Reflecting Rolke's Prose/Stories of God

Reflecting Rilke’s Prose/Stories of God

First the old man says:
Finding no rest in their beds
The men come out into the night
To gaze wordlessly, agape
At the silent, windless heavens

And then the beardless youth goes on:
Until, in the rising sun
Figures of men can be seen
Silhouetted against the flat distance
Atop the ridges of the kurgans

When a weary mother adds:
Within the kurgans lay cold
The fathers of forgotten fathers
Buried deep in earthen mounds
That ripple on the steppe like waves

To which a strong man responds:
Sometimes birds fly among the mounds
And wild songs drop deep inside
Where graves are the mountains
And men are the abysses

Now the child speaks his part:
Even their houses can’t protect
Them against the limitless steppe
For the dusty windows admit
The glaring light of eternity

A young maiden has this answer:
Only the icons succor them, as
Mileposts on the road to God
Glinting with flecks of gold they
Show His lost children the way

Based on a translation by M. D. Herter Norton

100 words on the subject of: quiet

The house was so quiet I could hear mice skittering in the attic three floors above me. I listened to them running willy-nilly and wondered if they were playing; I’ve always imagined that animals focus pretty much on their own survival – play seems like a luxury.

But in that nearly silent moment I suddenly understood that play is much more than a human diversion. It’s a genetic condition, evolution requires it. Those mice gamboling happily above me would die without their play, I was sure of that. Perhaps they’d have no reason to be born, if not to play quietly.

Lost on the sea of regret

I always thought you were far too pretty for me to ever dream about asking you out to a movie or into my bed or over and over, to the opening chords, again and again.

But I do know a lot of things, like how many feet there are in a mile, and how fast light travels, and what it sounds like when a broken heart hits the floor, scattering.

So I wonder and wonder, and sometimes I just can't breathe from the longing and the hopes and the dreams and devilish schemes that live here inside me.

But I did know instinctively howwhenwhere at the darkening moment when words have no meaning, to touch you, and I know how it feels to fall deeply in love, but to find out that I’m there an hour too late; but then not to know I’m too late until morning.

And I think I know a good song when I hear it, but I just never know quite what it’s about.

And I never know when to say when; or when to keep going but I do know that all will be well if I can.

And I know not to ask why, though why I’m not sure.

But IdocareIdo because caring and burning with fervent desire is feeling a little like living and dying, and dying of hope in the moment that’s fading away.

New Houses

The sun is setting as I roll down the narrow state highway. I’m pushing 80,000 pounds of semi- rig pretty hard and where there are houses or stores the view opens up a bit; but stores and houses mean traffic, so I try to keep my eyes on the road in those stretches. The sun’s low on the horizon and it can blind you. People zip out of side streets - you can’t always see them. Dusk’s a hard time to see when you’re driving.

I coast a bit. There’s a traffic light up ahead, so I let the clutch out all the way and slow down, joining the line of cars.

The light changes to green and I jog over to the right, bypassing the cars in the turning lane. The guy in front of me makes to turn right, and I roll past him. Past the intersection, the view opens up in all directions. I glance to the right and the setting sun blinds me just a little; I look forward again and I see clear road ahead, so I give it some throttle. You know, to pick up speed.

Looking out the side window again I see a bunch of new houses going up in an old field. Some of them are just frames, but others are finished and have a car or two in the driveway.

A lot of people get mad seeing old farms torn up for new houses, but its like arguing about the weather – nothing you’re gonna do. Times change, and people want nice big houses. Helps them feel safe, I guess. What do I know? I drive a long-line delivery route 325 days a year, always have. I spend my nights in an apartment I shared with my dad, or curled up in the back of my cab.

Maybe nice families need big houses like this.

The orange sun on the horizon is mostly hidden by the square blocks of the houses, but as I roll along, the windows of this one house line up just right so I can see right through the house. Window after window flickers with sun, like its on fire.

Through one window, though...I only have a split-second look, but I am pretty sure I see the shape of a woman...and she’s holding a baby.

I wonder if she is excited, looking out, thinking about the grass in the spring. Sure, who wouldn’t? I bet she’s thinking of the trees, and flowers, too, and all of the other growing things. Maybe she’s wondering if there will be kids to play with, or neighbors to share the mornings?

