Inconveniences Rightly Considered

by Lancelot Schaubert

  *see also Daniel Craig as James Bondº

  ºsee also Adele's^ song for said film

  ^see also Adele's dead ancestors†

  †etc.

  Wash your hands too little, you get infections. Wash too much, you mutate germs into superbugs and megaviruses -- radiation to komodo dragons; Godzilla crap, man.

  Take too little aspirin, you die of heart attacks. Too much? Your liver fails.

  Out of the frying pan, into the fire. Right Bilbo? Oh yes, look at what Mr. Tolkien did to cute, little, respectable, good, admirable hobbits: HE THREW THEM INTO A VOLCANO.

  } so to speak {

  There's coughs and wheezes, choking precautions, SIDS, cancer, saucers (the flying kind), terrorists, communists, capitalists who practice corporate assassination, oppressors, gangrene, poisoned tangerines, house fires, betrayers, cannibals and human filleters, wildcats, vampiric bats, bloody shats and molten vats of murderous liars.

  Also guns -- machines made of still more twisted metal that use a single compressed explosion to propel pointed hunks of metal through the air at hundreds of miles per hour in hopes to find a heart (or other vital human organ, remember those internal water balloons?) to pierce and thus end the life of the father, brother, mother, sister, daughter, son,

  grandchild

  of another human being who's no different than you or me. Not where humanity's concerned.

  "DAMNED IF YOU DO, DAMNED IF YOU DON'T," says my uncle and King points to the dance of death. It reminds me of that movie The Box. Push the button, someone dies. Don't push the button? You die.

  Maybe pushing the button isn't the whole story...

  It's not that we need safety, security, on the personal or national level. Even if we did, we cannot find such things in this world of barbs and barbed wire, guns and roses (NOW including free thorns with every purchase). Death finds us all, and we do well to "meditate on our deaths and the common circumstances which attend death," as Johnny Edwards said. Get rid of the button -- that was the moral of The Box. Don't kill somebody so your life can be better. Stop pushing it and chose to die. You die. You die. You choose to die.

  Not them. Not those people. Not your neighbor. Not your enemy.

  You.

  Don't push the button so that you can be safe.

  We don't need to be safe.

  We need to be saved.

  If saved, we get a chance to save others – Brandon knew that, wanted to go serve a nation far poorer than his own, push all-in with his own mortality that others might have life. Risky? Yes, but so is getting blinded out, letting your chip stack dwindle with every pass of the dealer button, letting your stack get smaller and smaller until the last two chips fall into a pot which will inevitably be a side pot (not the main pot), one that, even if you win, won't give you enough cashflow to carry you through to final victory. No, the slow surrender never suffices. We all must go all-in at one point or another, must risk to overcome, or we shall fade, some slower, some faster, into the loser's bracket, blind following blind after blind until the bubble bursts and we fail to make it into the money.

  Duly noted, Brandon.

  We hear your message and hereby sign this memorandum – let the record show:

  One put Himself in harm's way for us.

  We must put ourselves through harm that others might be

  safed.

  Infanticentric

  We can't go to that party

  cause of the baby.

  We can't ride the subway

  cause it's hard with a baby.

  We can't fly anymore

  with our newborn.

  We can't take that road trip

  cause of the baby.

  We can't sail around the world

  it's hard with a baby, you see?

  We can't invent cheap space travel

  or write our novels

  or shoot our films

  or save the planet

  and forget sex

  with the way our newborn cries.

  I don't know how we'll make another.

  We can't have parties anymore

  cause of the baby

  can't find unflooded shores

  cause it's hard with a baby.

  Can't breathe the air or drink the water

  or end this war

  what with how much time

  these last few newborns take.

  We can't live past thirty

  cause of the baby,

  must ride our rascals

  cause it's hard with a baby.

  Rot in nursing homes

  cause of the baby

  and you can forget about ever

  trying what comes next

  with the way our newborn cries.

  I guess we'll just have to never die.

  The alternate:

  that baby dies --

  would be unbearable.

  We couldn't whine and cry.

  Fall Into The

  There's a gap in the platform

  between the train and the earth

  you can fall right through it

  mind the gap.

  There's a gap in the sidewalk

  between the grate and the earth

  you can fall right through it

  mind the gap.

  There's a gap in the windshield

  between the crash and the reaction

  you can fall right through it

  clean into midair

  mind the gap.

  There's a man in the sidewalk

  between the gap and the earth

  you could fall right through him

  you could wonder until you're blue

  was he in some sort of

  extra planar space?

  a bag of holding placed

  inside a bag of holding?

  that didn't have room for bicycles

  in front of B63 buses?

