Anele: uoy evol I

what do you when apathy has a throat choke-hold
and you just sit & listen to blood pound
you don't care to recall air is necessary
you usually like breathing it?

i don't know what you do, but i always remember that Filibuster would be a very good name for a duck, and there is a little girl who said so that NEEDS me to be very un-apathetic if she's gonna make it & blood pounds in both of us & hers needs to stay inside her and her wrists, and then i do a little mental brazilian jitsu-jitsu on the apathy, wack it a few times with Romans 7 & Co. and buckle down to the hard business of living, the daily duties that challenge me so little that I realize the hard part is not in their completion but in my attitude towards them.

and one day i want to write a story about a duck named Filibuster and the 10 year old boy who slept on the kitchen floor with his new puppy & the breakfast table with Sicily missing from the map, for green tea with honey & the house where even the pictures on the walls cry out in grief and where her every other breath is drawn to say "Death, where is your victory" even though it seems as if the battleground proves it to be right there in the piles of unaswered mail.

in a world this sharp, this fallen, there is no room for apathy

For Destiny (who needs a good teacher)

I have seen you, with the hard eyes
watching the boys shoot hoops
and not even flinching when asphalt & skin meet.

teach me.

teach me how to hold in the tide
conquer and quell and wrest back
the suprised cry
and tears.

teach me, you with the hard eyes, teach me how to suffer.

Teach me the art of the careful harvest. I do not want to share my pain
the lighting striking long lasting sharp encounters with reality.
I have hands, show me how to handle these things.
I want to hold them like you do,
careful lips pressed together, and the hard
eyes that watch
details
and learn so much, with out giving away anything.

teach me, o hard-eyed woman, teach me how to survive.

begin a ballad & where will it end?

tremble trees turn and twist
tithe your leaves to breezy mist
grey-shanked clouds roam through the sky
and Harnod Well is frozen dry

heather sway and thatch lie still
this winter's brought a cutting chill
Rosser Dike's beleagured sore
woman, go and latch the door

on nights like this, my da did say
send the travelers on their way
light no lamps and save the bread
for fell things walk abroad, he said.

tarry starry northern wind
bid our sons to make an end
all the chores til morn will keep
and i would have them all asleep

for fell dread walks abroad tonight
it's in my heart not all is right
you heard how Chapman cursed the rood
and faith, the man was of my blood

what is in my heart, Lord, besides empty silence and holes?

what pours from my mouth, O Creator, except stammering syllables of doubt?

where do my eyes stray, Jehovah, other than back to the grapes of Egypt?

the crooked path he will make straight; the broken reed he will not break

What was in your heart, Jesus, when you went to Bethany? Holes and the horrible hush of decay & sorrow? You know.

What did you say, when she broke your Father's command, when there were stones at elbow and foot? You did not doubt the power of Love.

And your eyes, drawn to heaven not by doves or lightning but faith - your eyes sought the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

let the mind of Christ dwell in you richly

sherpa

nondogmatic mouth

juniper sprigs of incense

praying heavenward

On Hopkins Article Rachel Leon gave me ages ago - I LOVE!

I have been reading about Gerard Manely Hopkins - here is a beautiful description of him and his struggle to understand what makes life worth living, written by Paul Mariani:

"But what of those for whom the titanic struggle is all within, as with this lowly porter on the island of Majorca [the largest island in Spain]?
What of those who are bedridden, crippled, house- or prison-bound, who suffer with silent courage from depression or migraines, or who have been given the task of reading thousands on thousands of examination papers and whose salary they never see?
Does not the God who over millennia and with infinite patience has hewn the very continents, melting mountains along with glaciers, or each spring for untold ages past has veined violets cell by cell and watches over the slow growth of cedars and oaks and maples, can not this God 'crowd career with conquest' when nothing seemed to happen, as a man, who merely did his duty day in day out in a world without event, was molded cell by cell into a saint?"