Who knows what nice things a woman will want when she’s got a big sunny house? I bet that house will make her happy.

Then she’s gone. The dark blocks of the houses hide the sun again. I turn to the road ahead and shift gears, giving her throttle. You know, to pick up some speed.

It's January, and I'm so cold

I sit in a parking lot, afraid
Losing this morning's hope
I know you weren’t ready to
Begin this new love affair

I read the poems you wrote me
Regretting the intemperate promise
I made to leave you alone
A promise I always meant to keep

I ask if I might sleep with you again
And openly admit my self-deception
You don’t believe a word I say
I tell you again that I love you

“I’ll make you leave,” you say
You’re angry because I disagreed
And you think I don't take you seriously
Because I’ve ignored your ardent advice

“Why did we start this, Mary?”
These things become so complex
It is all so confusing to me
Even the most important details

“Remember the starling,” you ask?
“That died on my front porch
The day we first made love?
That and sex are all I have to offer you.”

(untitled)

Both of us go through life
drenched by the liquid sky
captured by the insane dancing
startled and repelled by the maddening sound
we hear but can't recall,
as if we dreamed it
and forgot
the noise we call
sensation and lust.

We are too busy with all of these
to step back from
the flickering delusions
projected on the scrim.

Winds or deadly calm?

They speak of certain winds that drive people crazy - Hermann Hesse wrote about the Fohn, a wind in his adopted land of Switzerland; the Saharan nomads hunker down when the blue sirocco blows across the molten sands; the hot, dry Santa Ana in California have driven whole cities insane, and made it rain frogs.

But I think the August doldrums are worse...the dead calm of the middle of August that just sits on your sweltering soul and dares you to do something - do ANYTHING! Just as long as it’s fun and crazy!

Make the choice: act or die.

It is nothing I'd hoped for

Here's a sample of the words I can't bear
Michigan, Ann Arbor, Kalamazoo
I never asked you to stay around here
I simply wanted to love you

England, rowboats, Bailey the dog
I avoid Central Park, I can’t stand
The catch in my heart, my mind in a fog
As lovers walk by hand in hand

Talking, that’s all I ever asked
A single step away from the edge
Instead I received the back of your hand
And your gun-toting boyfriend’s sarcasm

Lies that have been told about me

Had I infinite monkeys
Clacking away at
Infinite typewriters...

This is my worst nightmare
Imagined, come true
In the bright daylight.

The one secret question
I don’t know whether
The soothing can answer

It’s as if someone
Stole furtive glances
Into the dark attic

Or went to my bedroom
Every night of my life
To record my whispers

Stray thoughts of ending
Or visions of failure
Can’t touch this regret

She tallies her losses
In songs that I’ve stolen
What was I thinking?

Goodnight my sweet song

goodnight my sweet song

it was heaven to sit so near

your beauty and your grace

as the tunes were played

and the sacred praises recited

and offered to the distant gods

but your voice was the psalm

that i listened for and heard

rising and falling, as the sea, as

a wind that comes at midnight, or

some far away song in the forest

that tells me a tale of longing

and awakens me with a dream

of strategies and desires

and paw prints in black

left on my windowsill

Seeing what isn't there

I believe that sometimes the best – maybe the only way you can see what your universe looks like is to peer into the darkness and figure out the shape of what isn’t there.

Another way I think of this is that among the many faults, shortcomings, sins, and omissions that make up my makeup, I think, are sprinkled some attributes that I can only define by what I am not.

I was reminded of this by the acceptance that I can’t hate even those who have hurt me most. Believe me, I have tried…it seems that other people are often sustained by the anger and hate they feel for those who have done them wrong - I want, so often, to feel that certainty and self-assertion. I want to just not give a shit. I am sure it would make me feel better.

Let's not begin to parse the words or palaver over personal shades of meaning...let's just lay aside doubt and accept for the moment that some of those who we love and who love us also hate others, too.

Maybe it is just that I can't sustain the certainty that seems necessary to hate another - even those who deserves my hatred because of the things they've done to me.

I’m not tooting my own horn, or wallowing in passive-aggressive self-aggrandizement; I’m wondering if this isn’t a fatal and self-destructive flaw in my make-up.

