Welcome to my poetry site. I took it up in 1997 for the first time since high school, an outgrowth of the journalling which began as part of my therapy for depression. The poems on this page have been assembled into a chapbook entitled "The Caterpillar" which is available in an attractive print edition as well. The more serious of the poems examine various inner demons and psychological journeys, such as depression, addiction, religious ambivalence, divorce, and family of origin issues. I hope anyone who has been through some of these sorts of ordeals can find some insight or identification from these vignettes. In the meantime, my subject matter has broadened to include lyric poems, love poems, and humorous poems as well. But even in my most personal poetry, I try to find an element of irony, self-deprecating humor, or the surreal, to lift the writing above the level of overwrought ventilating. My idols are Mark Strand, James Tate, and Leonard Cohen. Some of the poems in this book have previously appeared in the following
print journals: I welcome your comments and correspondence from a literary or personal standpoint. Email me by clicking here. The entire contents of this site are Copyright © 1997, 1998 Douglas J. Westberg and may not be reproduced or transmitted in any form without written permission. |
|
This countryside
Through which we walk
Is no less beautiful
For being only what it seems.
Mark Strand
A dusty tinkling greeted me as
I entered the antique store.
A gray man sat in the back,
picking wooden ABC blocks
out of a pickle barrel
and arranging them on his desk
this way and that,
until they shone
like polished brass.
I stood watching him
for an hour and a half or so
until it seemed opportune
to interrupt.
Excuse me, sir, I spoke,
can you teach me this
strange and marvelous art?
Or perhaps I should ask
to what sort of God should I pray
to receive this mystical power?
The ashen man did not
look up from his work.
"The gift of alchemy," he intoned,
"is not given to ordinary men,
but rather to certain doomed souls
who wander the city,
seeing metaphors in everything,
until they are driven completely mad,
unable to see anything for what it is."
So saying, the burnt man
rose up on his haunches,
bared his fangs, and
lunged at me with a roar
like an incinerator.
"I'm doing this for your own good," he snarled,
and devoured me whole.
| TOP |
"Where is the center of the universe?" Corky, the meeting chairman, asked
rhetorically. "When you miss the nail with your hammer," --he held up his thumb--
"This is the center of the universe!"
I present my disemboweled self to you
in rape-victim clothes
and toothless smile,
And serve up a generous helping of entrails,
herb butter on the side,
which you nibble like a food critic.
You gather me in your Gaia arms
and bury my face between your breasts
as I wolf down great mouthfuls of comfort food
like a prisoner of war.
"I am a victim, too," you say,
"but that can wait."
And Pieta-like,
admire my hair with rain-swollen fingers,
and graciously accept the ceremonious gift
of my consuming self-absorption.
Your tongue caresses the bamboo shoots under my nails;
you pour out your healing balm
like a libation.
I lie on my back, excavated, an empty husk.
You place your hand in my side
and I believe.
You tell me I'm like your father,
full of rage and whimsy,
mischief and melancholy.
You had never known another man like him.
I do not care so much about being unique
as being suckled.
You give me a Monet postcard.
You get my reference to "A Foggy Day."
Our fathers both used to read to us
from James Whitcomb Riley.
"This is too much," I say.
"Who sent you here?"
I begin to laugh, to give.
The world, no longer a kinescope,
begins to unfold.
You smile like a mouthful of canary,
and ask me to sing.
You knew, didn't you,
once the pain abated,
I, like Galileo, would emerge
in a heliocentric universe,
and, rising,
become your sun.
| TOP |
Embalming fluid slithers through my veins.
I part the sluggish air
like a swaybacked draft horse.
The downed leaves
protest meekly underfoot.
I envy them.
They don't ponder the barrenness they left behind
and say, "What have I done?"
The don't stand in front of the candy
rack for three quarters of an hour
in agony, lest they buy the wrong one.
If I must live in hell,
why can't it be an honest one,
full of sulpherous pyres
and ravenous, imperishable worms?
Not this pusillanimous limbo,
suspended between guilt and ennui,
my papery skin turning jaundiced
for lack of chlorophyll.
| TOP |
I keep the TV on
to drive the ghosts away.
Sometimes I don't even pay attention.
It's white noise.
But it's as necessary as light.
If I turn it off,
the darkness closes in,
the voices start murmuring,
the silent air becomes palpable.
It's my campfire in the wilderness,
keeping night predators at bay.
I stare at the fire,
shotgun at the ready,
listening for the telltale
snap of a twig.
The phone rings.
The machine takes it.
I am safe again.
Exhaling,
I finger the volume button on the remote,
to stoke the flames.
| TOP |
The ceiling ripples
as I lie here in half dark
staring at my spackled sky.
Seconds drip past,
like Chinese water torture.
I have no ambition.
The silence makes everything moot.
Alone, I am a cipher, a phantasm.
Like Nosferatu, I cannot see myself in the mirror.
That is my sickness.
It's the phone.
Who is it for?
It's for you.
No thanks, I already have a phone.
Something answers my phone,
a disembodied voice,
a cheery charade.
It speaks in monosyllables and polite grunts,
hoping you will get the hint
and go away.
And when you do,
I curse you for not reaching out to me.
I seek inspiration from the poets.
I will arise and go now,
I say to myself.
It does no good.
Anchored to the bed
like Gulliver in Lilliput,
my last shred of self-esteem
empties out of my bladder.
I curl up into a ball,
bury my face in the down-filled bosom,
and fight for sleep,
blessed sleep,
to spirit me away from this rancid coffin
and return me to the womb
where slip easily by
the amniotic hours.
| TOP |
You are at the door.
