the divine burlesque

Our Father,
who art in heaven,
is a god/man of juxtaposition--
He lay lion next to lamb with the same
sleight of hand that wrought
Paul out of Saul and
Eve from Adam,

and I cannot help but wonder,
when He, transcendent ether,
became concrete, donning human skin,
was it sarcasm thicker than angelic choirs?
had He, being bored by that neverending day of rest,
become jealous of Kevin Smith?
did he, too, want to make humans laugh?

or was He flirting with us,
having realized rage and worldwide floods
were not becoming of His name?

was He getting coy,
slipping that miniskirt of jesus
up His bronzed loins and
shaving the hairs of deity from
His now-contingent legs?

or perhaps He's just perverse,
making a mere burlesque show of His world,
cross-dressing incarnationally,
and selling tickets to the equally bored seraphim.

why I am not a female poet

so it's true,

I cannot write of menstruation
with words darker than the blood itself,

I cannot recycle the image
in patterns of lunar months,

I have no tampon to point to,
to prove to you my afflictions,

and my breasts never grew,
no training bras restrict them.

And the taste of cock is foreign;
I cannot therefore conjure up the steed
or the rampart
or the omnipotent sadistic hebrew god, prick in hand,
chest bared, gorilla-like,
celestial rapist summoning floods to ravage a virgin earth.

And I have no metaphors--
no similes--for incest,
weight gain, sluts, or hymen--

I am silent as the hymen
when it comes to its being split.

But mainly,
honestly,
I think it's the penis dangling pink between my legs.

That just might be it:
my genitals get in the way.

Compassion

---

I fucking hate compassion.

It’s always a five-day surgery,
some gentle detox—

a chisel perpetually chipping away
the skull, wanting to crack it,
make an omelete,
sprinkle pepper to see
if the brain waves are on fire,
do the patterns dance in normal
line dance fashion,

or are they strewn across the stage,
a postmodern jazz number
writhing and convulsing in the strobe lights of
why aren't you right with god? you worry us,
we pray for you/did we do something wrong?

One wants to pull all the eggs from the carton,
smash them on the kitchen walls and
spread them across the body, smearing the
questions accusations confusions into one's pores,
set fire to the house,
ask them to use a more blunt
or sharp instrument—

a crowbar, please, the chisel is too soft–

so the extraction can just end and
the patient can finally sleep.

how the poem and the painting made love

it started timid,
virgin,
not crass,
or violent,
no blindfolds or
pick-up lines
but the erotica of
black-and-white lovers
with their hands first conjoined,

the poem with its honeyed words
and the painting,
bashful,
holding back its oils,

until the poem, emboldened by
a scripted and sensuous need,
lifted the pastel to gaze in wonder at
the canvas underneath,

and the painting,
with quickened breathing,
spreading its colors for the
oncoming stanzas;

and the poem slowly began

its tongue,

forming words of
aesthetic bliss and pleasure--

the rhythm and
the rhymes,
patterns retracing the first brush strokes,
taunting the painting to come forth from its frame;

the painting,
unhooking its clasps,
slipping gracefully from its mat,
stepping forth from the glass,
coyly shaking the dustcovers off its feet,

bending this way and that
to exhibit its carefully drawn landscape

then curling its deckle edges about the poem,
urging the words to melt from the page,
wanting the ink to mingle with its mediums,

-- and the subsequent,
not so spontaneous
but rather sumptuous
combustion of image and word,
wherein the rivers and mountains and
the walking in beauty like
the night, the pretty how town and
the impressions of some
starry night
became one --

and the one,
and the other,
one pointing,
one singing,
now joining,


then collapsing,
and stars,
afterglow and punctuation mark,

both spent as a child's allowance,

whereafter cinema,
their love child,
took its fragile infant form,
gestating from the union of
poem and painting.

faith. a poem cycle in the form of vers libre.

*****

"This is the way we go to church,
We go to church, we go to church;
This is the way we go to church,
So early Sunday morning."

~ 1966 edition of My First Sing-A-Song Book

*****

the first rotation--
"god is the divine abortionist."

...when i was a child...

i felt as a child
i thought as a child

(i hurt as a child)

my elbows, alabaster
my smile a golden calf

and scevah knew my secrets
(did abel love his cain?)

and my knees were child-knees
scraped by unchild worlds.

-- when i was a child,
god forgot me --

...but now that i am grown...

i put childish things beside me
i hold them all more tightly
i place them around my room

my walls are scarred with ponies
the ceiling knows my demons
my bedspread is a doll house
i wear my captain crunch

now that i am grown
still i am child

and nightly as a child
i have a nightmare vision:

the children rise up against god,
and god will lose his children.

*****

the second rotation,
being a variation on a form

here is the church
here is the steeple
open your hands
see all the people

open your eyes
see all the people
here is the girl
here is the preacher

open your ears
hear the girl screaming
here is the church
here is the steeple

*****

the third rotation--
"in honor of evagrius; in contest of pope gregory; otherwise entitled acedia."

we are the dark-skinned.

we are the children of the night and
the inheritors of the earth.

we are the children of the morning and
thus eclipse the sun.

it is not that our skin has burnt,
that our pigment flows thicker,
more crudely, than yours and your oil

it is that our souls have swallowed our skins
and we do not mask our pigment

we do not blink with fists
and we do not take god lightly.

*****

the fourth rotation,
being entitled,
winter.

is it possible,
when we feel we need
ten more begotten sons,
a hundred of His daughters,
two more virgin (repentant lesbian) mothers
and hell itself,

that, in the aftermath
of the passionate expression of
our sacred freedom,

hearts,

long toyed with,
held in suspension by puppet-like fishing string,

break into a million sacreligious pieces,
yet someday mend?

understudy, or, aesthetics pt. 6

"or was it backward,
I had to ask
as I turned
to reach for a faraway towel."
~billy collins, "the long day"

it seems trite to tell you
that i write,
while sitting in the rain on a black metal chair
with a hole in my left shoe and
a cigarette in my right hand,

about the galaxy in her eyes
or the homeric epics in his head,

or to bring your attention to
-- is it a fact? --
that "homeric epics" are an understudy
to the pain he felt when he,
but a solitary astronaut,
realized he floated in plantary rotation
around but one of her planets,

the pain itself, having broken its leg,
being unable to stand for itself,

and wondering,
is it coy or crass or perhaps
is it a moment of poetic fury,
to ask the illiad to take its place on paper?

would it be heavyhanded,
to point,
line by line,
to how the poem,
more thinly constructed than tinkertoy windmills,
rose from dust into its eden home?

but most of all,
to end the poem,

not with some profound utterance or
subtle nod to the more favorite of plato's forms,

but rather,
languidly, as if intentionally,
an incomplete sentence,
an unfinished phrase.

an exercise in rhyme, or, aesthetics pt. 5

“And I wove the thing to a random rhyme."
~Austin Dobson

it is the weight of love on water
it is peter's feet on water
it is the smell of fishermen's daughters
it is pure and sweet and true

it is true and it is lethal
i am the bells that grace the steeple
i am the coroner and the preacher
i bury thoughts in moss

still mermaids hide in brambles
it makes no sense to ramble
it makes much sense to dally
you are the posterboards at rallies

i pen these words at midnight
i burned your words at midnight
i burned your words with daylight
i cut myself with love