Devout Yokel collects the Yokel songs written between 2018 and the present End Times and marked deep blue for spirituality, religion, and altruism. The Yokel hears the divine voice from their own Throat.
2018
Breastplate Villanelle
Watching myself wait.
In love with myself, as always.
Waiting for the blood to abate.
Thinking of St. Patrick’s Breastplate.
Sitting with my brain in a haze,
watching myself wait.
What’s blood’s level in its normal state?
Why should I settle for anything less
as I wait for my anxiety to abate?
Be with me! as my blood passes through
the gates
of the heart (to cop a phrase),
watching myself wait,
and listening for such pounding on the walls
of fate—
senses full of our Oneness, light in our eyes!
Will my fear abate
when we can finally hold each other’s weight
(just a bit abashed by the surprise)?
Watching ourselves wait.
Waiting for the blood to abate?
2019
Strange
Yes, the Trinity can’t change.
So, what’s the idea of all this Spirit stuff?
It’s a strange
Unity. The Babe in the manger
makes Three, enough
to stand apart and never change.
But the Babe became the Son, sort of a stooge
of God the Father (Who’s deaf).
But Jesus performed strange
miracles, even arranged
for the dead to come back to life—
in their bodies, no less! Exchanged
for eternal souls? No way! When we plunge
into the river of life-in-death,
strange
vibrations seize our limbs, spirit rearranging
our molecules until we’re fully stuffed
with Love that, like the Trinity, can’t change.
Strange!
Deep-Sea Fishing
Expectant writing state,
like I’m just starting my lunch.
Finding out what’s on my plate.
My plate is flat,
unlike an ocean trough
like the Mariana Trench
lying along the Philippine tectonic plate.
(Well, there’s a mild stench,
but I think that’s just some clams I ate.)
OK, I’m First Mate
on a ship hovering over the clenched
fin of a shark, denizen of the abyssal plain.
Dolphins scud and whales breach,
but nothing more to be heard or seen
than the wavy shapes of the sea’s speech.
The ship rocks as my pen writes
the story of my mind in a winch—
my expectant writing state.
Finding out what’s in the net.
Claustrophobia Celeste
I feel trapped by my poetry.
Shouldn’t a poem be
a portal to eternity?
Eternity’s no trap—agree?
I guess we’ll have to wait and see.
But I won’t need to write poetry
anymore when I’m up in Glory,
right?—weary
no more because the Eternity
Man came and set me free
to climb the cherry tree
or chop it down—there’s poetry
for you! I’ll leap
with alacrity, happy
at last in the lap of eternity—
master of the mystery.
Here I lie where I longed to be,
writing poetry
in my dear little walk-up in eternity.
Phaethon's Song
I am the universe.
Can it get any better?
Can it get any worse?
I’m a comet trying to stay on course
on a plunging tether.
I am the universe.
I’ll soon be riding in a hearse—
black window drapes and wheels of rubber—
but that’s the worst
I have to fear, since I’m the source
and object of all trouble,
striding the universe
on my sunhorse,
roaming all over.
So much the worse
if I scream myself hoarse
so I can’t sing Willie’s a Rover.
I am the universe.
For better! For worse!
Altruism
There’s the altruism of doing for the poor.
The poor will always be with us, says the Lord.
Then there’s the altruism of learning
another’s song by heart.
Doing for others is a two-edged sword.
Bestowing my gift, I erase you with a word—
the othering of doing for the poor,
apparent in the nice reward
I grant myself for my commendable charity
in doing for others. But when I learn
another’s song by heart
I’m the one
who receives the gift—collaborating
and learning the altruism of doing for the poor.
Poor me, that is,
poor ardent clown—
me trying to learn your song by heart.
It’s remembering how the song starts
that’s trickiest, but I’m not on my own
with that—the altruism of singing
your song in my heart.
Blocking the Sunlight
Grazie, John Bunyon.
Taking pictures of my day:
nothing could be easier.
You are just in your way!
the sparrows say.
Your songs couldn’t be drowsier.
Instead of these ditties of your day.
what we need’s a fair
breeze to make our departure hastier.
If you make us bow and pray
all day, we won’t be on our way
in time (though we’ve never had tastier
bugs in all our days).
Tracing sparrow silhouettes in rays
of light—what could be priestlier?
You're just in your way,
but the sun shines right
through you. A mere morsel of
need, but you take pictures of your day.
They're just in their way!
Adam and Eve in the Garden
Little Mary Bell had a fairy in a nut. Long John Brown had the devil in his gut. William Blake
The church teaches that our body is sinful.
Sin is shameful dirtiness.
The templed mind
is never stained
unless the unguarded eye pollutes it.
The eye's to blame
for ogling the skin,
ignoring the soul beneath it—
the substantial, immortal mind
itself dazzled, mistaking bane
for sweetness.