I want to let you in.
My clothes disintegrate
as I peer through the peephole.
I put on a robe but it dissolves.
I try taking a scalding hot shower,
hoping if I scrub my skin off
there will be some clothes underneath.
Now I'm not just naked.
I am naked and pink.
I turn off the water and fumble for the door
to fish for a towel and daub my eyes.
I can't find the handle.
I grope everywhere. No door.
I rub my eyes with the back of my hand and
find I am in a glass box
suspended above a giant arena.
The stands are filled with pinched women,
purple with rage, waving hickory switches.
Below, policemen beg me to
burst through the glass and jump.
How can I? I'd be cut to shreds.
They call for my priest.
He looks like a Minotaur.
He takes the megaphone and tells me all is forgiven.
I scream at him, "You did this to me!"
He can't hear me.
The crowd boos and throws garbage onto the field.
I sit down on the glass floor
and start licking myself all over like a cat.
I am especially interested in that place
cats are especially interested in.
I want to lick it until it disappears.
I must purge myself of orifices.
This is the only way to feel clean.
| TOP |
The pat of margarine skitters, skitters
across the frying pan,
the crackling ushering in a day full of promise.
The smell of simmering, simmering
polyunsaturated fat
fills my nostrils with ambition.
Today I will do the dishes, pay
the bills, return my phone calls.
Then I will hail myself a conquering hero,
lay palm branches at my feet,
and record it in my journal so I can
crow at my therapist next Thursday.
Then the demons come, a cadre
of storm troopers, tramping, tramping,
crushing the heads of children into the dust.
They scream like a plague of locusts,
swarming, swarming, devouring the
ripe wheat fields into powder.
I look at the pile of bills. It hulks,
hulks like a grand jury, handing down
scathing indictments on multiple counts.
The dirty dishes snuffle, snuffle
in the sink, yammering like a
gaggle of filthy street urchins.
The phone messages swim, swim
around in my brain like
an infestation of leeches.
I look at the frying pan. It has an
oily brown patina now,
the color of dried blood,
impossible to clean.
For want of an egg, the skillet is lost.
For want of a nail, the kingdom...
For want of a mind,
the whole
putrid, putrid,
pestilence-ridden,
pus-filled,
God-forsaken
day.
| TOP |
The day it all came crashing down
I was walking along the golf course fence.
And suddenly my impotence
erupted in a thrash of spleen.
And there, underneath a canopy
of cedars near the fourteenth green,
years of humiliation, futility,
and recrimination came spewing out of me
In a cataract of salt water, snot, sobs
and sputum, gaining intensity with
every wail, like breakers,
wave building upon wave.
I have to keep moving, I thought.
I tried to light a cigarette to stanch the flow,
but it was like trying to cap a geyser
of Oklahoma crude.
I gave in to the torrent, finally,
and stopped, leaned on the fence next to
the cart path, and prayed no joggers would
lope past while I cried,
exuding salty fluids of a different sort,
and notice me, or worse, not notice.
Or worse yet, ask if I was all right
without breaking stride.
| TOP |
I don't know who I'll be from day to day,
A world-beater or a hapless lamb.
I always feel like this when I'm this way.
I limit my remarks to pleasantries
For fear you'll find out who I really am.
I don't know who I'll be from day to day.
I smile on cue, take pains to meet your gaze,
The better to perpetuate the scam.
I always feel like this when I'm this way.
I must be good lest I incur the lash.
Thus my authentic self becomes a sham.
I don't know who I'll be from day to day.
Despite my pains, the lash comes anyway.
He tells me I should take it like a man.
I always feel like this when I'm this way.
There is no there there, Gertrude Stein would say.
I'm loved for what I do, not who I am.
I don't know who I'll be from day to day.
I always feel like this when I'm this way.
| TOP |
The memory of that coat
flies in the face of my most cherished myth,
that I grew up with an absentee father.
I made him buy it for me in Sacramento.
It was a hideous green and white sportcoat.
I never wore it once.
It hung in my closet for years,
silently castigating me for my greed.
But don't you see--
he drove me to college once,
all the way from Portland to L.A.
And the only memory I have of that trip
is buying that stupid coat.
| TOP |
The plastic sack
tantalizes on the futon,
its open mouth
the entrance to a
shimmering white cave.
It shines
like a mermaid
on a rocky spit,
calling to me.
I touch it with my paw.
It speaks to me
in a crackling language
only cats can understand.
I poke my head in.
The handle wraps around my neck.
I pull back, but the sack
comes with me.
I tear around the room
like a shot. The sack
flaps behind my ear
like the wings of a falcon.
The faster I run, the louder it gets.
I zigzag furiously,
but I cannot shake it.
Its talons will sink into my flesh any second.
This has been going on
for six years. My weight is down
to two and a half pounds.
Suddenly my master
tackles me and extricates
my neck from the noose,
petting me and cooing.
It's been three months now
since the last time I
(as they say in the program)
crawled into a bottle.
They tell me I will be a cat
for the rest of my life.
| TOP |
The mechanic says in horror,
"How far did you come?"
When the idler arm goes, he says,
the wheel falls off.
I don't have the heart to tell him
I have come from the coast.
I imagine my guardian angel
flying along beside me at 60 mph,
holding my idler arm together
with his bare hands.
I am on the outskirts of nowhere.
The needle has been on E for the last 50 miles.
My thoughts turn to God.
Fifteen minutes later
I coast into a filling station.
I dryly refer to this phenomenon
as Guardian Angel Gas.
It is 4 in the morning.