  There's a Gap on Times Square, now.

  They used to have commercials about falling

  into them.

  The man is wearing one of their shirts.

  His blood's on the shards

  in the gaps

  of the street.

  I have fallen into him

  and no one followed me...

  Sonnet # 0 K

  to be read on infinite loop

   

  Enough to still the movements no one sees

  in statue, ice, or iron or the trees

  which chip, melt, ring, sprout leaves. Presences still

  .     Presences having their fill – face frees face

  freeze face (my worry in Unworried Will) –

  of one another linked :: moment and place ::

  lesser in Greater (greatest, then Greater)

  until my lesser freezes. Enough to...

  This is the way Ice Ages can conceive,

  can by unmoving move the world to be.

  They tell me, "Worlds can only grow so hot

  before they burn out, ours will burn out soon."

  Then, having fizzled, freeze amniotic.

  Can I expend my energy to freeze?

  To move to stop before I'm out of moves?

  Megabus Moon Roof

  The overpass eats, opens like a dark

  To swallow the shuffle. See how the glass

  Of our double decker darkens and the ear

  Is silenced shuttered? Space comes to mind

  Millennium Falcon's maiden plunge

  In the belly of the beast. Back when Han

  Was still scared of sharper teeth

  And the bowels of bore worms the bounty king

  Jabba will joke in jumbled tones

  While out feeding them the faces of free Jedis

  And rebel parsec runners and the Wookie

  And these two droids. That's how a Mega

  Bus will abide bridges that just

  Barely brush the brink off the moon

  Roof and render the row of ceiling

  Windo
ws into weird, wind-up pixels

  Whose fellowship flashing fetches dreams of

  Broadway's bygone billboard lights

  And their rickety rhythms. Remember then, I ,

  How one of the panes offered its embrace

  To some bad bridge that broke its trust

  And shattered the shield of a second pane

  Above the bunch. You bear up as

  Luxury leaves below your fears.

  New York Funeral

  Put me with the pets. Pushing up daisies

  Ain't easy in the environment shared

  By eight-million owners and workers

  And predators and prey, so prone are we

  To leave lions to lay rotting

  For the birds and beasts. So bag me (and tag

  Me not for the news). I never want a tomb

  Or a catacomb's colored glass to

  Decorate my death. A dearth of rites

  Wasted on withered wraiths of men -- 

  Put me with the pets. Plows and dump

  Trucks will take trashbags black

  And filled with the fur of Fido or Milo

  So that landfill is the last longing of the fury

  Body and its brine of boiling maggots

  Cause where can you bury a Wilbur or Charlotte

  In the city that seldom sleeps or grieves?

  Put me with the pets. Those purring, barking,

  Corporeal powers, those purple flowers

  In the Garden of God (who gives being

  To each and every instant -- and existence

  To contingent things). He thinks donations

  And graces gives -- these good bits of the Soul of

  God's Glory, these goodly painful

  Summertime stories of song and its laughter

  Of fetch and the fletcher whose flights have stricken

  The liver or the organ of love and blood

  Of one so the wind can whip in the ears

  Of a spaniel's spring, or the snow leopard's

  retrieving or a terrier's. The truth of the shared

  Life and its loves -- of living being --

  Put me with the pets. Put me in a bag

  With the discarded dreams of America

  And the souls it disposed of and summon the courage

  To see me in the same image

  And bruised body of the battered pit bull

  And then put me with the pets and please weep

  For them and their thankless thoughts and jobs.

  Greenwood Cemetary Graves at Snowfall

  Snow on the stones, salts and ices

  That garnish the graves. Greenwood waits

  For the day when dawn doffs the wrappings

  And garments of granites, the garland of a robe

  Or a blanket's mask on the bleak pillars

  Like condoms or clasps of copper bracelets

  Or the hood of The Grim. How will their clothing

  Slip away like a summer nightie

  Or an iPhone sleeve? I sing a

  Dirge of laughter. Dream, I, a

  Joke of tears. Just as the summer

  Shatters after sunlight sears

  And the great globe burns. For God will decloak

  These old oaks, these overgrown pillars

  Whose moss remembers the making of life

  From our rotting rinds. And ruin is quickly

  Impotent rendered. Import is the weight

  Given from without. Graces make

  The meaning mind. And a mountain of giant

  Phalluses vanish before the Master's

  Vanishing veil and the varnish fades

  And the stone statues stand upward

  As men of bone and mothers' faces.

  La Fin Du Monde

  Read the world's ending

  in a book again today

  and I laughed

  Determined:

  laughter

  helps us finish strong.

