Wednesday, August 26, 2015

#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

1 comment:

  1. There's nice work here. I'll try to follow up when I'm at a desktop.

    ReplyDelete