I am blind drunk,
throwing newspapers out of the car window.
Parked cars line the street
but all I hit is a telephone pole.
The man sitting next to me
tells me I don't have to talk if I don't want to.
A woman named Sam asks
if any of the newcomers would like to speak.
My hand is in the air.
I do not know how it got there.
The day after tomorrow, I say,
would be a really good day to quit drinking.
The brisk air
rakes across my face like sea spray.
My racing flats deftly, almost magically
dance over the hairpins, the gullies,
the exposed tree roots in the narrow, hard clay.
I feel my angel flying along with me.
I reach over my shoulder
and clasp his hand.
| TOP |
It's a shrine now, the
housekeeping room
where I sobered up.
There you can see
the sink full of moldy
plastic plates and
jelly jars. Over here
in the corner is the
tangle of wires left
behind when the burglars
stole the stereo. And
here, this empty enameled
pot full of dry dirt used to
contain the Mother-in-law's
Tongue my sister gave me
that Christmas. I loved
that plant and I watched
it die, like a Christian
Scientist who doesn't
believe in hospitals.
It's been twenty years,
but I still return to this
shrine once a year, to
hide under the bed and
watch the tourists file
through, taking pictures
and clucking.
| TOP |
The world is
teeming with clichés.
And you tell me
they don't belong in my poetry?
Take the phrase
"courting disaster."
I courted disaster.
Then I married her.
For a few years,
we lived in a Fool's Paradise,
kept house,
made babies,
had Everything We Ever Wanted.
Enough clichés
to Choke A Horse.
I had married, it turned out,
a Ticking Time Bomb
full of Dirty Little Secrets.
And when they
Came Back To Haunt Her--
the incest,
the rape,
the abortion,
the tricks turned for heroin--
she tried to starve herself
to Within An Inch Of Her Life.
And I found myself
Living With A Stranger,
being dragged down with her
into the Terrors Of The Damned,
until I had to move out
to Save My Sanity.
It was supposed to be temporary.
Now I'm a cliché.
Every other weekend
I take the kids to the amusement park,
shower them with trinkets,
stuff them with Happy Meals.
I do it to buy their affection,
assuage my guilt,
make it as anticlimactic as possible
when they go back to Mom's.
It's called being a
Disneyland Dad.
I may be a cliché
but I'm trying to be
the Best Cliché
I Know How.
| TOP |
She runs up the stairs on three legs,
hissing at a phantom predator.
We still don't know how it happened.
She is confined to the ward by court order,
having called 911 threatening to kill herself,
drinking and burning herself with cigarettes.
The vet says she needs surgery to implant a screw.
A thousand dollars. Otherwise we'll have to amputate.
We don't put cats to sleep for broken legs, he says.
There is a camera on the ceiling of her room,
hidden by a triangle of tinted plexiglass.
The mirror is made of stainless steel.
We decide to try splinting the leg
and hope a callus forms around the joint.
If it works, she'll have a limp, but she'll have four legs.
The kids and I play Scrabble with their mother.
She is nicer to me than she's been since years
before the divorce. She is heavily medicated.
We build a cage for her out of scrap lumber and screen.
All summer she lives like a hamster,
sleeping next to her litter box and food dishes.
The nurse comes in to take her blood pressure.
The children gasp at the wounds on her arm.
She says they are from the IVs in Intensive Care.
She's pouncing on feathers and bits of yarn again,
racing in front of me and flopping down to
cadge a belly rub. There isn't even a trace of a limp.
The kids disappear into their mother's house. It's their
first weekend there since she got out. Pulling away, I make sure
my pager is on. Our oldest daughter knows the number.
| TOP |
My medicine is starting not to work so well.
I can tell because I have nightmares every night.
My children wield Uzis.
They shoot their classmates in the head.
I try to delay the inevitable.
I quit smoking.
I run every day with cans of soup in my hands.
Soon it will be no use.
The voices will come back.
You're an imposter.
You're a charlatan.
I will have to break in a new medicine.
I must become a baby again,
learn to shower, learn to get out of bed.
I tried two drugs before I found this one.
One made me a zombie,
the other made me impotent.
I read some drug addicts go into rehab
when their habits become too expensive.
After drying out for awhile,
they can get high again on less heroin.
If only I could find a hollow tree.
| TOP |
The supple arms of night like herons' wings
Curve up to touch the clouds and fold me in
As balancing en pointe the new moon sings.
Like silk on silk the music of the wind,
Murmuring in the willow's wispy veil,
Is subtler than the softest violin.
And silent as a skiff with flaccid sail,
The color from my body drains 'til I
Am paler than the moon was ever pale.
A darkling presence like a wraith arrives
To cradle me in blackness deepening
As one by one the stars like candles die,
A womblike peace, long sought for, gathering
Me in the arms of night like herons' wings.
| TOP |
If the wind is asleep,
it does not exist.
If a river is asleep,
it is a lake.
If I am asleep,
no-one can see me.
If a tree falls asleep in the forest,
is it sound?
If the moon is asleep,
it is new.
If a dog is asleep,
it is old.
If I am asleep,
you can't make me angry.
If your laptop is asleep,
press any key.
If I am asleep,
I am safe from myself.
If I dream I am asleep,
I am safe from my dream.
If I dream of angels,
I am dead.
If I dream of sleeping angels,
my soul is dead.
If God is asleep,
this is a dream.
If a monitor lizard is asleep,
crocodile eggs get a reprieve.
| TOP |
Her stubbornness squeezes me
like wet ropes.
You might as well carve obsidian
arrowheads with your spit
as negotiate with a six-year-old.