  It's not the first book

  printed whose themes

  Feature the end of the world

  Humans often transition from

  fantasy

  to

  science

  fiction

  (from mythology to

  eschatology)

  by way of

  apocalyptic modes of transit

  and... here we are!

  science

  fiction

  from

  fantasies

  my rich uncle

  well-respected in my home town

  preppin' with canned food

  ammo enough to sow a million fields

  were they seeds rather than shells

  of broken things

  the heirloom kind they buy

  unlike those engineered

  to die

  three generations out.

  buddy told me to buy-gold-not-buy-gold-buygold

  after the Dinar revalues

  (after the bitcoin exploded)

  after they devalue the dollar

  nevermind, don't buy gold again,

  buy foreign stocks

  from those countries America invaded

  in order to have something worth investing

  in:

  Japan

  Germany

  Iraq (once they get theirs up and running)

  because depression's a great

  foe, great depression

  is

  and I

  determined to laugh

  so

  I laughed.

  Call me a scoffer, a cynic, a mocker

  but I see the ashes, the cinders, the embers

  and laugh

  cause the fire, it keeps me warm

  throw some Benjamins on it

  I see the smoke rising and see

  smoke signals

  in billowing willows

  and think: if Isengaurd burns

  Ents are going to war

  poisoned wells

  I rejoice that half the world has no

  clean drinking water

  they could be like we who

  sitswimmin in 16,000-gallon pools

  of rotting water

  while theirs at least reached stasis

  Drink up, drink up together and

  laughing and chugging

  poisoned sacraments of the poor

  while we die of thirst,

  so I laugh too

  because that's what my homeless friends do

  and Rich told me

  "He did not have a home"

  so why should I?

  The whole world belongs to the meek,

  why shouldn't I?

  Wounded wings mended

  when kids giggle and bells toll.

  Crashing planes

  flown inverted

  by drunk men

  laughing

  who say, "Hello, my name"

  and laugh with others

  who once nursed the bottle

  in temperance movements

  who readily admit:

  we've all got some serious problems.

  I see games to end hunger,

  Givers,

  people sick of taking The Stand,

  game overs for Readied Player Ones,

  all under Big Brother and I can't help

  but laugh

  because even O'Conner and

  Anne Rivers Siddons

  Straub

  Shirley Jackson

  dude that wrote The Walking Dead

  McCarthy – these "southerners"

  all can enjoy the sweet

  tea

  black and

  refined sugar

  meet

  in

  brown-iced-liquid

  They laugh at dinner like the rest of us

  if given half a chance

  and good company

  "friends," that is.

  Don't believe me?

  read Malin's recipe f
or "THE NEW AMERICAN GOTHIC:"

  (1) setting: microcosm

  (2) ...as image of imprisonment, confining narcissism

  New trends make sense:

  zombie,

  bomb,

  economic collapse,

  or your run-of-the-mill invasion

  (of the body snatchers),

  because it's all as small

  as claustrophobic

  as the modern kitchen table

  which remains woefully vacant

  literally

  (only one due to loneliness or

  none due to fast food)

  or figuratively

  (only one due to worry or

  many due to fast phones)

  gather around and forget that this symbols communion.

  And so we invest in

  (1) microcosms of

  (2) imprisoning narcissism

  and let the wrappers,

  status-updates,

  preppers,

  and divorce

  leave us like the last man

  in a prison of

  living hells,

  undead

  but at least we got our guns, by God

  and at least they have theirs, by God

  hmm. [chuckles] By God

  maybe not.

  if "No man is an island" remains ignored

  we convert

  kitchen tables

  back into islands

  and the only way off the island

  (Lost?)

  is by building a land bridge

  not in the Alexandrian way,

  using the rubble of conquered cityscapes to

  level the playing field,

  but rather the rubble

  of broken loves

  broken kins

  broken brokers

  to rebuild a path from my side of the table

  toward yours

  and that sort of thing

  starts with the sound of

  kitchen tables,

  starts with

  a laugh.

  Scared?

  That's how you know where the courage is

  in this brave, brave, brave, brave,

  Brave New World.

  So yeah, I laugh when you tell me the world's ending

  not out of disrespect

  but out of this respect:

  laughter's the way out.

  "But Lance, the world's really ending.

  Like, for real this time."

  I know.

  [sound of laughter]

  Trust me, I know.

  Has been for two-thousand years.

  Apocalyptic

  literature

  's as old

  as Scripture

  after all.

  We humans've done this thing for quite some time...

  and the best of us knew how to overcome and

  laugh. Look at John, Zeke,

  Bell and her Dragon.