But it is one of those things I know about myself only by perceiving an absence – by recognizing the shape of something that isn't there.

Quarantine - A Poem

Quarantine

The wind blew straight and strong and cold
When I found a skull near the baseball field
Behind the Catholic boys’ school gym

I don’t usually touch animal bones – it’s
A fear of disease I learned young
My parents were very clear about this

But I picked it up anyway and turned it over
I wasn’t even sure, at first, what I had
Maybe it was trash, something plastic

I stood there looking carefully at the skull
And as I did, I heard no cheering
The sounds of the game faded away

I don’t know what animal it came from
There wasn’t much left to it, just enough
A rodent, maybe a squirrel, I’m not sure

I looked closely, with childish intensity
The small teeth, the snout, the eye sockets
Where the jaw had been joined to the skull

I wanted to show someone, to show it off
Instead I glanced around, and threw it away
Wiping my hands over and over on my shirt

100 Words About my Ass

I slid from under the sheet and walked around the bed – headed for the kitchen. I asked her if she wanted anything. Glancing up from her book she started to say “no,” then she stopped short. I knew she hadn’t been caught by my full frontal: I wasn’t very impressive at that moment – besides, mostly I’m nothing to write home about naked. Except, I’ve been told, for my ass. I knew she was watching my ass as I walked away. Guys aren’t supposed to be proud of our asses, but the thought she was staring at mine got my attention.

It Doesn't Get Much Better Than This

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100 Words on Love

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And then you say –

Hush, darling, come
Hurry to my hidden house
I’ll dazzle you with magic spells
Chants and incantations
I’ll give you kisses that are
Made of winter wind and fire
Passions deep and caresses
Fished up from the sea

I’ll promise you that I alone
Can save your life tonight
Just as you and you alone
Can save me from tomorrow.

Ache for me, bleed for me
Slash me like a sharpened razor
Curse me for my cruelty, but
Dare me to come closer
Accuse me and betray me
Pounce on me like a tiger
Give me all you have to give
And I will be forgiven

Then, please, release me
From my obligations
Dreaming that I still sleep
There in your blessed bed

100 Words about mercy

Bart’s face betrayed a fear of death. His watery eyes were open wide – to admit all the light possible – and locked into mine, imploring. No pride remained.

My boss said, “NO! It’ll be booze in 5 minutes.”

He’d said he’d fire me on the spot. He thought he was showing Bart “tough love” and giving me an excuse to refuse him.

I looked at both of them.

I put my last twenty in Bart’s hand and said, quietly, leading him to the door, “I can’t do this again, understand?”

Head down, he nodded, and the door closed with a click.

Narcissism

She told him, "You are also deeply, albeit subtly, narcissistic. You are so narcissistic that you almost never, during all the times I have strived to maintain a no-contact policy, inquired after my well being. It was all 'talk to me, I'm miserable.' It makes my personal experiences of loneliness all that much more painful and I fiercely resent it."

She barely paused to catch her breath before continuing, "Your narcissism is so subtle that it also is displayed at times like when there's a party or occasion, and you choose to remain hidden or wander off – it appears to be an 'I'm unimportant syndrome' but I see it for what it is – it's the unique privilege experienced by narcissists, the privilege to behave as you wish with little or no respect for the needs or wishes of others."

He didn't know what to say.

I am cast from your house

Cast From Your House

Cast from your house
I am swept
To the front porch
Cast out by a strong wind
Exiled without trial
Broken sprawled scattered

I look for a haven
A soft bed, silence
A place to sleep;
A sanctuary where I
Might gentle my own condition

I wash up on a beach
Seaweed in my hair
Feral, voiceless,
My mouth full of pearls
Or maybe

I am seen, by chance
From a distance, lost
On the penitential streets
Of a carnival town
With walls of blue

100 Words about Distance

(This bit of short fiction was written as part of a blog for the FastCupid dating site on April 21, 2008) They sat a foot apart, their hands almost touching on the tabletop, but not quite. He looked out the window, she at an invisible spot on her sleeve. They had little time left and only enough room for silence. Once they’d been one: he’d slip into bed and she’d put her arms around him without waking. They knew each others’ thoughts. They’d make love for hours, amazing even themselves. He once said he didn’t want an atom of separation between their bodies; she said that made her love him even more. Now an infinite, unbridgeable distance lay between them, forever.