First it was "Let me finish my juice!"
Now, the bus two minutes away, it's
"I don't want to go to school!"
An explosion severs the brittle air,
like lightning
hitting the ground a block away.
Hollow-point words
shatter her isinglass armor.
There is a bomb crater
where her face used to be.
By the time she gets off the bus,
she will have forgotten it
like a summer squall.
I will spend the rest of the day
smelling like gunpowder.
| TOP |
my child, on the other side of the glass,
tendrils growing from your arms and nostrils
and blossoming into a cacophany
of electronic angels,
looking like the cargo
of some homemade alien spaceship,
and I wonder
who, or what,
if anything,
is at the helm.
| TOP |
The river is bluer than a Monet
this bleached afternoon.
Among the white sails,
lime cabanas, banana caftans,
cherry-red motor-boats,
I launch my gaudy box kites,
my ticket into the big top.
Hovering over me
like banners over an altar,
they agree with my green and yellow melancholy.
I am an infiltrator.
The kites are a subterfuge.
My sport is to distill this chaos
of color into black and white,
a fitting enterprise for one
whose every fleeting pleasure is
filtered through a gray lens.
I observe the aquatic mammals--
aquatic by virtue of their cabin cruisers,
mammals by virtue of their breasts.
I watch one preen like an otter in the sun,
adjusting her white bikini,
pure as a nurse's uniform against smooth copper skin,
arching her back as she brushes her long hair
while the males prance about on jet-skis.
I see two rather lumpier
bikinied females displaying
tattoos on their thighs and arms.
This is how we achieve immortality, I think,
having graffiti engraved on our skin,
the modern equivalent of cave paintings.
Relationships come and go,
but tattoos are forever.
I ponder having a picture of Icarus
etched on my chest.
I quickly think better of it.
Red, blue, green, fuschia, lilac,
aquamarine--these are only names,
like depression, mania, schizophrenia.
We cannot describe them to the color-blind.
So I sit in the center ring,
smell the canvas and the sawdust and the dung,
take notes and try to blend in.
| TOP |
I am in a coliseum
waving my arms,
shouting gibberish
and swooning in the Spirit.
I have a vision
of the face of Jesus
with eye sockets like Black Holes
and pupils of distant white stars.
This can't be right.
My Jesus is warm and fuzzy.
I shake it off
like a St. Bernard
coming in out of the rain.
I am in a holding cell.
Matrons in Italian suits
reach into my body cavities
and confiscate my house,
my children,
my bank account.
I am forced to watch
as great red blotches
devour my kid brother's flesh.
In another room
my wife is screaming.
Butchers disguised as college professors
are sawing open her skull.
They show me a film.
My pastor and his assistants
are passing around a male whore.
A portrait of my son
hangs over the mantle.
His forehead is wreathed
with hypodermics.
They shine a light in my face.
They teach me words like
AIDS-related dementia
suicidal ideation
binge and purge
incest
liberal visitation
I am a better man now.
My Raggedy Jesus doll
is in a box in the attic,
the succor of easy truth
sucked into the infinite gravity
of anarchy and betrayal.
There is no God
only my Dark Jesus
with his stare
cold as deep space
inviting me in
| TOP |
I
"This wine does not please me," Jesus said.
"It is cheap and bitter, like gall."
And Mary said, "So do something about it."
So Jesus said to the servant girls,
"Go, fill those jugs up with water."
Which they did,
and the rest is history.
Jesus' first miracle.
A parlor trick.
And so the masses flocked to him,
clamoring for more tricks,
like he was Houdini, or David Copperfield.
And when they didn't get them,
they threatened to throw him off a cliff.
That's when he pulled one of his greatest tricks ever,
walking through that homicidal mob
like a hot knife.
And what about the time he killed that fig tree
because it wouldn't give him any figs?
Raising the dead, making the blind see,
that makes sense to me.
Killing a tree? What is that?
Then he says to his disciples,
"You can do better tricks than this if you have enough faith.
You can make mountains throw themselves into the sea."
I can't believe they bought it.
II
I had a lousy morning this morning.
My six-year-old tried to run away.
I ran out of cigarettes.
My twelve-year-old scolded me for
waking her up with my screaming.
Did you abandon me because I wrote that
blasphemous poem last night?
Am I just another fig tree to you?
III
Jesus, I think you are a metaphor for God.
And I'm one of those earthen vessels that Paul talks about,
full of washwater which you turn into
Chateau Lafitte Rothschild.
Already I am being poured out
like an after-dinner coffee.
In the parable of the fig tree,
the vineyard owner gave the nurseryman
another year to make it bear fruit.
Jesus, I am struggling with this.
And I have come up with a moral:
"If you're looking for mercy,
it is better to be a whore
or a thief on a cross
than a barren fig tree."
No, that's not it.
"Do as I say, not as I do."
No, that's not it, either.
IV
"This wine does not please me," Jesus said.
"It is cheap and bitter, like gall."
And he refused to drink it.
No more parlor tricks up his sleeve.
Deserted by his public.
A few hecklers hanging around the cross,
waiting for just one more trick.
"Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani?"
There's nothing more pathetic, the centurion said,
than a man whose art has deserted him.
And uttering a loud cry,
Jesus gave up his spirit.
This was to fulfill the prophecy of Nietzsche,
who said "God is dead."
And the earth quaked,
the graves opened,
the temple curtain was riven in two from top to bottom,
and Adolph Hitler invaded Poland.
| TOP |
These days he passes up the holy water,
rarely genuflects,
practices the organ with his hat on.