  That Shepherd of... what was it again? Hermas?

  Sure, why not, the world's always ending.

  So what's changed?

  Nothing.

  Wars

  rumors of wars

  not yet the end, but the end's in sight.

  [sound of laughter]

  Greatest man to ever live saw the end

  and laughed,

  scoffed, really, in the face of doom

  (His)

  and the world's ending.

  Oh we could wax on with the appropriateness

  of phrases eloquent-yet-cliché:

  laughed his head off,

  laughed it to scorn,

  laughing all the way to the bank,

  but really

  the laugh's on him

  cause he had the

  last laugh.

  Story time:

  The other day my buddy was having a rough day

  so we played chess after eating homemade burritos

  at his kitchen table.

  His world was falling apart

  (he'd overstated a point)

  My world was falling apart

  (I hadn't got paid for an invoice)

  His wife's world was falling apart

  (she dropped twelve stitches on her knitting)

  My wife's world was falling apart

  (we are moving away from everyone and everything we know and love)

  His son's world was falling apart

  (he had to go to bed without milk)

  His daughter's world was falling apart

  (she wanted to stay in the living room and flirt some more

  with me,

  even though I won't flirt back--she's three

  and I married the lady of my dreams)

  and everyone I knew was falling apart

  and everyone he knows was falling apart

  and our everyones everyoned into everyone

  until every one

  fell apart.

  The fragments spilled out on the table...

  even on top of our chess game where he beat me with

  hypermodern openings he didn't know the name of

  He sat down a bottle of French beer named

  La Fin du Monde

  and he

  Friended me

  and I

  friended him

  over fragments

  and started to piece together

  a mosaic using glue found in the motherlode

  running through all our

  kitchen table islands

  this natural resource,

  this love-

  glue

  laughter.

  We laughed

  while I sipped,

  some say nursed,

  the bottle

  of the end of the world.

  Daylight and The Stand

  ...anyways authors arm their minds

  With the rinds of ruined rights and their power

  To bind black burdens of fears

  That find them flailing in the ferret holes

  Of vain environs developers dug

  Out of stone or stock, steel or river

  Like holes in holy hearths or the essence

  of elements like earth. Earning your way

  Seems a bit shallow when the sun dies

  Or the power pines. Ponder what the writers

  Who've taken the tunnel towards the Jersey

  Line have learned: lay a system

  On a system on a system, it soon burns

  With a switch flipped off. The sea breaches

  Stalone's lanes. And left cars

  Corridors clog for King after

  The flu vaccine fails and the mighty

  Choke on their snot. Choose your way

  Carefully, cousins, because cosmos collapse

  Eventually, see? Vials of cures

  And silos of surefire shots will bow

  To the fate of future fights and rustings

  And you'll yearn for the youth when the thought

  Of claustrophobic conclusions to fictions

  Seemed worse than the weather that warmed daily.

  Dr. Robert Lowrey, In Memorium

  I saw him call down fire from heaven

  into young minds

  primed for eruption

  I heard him whisper names of things

  secrets hidden in bittersweet scrolls

  names, masteries, insights, mysteries, intuitions,

  control over nuclei

  of thrones, crowns, primeval beasts, modern call girls, flying scorpions,

  red dragon

  of the sea,

  of the song,

  of the seven thunders,

  of the sacred surreptitious scroll

  once buried under sand

  I smell incense rising:

  Nag Champa, Cinnamon, Egyptian Musk, Spikenard, Lavender Sage, Myrrh, Goldenseal, French Vanilla, Rose, Raspberry Crystal, Jasmine Flower, Juniper Breeze, Sandalwood, Super Hit, Coconut, Cool Water, Paradise – Le
t's Go!, Cotton Candy, Mango Madness – Think Vacation, Cherry Vanilla – #1 Best Seller, Pink Sugar, Polo Blue, Dream Catcher, Eternity – Is Forever!, and 77 other scents!

  I smell prayers rising

  once filtered out of our fresh air

  I take the scroll

  I taste the scroll

  I eat the scroll

  savor sentences

  relish recapitulations, refraining

  piquancies within consuming consummation

  deep in our cores

  inside we who heard him,

  discovered with him,

  absorbing along, the

  man who acquired this taste for things

  Can you feel him?

  Can you feel him among the great cloud?

  Hear him bear witness:

  Ireny

  Allegiance is bliss, on our irenic side.

  Celestial envoy giv'n to John.

  Bless all who keep it, they shall hold the tide.

