eyes

Has found within your words

A sister in the soul.

--

It’s a strange thing,

This parting of the heart and posting light

(or misery)

for all the colony to see, but

could you ever have imaged that

your words would reach

three hundred fifty suns

into the future?

And now, here you are

Right up front: the “first” gal poet in an anthology of American works.

Anne Bradstreet

1612 to 1672

--

I thought to tell you first, how things have changed—

Your wilderness is parking lot

and littered with machines beyond your dreams.

We wear less clothes or sometimes hold your ilk,

in poor repute.

Indeed, we think of Puritans as pleasure snuffing prudes--

stern faced zealots with a taste for gloom and work in general

But then I read your words and find

SUPRIZE!

A red blooded woman with a taste for joy and life in general

--

And now,

What’s this? Could it be

that crickets filled your ears as they do mine

Or that

oak trees powered through your soul

like living praise?

You say:

Then on a stately Oak I cast mine Eye

Whose ruffling top the Clouds seem’d to aspire

How long since thou wast in thine infancy:

They strength and stature, more thy years admire.

Hath hundred winters past since thou wast born,

or thousand since thou brakest thy shell of horn?

I say:

A seed is power

Spewing power,

Stink or weed

Or common flower.

You say:

I heard the merry grasshopper then sing,

the black-clad Cricket bear a second part;

They kept on tune and plaid on the same string

Seeming to glory in their little art.

I say:

Cricket and cicada calling

A walling falling on dawn

Black audio, rainbow snow

Blowing like a blizzard through my ears.

You Say:

Thy Swift Annual and diurnal course,

they daily streight and yearly oblique path,

Thy pleasing fervor and they scorching force

All mortals here they feeling knowledge hath;

I say:

Brother sun slices though the heavens

Like a bob sled

Running down a course of rigid nothingness

Ever pushed and pulled by pulsars

And the stellar winds of the Milky Way,

But still, He smashes the horizon

Exactly when, and

where He should.

You say:

What’s glory like to thee,

Soul of this world, this Universes Eye?

I say:

He steels a peak through the hole in the sky

We call the sun.

You say:

In a secret place where I once stood,

Close by the banks of lacrym flood,

I heard two sisters reason on

Things that are past and things to come.

One Flesh was called, who had her eye

On worldly wealth and vanity;

The other Spirit who did rear

Her thoughts unto a higher sphere

I say:

I got this doppelganger henchman

with the lusty eyes

steals my joy and deals in lies

plays with matches and gasoline

says come on man, you can’t be clean.

You say:

Be still thou unregenerate part

Disturb no more my settled heart,

For I have vowed and so will do,

Thee as a foe still to pursue,

And combat with thee will and must

Until I see the laid in dust.

I say

Brother Jesu

Lend a hand

I got this ugly double man

Hearing with my ears and talking out my tongue

How long Oh, Lord till he’s undone?

You say:

My crown, not diamonds, pearls or gold,

but such as angel’s heads enfold.

The city where I hope to dwell

There’s none on earth can parallel.

I say:

I want to dwell in that city

City of substance and form

I want to warm my skin in his eyes

And rise with the children of dawn.

You say:

Glory

I say:

Hallelujah

Today the leaves are falling

in abandon

with the breeze,

but -- unless I sneeze (or maybe even if I do)

each leaf will fall

exactly where it would

if the universe reversed

for a second or two

and then commenced.

I try it with my mind, down many ruts.

a Billiard-ball batch splitting

or …

a lone ping pong ball

descending down a toggle-board of nails.

Watch it drop, then back up time, and try the drop again.

Should everything within the universe be set the same,

from the frame and direction to

the plain of the moon,

and the currents in the room

and the zoom of electrons in the path …

Then (I surmise): Given the same input,

the output

will be --

MUST be

identical with every turn.

The ball unleashed

encounters, to my eye – a smorgasbord of a option:

Will it bounce this way or that, fidget or hang,

or chart any of a thousand different paths?

But unless, plugging up the unused options

modifies the course,

we need not ever give that ball a “choice.”

The trajectory and end, were found in the beginning.

The falling ball encounters nail,

rebounds in accordance with its essence

and the rules that govern matter.

The force, the fall, the vapors in the hall,

the construction of the shell,

the rust on the nail, the gravity of light,

the rotation of our planet and protons,

all combine to sculpt the path from the begging to the end.

The junctures are illusions

teasing finite minds, But give me every fact,

(and an omniscient calculator)

the end is just another way

of saying “means” …

Indeed, Every cause (apart from God) is at once an effect,

and every effect - effects cause;

The two are glued …

And the leaves that flutter dance on the freedom of sky

are but slow moving

bullets in a crooked barrel

drawn by the target.

Until....

I blow.