Every Friday, he goes to
Richie's New York Deli
and orders a pastrami sub,
even in March.
He hasn't been to confession in years,
ever since his girlfriend deduced from
Father Basil's solicitude that he had
confessed their sleeping together.
He putters about the choir loft,
collects the octavos left over from
choir practice, and thinks idly
about when he was younger,
when he felt priveleged to be working
under the same roof as the Holy Eucharist,
when he struggled out of his hospital bed
with five cracked ribs and a collapsed lung
to rummage for his rosary,
and whiled away his recuperation
reading Bishop Sheen's
Modern Man In Search Of God.
Turning out the lights,
he gives the briefest of nods
towards the tabernacle,
and makes a mental note
to have the sacristan
replace the vigil candle.
| TOP |
| I look around the dingy cigar store to make sure no one sees me. The bent little clerk in the Roman collar takes my money. I grab the magazine, slip it under my raincoat and hurry out the door. Safely at home, I slide my prize out of its slipcover and open it. A holy card falls in my lap. I flip to the center- fold and turn it sideways. There, in all its airbrushed glory, is the Monstrance from the Basilica of Saint John Lateran. I gaze at it worshipfully, trying to ignore the staple which, damnably, is located right in the middle of the Sacred Species. I stare at it for an hour, chanting "Jesus I adore you in the Blessed Sacrament." The phone rings. The voice at the other end says, "I'll take over now." I close the magazine, slip it back into its sleeve, place it under my pillow and sleep like a baby. |
| TOP |
The yellow fog wraps around me like damp fur.
I search the pockets of my overcoat
for some gloves, but find only
an envelope. I open it and read:
"You will slouch toward Bethlehem.
You will whimper."
I stand at the door and knock.
Gabriel the Bouncer opens the slit
and examines my stigmata.
"You'll have to check your
Breviary," he says.
I enter the cathedral and genuflect.
The waitress with no arms
places a napkin on my writing-desk.
"India ink," I say, "straight, no chaser."
I unzip my fly, dip my penis in the ink.
My first grade teacher glares at me
as she adjusts her wimple.
The bell rings.
I kneel at the rail.
Father O'Malley stands in front of me
and brandishes the Host.
"Corpus Delicti," he says.
He places it on my outstretched tongue.
The acolyte in the hockey mask
holds a machete under my chin.
I pant with joy and salivate.
I return to my desk,
falling down three times.
Angels ride up and down
escalators of sunlight
as I caress my Underwood.
I pound out Cantos with my hooves,
braying Salve Reginas and Pater Nosters.
Gabriel throws me out for disturbing the peace.
Two roads diverge in a yellow wood.
They both look exactly the same.
"Some people do go both ways," says the Scarecrow.
I lie down in the middle of the crossroads
and curl up into a ball, weep,
wait to be born and swaddled.
| TOP |
I elbow my way past the
mules and the astrologers.
There is a dog in the manger.
I look into the eastern sky.
No wonder. It's space junk.
The dog howls at it but it won't go away.
I bum a Camel off one of the shepherds.
The soldiers were here yesterday, he says.
The prospect of going back to the fields
seems so depressing now.
There is a book under the manger.
I open it and read:
"I was here. Where were you?"
I fall on my knees and cry out:
Forgive me, Lord, I've been a
voice in the wilderness for so long,
I just got tired of it.
The movement's dead, you know.
People throw babies away like wilted lettuce.
Besides, I thought you were supposed to come in power!
A blinding flash knocks me to the ground.
Liver-colored sarcomas erupt on my face and hands.
Even the Stones are crying.
"Please allow me to introduce myself."
The Magus in the silk suit approaches me.
"We need a Messiah," he says, "are you game?"
I fire up my hog and flee to Egypt.
The Millennium will have to wait.
| TOP |
I: Jesus Is Condemned To Die
Am I a Jew?
Why are they bringing you to me?
I wish these Jews would do their own dirty work.
My wife had a dream about you.
I don't want anything to do with you.
Unless, that is, you are what you say you are.
Perform a miracle for me
and this unpleasantness could all be over.
I have some water here.
How can you be so implacable?
Don't you know I can have you killed?
How I wish Herod hadn't sent you back to me.
If we meet in the next world,
the Jews did this to you, not me, okay?
II: Jesus Takes Up His Cross
They make you build your own scaffold,
tie your own noose.
They make you walk through the streets of Jerusalem
dressed like a clown,
carrying the instrument of your torture,
surrounded by screaming, bloodthirsty spectators.
Mothers hold their children up and force them to stare
at you.
He consorted with prostitutes, they tell them.
He's possessed by Beelzebub.
He eats babies for dinner.
This is what will happen to you if you don't mind me.
You'll grow up to be a criminal and end up like him.
III: Jesus Falls For The First Time
You've lost three pints of blood.
Your legs are like molten lead.
You can't see for the blood and the dizziness.
You black out and collapse in a heap.
The soldiers whip your legs.
The fresh pain makes you come to.
Your mother screams:
Don't get up!
Please don't get up!
The children throw rocks at you.
The men scream filth.
The soldiers daydream about going home to supper.
IV: Jesus Meets His Mother
I told you not to make waves,
but you wouldn't listen.
You had to go terrorize the moneychangers.
You had to tell Pilate you were God.
You had to make a big show of coming into Jerusalem
so the Romans would have to squish you like a bug.
Who will take care of me now?
My husband's dead.
Peter ran away with his tail between his legs.
John's here but they'll probably come after him next.