-Paul Mariani, Hopkins' Late Poetics: The Christ-saturated Thing Itself, p. 111

Decision

The bumper sticker said Cross the Sea or Stay and he chose and so did she, so now she's swimming across an ocean of tears

go

I’d noticed them on a few other trees near base camp, light pink rings of fungus decorating the bark, centered a darker crimson like a bulls-eye. Now as I hiked up the steep incline past the jutting bones of Buffalo Mountain, I noticed them again. Natural targets everywhere. A few of the trees appeared as if a woodpecker marksman had been practicing, which led me to wonder if the local Indians had ever thought to use them for archery practice. Working as a camp counselor all summer, I’d made up elaborate stories about the local Indians, the Shawnee Tribe. Tall men with fierce hawk faces and uncanny raccoons-tracking skill. Bold women who ate crawdads and knew how to make weapons out of daisy chains. Their skill with the bow had grown to mythical proportions yesterday, as I was running the archery range, and right now I had seventeen ten-year-olds hiking up Caleb’s Trace behind me. . . as soon as they caught up they would want another story. Hmmm. It ought to involve a bear. Or better yet, a whole posse of bears. Bright Otter was a young brave. . . but wait, I was supposed to be scouting out our campsite. This wasn’t the time to be distracted by Indian boys or tree-fungus, however pink.

Training.

"Come forth! I call you out and come!" And there you were standing in front of the toaster with your back out to me, summoning your poptarts out with all the eloquence of Sauruman or a some holy bloke from some ancient time. I had to laugh, y'see, because you've been doing that kind of stuff since you were weaned, and I'm not doubting you'll do great things, it's just i so enjoy watching you cut your teeth on everyday life. I'm glad I get to be part of the training. Not everyone is so lucky.

those poor rats

NO
FOOD OR
DRINK IN LAB

stream of consciousness

Tremble, Prudence, we are remodeling your house into something lovely; French windows open on the spreading yard where we're replanting the Victory garden with camilla bushes and gracefully weeping willows. Here, we will put in a fountain that the children can splash in, and there, out on the West lawn, we will put in a tennis court where the fathers and their daughters can breathe strenuously wearing pastel-colored summer clothes. We have done away with the high ceilinged nursery and the governesses back bedroom, and I'm afraid the butler's pantry has also been replaced by a breakfast nook and rubber plants.

You see, my dear, once you offer to sell, you cannot control what your new tenants will do.

Most of Life

most of life she takes
with mouth wide open and eyes half-shut -
look through the poleroids and note her eyes
squinched up with joy,creases spreading out - a network of love-lines, loveliness,
binding motherhood & Dad & us all up tight.

Rage, rage against the dying of the light...

her mouth is open now as she sleeps
like some stone goddess all her features now in harmony - the light is buried
even so she adorns this hospital room. The muted white walls
had forgotten the beauty of the human battle -
my mother's war-cry still echoes down the startled corridor
and
I long for her to reawaken and re-engage. Molars exposed, eyelids compressed,
and life inside coming through her parted lips:
Pain and my mother,
locked in struggle for the glorious, mundane, tedious thing we've named
"old age." LIVING IS LIVING,
whether sunrise or sunset, and she wants to live hers to the
full and proper end...

Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay. . .

I have not written it yet, but perhaps I will.
When she wakes up.
How my mother loves to laugh,
laugh with mouth wide open.....

Burn or be burned

On the rack, the self-same concentrate of arrow-thoughts
and prayers and dark-eyed passion, the same petualance as before;
Another turbulent sowing, yet why should the harvest be any different tonight?
As if a child, half-dressed and illiterate, should be made a prophet,
as if mouse-brown eyebrows launched Helen's armada.
milk it dry, but don't be ridiculous. Cross the sea or stay.

but what shall I do?
"burn or be burned but she must have" - benet wrote that
because when something's not easy, it must be right. give me
a creed, a song, a vinegar litany pressed through swollen lips
and out into this empty silence;
pledge or gentle promise, i don't care, but let it last, and
matter so that I may begin to know the stammering,
low and human voices
that flicker on the edges. To talk with them I need
to find the proper resonance, to barter, I must grasp their same values -
will the crimson glory of autumn do it, or the fine fire in a woman's eye? Are Nature and Love
going to persecute this spreading hollowness?
Darkness...a faint cold outline...like walking trees,
oh it's no use.
Tuesday again, and its all for cold, dark and aloneness - "Aloneness" which is good says a small little puritan voice inside,
but hopefullness has gone the way of Merry England and poor, pretty Jack.
the blood has been proved,
the prophet has been named,
and the wandering goes on
among stars that have a different birth
but the same birth-day.