Divine Frenzy
A current notion is an old notion made new,
like we do, that our real spirits puff away in air
like perfume or flatulence when our bodies die,
and though gods aren’t real we should pretend
to believe in them for the sake of civility
with those who find the notion of not being
so despairing they’re driven to kill themselves,
as youths today risk death by overdose,
we’re told, for merely some moments of bliss
or ecstasy of soul, like the direct love of God
might’ve felt to a penitent seized by rapture
in his austere cell. True enough, if you’ve lost
your license and have to walk a grimy strip
past cinderblock and asphalt shingled dumps
selling vape pipes, tattoos, and pepper spray
to buy a pizza slice, why not die in the full glory
of some passion? Or shoot everyone you hate
or don’t care about at wherever you choose?
But for us aloof egghead explainers: once dead,
who’d want to come back as a high end
tree ornament programmed to sing
for rich people, as the poet our schoolbooks
named our last Grand Poet declaimed,
though bloody shit-stinking trenches
had turned such hot air into so much exhaust
on sordid streets and inside our stuffy halls?
We can still get it, though not high flown
or mystical like invisible fingers that strum
a box harp on a window sill, but umbral images
that flitter lightless sparks against walls
inside our skulls. Why, asks a hand raised
in the back, don’t you just say what you mean?
Because we’re not allowed to tell. Once,
walking up the path to hike along the cliffs
of Great Head we came upon three kids
holding their phones idle by their sides,
for a change, huddled over a coiled milk snake,
all brilliant orange and black, engrossing
in its unhinged maw maybe the last marble
salamander left in the world, half in,
half out, with jerky little gulps, eyes popping,
the whole milky way in blackest shine
swirling around the flesh of the small creature
from beyond the beginning of any time
we’d become into for millions of eons ,
and in the ghastly beauty, disgusting
and enthralling, we saw old sublimity
still coiling its quietly desperate struggle.
Behind us we heard the tourist children
make their decision and start to stamp
both the eater and the eaten to death
to punish life, the only miracle
left to us, for its promise of suffering.
like we do, that our real spirits puff away in air
like perfume or flatulence when our bodies die,
and though gods aren’t real we should pretend
to believe in them for the sake of civility
with those who find the notion of not being
so despairing they’re driven to kill themselves,
as youths today risk death by overdose,
we’re told, for merely some moments of bliss
or ecstasy of soul, like the direct love of God
might’ve felt to a penitent seized by rapture
in his austere cell. True enough, if you’ve lost
your license and have to walk a grimy strip
past cinderblock and asphalt shingled dumps
selling vape pipes, tattoos, and pepper spray
to buy a pizza slice, why not die in the full glory
of some passion? Or shoot everyone you hate
or don’t care about at wherever you choose?
But for us aloof egghead explainers: once dead,
who’d want to come back as a high end
tree ornament programmed to sing
for rich people, as the poet our schoolbooks
named our last Grand Poet declaimed,
though bloody shit-stinking trenches
had turned such hot air into so much exhaust
on sordid streets and inside our stuffy halls?
We can still get it, though not high flown
or mystical like invisible fingers that strum
a box harp on a window sill, but umbral images
that flitter lightless sparks against walls
inside our skulls. Why, asks a hand raised
in the back, don’t you just say what you mean?
Because we’re not allowed to tell. Once,
walking up the path to hike along the cliffs
of Great Head we came upon three kids
holding their phones idle by their sides,
for a change, huddled over a coiled milk snake,
all brilliant orange and black, engrossing
in its unhinged maw maybe the last marble
salamander left in the world, half in,
half out, with jerky little gulps, eyes popping,
the whole milky way in blackest shine
swirling around the flesh of the small creature
from beyond the beginning of any time
we’d become into for millions of eons ,
and in the ghastly beauty, disgusting
and enthralling, we saw old sublimity
still coiling its quietly desperate struggle.
Behind us we heard the tourist children
make their decision and start to stamp
both the eater and the eaten to death
to punish life, the only miracle
left to us, for its promise of suffering.
