Myth of Arrival

Conceit: n 1: feelings of flamboyant pride [syn: egotism, narcissism, pretension, pride, self-love, self-worship, smugness] 2: the trait of being a complete bastard.

Yesterday I received in the mail a letter from The Academy of American Poets asking for money. I believe that is what you call irony. Yes, it turns out that I too could be part of this little old boy's club (well, not as a poet) if only I could give out, spend, afford it. Give out, indeed. I am giving out. Falling down. I, too, am exhausted from my poverty, from other's consumption.

This has nothing to do with having been raised on a healthy diet of being the last of the famous international playboys; last of the glamorous bright young things. After all, we have so many resources. I hope that perhaps the next poetry book Tupelo Press, Copper Canyon or Nupress releases will change the world, impact someone, somewhere … perhaps they will. Does it matter? Perhaps for a moment after 9/11 poets were timely, relevant, spoke about what was happening in this nation, this world. For a moment. Perhaps. Now this month's National Geographic shouts out: The Selling Of Alaska. Destruction of the Oceans. Unending Consumption. Where is our Lorax? Who speaks for the trees, for the trees have no tongues?

Here, Academy, I would send your letter back empty if I had 39 cents. Regardless, here is one more crack I will gladly fall through …

The odd thing about being poor is that the rich always seem to romanticize it. But they have health insurance and postmodernism and clubs that turn the rest of us away at the door.

Mnemosyne, about a week ago,
wandered out behind the clay breakwater
to build an elephantine whale. I know
you have all seen whales, sort of rubber
swimming joy, but Mnemosyne? Mother
of the Muses and Inventor of Words?
Think of a girl, but more so. Inventor
of words crafts into craft what the bastards
of this world destroy. We love to chase herds
off cliffs, net even the last, let clubs kill.
There might be magic in the seas, orchards,
valleys, but you will never know. I will
never know. To consume all, our human
gift. That's our gift, not words, but extinction.

The moment of desire! the moment of desire! The virgin
That pines for man shall awaken her womb to enormous joys
In the secret shadows of her chamber: the youth shut up from
The lustful joy shall forget to generate, and create an amorous image
In the shadows of his curtains and in the folds of his silent pillow …

This passionate cry comes from Oothoon, a character from Daughters of Albion, a poem by London maniac William Blake. Like so much of his "prophetic" poems, it is less lyrical poetry (in the way we traditionally see sonnets and odes and even epics) and more a long series of arguments and conversations by various archetypes and antitypes. Thus, you might have fifty pages of conversation between the Spirit of Liberty and Napoleon on the corrupt nature of the British Church or in this case, Oothoon, a Daughter of Albion (Eden, or in Blake's case, pre-Revolutionary America) and a tyrannical son of Urizen, Theotormon.¹ For Blake, Urizen, "Father of Jealousy," "mistaken Demon of heaven," is the physical perversity of the Church's teachings. Accordingly, Urizen binds the Daughters of Albion to amoral and unjust laws, causing them to be little better than prostitutes in the marriage bed.

The Daughters of Albion has been called many things: rambling, Blake's declaration for women's emancipation, a revelation. The point is, I think, that Blake brought up issues two hundred years ago that we in our "enlightened" age still have issues with. Our double-standards when it comes to sexual freedom, say. Kareleen Middleton Murphy (among others) have pointed out that Blake's possible call for free-love in Oothoon's lines "Take thy bliss, O Man!/ And sweet shall be thy taste, & sweet thy infant joys renew" as well as [let me] "catch for thee girls of mild silver or of furious gold;/ I'll lie beside thee on a bank and view their wanton play/ In lovely copulation, bliss on bliss with Theotormon …" simply illustrates the irony of the poem in this modern age.

I have never been comfortable with the callowness, simplicity, narcissism found with many advocates of free-love. If my Women Studies classes taught me one thing, "free love" is rarely love and never free. And yet … yet, I must constantly throw my lot in with our highly problematic sexual liberation since the alternative is the frightening history of rape, violence and ignorance that Theotormon represents; his constant doubt over Oothoon's desires.

So most of the time my energies and desires, all that I show the world in my poetry and writings, are those "amorous" fantasies this youth finds "in the shadows of his curtains and in the folds of his silent pillow." It might be a flawed, unsatisfactory, crude use of my time on many levels, turning night into day and making desire confused at times; however it also does not hurt a single other person and thus is an innocent action. I wonder if the vast number of other people who have felt desire (if they have felt anything at all) can say the same thing?