  Good John wrote epics hard to hide

  The Word, The Witness - act upon

  Allegiance -- it's bliss, on our irenic side.

  Blissed the reader!  Blissed the hearer's life!

  This Oracle will thereupon

  Bless all who keep it, they shall hold the tide.

  Every stroke, note, letter, ledger line

  Was written with a King's baton.

  Allegiance is bliss, on our irenic side.

  You must know there remains no time,

  (Dear father time bears no more spawn).

  Bless all who keep it, they shall hold the tide.

  This vision escorts, let it be your guide.

  You'll take a side (take one that won).

  Allegiance is bliss, on our irenic side.

  Bless all who keep it, they shall hold the tide.

  Revelation 6

  I've held the broken seals

  As a man returning home

  Revisiting his desk

  Finding open envelopes

  Red wax unsealing truth

  Whitened pages bane pure love

  Before each letter reads it

  History's mourner's song is sung

  The first, a tyrant strong

  Yells a conquering, taunting chant

  Upon his white-clad steed

  His bow, war's stimulant

  The rider's parallel

  Quickly slashed his second seal

  His horse the hue of hell

  His extensive sword kills peace

  Thrice told with broken wax

  Blackened fur now rides along

  Both horse and rider poised

  Holding scales, earth's judgement song

  A fourth! A paled horse

  Bearing Death himself bareback

  Hell itself still tails his course

  Dragging plagues and famine's shack

  And as I read the furied fifth

  Martyrs' dirges filled my ears

  Lives which seal the truth, their wax

  Cries, "Vindicate our tears!"

  Before my chance had come

  To reread the open sixth

  An earthquake snapped the ground

  as an ice storm would a twig

  A veiled sun behind

  and the moon-man's bleeding face

  Stars detached themselves from sky

  Looked like ripened, shaken figs.

  By then each king of earth

  With the free and every slave

  Each man of natural birth

  Hid beneath each rock and cave

  Could any man now stand?

  (Even I at desk received)

  I heard a mighty voice

  "Who can open up the scroll?"

  No man, nor angel came

  Not in heaven, caves below

   

  A lamb came limping forth

  Looking long as if it had died

  He gently took the scroll,

  He glanced inside...

  OH!

  Revelation 10

  He had a cloud

  a robe

  but a cloud around his waist.

  crimson, apricot, gold, avocado,

  navy, cobalt, lilac all swirled into one band.

  one halo on his brow.

  His smile blazed in light

  Light from a thousand suns

  Bricks built towers that made his legs,

  towers flaming as a gasoline fire

  between the two, he spanned the hemisphere

  rising in the western sky

  the land, the sea, his stool he straddled

  on and over,

  by and by.

  His voice roared as a horde of lions,

  a pride of giant, hostile cats

  which quake the worlds ceiling

  sounding the seven thunders.

  of those, I can't write.

  Maybe in the next compilation...

   

  He gave a fling, a flick, an elevation of his wrist.

  Raising his hand in solemn vow.

  And winsome grin escaping now.

  He swore his oath to heaven.

   

  Resting on the elder,

  The old man he swore by,

  The was, the is, the coming one,

  He swore his oath to heaven.

   

  By the one who made the earth

  With its rocks & muddy ruts

  With its beasts & dummy ducks

  With its birds of prey & honey nuts

  Along with all them old trees.

   

  By the one who made the seas

  With its crabs & deeper depths

  With its whales & lockness tales

  With its cranberry toes & flotsam gulfs

  All on this stormy sea

   

  He swore that time was up.

  That as the 7th blew his horn

  One's mystery would come

  & all would complete.

  An angel spoke

  In speaking, set me free

  "Go take the giant's book

  held open over the world,

  He is the one upon the fence

  Between the land and sea."

  So I removed my pride

  Approaching such a being

  His book outweighed a train

  Theory seemed so small

  "Now take-it-eat-it" so I kissed

  sweet pages & let free

  taste of honey sweet

  my stomach turned

  vomit, scorn, a haze

  Then left to prophesy

  To the men in the vale.

  Revelation 12

  Sylph with freckled cheeks

  Well she stood upon the moon

  She, more than any, dressed in sun

  Clothed in light

  Robed in shining cloth

  A fizzy form engulfed her brow

  A crown, tiara, diadem

  Made of twelve sole stars.

  She was pregnant, pretty as she was,

  But not for much longer.

  Cries -- the cries -- that echoed in the night

  For her child's coming

  Another sign:

  A Rabble, ruckus, caucus sound

  flame & shadow, smoke & death

  The first and only dragon.