Why did you do this to me, why?
o god I'm sorry I didn't mean it
V: Simon Of Cyrene Helps Carry Jesus' Cross
So you're the King of the Jews.
You don't look like much.
I heard you were going to help them
rise up against Herod.
I guess Pilate put a stop to that soon enough.
How did I get myself into this mess?
I just came to Jerusalem for the festival.
Now the soldiers' whips are missing you and hitting me.
The crowd is cursing me for helping you.
That man who just threw a rock at you--
didn't he used to be blind?
VI: Veronica Wipes The Face Of Jesus
I loved you.
But you wouldn't pay any attention to me.
I would have given you anything.
I could have pleasured you a hundred ways.
But you would have none of it.
So I had to follow at a distance.
What does that Mary Magdelene have that I don't?
I'm much prettier than she is.
Here, I soaked this cloth at the well.
I don't even recognize your face.
If you'd only gone with me, you'd have been happy.
VII: Jesus Falls The Second Time
Where did that Cyrenean go, anyway?
I'd better keep a low profile,
they'll be pressing me into service.
I could get arrested.
They'll figure out who I am and crucify me instead.
I thought they'd give me a job in the courts
after what I did for them.
But they still treated me like an insurrectionist,
the bastards!
They can keep their money.
Let 'em choke on it.
VIII: Jesus Rebukes the Daughters Of Jerusalem
More groupies.
Don't they ever quit?
The man's a has-been, can't you see that?
They're taking names, you know.
Anyone who associates with him,
they'll hunt down and try for treason.
Don't weep for me, he says,
weep for yourselves and your children.
Listen to him, he knows what he's talking about.
If they can do this to him,
with all those followers he's got,
think what they can do to you.
You won't see me running up and throwing myself on him.
I'm too smart for that.
IX: Jesus Falls The Third Time
Well, it's over now, he can't possibly get up.
I think he's dead.
Let's go home.
No, I want to see him on the cross.
This only happens once a year.
Besides, maybe he'll call down Elijah to save him.
You never know.
It would be something to tell the grandkids.
X: Jesus Is Stripped Of His Garments
This is the worst part of the job.
You're trembling from pain and shock.
I'm pulling your cloak off as gently as I can
but it's opening up all your wounds again.
Those whips must have had shards of tin on them.
I wonder if my wife can get these bloodstains out.
Why did Pilate have this sign read
"The King of the Jews" instead of
"He said he was the King of the Jews"?
Does he really think you're a king?
If you are, Lord, remember I was gentle with you.
XI: Jesus Is Nailed To The Cross
The crowd is chanting.
They want to see you suffer.
A few days ago they were showering you
with palm branches and Hosannas.
The Zealots are mad at you because
you didn't lead them against Herod.
The Sadducees are mad at you because they thought
you were going to start an uprising
and upset their cozy deal with the Romans.
You can't win.
There you are, like a kid goat on the temple altar--
pathetic, alone, half-naked.
I feel sorry for you.
You didn't deserve this.
But you had to know preaching
radical egalitarianism in a police state
is a good way to get yourself killed.
XII: Jesus Dies On The Cross
I can't watch.
If they had just lashed you to the tree,
you might be able to pull yourself up
and get a breath,
until you become exhausted, anyway.
But they used nails,
so you can only hang there, suffocating
like a harpooned salmon.
What's this?
You're talking to that thief.
He wants your forgiveness.
You promise him heaven.
Maybe there's hope for me.
Or maybe not.
The soldier runs a sword through your side
so he can go home.
He has to make sure you're dead
in case your followers try to steal you.
I don't know what he's worried about.
Everybody's gone.
XIII: Jesus Is Given To His Mother
I'm sorry, Mary.
I tried, really I did.
I wanted to help him.
I walked with him the whole way.
There were just too many of them.
You have to believe me!
I can't take this.
There's no hope for me now.
I might as well hang myself.
XIV: Jesus Is Laid In The Tomb
There's a cave on my property.
We can lay him to rest there.
I have oils and a shroud.
He'll be safe, have a little dignity.
I'm sorry for your loss.
He was a good man.
Some people thought he was the Messiah,
the Promised One of God.
I heard him preach once,
I can see how they'd think that.
What did he say?
"Blessed are the meek
for they shall inherit the earth"?
Something to think about.
Though it doesn't seem he inherited much of anything.
But what do I know?
I would like to have seen him establish his kingdom.
I'm a member of the Sanhedrin, you know,
but I didn't have anything to do with this.
| TOP |
Long before there were Swim Worlds
with their giant slides and wave machines,
we'd journey to Sauvie's Island,
give Mr. Reeder three dollars,
and trudge through the curtain of alders
to the river channel,
a poor man's beach, if you will,
the kind with no dunes or driftwood,
where the sand is rough and oily,
and you can see the opposite shore.
Sometimes we were graced with seagulls, though.
My father would say there must be a storm at the coast.
We helped mother lay out the picnic on the narrow sand,
no worries about the tide coming in,
and changed into our suits underneath the blanket.
Gorging ourselves on tuna sandwiches and Kool Aid,
we waited for a ship to come downriver.
Spotting one a mile upstream,
we stared intently into the haze
to see if it was getting bigger
or just moored in the middle of the channel.
It's moving! I shouted.
We tore down to the water to build our sandcastles
right next to the lapping of the Columbia.
An eternity passed as we raced to fashion parapets,
surround them with moats,
dig canals running from the moats into the river.
The rusty, rumbling edifice loomed over us now,
bigger than a school bus--
no, bigger than school!
We stared in awe, soaking in the size of it.