Clothes tossed to the floor. You throb — throb — with your
left hand you grab the sheets, cry, bite your right
to kill your cry. How these abused bones, poor
old skin, tries to sing! The coo of delight,
hum of the body at play. Once I might
have thought it a cry of pain or anger.
Perhaps … once. Now I make it too. Tonight.
Because no one else is here; no eager
Urizen son; no willing Albion daughter.
Because you are not here to hear me tease
awake my uprooted root; this splendor
that still slumbers. Does this small act displease?
Friend, there is nothing small about this act.
It turns night day, God godless, love abstract.

1. Theotormon is a name, Victor Paananen suggests, which might mean "'God -tormented,' one tortured by holding the mistaken vision of God the law -giver rather of the Jesus who preaches 'mutual forgiveness of sins' …" (Twayne Publishers, 1996, page 68) [back]

Again I wonder how the origins of a poem arrive? A Paris torch singer, Dee Dee Bridgewater singing with her Flint, Michigan accent, croons out: "la mer qu'on voit danser le long des golfes clairs … la mer des reflets changeants sous la pluie," which I slowly translate as the sea which we see dancing along the clear gulfs … the sea with its reflections changing under the rain. It is true, my French is shameful.

A friend writes asking how my studies are getting along? An earlier draft of this sonnet (earlier as in 20 minutes ago) read it is pointless to study/ French verbs in this ex-factory city/ no one speaks … which sounded callous, dull, sluggish to my ears when I re-read it. All the poetry you see, every sonnet I post here, was composed in one go, twenty minutes and I publish it. At most I will spend a couple of hours sitting slack-jawed, lost and forgetful but rarely are they revisited, revised, revived. It is meditative exercise. One fluid movement and the poem is over and done. Unlike my sleeping desire, that rarely bubbles to the surface of late. Unlike my command of French, which simply frustrates. Perhaps a beautiful pea-green boat will take me away for a year and a day to Haiti, Guadeloupe or Martinique? Perhaps. Then I can walk the streets and listen to the French I want to hear. Instead of the gobbledygook of rain on this window. A gibberish of water.

You know rain. Some times we dance in it. Some
times we hide from it. It brings so much; stench
of this and that. Smells of sloth and boredom.
We know of this water that tries to drench
all that, the way water drenches. My French
is poor but I know "la pluie" means the rain.
It is good to talk about downpours, wrench
meaning from rain, smell the mud once again
in these devout verbs. I love verbs. A sane
verb is like a little nun, but better,
since verbs can be naked but nuns? Explain
to me why I've been such a poor father
to my lust? Lust-like rain on little nuns
I am destined to bear only orphans.

The origins of a poem arrive at many different levels. For example, I have in my possession a stash of naked photos of myself and erotic poetry I have written over the years. I have toyed with the idea of printing them into a booklet of a sort, make a hundred copies to send to my friends. But the people I suggest this to see it as problematic. That is not the purpose of poetry, I am told. Do not write smut.

You see, I work at a nursing home with teenagers who fully embrace the lyrics of violence that are sold to them by corporate America but see nudity and erotica as censurable, sinful, pornographic. We live in a culture that embraces violence, not sexuality. Death Row Records, corporate punk, buffoonery, anarchy; it's all the same really. How can we take serious any "desperado," "outlaw," "miscreant" backed by the Time/Warner juggernaut as legit?¹ That isn't to say there aren't righteous artists speaking out against violence or brutality, who are trying to embrace a healthy sexuality, but you are not going to buy them at Tower Records. I wonder how many other people are tired of the mantra of "pimps and hos"? The manta that it's sex that is problematic and that violence is a natural consequence?²

Thus I am coming to see to be subversive in this modern world you need to be the naked one; not the one waving a gun around. Not the one who claims it's hard to be a pimp out there but the one who actually is living out the creed "all you need is love" … if indeed love is what we need.

Why not? Anything else seems like a perversity …

… who knows? Maybe someone will write to me and say they want one of my booklets? Maybe they will have a booklet for me? It is hard to know; we live in a world that turns the divine into corruption so easily. But for those who wish a different ending than what is sold to them, I call you friend. This poem, this photo, is for you.

It will. It will. It will happen. You know
it will happen. We do not know the end.
Not when. Carry this poem, this photo
on your body. Your body shall twist, bend,
fall. It will. It will. So carry your friend
with you. This nude photo. This rude poem.
I give them to you. How can lust offend?
Let lust thrive when there are cop and hoodlum
alike who will not leave you alive. Numb
to this bliss. Do not be dumb to my kiss.
It is. It is. My kiss to you. Welcome
our kiss. And more. More than this poem, this
photo. More places for your last heartbeat
than on death row or gunned down in the street.

