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Jam Our love is not the short |
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Alpha Zulu
by Gary Lilley
I know more people dead than people alive,
my insomniac answer to self-addressed prayers
is that in the small hours even God drinks alone.
My self-portrait; gray locks in the beard, red eyes
burning back in the mirror, the truths of grooves
and nicks on my face, one missing tooth.
I’m a man who’s gathered too many addresses,
too many goodbyes. There’s not much money
or time left to keep on subtracting from my life.
Except for needs I can pack everything I have
into my old black sea-bag. To all the bloods
I’ll raise a bourbon, plant my elbow on the bar
and drink to the odds that one more shot
won’t have me wearing a suit of blues.
I’m so exposed, with you all of me is at risk,
and if that’s only one side of being in love
that’s the one deep down that proves it.
Here you are sleeping with me, narcotic as night,
naked as an open hand, and the skinny of it is,
what makes you think I am afraid of this
when I once lived in a cave, moss on the cold wall,
all my bones scattered across the floor.
Modern Day Jesus Song
Alive am I in you; you alive in me; we alive in we—
prayers you hear and sometimes do not answer.
Alone, a lonely hawk on wire bobbing rhythmically
eyes searching for food. You take care of these. Too. It feels like instead.
Grooves carved in pain and sweat, sweet anguish, a
tooth clicked, cheek sucked, knocked to ground. One less.
Addresses, envelopes. Envelope me in your greedy, ready,
money laundering. Send money but don’t write. It is only
life after all. Lived long without much food. Poverty. The poor
have social services to live by. Turn the other fat cheek and chew.
Bloods dripping diseases. Famine distending bellies. Apathy. Coffee
bar slips our drinks and we go crazy. One shot? I said two. Add one
shot, and the blood pours for diamonds, clothes, shoes and we sing the
blues over spilled milk. A man sits cold, on the corner. And we
risk nothing. Seven cloaks in the closet. Demons. Skeletons. But
love? Greater love has no man than to lay down his life (or give a coat).
It is finished. But the world turns on, turns off, turns on again.
Night turns. Day turns. We turn away. Insular. Isolated.
Is this what love is? Do they know us by our love?
This is what love has become. They know us by our latte, our full closet.
Walls built keeping out the vagrancy, degeneracy, otheracy, only me you see.
Floor-ed. Cross-ed. Double cross-ed. You and me. Not you and we.
Gnosis
by Theodore Worozbyt
Turns out the radiologist didn’t know thing one about radios. I stood there in my stocking feet and waited for the music to begin again. Being generally good with small motors I would mow and mow the lawn stoically with a white hand towel draped around my neck. I was stimulated by the reports of the optical scienteers. Because of the particular reflective and refractive qualities inherent in the molecular structure of the chlorophyll molecule, the wavelength perceived by the human eye as green is in fact repulsed by grass. Thus grass is all other colors. Impossible, impossible! was the catarrh violently discharging itself in the chambers of my thoughts. Grass and vert are green. Reading is black surrounded by white. If not, what? A barely perceptible hum underfoot that turns out to be electricity or some other invisible fluid? A basket heaped with unadjusted watches? The forests filled with white tigers. Fire came from god’s beard. The sun rolled, a chariot wheel flaring its treads across the clouds. Starlight: angelic punctuation on the carbon paper of midnight. New York City sewers crawled with titanic alligators before debunkers in rubber boots stepped in. President Somebody was smoking an Egyptian cigarette and several papers didn’t get signed before the prognosis began to resemble a trumpet: something gold around a hole.
I decided to come a bit early to the Blue Bottle to meet with my friend Chelsy. We aren’t meeting until 10AM, so I told myself I would get some things from school done before she gets here. I am processing some of my own life, here and now, before I get started reading articles upon articles. I have decided I need to get one paper and my annotated bibliography finished this weekend even if it kills me. Once I get Bob’s paper finished, I can then do my other two papers and be finished with yet another semester of graduate school coursework. I will then have two summer courses, and two regular semesters left to go. I am ecstatic!
This summer I am going to try to narrow down the texts I will focus on for my dissertation. I think I am going to try to select texts from my various areas of interest (Contemporary American, Contemporary British, Victorian, and Realism/Naturalism) and then use a theoretical tie to bind them all together into several cohesive chapters. That, at least, is what I am thinking of doing right now. We’ll see when the time comes if it actually works out that way!
I realized as I looked back over my last few blogs, that I have sort of left God behind somehow. I assure you, that for once in my life, it wasn’t intentional. [They] just sort of slipped through my fingers somehow. I think that happens every semester in some way, but this semester it started with Lent. I wasn’t really in a Lent-y mood and it degenerated from there. In the past, I have had some bone of contention or some beef with God, but recently I just find myself thinking I can do things without God’s help.
I appreciated our sermon this past Sunday because it reminded me that we need to take on tasks, visions, dreams that we cannot possibly achieve without God’s help. David reminded us that too frequently Christians are comfortable in our set ways, our little ruts we trudge along in, and we don’t do much out of the ordinary. And how many churches do you think heard a sermon in which the pastor compared theology to string theory? I am sure that in Muncie there may have been one other one, but outside of that…I suppose I should pick up String Theory for Dummies if there is such a thing, so I can understand the entire analogy he was trying to make.
Really, things in life are chaotic but good. So I look forward.
Pastoral
by Jennifer Chang
Something in the field is
working away. Root-noise.
Twig-noise. Plant
of weak chlorophyll, no
name for it. Something
in the field has mastered
distance by living too close
to fences. Yellow fruit, has it
pit or seeds? Stalk of wither. Grass-
noise fighting weed-noise. Dirt
and chant. Something in the
field. Coreopsis. I did not mean
to say that. Yellow petal, has it
wither-gift? Has it gorgeous
rash? Leaf-loss and worried
sprout, its bursting art. Some-
thing in the. Field fallowed and
cicada. I did not mean to
say. Has it roar and bloom?
Has it road and follow? A thistle
prick, fraught burrs, such
easy attachment. Stem-
and stamen-noise. Can I lime-
flower? Can I chamomile?
Something in the field cannot.
Something in the field cannot.
Something cannot breathe
smothered under the ground
as it is by the sod.
Little eyes and little claws
scratching blindly at the roots.
Gnawing noises, sawing noises.
Slip up. Away. No lawn mowing
above the tiny beings. Head down
the blade swings fast. Vole. Mole.
What’s the difference? How are they
the same? Tunnel. Tunnel. Dirt and roots.
Slip through, slimy little skin.
Blind eyes. Claws. Long claws.
Moth balls choke. The smell.
We cannot breathe with those balls
in our tunnels. We retreat.
Reason Breeds Insanity 