#238 Henry's Programme for God

‘It was not gay, that life.’ You can’t ‘make me small,’

you can’t ‘put me down’ or take away my job.

I am immune,

although it is not gay. Why did we come at all,

consonant to whose bidding? Perhaps God is a slob,

playful, vast, rough-hewn. 

Perhaps God resembles one of the last etchings of Goya

& not Valesquez, never Rembrandt, no.

Something disturbed,

ill-pleased, & with a touch of paranoia

who calls for this thud of love from his creatures-O.

Perhaps God ought to be curbed. 

Not only on this planet, I admit; somewhere.

Our only resource is bleak denial or

anti-potent rage,

both have been tried by our wisest. Who was it back there

who died unshriven, daring to see what more

could happen to a painter with such courage?

 

In Focus

When gunshots burn holes

Through good people on live

Television screens

And candidate leaders

Suck attention and votes

Moneying like tornados around themselves

Turning desire to contempt at teachers

Blowing back desire

Like sour breath after a pokered-out

Morning still rank

Of rye and cigars,

I look around and I ask why

For awhile. Something has to be there:

I’m here: I peer out of my eye-holes

I feel my heart moving

And the concentrated

Center of my laser-focused

Feelings. I make

And I am. But God

Must be a slob

Heartless, at least careless.

Then again I remember:

I know I work and make

In a room lined with books

Each a making of one human’s

Focus and gift,

And when I startled

A deer last night

With miraculous pointy-hooved

Grace it danced into the moonlight

And stood, watching me back

Tall antlers like telegraph poles

Blinking messages with the fireflies

Reminding me to be still.

I understood

Like the rising of the moon

That his gaze back at me

Was holy. There is nothing

Unordinary about holy. A miracle

Looks through the lenses

Of my eyes, and back through yours,

Through the deep, wet eyes

Of an antlered buck

And communicates through our bodies’

Intricate languages

And when I’m struck silent

With despair, grieving reporters

Whose focus was punctured

I know it’s only the murder talking

Shouldering once more

Into the world’s awareness,

Diffuse and sour,

Clamoring for the proof

It was never handed

Because it was there all along

Still shining through dark-blinded eyes.

KZ