When the freighter was a couple of jetties downriver,
the wake arrived,
poor man's breakers, if you will,
and we tumbled into the six-inch surf
gasping in mock terror,
as if we would be sucked out to sea.
The castles! my sister cried
and we ran to them like a gaggle of ducks
to watch the tsunami surge through the canals,
melting our medieval fortresses
in a miniature ecstasy
of divine power.
When the sun touched the tops of the alders,
we'd pull on our sweatshirts,
dump the ice water out of the styrofoam cooler,
and trek back to the car,
the river disappearing behind the woody veil
like a rabbit under a silk kerchief,
and ride home in father's warm back seat,
nestled in the glow
of our mild sunburns
like electric blankets.
| TOP |
Your tan fedora
Exudes the cool
Felt aroma of
A light drizzle that
Stopped just before
You stepped out in it,
As you breeze
Through my front door
With a clatter
And a choir of cherubs.
The plaster walls
Flap gently
in your wake
And
the bannister
Creaks
its greeting
As
to a long unseen friend.
Your
smile precedes you
By
half a flight
As
you climb to me,
Rustling
like the surf
Of
a tiny, barnacle-laden
Cove.
And
there you are,
A
4th of July fireworks
Show
made of lemon
Meringue
and rose petals,
Wafting
like a flock of
Sandpipers
through my
Bedroom
door, and
Falling
as onto
A
featherbed
Into
my waiting
(until-just-now
atrophied)
Arms.
| TOP |
The seagull squatted stolidly
on the lip of the cliff,
a starfish wedged in its craw,
two legs in, three legs out,
splaying its beak open at a
ludicrous angle. It maintained
an incongruous dignity,
placidly contemplating the sea
like a skewered Buddha.
I stole closer, but it
glided off the edge, and
without a wing beat,
descended as gracefully as a
soap bubble to the rocks below.
I would not be playing Androcles today.
It appeared the gull would
keep its stoic vigil until it
keeled over from starvation,
like a battered wife hiding
her black eye with sunglasses,
or an alcoholic who doesn't need meetings.
When there's a shortage of acorns,
squirrels cache rocks instead.
EPILOGUE
We turned away reluctantly
and walked back to the car,
comforting ourselves with the notion,
a pure fabrication at the time,
that the seagull's gullet juices
would dissolve the starfish
until it could fall out of its craw.
It can't be the first seagull
who tried to swallow a starfish,
we agreed. It's like when you
pass a derelict on the street,
you need some rationalization
to keep walking, just as the
Dutch child crossing a field
carries a pole to vault over the
irrigation ditches. So you say
there are shelters for him, or
he brought it on himself, or
he'll just spend it on booze.
Still, we couldn't shake it,
the image of the seagull's
death watch. So we called the
extension agent, and sure enough,
seagulls eat starfish all the time,
in just the way we surmised.
Of course. That would
explain the gull's nonchalance.
A metaphor destroyed,
a poem blown out of the water.
But at least we can sleep.
| TOP |
Shards of red
poke through the clouds,
a mound of dying briquets
on the horizon.
We just missed the sunset,
or that's all the sunset there was.
I can't tell which.
We scurry along the beach
like sandpipers late for an appointment.
My conversational skills went out with the tide.
Why did I drag you out here?
"Do you want to turn around?"
"Okay."
We do an about-face and
power-walk back to the car,
clutching cold hands,
ignoring the breakers
as though they were boarded-up shops.
How to salvage something from this debacle?
I wonder what it would be like if I were alone.
The surf clamors like a prison riot.
The clouds are heavy as concrete,
gray as cell walls. My chest feels like
somebody ran a shiv through it.
"Was the walk everything you wanted it to be?"
The solicitude in your eyes
is like a driftwood fire,
sparks driving away the night chill,
like the pillar of fire
that led the Israelites out of Egypt.
Yes, my love, yes it was.
| TOP |
The wind is dying.
The tide is coming in.
I adjust the rib and
let the kite out again.
It goes out, still won't climb.
I reel it back in,
clutch the kite under my armpit
to replace the spinner.
The rib snaps.
The spare dowel
I brought is too thick.
I use it anyway,
cut a piece to size
with my dull jackknife,
break it trying to put it in,
cut another piece.
The surf laps at my feet.
"You really are stubborn, aren't you?"
No, I say, holding
the misshapen sail
like a schoolboy
caught with a cigarette:
This is the scientific process.
| TOP |
The sheriff shunts us into the left lane.
A knot of brown uniforms compares notes,
or maybe football teams.
Half a dozen squad cars line the road,
not one ambulance.
"Don't look!" my wife says.
My eyes lock in on it,
prone on the asphalt,
a blood-soaked forearm
sticking out of the long white snood.
Among the cruisers, a twisted hulk
lists in the ditch,
a ghost ship
keeping lonely watch
over its dead captain.
We glide by within arm's reach, protected
by auto glass
from the smell of death.
Driving home
through the forest corridor,
lost hubcaps
dangle on reflector posts
like scalps.
| TOP |
I
It was on the Via Dolorosa. The little booth was so unassuming
I almost missed
it. On the table were tiny vials containing what looked to be clods of dirt
no
bigger than the head of a pin. A craggy little man almost as tiny as the vials
sat
behind the table. "Jesus' fingernail dirt," he barked, "lovingly
collected by Mary
Magdelene and recently discovered in a cave near the Jordan River. Amazing
healing powers. Only 100 shekels. Each vial comes with a certificate of
authenticity. Ten times as effective ounce for ounce as Lourdes water."
"You actually sell this stuff?" I asked the man.