1. The last couplet comes from a dimmly recalled line from The Guns of Brixton, a Clash song: When the law break in/ How you gonna go?/ Shot down on the pavement/ Or waiting on death row? Or something along those lines. Like I say, it's The Clash, it doesn't really matter. [back]
2. Perhaps I am being too hard on my teenage co-workers? They are, like you and me, simply products of their culture. After all it is not as if we have had role models in this culture promoting a healthy view of the erotic world. Far from it, when the topic comes up the Left tends to talk of some distant utopia apparently not connected to this world where Confederate flags, Bible studies, bigoted drama queens like Katherine McKinnon and Ann Coulter are simply ignored. No wonder our civil liberties in this country are in such dire straits! [back]

Paul Hanson — bassoon, clarinet
Daniel Hoffman — violin
Kevin Mummey — dumbeg, zarb
Moses Sedler — cello

These are the members of the band Davka. I became interested in the group because the jazz bassoon is one instrument I am trying to enjoy of late. Davka successfully uses a jazz bassoon in its music and released a CD a while ago, one that I keep going back to, Der Golem. It is a modern soundtrack to the silent 1920 German film of the same name directed by Paul Wegener and Carl Boese.

Though the legend of the golem comes from Kabbalistic sources, I have never really been interested in religion; spirituality, however, endlessly fascinates me. To put it slightly differently, it is not the new structures people throw together at a given notice I am drawn to, but the ancient earth that the structures sit on. I am not even talking about the difference between old gods and new, rather the chemical elements the myths are drawn from.

What about this myth interests me? I have been reading about MSF, Medecins sans Frontieres, Doctors Without Borders, lately. Their goals are simple: Feel the suffering with our own hands. Witness everything as you bring food, water, latrines and medicine. From witnessing humanitarian disaster comes the urge to assist, to help, to lend aide. So it is when I have time enough to let my mind wander that I turn to these ancient building blocks for some sort of rescue.

Perhaps I need rescuing at times, just like everyone? I am fatalistic about my future. Like the short life of the golem, pulled into existance only to carry out a mission and then be released, I found in Psalm 139:16 the following:

Your eyes beheld my unformed substance. In your book were written all the days that were formed for me, when none of them as yet existed.

I like the predestination of that sentence. All the days that were formed for me, when none of them as yet existed. My unformed substance. The river clay Rabbi Loew, the Lion of Prague, used to craft the golem. I like the idea of creating something, some thing, that will be used as a shield against the harsh nature of this world. The harsh truth that there are others who wish us ill; that because of your size or shape or skin color or the placement of certain bodily organs, because of nothing more than the way you pronounce words, men will kill you in the most brutal ways imaginable.

Is it not surprising that we imagine alternatives to such practices? We imagine new myths to fight against such horrors. Jorge Luis Borges wrote:

… the Golem legends are in no way absurd but rather part of a doctrine that is worthy of attention: that there is in each of us a particle of the Divine.

It is from that particle I now draw. I have shaped the river clay into a form, I have placed the stone with the Hebrew word for life into the form's mouth, I have spoken the words of power to activate the form.

I call this form Na'arah. It is important to know what you say when you name something. Names hold power. I am sick to the soul of cultures that constrain others, that are so controlling that the mere name itself defines the enslavement. However, under the right conditions, the masters claim, they have their use. Take the word na'arah, in Hebrew:

[It] means "young woman" or "girl." It … implies not so much age (before or after puberty) or sexual status such as "virgin" but social status, i.e., "unmarried." Like its masculine likeness Na'ar, it refers to a servant (for examples see: Gen 24:61; Ex 2:5; 1 Sam 25:42; Pr 9:3 etc.)

So here I am in my own words, committing the same sin by subjugating the female golem, the girl of clay, Na'arah. Here I am naming her as servant. It is an interesting contradiction, paradox, irony, one that is not lost on me. The question is not am I doing this for noble reasons, all causes seem noble to someone, somewhere. No. The question I cannot answer is will I have the wisdom to stop once I begin uttering these terrible words?

I am a slave to words, I hear bizarre
noises and turn them to meaning. Listen:
you are like her, you pray to a savior
that winks at fiends, too. All evil; klansmen,
cops, thugs, pray to your god too, the human
need for self-pity. But what if we had
acted? Molded the river clay, spoken
the old Hebrew, commanded the unclad
puppet to life? A girl golem? A tad
freakish, perhaps, a tad rude, but ready
to stand between us and madmen, that mad
blood lust that possesses men. What mighty
words moved her? None. No, one. O no one, O
Na'arah. O lump, now move, O now go …