Televised

Pontius Pilate, the first unwitting interviewer,
came to wardrobe to check on the comfort of his guest.
"This is my production; shall we talk of truth, show the trailer?"
After that, cancelling the episode was what he thought best.

But production would not have it, so Pontius Pilate
stacked the show, in Roman fashion, with bloody blows,
and with Roman ingenuity, searched the law to bet
on appeasement by Barabbas, but the audience yelled no.

Yet the guest, abused by wardrobe and the make-up staff,
made excuse for Pilate, from his agony gave ease,
as he did to a guest beside him, not too later,
as he did to the dogged audience, breathed out his peace.

Not So Long

Another room has opened in this night

which holds no winter: vibrato in the waters

and transmission from the firs, oceanic

south wind - abrupt, benevolent, stealing in.

Not so long and the chirrups will rise, amphibian

gladness from the ponds, creeks, and ditches,

when dark air sighs about the notch of warm

poised in the chill - of softening humus,

when air sings strangely of water houses
multitudinous and suspended, where the crick
crick crick reverberates, and skunk cabbage surfaces.
Not so long and the oak won't rattle - but release

its stiffened leaves, like shriven sins; not so

long and daffodil green, wetly woven, will

bend in pliancy and sheen, in silence.

A room is being made, a humble promise.

2017

Late fall there were red huckleberries
in the forest, the which is reserved
for the prelude of summer, but mid
November they appeared, mostly insipid
and not so big; drops of blood that hovered
above the stump culture, in compensation
for their earlier drought termination.

Down the path a couple who drew
near, saying, "There's still some left!"
and more surprised to hear, "These are new",
remarked on the unseasonal warmth of the year
and continued on. Every one of them
had to be plucked, for a reason like to
courtesy, an adult accepting the dandelion

bouquet - only the roles reversed, and alien
rubies for the weeds: like a concept of berries
given in blood, thought-rich, unharried,
out of extenuation, squeezed; like the dry
blessing in the cool church stones - to fruit in days
far ahead - at the hot pilgrimage end;
or like the Christmas blossoms of the haw

from the staff of Joseph of Arimatheia.

The pale bean is like a dragon's egg:
a green hatchling rearing out its spine.
The shell is split, two wings are splayed
before it spirals up the fence-taut twine.

The dumb, the innocuous, the dead,
leavens a leaping out all unexpected,
like the flake of flint that is an arrowhead.
Our sin is conquered by a slip of Bread.

"The least in heaven is greater than he."
The mildest leaf by the cold bright sheen,
points to the moon face through the tree,
then to the sun, nowhere to be seen.

A Philosophy

I know that God at least
does not reject this rule of thumb,
though by itself it has deficiency:

that I do not so soundly sleep
as when my feet are sore beyond belief,
and concrete labour makes me dumb,

and mental constructs like rags are wrung,
and aired out in the morning.

But the bottle caps
and other scraps
will have their day.

Bits of fabric
a life-or-death currency.
And the power suit for
the horse's ass
hemorrhaging casino coins.
They will toss their gold
into streets.

One day a child will
look at daffodils,
see in them something
no one has ever seen
before in the history
of the world, and the God
of history will rejoice.

Hap - A September Song (revised)

The black dilation of the burdened
sunflowers, garners squirrels,
twitchy-high on the rich platters.

Straight of stalk was matched by surge
inch a day in summer: the quiet
bee grains moved, light as light,

now bend, as ball and chain, the stems
to the ransack, omega thieves' din,
leaf pelt and pith rip - like acorn rain;

like pitiable salmon, having spawned,
wavering thrash in mangy scale suits,
dancing the shallows with their epilogue.

If frisky gold opened on the bees and fire
manes flickered in the breeze, they went on
continuing, unchanging yellow sunflower,

and they were never strung like bows
to shoot, no spiders gauzed their prostration,
this autumn sky would bear down cruel,

those eyes sufficiently beamed and self-ruled
to never die: what heart stab if their leaves
never frayed, nor their poles strain seed down

in fall, inch a day.

Where is your Nazareth, your backwater.
Turns out after several detours
you do not know, have not known.
You have not much been there.

Yet it's your most native place,
this nowhere where Jesus goes with his grace,
not to your high altar where you count your earnings
while living from some proxy,
and formally identify with one
beyond uncertainty and dispute.

This the joy.
Jesus got there in you long before you. He took up his abode.
To your backwater Nazareth that Jesus goes,
like a basket baby in the river reeds,
a God Child in the hay seed,

bypassing everything, first taking every finicky reroute.
He got way in behind of you.
Long before anyone.
Bethlehem, Egypt, Nazareth,
Jerusulem, Golgotha.

Something broken in you
that you yourself cannot even reach
because your fallen nature prohibits it.
Jesus bypasses this and enters
to rest secure.

You did not call him down.
You did not synchronize with him
by the right kinds of symbols.
Your repentance does not earn his grace
but is itself a fruit of grace.

You can store brooms in the confessional
if you wish, nothing wrong with that.
Can still have confessions there, colloquial.
A broom won't listen to your conversation
and come up with search recommendations
based upon key words in your litany of sins.

Some people speculate that the workshop,
kitchen and bedrooms
were basically one single place,

or if they were somewhat separate,
it wasn't by much; it was all one home.