"Sell it!" he said. "It pays for my villa on the Adriatic!"
I started to walk away. "Okay, for you, fifty shekels."
"Twenty," I replied.
"Sold!"
I've been had, I thought as I walked on past the day-glo
rosaries and the holy
cards to Mary, Queen Of Too Much Makeup--clutching my vial and periodically
checking behind me to see if any old women were touching the hem of my cloak.
II
He stood over Abel's body, at the point of running the
knife through his own
heart. And God appeared to him and spoke: "There is no need to kill yourself.
You are forgiven."
And Cain said, "But I thought forgiveness was not
available until the Messiah
comes." And God said, "The Son of God has already been crucified.
He is
crucified for all eternity. How could it be otherwise?"
"Then who is the Messiah?" asked Cain. And God said, "The Messiah
is a
hologram which I will send at the proper time, to show humankind that
forgiveness is available to everyone who believes. I just have to perfect the
technology. It should be ready about the time I can't keep you people in line
with
prophecies and promises anymore."
"So where is Abel now?"
"Abel is already in heaven with me. The idea that
your father Adam could close
the gates of heaven for three thousand years by eating an apple gives him just
a
little too much power, wouldn't you say?"
"I see," replied Cain. "Just one more question. Where am I going?"
And God answered him: "You're not going anywhere,
my son. You're already
there."
III
A man visits a tattoo parlor. Motorcycle insignia, dragons,
eagles, valentines
litter the walls. "I want a bust of Walt Whitman tattooed on my biceps,"
he tells
the proprietor. "On second thought, put it on my writing callus, on the
knuckle of
my third finger. This way, when they find me at the bottom of a cliff, they
will
know I am a poet. They will search my apartment and gather up my writings, my
letters, my poems, and I will get the recognition I was so unjustly denied in
my
tragically short lifetime."
The tattoo artist does as he is told. Days later, the
man is found in his car at the
bottom of an embankment. The coroner notes in his autopsy report a tiny
tattoo
on the man's third finger resembling George Washington or Albert Einstein.
| TOP |
My theory teacher, decked out in his tux,
signals me to turn my radio off
(while my neighbor obeys her cue to cough
discreetly), as he earnestly conducts
John Cage's Piece For Twelve Radios. The
concert of new music also includes
a piece by Yoko Ono, which concludes
with the players riding bicycles a-
round the audience. Meanwhile, the Music
Department abolished the piano
proficiency requirement last year so
the college would comply with the Americ-
an Disabilities Act. Now classmate
Sean "Six-Finger" Maguire can graduate.
| TOP |
We lie on the bed
separated by a game board
on which tiles pile up, terraced
like the hanging gardens of Babylon.
The only sound is the
announcement of the score
after each play.
You think: how lovely
that we can just be together
without having to say anything.
While I, unbeknownst to you,
am grateful for the wall
the game erects between us,
and the fact that it eliminates
the necessity of
actual conversation.
| TOP |
Sesquipedalianism
is for the birds.
From here on in,
each word in this
piece will have
no more than one
| TOP |
We are watching TV.
My distraction is my gift to you.
I noodle on my guitar.
My improvisation is my gift to you.
I'm happiest doing
This riff is my gift to you.
two or three things at once.
My ambivalence is my gift to you.
I can serenade you
This chord is my gift to you.
while I'm ignoring you.
The space between us is my gift to you.
My fingers pour out my soul
This song is my gift to you.
while I try to catch a glimpse
A gift from my subconscious.
of Rachel Ward's nipples.
A gift from my automatic self.
You see the beauty of it?
| TOP |
Pixels draw you near.
You answer my cyber-ad,
Cling like silicon.
| TOP |
The vacant house
sits on the vacant lot,
vacant, that is, except for the vacant house
and a dead fir tree in the back yard,
a vacuous back yard
if ever there was one.
The vague landlord
shows me the vacant rooms:
an ivory bedroom,
a varnished vanity.
His vapid wife runs a Hoover
over the vast carpet,
her vagrant eyes
vacuuming up vermin.
"I will fill the vacancy," I announce
to the vague landlord.
"I will vacation inveterately,
sip vino on the veranda,
and compose voluminous odes
to valiant veterans,
inspired by this napalmed noble,
vanquished by the vicissitudes of suburbia,
yet still erect,
defiant, like the flag at Iwo Jima,
a Wagnerian Valkyrie
hovering over my vacuous Valhalla,
its wizened arms
and withered needles
pointing at me like a
burnt orange Jacob Marley,
a violent, ever-vigilant emblem
of my ongoing death!"
The landlord gives me a vacant stare
and asks me to
vacate the premises.
| TOP |
Beyond all sense, wihtout a shred of pride,
We gild ourselves with failure's residue.
We court disaster, play at suicide.
We love the rush of rising up anew.
We rule our self-contemplative milieux
Like lonely peacocks with our tails spread wide,
Adoring our stigmata on prie-dieux,
Beyond all sense, without a shred of pride.
When hubris fells our grandiose designs,
We nurse our guilt and take it as our due.
We Hindenburgs, we'd rather burn than fly,
And gild ourselves with failure's residue.
Beset by ghosts we cannot listen to,
We drown our brain cells in formaldehyde,
Until when even liquor will not do,
We court disaster, play at suicide.
The privilege of having almost died
Lets us see life as others seldom do.
We carry like a badge our death defied.
We love the rush of rising up anew.
We plumb our depths for all the world to view,
Exploit this metaphysical thrill ride,
Until we resurrect one time too few,
Too-kindly Fate imposed upon and tried
Beyond all reason.
| TOP |