  All seven heads crowned in power

  Ten horns more, still more for power

  One flick, one twitch of His cedar-tail

  And one third stars snuffed out

  Falling, crashing to the earth

  Shuffled by his tail's girth

  Crouched before her child's birth

  Poised to eat him whole.

  The dragon's mouth was shut

  Boggled by an iron rod

  Wielded by the new-born god

  Son of sylph, the woman

  Racket of nations soon will still

  For he will rally yes he

  Will fill the earth with his renown

/>   Green the snake shifts

  Sick from the truth

  As the infant king arose

  Snug & tight in the sight

  Of God himself

  on his throne on high.

   

  Sanctuary. 

  Protection, haven for a time.

  In the Desert, safety

  For 1260 days to be precise

  Waited on hand, side, and foot, she was, mother of the King.

  Weighted dawn tanned sky, afoot, to cause other love to bring

  Hope.

   

  WAR!

  (Like never before.)

  War is hell.

  Especially war in Heaven.

  Heaven was at war.

  And war is hell.

                  ∴ hell invaded heaven.

   

  Hell'd forgotten about angels.

  Dragon's angels forgot Michael.

  Who can withstand Heaven's host?

  The armies of The Lord know no match.

  Dragon worked from every angle

  Breathing fire and death in cycle.

   

  None can stand.

  None are strong.

  None can pluck the cord they need

  to sing the master's song.

  None are Him.

  None but Him.

  And Nothing holds a footing facing all of heaven's throng.

   

  ∴ Asp fell

  devil-king of cobras

  And morningstars

  Hurled to the earth

  With his messengers

  The enemy of mirth

   

  inhale

  booming voice before a gale:

   

  "Salvation,

  All power,

  Kingdom. and

  Authority

  Have now come to us

  Through Cristus

  Victor

   

  Prosecution of our brothers

  Rooted in the one who

  Persecuted all the saints

  Accusing all our people

  Now is heaved

   

  Our brothers overcome

  Standing Heaven's ground

    By blood

    By proof

  They loved to die for him

  More than to live for themselves

   

  REJOICE, O HEAVEN!

  SING DEAR SKYS!

  CELEBRATE UTOPIA FOR DOOM OF HIM WHO LIES!

   

  Woe to you, poor earth

  Cry temporal tears

  Fill the deep, turn to sea,

  through lowly mourner's cries

  For he who lies is here,

  And know that he is RED

  His anger mounts, you'll be his sport

  And now he knows his time is short..."

   

  As Dragon saw his fate

  Having crashed into the earth

  He chased the woman great

  (Yes, the one who'd given birth)

   

  Great Eagle's span shall bring

  Her a haven for a time

  Times

  Half a time.

  Beyond the dragon's reach.

   

  From deep within the eel

  Within the sea-drake's throat

  A river cursed by pride

  Sought out to torrent zeal,

  To smash her hope, which floats

   

  Earth helped her

  By swallowing the flood

  The Dragon raged, ticked by failure

  Stormed to murder her sons,

  Command keepers and

  Holders of life.

  Revelation 13

  Dragon stood on the seashore.

  Lonely and alone.

  Wondering why his lonesome pride

  Had furnished him no home

  Feel not for him, nor pity

  Pity's no game

  Bilbo's pity ruled the fates

  dragon stands

  On edge of our divide

  And from the sea, he calls another

  "Blasphemous" from "Pride"

  Ten Horns sprout from his face

  Or faces, if we see

  All seven – sheer disgrace

  For both beasts by the sea.

   

  Leopard?

  No, the feet of a Bear. 

  But that's a lion's mouth...

  Well, whatever it was it came from the deep

   

  Dragon gave the beast his sword

  And with his sword, his blitzkrieg crown

  And with his crown his tyrant's scepter

  Stained in blood, bent from drowning babies

  The struggle, the wrestling, that ends in his taking

  Even our names.

  Precisely the opposite of Jacob.

   

  One head of seven had a scar

  No lightning bolt, nor pirate patch

  A blow that almost killed him

  World followed him, enticed by charm

  Captivated by his words.

  Men soon bowed for the Dragon.

  For he had given sword, and crown and scepter

  To the seabeast

   

  That damned beast was worshiped too.

  "There's no one like him."

  They said.

  "Who can stand against the Beast

  who holds the scepter in his hand?"

   

  They'd regret that...

   

  He never shut up

  Never closed up his mouth

  His arrogant boasting, and blasphemous bout.

  Beast did what he pleased

  (for forty-two months)

   

  Spitting, Swearing, Scoffing at God

  Bedamning, Blaspheming, Excreting his curse

  Upon the Name, and His Church

  Mostly to those in Heaven.

