Enough to be on your way
You disembodied when you had
enough to be on your way.
You disconnected,
discoupling, finally, from the mother ship
and from each of us,
every man jack and dockside sally.
Dispiered as you disappeared
into the tunnel through your brain,
cast off, disshored.
Dissorrowed your soul
with fingerprints on the metal
of the last thing you touched,
your last action
before, empty, you fell as sack of vitals
disvitaled.
You dissinnered yourself who
was more wronged,
disguilted who was pure, stained,
disconvicted who was on the other end of the gun.
I would embrace you now
though you and I learned early
the rule of disembracement,
disbrotherhood, diskinship, dislove.
No one wants to hear this.
Shut up. Ignore it. You’re wrong.
Baby, don’t cry. I mean it: Don’t cry.
Don’t disobey.
Those who demanded our care
though we were cribbed —
they took that photo of
you screaming in rage, one,
me looking to forever, two,
both disciplined.
We displeased them.
Dischildrened we were,
adulted.
You disengaged, disgripped, disbreathed
when you had enough to be on your way.
Enough, finally,
distanced yourself.
Dissuffered,
disbirthed,
disconceived.
……
Duquesne whistle
The bones of the back tell stories.
Skin, muscle, mole, tan, tension,
haired, scarred, leathered, age-curved,
bare, skeletal, t-shirted, long-sleeved,
stiff, round-shouldered, supple,
a wilderness,
an ocean.
Praise the baby’s ear-swirl of skin,
as individual as a snowflake.
Inhale flame.
Speak thunder
The choir hymn:
Fortress, bulwark, mortal ills,
foes, woes, power, flood,
earth, one grim little
word, strength, striving, Lord,
age to age, battle.
After walking Duquesne University,
we ate hot dogs and listened to news
of brain-dead woman dead,
who we had never before talked of together.
The rhythm of the drum.
Hold or toss the dice.
My father said little.
He was told not to talk for three weeks
after polyps were removed from his larnax.
It was no penance.
He whistled orders at his many children
as if we were truck drivers working badly
to park our rigs at the South Water produce market.
Dummies.
Sacramental noise. Ritual bloom. Liturgical scar.
Blessed light. Mystical generation. Sacred bruise.
Holy water. Living stone. Solemn whisper.
Solemn shout. Solemn scream.
Beginning, middle, end.
He could have gone his whole life only whistling,
and never a tune.
……
Peru’s Golden Treasures exhibit catalogue
Gold glove on cover — like
gold French arm-shape reliquary
holding saint arm or bone —
into which priest slid hand to
hold sharp-edge for
innocent throat or maybe
hold a fist of wheat or maybe
hold hand full of bloody chest flesh.
What do I know?
I make this up as I go along.
Small, embossed grimace-head of
gold, once full-painted red and blue,
containing all eaten sin.
Gold-copper alloy green headdress
with metal disk eyes,
staring full-face at unseeable, like
gold Agamemnon mask, like Turin shroud.
How am I supposed to know
what Incas, French Christians, or old, old Greeks
did, thought, knew?
None of this is fact. All invented
(except 1978 catalogue, brittle but
still color full, found in free book box).
I embrace fact-haters.
I design to look deep at these things
to see what I will, to see what I see.
Don’t tell me what to see.
………..
Brothers
Red Cent ambled out of the bar
into the rush-hour morning,
factory dirty, shot-glass stunned,
watching the slash-slash-slash
of traffic colors at his embankment feet,
two-direction balance of speed,
turned left
for the mile to McDonald’s on the king’s highway
to meet his brother Lincoln
close-printing his prose scripture,
numberless numbers in formula,
as if batting averages for breathing,
sat across from him, foodless,
and they were statues underground,
an invading army of two
in a war everyone else had forgotten,
dancers at a wedding,
holding aloft the groom’s chair,
unrecognized as crashers,
and they had no words for each other.
……..
The problem of human suffering
My moments rosary,
each bead a flighted arrow,
fleshed an edged head.
Can’t money aside the bullet,
gleam the path away with polished teeth.
Read the scripture inside the scripture.
Pantomime the silence.
A mansion with many locked rooms.
Turn your face from me.
Gaze not to my affliction.
You are an insect of many eyes,
each slices and does not blink.
The storm never won’t oppress.
Howl.
Virgin clowns dance at halftime,
bridegroom quarterback kneels at midfield
to offer his brain to Mother Science
as snow falls and, through green fabric,
pushes up strawberry weed.
Bend back, offer neck to blade,
yearn for angel.
Let the baby sleep.
Soon enough,
she will walk the jagged path,
encased in her fate.
Patrick T. Reardon, a three-time Pushcart Prize nominee, is the author of ten books, including the poetry collections Requiem for David (Silver Birch Press) and Darkness on the Face of the Deep (Kelsay). His memoir in prose poems Puddin’: The Autobiography of a Baby is forthcoming from Third World Press, and his chapbook The Lost Tribes will be published in January, 2022, by Gray Book Press. His poetry has appeared in America, Burningwood Literary Journal, Rhino, Meat for Tea, Under a Warm Green Linden and many other journals.
No comments:
Post a Comment