Anacreon’s Place

I have recently changed living spaces, not under the most ideal circumstances. I realize to what what extent my previous apartment was the spiritual center of my existence. I lived there for ten years after all. Now I feel centerless, and will have to make efforts to refocus in order to have any efficacy whatever in daily living. So that is the challenge now.

More importantly, my muse seems to have flown the coop in the process. She always returns, so I’m not concerned about a long-term writer’s block, but since writing poetry is the thing that keep me going spiritually on a daily basis, much like prayer keeps a monk going, it’s exactly the same thing actually, this is like having asthma or chronic back pain. Very unpleasant in the short term.

My hopes are 1)since I feel that the recent events actually do have a positive eventual purpose and will lead to more positive creative, spiritual, personal, and professional connections and 2)that I have sensed the presence of the divine throughout, and also have the conviction that I am working in unity with that will as I understand it, that by digging in and retuning my inner ear - as well as getting to know a new locale and coming into contact with fresh ideas and personalities, (and this is the point of this overlong sentence which I am indulging in because I feel like it), I am about to enter the most fertile creative period of my life. The things I have written up to now are what they are. I’m not ashamed of them, but they really don’t cut it. It’s time to start forging the stuff that will cut it. That’s what I’m about now.

Notes fly off my callouses like
barbed wire, chunking hard the
detuned low strings, they’re a
bit slack but feeding back sweetly.
Diabolus seculorum under God,
this obstructer is one with the green
faces you’ve been peeling off into
the teller’s face. The nation was spinning
down the drain. Now it rises from the foam
and whirlpools of shaving-detritus
like Venus.

I don’t know if I’m dreaming, but it doesn’t
matter, because I’m playing guitar.

kneading dough
ad infinitum
always learning and never
coming to knowledge of
the truth.

You were not called by God
to be a pastor, or a prophet
but call yourself both. Apostle,
even. All you care about is the preservation
of your own authority, and your
family’s nepotistic stranglehold
on the local Conference.

You defend yourself against me
by saying I’m “not walking in love,”
and that “I have some things to learn
about working with people,” all of which
may be true. But what you really mean is
that I’m a lot smarter than you, with much
deeper insight, and you’re intimidated, and can’t
successfully debate me because of
your limitations of intellect, training,
and cultural background.

And I just don’t fit in, and don’t really care to,
and that rankles you, because your insecurity does not
allow you to feel adequate if there’s
someone in the room who doesn’t buy into your
palaver, the form of religion without
power to transform, or to heal, because
you don’t enter the door yourself, and
you bar it to others. Those slick colors
spread on the wall and doors that look
so artistic, and are even cross and bible-
shaped in the appropriate places,
are exactly one-millimeter thick, and have
exactly that much power: none.

This is where you strike back by telling the story -
which may even be true – of your encounter with
a supernatural being that was your calling to the pastorate.
And of the grave responsibility you have for your flock,
and how you won’t let anyone “harm this church” by
spreading deceit and false doctrine.

Answer me this: how do you know that the supernatural being
was really an angel?

My friend from Hamburg
accidentally pushed a rock
from a cliff in 1987, the stone
plummeted end over end downward
striking me on the shoulder and I ended
up in the hospital. To this day I accuse
him of trying to abort my political
career early through assassination.
A few inches to the right and
the two hundred pound rock would
have caught me in the face, and
I would not be here to write this.

Or at least we wave our
arms in the air fast enough
to slow us down enough for
survival, even if we break
our arms in the process.

Her fingers pluck the harp strings, callouses
a kind of love, the backdrop of my charade;
chandelier breaks and on the way down reassembles
itself but never reaches the floor to break into shards.
I shatter instead, watching.

Gutter violations breed fleas in October
radicals’ starched fur; Neptune drowns in
his own urine, despite the fact that he
can breathe water.

Praise unto the rage ecstatic, the joy
of free-bliss desiring which delivers us
like gangsters from the awful cozens
of comfortable damnations.