   

  Permission came for his bedlam and din

  For conflict, for bloodshed of saints worldwide

  For War and for mayhem, for sowing in sin

  No tribe, Nor voice, Nor kindred could hide

  From the Beast who sucked them in.

   

  Rue! Woe! And Rain to all whose name

  Hides not in the Lamb's book of life

  For they, as worshippers, must bow down

  All remain fall face down in time

  All kiss toward the Beast

   

  Are you deaf ?

  You're deaf, aren't you?

  Because if you aren't

  If you really wanted to hear,

  You'd listen.

   

  You'd take it in.

   

  If you set yourself up, tighten the trap –

    It's sure to spring on you

  If you're tagged for chains, tighten the cuffs –

    You're sure to be tied down.

  If you're locked in battle, loosening sheaths –

    You're sure to be slain in war.

   

  But if you're of God

    And if you're of life

    And if you are chasing like madmen after Christ

    And if you have passion

    And faithfully stand:

  Sacrifice

    Saves every man.

   

  Ground broke.

    No golden shovel

    No red ribbon,

    The ground split all on its lonesome,

    Crumbling as it rose, that Beast of the Earth.

  Two horns for him, two like a Lamb,

    he isn't our Lamb

  One voice for him; voice like the Drake

    A marionette of the sea-Beast's expense

    A slave, a herald to spread sea-Beast's fame

  Pseudo-Lamb, false-Ram forced everyone

    To ki
ss towards & bow'fore

    Sea Beast's wake.

  He looked with a taunting, tempting grin

    Supporting sea beast

      Who's mortal cut now scarred...

   

  Puppet – Beast performed enticing signs

    Calling judging fires forth from sky

  Using power given from Sea-Beast

    False-Ram rocked our brothers to sleep

  Soon they forged a golden effigy

    Bowing down before a gold Sea-Beast

   

  He who took the deathblow stood alive

    False-Ram mobilized his golden form

  Woe aroused in shape of idol bold,

    Ventriloquized by the puppet-beast

  For all refusing bows to the Beast

    Stood steps away from their brink...

   

  They coerced all public

  All society.

  They strong-armed nations

  Forcing citizens

  (Ranging from the lesser trivial -

  Toward all the weighty, men of note,

  Spreading from the wealthy comfortable

  En route to meager penniless,

  Stretched between those chained to someone's floor

  And those permitted rampant liberty)

  All to wear a brand.

  Tattooed on their hand or brow,

  Their name is shadowed over.

  For those without a brand

  For those without a mark

  For those who kept their name

  Nothing could be bought

  They couldn't sell stuff

   

  A labyrinth of a questions fills our minds

  One veiled in truer mystery

  Only all together will it show

  (Revealing only comes through unity.)

  To know the number of the Grounded Beast

  We must know that he thrice has fallen short

   

  Dear sevens, you are whole

  You've earned rapport

  But Beast has fallen short of seven's par

   

  Once he took a floundered blow

  But healing now he has a horrid scar.

  Twice more did he decline, run us aground

  Miscarriage of his "truths"

  He truly failed.

   

  Thrice has he fallen short of we, God's 7-star rated

  Thrice he has amounted to only a 6-star safety rating

  See his horrid number, turned upon God's heavens

  Hear his number slowly:

   

  666.

  Whatever that is, it's not a jackpot

  Down at the slots.

  Ash Wednesday

  It was the palm's power to pick the one

  Who would have the honor. Healers and kings

  And prophets and priests enpalmed like the actors

  Who ready for the road of red carpet

  And the fanning of fans' fingers and extra --

  EXTRA! -- Excerpts from the excess paper

  Runs The Register or rather The Times

  Printed for critique: petty to be used

  As a cooling device. The carpet and the fans

  We used to hail him, but even kings

  Our loyalty lose, leave we the healers,

  The prophets, the priests. And the palms either rot

  Or burn and return to the black ashes

  In which they once weathered the sowing

  And the deluge of planting. The Dominican or the friar

  Or the priest thumbs the powder and marks

  My mind's meat -- Remember, my brother:

  You are dust and to dust you do return.

  Black Sabbath

  Brief Intro

  Sometimes coincidence happens. And sometimes providence strikes.

  And sometimes the statistical anomaly of the universe's mathematical equation and the providence of God time out to make something truly, deeply odd. These two poems are the latter -- a wedding of statistical anomaly and providence -- and therefore they, as a unit, need a special sort of introduction.