Patriotism and ghosts

(This was written on April 22, 2008 (Election Day in Pennsylvania)

I live in New Jersey and this was the first Presidential primary in which my vote mattered - in the sense that it was cast prior to the nomination having already been decided. Before this year it was always a done deal by the time NJ rolled around.

That said, I always vote, always, even when there are no challengers. I don't always vote for all of the candidates (I've been known to bullet vote a bit, leaving some positions unvoted), but I've never, ever cast a vote for a Republican...I'm not proud of that, but it is important to me - it's where the Leninist in me comes out - I believe that true progress is achieved by groups of people acting in concert, not by lone wolves pushing through changes that will simply be rolled back after the excitement of their "personality" fades - which it always does.
















But as I said, I always vote. This may sound negative but I don't see it negatively: I usually have an image of Omaha Beach in my mind when I walk into the polling place - or of Antietam, or of Breeds Hill in Boston...the fact that men and women actually offered their lives so I could do this simple thing - it would be a slur against their sacrifice and memory if I didn't redeem their honor with this simple act - particularly since it is so painless for me to do so.

I'm not "patriotic" in the standard sense, maybe. But I do believe that the ideals of America - while rarely achieved - still inspire people to search for the "angels of our better nature." And lives offered up to those dreams deserve to be remembered, not only in Memorial Day parades but more importantly at the ballot box. It's the least we can do.

It never happens that all my wishes for America come true because I go out to vote - but none of them will if I don't, I know that.

SO...get out and vote, you sons and daughters of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania!

Bitter Pennsylvanians

(This was written on April 16, 2008)

The flap over what Barack Obama did or didn’t mean when he spoke of “bitter” working-class people in Pennsylvania has me both excited and depressed. Here’s why:

But first, full-disclosure: I have an Obama bumper sticker on my car…I’ve never given money to him, I’ve never volunteered for him, I’ve never attended a rally, speech or coffee given by him or in his behalf. Having been a professional Democrat for a large part of my adult life, I reflexively avoid getting involved in primaries unless paid to. It can be like choosing who’s the most attractive among friends: way more downside than up.

Having said that, I have been overall cautiously surprised by Obama’s willingness to reset the agenda – particularly about his tendency not to give in to the hoary old rules about what is and isn’t to be discussed in public. I like that about him; it’s a big part of why I like him. I don’t like his health care reform plan, and I don’t really know much else about his other “plans” in detail; but he seems ready, willing, and (most importantly) able to discuss important issues like a mature adult.

About twenty-five years ago there was a movie called “The Deer Hunter.” For those who didn’t see: it told the story of a circle of working-class friends in Western Pennsylvania (focusing on two or three of them who went to Vietnam) and how they all were changed – not for the better – by their experiences in life, and particularly about the differences in the ways they’d been changed: but all of them had become bitter.

At the end of the movie is a scene of harrowing sadness and some mystery (to me, at least…I saw the movie twice in one day – it was three and half hours long – to understand the last five minutes). It shows the surviving members of the circle sitting at a kitchen table, drinking beer in silence – until they spontaneously begin singing a patriotic song (The Star-Spangled Banner, I think).

Despite the ways in which they’d been damaged by their faith in their country, in the final extremity – when all dreams had been taken from them, they turned to a few “eternals”: camaraderie, numbness, and patriotism. These “truths” got their parents’ generation through the tough times, and their grandparents', too. It is all these people (in the movie) know…it’s what they cling to in their “bitterness.”

As inelegantly as he said it, and the tone he may have said it in notwithstanding, it seems to me that Obama was simply making a similar observation; that we cannot simply sneer at and ignore those people who – against their own best interests, maybe, at least as we see it – have turned toward what they see as anchors (guns, religion, cultural isolation) in a stormy world…a world that seems less predictable each day - a world that marginalizes what they value most in favor of glitz and “reality.” If we simply call them “reactionaries” or pin-headed “right-wingers” without even attempting to understand the motivations they have, we fall into the behavior we say we most dislike in “the other side.”