Our parents learned their bodies were sinful
when they got moral knowledge
and left the Garden.
Thenceforth, the archon, Mind,
would lock the body in a cage of sin—
Mind, the whipped horse’s pious rider.
BUT JESUS MADE THE RESURRECTED BODY
THE SAME AS THE TEMPLED MIND.
Zen Poēm
For every action there’s a reaction.
And for a living organism every moment
is a crisis
of eating or being eaten.
May there be some way to slow down
time, sit still, and try to absorb things
by osmosis?
For every action there’s a reaction,
so you think you need to know what faction
you’re fighting with. Lao Tzu’s advice is:
Eat what you like eating,
but you’ll never get any traction
if you go wading in water shoes.
For every action there’s a reaction—
a splash of some kind—
but feet made of H2O can’t kick.
Do you think you can escape by being eaten?
OK, chop wood, carry water.
Try to seep into the interstices
between the reactions and the actions.
Eating is just a mode of being eaten.
Zen POA / Zen PAUA
Sometimes on our journey,
because we’re afraid our thinking is funny,
we need Zen Power of Attorney.
When we have to pony
up even though our cards are lousy,
when our journey
jolts to a halt in a God-forsaken stretch of Wyoming
and we’re worried about the lonesome roving
wolves, then we invoke our Zen Power of Attorney
to constrain the bitter, ravenous ghosts
from homing
in on us so close. Disappointing
as it is, we realize our journey
must be paused a brief while. We hold
a cuttlefish
shell to our ear and think of the family
of life—our Attorney
appointed before our Odyssey
began. And now we’re free
to resume our journey—
celestial body glowing abalone.
Goethe on Turkey Day
Dark Thanksgiving Day,
walking in a German cemetery.
More light! I pray.
Searching for a way
to own my flash of history,
this dark Thanksgiving Day.
We all have death to pay.
We might be dead already.
More light! we pray.
I believe we’ll be OK,
but not because of anything that I can see,
this dark Thanksgiving Day.
When Goethe was dying, he
requested the curtains be drawn—
More light! said
he.—Soul shining like a genial ray
of sunlight on our grave,
this dark Thanksgiving Day.
Light! we pray.
MAGA
Today we’re asking for the restoration
of our great American society—
not wanting to dress our nation
in old fashions—
tricorn hats and buckle shoes—
to promote the continuation
of abusive Calvinist traditions.
No, we want to
restore sense to our nation—
a new Bethlehem
with not just wise men and a pretty
baby, but full restoration
of life possible on earth through
empathy and passion
in the cynical face of oligarchy.
Shall our sorely abused nation
rise to today’s occasion
and help create a new community
of life through the restoration
of Nature?
2020 Letting Our Voice Ring Out
Counted Toward My Karma
And dreaming, as it were, held brotherly speech With one whose thought I had not thought to reach. Robert Frost, The Tuft of Flowers
Shoveling snow in the alley
behind the garage.
Full of morning gladness
at the brim, I’ll say—five inches, pretty
heavy! The alley-plow guy charges
our block some amount each winter
to plow the alley—
he’ll plow later on today,
I guess (I imagine a horse-pulled sledge,
but it’ll be a truck-pushed plow-blade).
What if I made someone’s morning gladder
by going to the extravagantly large
effort of shoveling my whole alley,
garage-door side of
the first tire rut?
Full as he is of morning gladness
at the brim, I wonder if the plowman
will notice my hard
work and try not to bury
my garage again. Small cost for gladness!
My Family Is Singing Tonight
Not in my best frame of mind.
AND my blog stopped working.
But my family is singing tonight!
I feel in a bind
about shining or shrinking,
mind
mined with blind
alleys. But let me ignore the talking
dead! Tonight
won’t be just any night
because my family is singing—
all dire frames of mind
skulking behind
in valleys where regret is dying.
We’ll step candidly into the light,
flooded with brightness—
even my silly poetry blog joining
the tintinnabulation of a better frame of mind.
I’ll be all smiles tonight!
Where the Lights Are Bright
I love my limerences,
but I fear I can’t stand the heat.
Do I need deliverance
in the same way that crystal microphones
need high-impedance input? I’m red as a beet,
unable to resist these limerence-
ohms—their devastating voltage. But I’m
not reticent
when I remember sweet Petula’s
downtown streets.
I won’t need deliverance
so much as eloquence to be a conductor
of the bright lights of the city—
each bulb a glowing amorance—
a heartthrob—a beat in the dance, however
I manage to move my feet—
stepping deliverance
from lonely fear into the loving radiance
of the eyes of Beatrice!
Heavenly droning of the spheres—
humming the holy limerent gospel
of deliverance!