  One of my best friends in the world is the soon-to-be Dr. T.A. Giltner. Other than my wife and perhaps Mark Neuenschwander, no single person has talked me off the ledge more often when I've thought about quitting, hanging up my poetic spurs, and trying out... I don't know... gaffing or fletching or cobbling or cooping. Candlestick making. Whatever. Point is, I owe a lot of the doggedness of my literary career to this guy.

  Sometimes we go months without talking to each other but when we finally touch base again, we always connect on multiple different things and find that our minds have, more or less, gone deeper and higher in a similar trajectory. Even if we have studied completely different things. One such occurrence happened after a six-month span without reestablishing contact with one another. It resulted in these two poems.

  I had spent time meditating on death, the abyss, suffering in the world, the death of the species, the death of the star, the heat death of the universe, gravitational decay and dispersal, entropy, and other things of that cheery brand. The abyss. I was staring into the abyss while chewing glass, as Mr. Elon Musk once put it, though it wasn't a metaphor for starting a business. I was doing it literally. And literarily. In the process I came again across an old Fred Craddock sermon in which he said, "Evangelicals love the crucifixion and they love the resurrection, but really they're like a bunch of mobsters caught red-handed: they don't know where to put the body. The body of God." When you add that to Nietzche's statement that God is Dead and Holbien's painting of the Dead Christ which he painted after he literally fished a body out of the Rhine river and used it as the subject study for Jesus -- a painting about which Dostoevsky claimed in The Idiot, "It could make you lose your faith" -- you get into the deepest, darkest questions any atheist could throw at you.

  I began meditating on all of the Dead Christ paintings I could get my hands on and then started reading up on the Catholic idea of Holy Saturday -- and how Christ dead in the grave mirrors God's choice to stop working on the Sabbath even though he has power to create again. It turns out the Jewish idea of resurrection isn't like our idea of life after death but something like life after "life after death," as N.T. Wright says. Their whole idea was that if God created gravity and superstrings and black holes once, he holds that same power to do it again.

  I then realized how much of my life had involved a deep obsession with the macabre -- how many horror films I had seen as a young boy, how many dead bodies I had encountered before college, how much animal blood my hands had shed. Even though I went vegan for a small season just to push closed-minded folk around me to reconsider their choices, still the vegans themselves gave me no respite: plant life is still life and therefore we must kill to live or else die to give life. I went into a deep dark hole, talked to my buddy Jordan Wood about nihilism, wrote a nihilistic children's book, listened to a Ben Quash lecture, and came out the other side with the long form poem Dead Christ.

  Then T.A. Giltner called. It had been six months, as I said.

  Somewhere in that conversation, I mentioned the dark process I had gone through and how I ended with this poem and how I was proud of it for reasons other than everything else I had written in verse.

  "Who have you been talking to?" T.A. asked.

  "What do you mean?" I asked.

  "Who told you about my work?"

  "Um..." I said, "I haven't really kept in contact with anyone in your circle, man. What's up?"

  "I've spent the last few months doing the same thing and I just finished a poem too. It's called Holy Saturday."

  We read one another's poems. The arguments, and therefore the trajectory of the poems, work in parallel. It was both coincidence and providence, dovetailing in ways only he and I can really get in the company of one another. I didn't really feel right publishing my poem without his beside it, so I purchased the first serial right
s from him to publish it here. His poem is the twin of mine and the medieval folk believed that twins shared a special sort of power when they collaborated. The truth is, his is a far, far better poem than my own -- I only include mine because I think they illuminate one another. T.A. is much bolder with his language than I am with mine, as you'll see, but his harsh and even crass language has a very, very specific point that's incredibly important. Remember: Geoffrey Chaucer was a Christian who critiqued his culture with the exact same four-letter words that T.A. Giltner uses in Holy Saturday. If you don't believe me, go read the article by C.S. Lewis entitled Four Letter Words.

  With that, I give you first my Dead Christ and then T.A.'s Holy Saturday. I always save the best for last and his is the best poem in this entire compilation. I'm honored to include his work because it raises the value of every fumbling attempt of mine that came before it.

  Dead Christ

  For Jordan Wood and Ben Quash

  I. The Magazine

  Holbien fishes bodies from the Rhine

  stone or marble forms a slab

  he clears green mold, seaweed, the guts

  it takes to paint a Chrorpse,

  and spreads them out to prompt his work.

  Oh yes, he thinks, this one will do,

  emaciated brawn like chicken legs,

  Oh yes, he thinks, this one works nice

  and from decay paints Christ.

  II. The Meal

  (Dig one out of that sink for me. No that one, the one that's getting sour. Yes, that'll do, I need brain food before I start this thing... thanks.)