These “bitter” people – assuming they exist, wherever and whoever they are – are our fellow countrymen and women. More than that, they are our class-mates (in socio-economic terms, not educational!). They are worthy of our consideration, our assistance, and – if we think they’re wrong about something – our best reasons as to why we think that. Too often, instead, we find ourselves jeering at others, or “imposing” changes on people who haven’t been in on the discussions about why the change is necessary or preferable.

Obama didn’t say he had answers about this bitterness, he simply said he has an understanding of its root causes. He also seemed to be saying that to dismiss the bitterness because they who are embittered have turned to symbols we don’t fully agree with is not in our own best interests. He seemed to me to be saying that such people are our allies, whose needs and wants and dreams are closer to our own that we recognize. That they aren’t to be dismissed as “gun nuts” and “Jesus freaks.” That’s what it seemed to me he was trying to say.

What’s made all of the debate in the country over this most painful has been the reaction of the news media. It seems that they relish the unspoken rule that race and class are never to be discussed – or that if one does raise those issues it has been a “mistake,” a “stumble,” a failure to stay “on-message.” They seem gleeful in their race rip his words from their context and doing so to join in the smugness of the "gotcha," eager to belittle the intellectual courage it takes to actually discuss such topics in public. And not one of them has taken a single moment (not PBS, not NPR, not CNN and certainly not Fox News – not one of them) to investigate what he actually seemed to be talking about.

It isn’t – of course – for the media to decide whether he’s right or wrong about what he said: that’s for us out here to decide (and we’re allowed to take our time doing it…it doesn’t have to translate into overnight tracking polls). But it IS their job to look a little deeper into the subject and to illuminate what they find; to hear what other people are saying about the issue (not about the controversy); to give us some perspective on the questions Obama’s speech raised. Instead they seem to be salivating over the sizzle, while the steak goes untouched (sorry for all you vegetarians out there in blogland).

Triangle in Washington Square

(This was written Thursday, April 17, 2008)

It was an ineffably beautiful day in New York City last Thursday. I’d come in from suburban New Jersey to conduct some research in a library devoted to Jewish culture and history, located in the East Village. I finished my work there by 2pm and walked a few blocks to Washington Square Park; I just read a book about the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire, and learned that the building which housed Triangle still stands, though it’s been renamed and now contains classrooms and offices for NYU.

For those who don’t know of it: the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire, March 25, 1911, was the greatest single workplace loss of life in a New York City...until September 11, 2001. Crammed into lofts filled with extremely flammable cloth and other materials, seamstresses, cutters and other workers toiled 12-15 hours a day six or seven days a week in the swiftly growing NYC garment industry. Conditions were bad, but they were worse elsewhere, and people were glad to have a job at Triangle.

No one knows how the fire started, but the minute-by-minute account makes it clear that after 60 to 90 seconds, anyone still in the building was doomed to death by smoke or by fire. Actually, some people chose a third option: jumping to certain (if not always immediate or merciful) death from the ninth and tenth story windows.

146 (mostly) women and men died; hundreds of people lined up for days to view the burnt and crushed corpses, to claim a sister or mother or child. In many cases the face was unidentifiable; only a lock of hair, a scrap of lace, a certain shoe brand, could give the victim a name. The tragedy sparked a near-revolt in the immigrant quarters of the city, leading to large-scale changes in workplace safety, treatment of immigrants, and the balance of political power in New York. The factory’s owners were acquitted of wrongdoing.

It was eerie to stand beneath the building at the northwest corner of Greene Street and Washington Place – it had become so iconic in my mind. It was like standing next to the Titanic. I looked around me and tried to imagine what it was like that March day almost 100 years ago: bodies sprawled on the pavement; firemen shouting – knowing that their firehoses couldn’t reach the fire on the ninth floor, running into the blazing building that others were running and jumping from; the slick streets covered with water, reflecting the blaze luridly in the setting sun; people on the ground shouting to those at the windows not to jump, that help was coming! It came too late.

Thursday must’ve been a visiting day for incoming or prospective NYU students, because the narrow streets were packed with smiling young people and their parents. Many had name tags stuck to their shirts. I stepped around them and past them to take pictures; they didn’t seem to notice the dead, mangled women at their feet.