Where Jesus rested, he worked.
Hidden in his development.
Your Nazareth, your backwater.

Apoca - trip hey! Apoca - hip hoo!
Apocalypti. Lypti, lypti, lypti. A lypti who?
Erroneous cism - make a soft C! Cism, cism, cism!
Cism - oh hey! Cism - oh yay! Apocalypt, apocalypt,
apoca - lypti. Lypti, lypti, lypti. Oh lypti cism.
Apocaya hoo! Apocaya hey!
Apoca - yay - polka polka polka!

It was cosmic

Quadruple decker ufo
humming on the moon bald hill
on the rim of town, where firs in rows
are buffeted with south wind blows.

Rub the doubt out from your eyes,
slap each cheek awake and throw
water in the face - what, lies? no no!
The first sight still remains, and purrs

like a glowing eyed jungle cat,
a giant bird on a stovepipe hat.
How much those beings have advanced
with layers four and lights that dance!

Savvy the bees
baptized in pollen,
dusted in gold.

They have taught me
the lottery
of dust, with zero
to zero odds.

They have taught me
the labourer's
dust is gold,
and the idler's gold

is dust.

I remember how the funeral home
removed my mother's smile;
the pall of their procedures
in the cask at the end of the aisle.

My dad's complete dishevelment
the morning he up and went,
as though to spurn his lifelong body,
not closing his mouth: they did the same to him -

closed his mouth, buttoned him down,
just like they wiped my mother's beam in wax;
the masterstroke of last passion features
levied with a dolt-world's leave-taking tax.

"We have done our best to make this countenance
into proper corpse" was each retroactive attempt,
and I laugh; we are laggers even to done tasks,
and only the living make death masks.

An Irreproachable Clemency

Old oak leaves, the wind of spring assays,
quit the boughs and skip like truants,
catching in crocuses,
strangers in the day.

They would hiss
in a brood of winter
tongues where they clung; but cut

and cast, now muted, they run
in silence of an abrupt release,
the more indelible for being late,
having no terms to negotiate.

In the bathroom the porcelain bowl,
if you care to note, is engineered
with curves, a tulip's sleek, nothing but curves:
where edges are, no edge, endeared

with bevel all, which is hospitable design.
Comfort, safety, to be not uninviting;
moreover functional, water dynamic,
to cater to the vortex on the flushing.

Work washes you.
Sloth is a glue.

Labour is light.
Lazy is blight.

One shakes the dust.
One forms a crust.

One is a forge.
One is self gorge.

One sleeps at night.
One is a kite.

In each other's eyes
they are both fools.

But as true as the sky
only one is a fool.

Shadows are not cast;
the light does not cause shadows.
Fire makes not ash.

Breaking Bad

Santa sat down with his pipe and thought:
"Should little Jimmy get a lump of coal?
He's been super bad, and I've seen the hole
in the middle of his soul. To fill it with a lot
of toys and shite will do him none good;
what he needs is coal. Coal, coal to ignite:
that pre-diamond, old as death wood;
the black pressure of time to light."

"Yes", thought Santa as he ruminated
with his pipe while stroking his beard.
"I've seen in my globe: Jimmy has hated,
he's not a good lad, he's filled with fear;
much to be pitied. But that's all stubble
burning before my deeper vision:
I see Jimmy burning his bad, untroubled;
self-shadows breaking down in radiant fission."

Adding Up

Poplar for the fence;
town was for coffee, tea, sugar
and selling fur. The natives
were unreliable workers.
Not that they did bad work,
but they had an intractable
sense of time and after
a day and a half would disappear.
The nights of migrating rabbits.
So many they made a carpet
flowing to the warp of the floor
under the shell of the moon.
What sticks out the most is Lutz -
him and the necessity of hitting
squirrels in the eye. Anyways,
Peter and Lutz would sit around
doing nothing, as times of leisure
generously given to homesteaders -
perhaps with tobacco, thinking about
potatoes, and after some time
Lutz would get up, and Peter said:
"Lutz, where are you going?"
Asking each time to amuse himself,
for Lutz like clockwork would answer,
"I am going to do sometinks."
This exchange was ritual every visit;
a Dane and a German,
some English between them.
Lutz, where are you going?
I am going to do sometinks.
Adding up hearth stones in the wilderness.

In the kingdom

eternal, charity is a sphere;

faith and hope will dissolve, they

will not be needed; everything will be

clear - by charity, in charity, for charity.

A sphere that can only expand - just like

the universe expands - always, but clear.

Now is eye's oblong - opening to sphere.

In the ordinary parish mission we pass

round this circle of brass and clear

glass: a mote, Maria Goretti,

who lives in charity.

The Better to Drink

Amber segues the speedway at night
and lamps apace illuminate naught
but glistening pavement trailing away;
superfluity of silence and space
coyotes yammer in, pigeons sleep-talk.

What's unfulfilled from day collates
in the hollows of bat ears, acoustic
grottos - the waiting wealth of prayer;
the singing of the coin down the well,
the soggy wool of somnolent clouds,

the stripes down the spine of the skunk.
Dark enriches that prolongs the thirst,
the better to drink the daily of day.
Young John held back to let old Peter
go first, into the empty, tingling cave.