Quarantine
I’ll pitch my tent on this campground. Few days, few days!
Separated from events and friends.
No small relief that the events aren’t
coming round!
Few days, few days!
Some of the events still happen on Zoom—
propinquity not necessary, we’ve found
(separated neither from events nor friends?).
Not near to one another in a room,
but we can still all have another round.
Few days, few days!
Some day they’ll reopen all the bars
and we’ll be in one another’s immediate
presence again,
no longer separated from our friends.
Will we be held in one another’s loving arms
again? No, we never were that close.
Few days, few days!
I’ll pitch my tent on this campground,
not separated from those who are near
me in my heart.
Separated from events but not from friends.
Few days, few days!
Quarantine—Gift of Warmth
Image borrowed from Eavan Boland, Quarantine.
Why be ashamed of what I really am—
a body?
Who says I’m ashamed?
My body’s made it all the way to Mecca—
a hadji.
Why be ashamed of what I really am?
My body’s a big ham.
My body’s bawdy.
Who says I’m ashamed
of the shoddy thing?
I use bling to make it pretty.
Why be ashamed of what I really am?
Give the diddler a gram,
I say—if it’s after five, pour them a toddy!
Who says I’m ashamed?
I’m the starving husband in that Irish poem,
drawing her feet to him—
cold and already soddy?
Why be ashamed of what I really am?
Who says I’m ashamed?
Balm in Gilead
Sometimes I feel discouraged And think my work’s in vain, But then the Holy Spirit Revives my soul again.
How do you lay your regrets to rest?
If you completely feel your culpability, will it
go away?
Will you again feel blessed?
I put that theory to the test
almost every day:
I try to stun my regrets
to rest by quaffing their bitter taste,
offering myself to be their prey—
feeling almost-blessed
as the snake of regret invades the nest
of my self regard. Or, I dig a lonely grave
for each regret to rest
within and to house its ghost.
Never not obsessed, I pray
for more and more guilt to help me feel blessed
again, and yet again. How will I know when
I’ve truly confessed
my sins to God?
When my regrets are at last at rest
and I feel blessed.
People Seem to Like My Photos
You enjoy my eye?
Well, how about my voice?
Can my voice be like an eye?
Clouds in the sky
(cormorants in rice-
paddies?) when I use my eye.
Remaining inside
where the camera lens
hides, which is the eye
itself. It makes no noise,
though its colors may be garish
and loud. And even an eye
can speak pain or joy
and sparkle brown or blue, its colors
saturating the world of Thou-not-I.
But it’s too shy
to talk. So, Schweige
stumm! obstreperous voice.
Be quiet as an eye!
Childish Finger Game
If we can’t depend on the decency of the
American people,
all bets are off.
Here’s the church, here’s the steeple,
open your hands inside-out and see all
the finger-people
waving and taking their hats off.
Those are the American people,
as ardent and innocent as apple
pie with its crust off.
Here’s the church, here’s the steeple—
when you count them all up on election day,
you see a heap of
mighty good folks who may yet stand the test,
though their leaders are off
their nut—trying to prey on silly people
who'll shut up and cooperate when they get
a spoon of maple
syrple in their gaping cake holes. It’s a bake-off,
winner to be announced in the basement
of that steepled
church, where the cake’s all dough—
no baking soda.
Time to complete the sell-off.
Sell the church, sell the steeple,
open the doors and sell all the people!
The Game of Law (Come on, Baby, Let’s Play)
The rule of law
can’t be in force if we don’t play
the game of law.
Law is a game we agreed to play
(like Keep your laws off my body!),
but what if someone steals law’s ball?
Granted, the Mosaic
creed and the code of Hammurabi
had a force of law
no one could steal or sell,
and tooth and claw
have force of law
precisely because life’s not a game. High
hopes for a ball,
but a demon stole circularity away.
Or, the game of law
can’t be won or lost, because every line’s
a curve—we can break laws and go free
because the rule of law
is effectively null and void, y’all!
Will we live to see the day
when we play by the kinder rules
of the game of Love?
George, Don’t Chop Down the Cherry Tree!
Other than my closest friends,
why should I give two fucks what
anyone thinks—
friends who’ll be with me when the story ends?
I’m tied together with rubber bands—
knees and elbows make imperfect links,
but I'll dangle here until my story ends.
Just a puppet carved of wood, I’ll dance
my limberjack
and clack until the music ends.
I'm glad I don’t leak urine,
anyway—yet. But why should I give two fucks
if the furniture stinks
because of my wet hind end?
I’d rather take than give a fuck,
but my nose rises like a periscope,
standing up to sniff out how the story ends.
God, this scene is rinky-dink!
Who’ll blame me for climbing my beanstalk
after trading ma’s cow for some fairy beans?
How does Jack and the Beanstalk end?
