The
Muse's Advisory
typed & spellchecked by
Tom Riordan
Epigraphs
If there be nothing new, but that which is
Hath been before, how are our brains beguiled,
Which, labouring for invention, bear amiss
The second burden of a former child.
- Shakespeare
Πάρτυ, Γκαρθ.
Party, Garth.
- Aristophony
Disclaimer
This, like everything else, is a work of imagination. Everything in it is used
fictitiously, including names, places, etc. It is intended for recreational use only.
Mom & Dad, you will NOT like this book and don't have to read it. My bowling
team didn't and we're still buds. No one should read it—seriously, please—who
holds religious or other beliefs they don't want misrepresented &/or demeaned.
Advance Praise
The Pushcart Prize, Lambda Literary Award & Nobel Committee agree:
“...Muse's Advisory is too hot to handle without a condom...”
“...throws open the doors of transcendence & other shangri-las but heroically
resists walking through any of them! There is still fun to be had right here.”
“...runs barefoot through the pasture, heroically stepping in bullshit &
drawing mustaches & goatees on the sacred cows with a permanent marker.”
Acknowledgments
Thanks to the Jewish holidays, there is no Foreword & no Preface. New York
City's alternate side of the street parking regulations, as always, are suspended.
Translator's Note
I mostly just winged it with Google Translate or copy/pasted someone's else's
work, which I can't vouch for either. See Sources Cited at the back of the book.
Exhortation - Muse's Advisory, Sept. 20 - Urania:
Take a ticket.
By Zeus!—number 2,900,001!
We started out 3, then swelled to 9;
you poets have no one to blame
but yourselves for this long line.
It's not like we can fabricate
more wisdom or beauty at will
just to meet an increasing demand.
Such things take time.
You understand.
Old-timers made liberal use
of hemlock to ensure their access
to us, four or five times a month.
But don't fear.
Unless you wilt from the sun
or collapse from dehydration,
I'll see to it you get your audience:
the quickest, faintest whisper
in one ear that only someone
starved for something never
heard before will hear.
Pitch – Muse's Advisory, Sept. 21 – Thalia:
Once you make it
to the head of the line
our personalized service
guarantees your inspiration
is a perfect fit,
a once-in-a-lifetime
opportunity!
Langston Hughes's
number came up late one night
during his busboy shift
at the Wardman Park.
I double-dared him,
Lay your 'Weary Blues'
down by the tea-cup
of that grim Illinoisan
with the swell cowlick.
Halfway through
his pastry and the poem
a plug of prune got stuck
in Vachel Lindsay's throat,
his wife dug out his gullet
with her index finger
and the first words to come
popping from of his mouth:
My God, who wrote that?
Bukowski was a tough nut.
When I first lit on his TV set,
he leapt and lunged at me
with a rusty fly-swatter!
Even a would-be angle
he brushed back,
until I whispered in his ear:
Rent. Food. Miller High Life.
Pall Malls. White Owls.
Child support. $100 a month!
He gave me props in
'Betting on the Muse':
this is why I chose
to be a
writer.
if you're worth just
half-a-damn
you can keep your
hustle going
until the last minute.
He thought me gold.
We midwife every
plump new poem that bawls
or coos its way to print.
Become a Byron on your own?
No. You'll learn soon
enough we are the best
and only game in town.
The Sincerest Form - Muse's Advisory, Sept 22 – Clio:
You who pander to posterity
as successfully as Nathan Hale
inspire me:
though green behind the ears
when facing Extreme Unction
at the New York city gallows
felt no inkling of compunction
about plagiarizing Cato
he'd just read at Yale:
"What a pity it is
That we can die but once to serve our country";
or Abraham Lincoln
several generations later
borrowing a page
from George III's old playbook
magnanimously made decree
that every slave
held by rebellious foes—
and only those—
“shall be thenceforward and forever free”;
or Jesus
cribbing the less two-faced Jeremiah's
"Turn the other cheek."
Pull out the stops!
Beg, borrow, steal
with all the cheek
that you can muster—
gloss your own lips with the luster
of dead losers
who turned lovely phrases
but no profits of éclat.
What goes around comes around.
Nothing's new under the sun.
The sincerest form of flattery
is looking out for number one.
Cherchez la Muse - Muse's Advisory, Sept. 23
Clio:
Big mouth and hyperbolic pen
both preconditions for renown,
but though you loudly toot your horn,
you'll want one sidelong bag of wind
to fan you
both while you live, and subsequent.
Take admirable John Paul,
Scots murderer and slaver,
who embarked to Roanoke,
threw in with rebels also hunted
by the Crown,
pirated a cargo of woolen coats off Labrador,
inked
his first heroic boast—
The news of the captured uniforms renewed
the courage of George Washington's army
and contributed significantly to his success
at the Battle of Trenton against the Hessians—
and appended the alias 'Jones.'
Angered by his arrogance
the admirals whisked him
off to France
where he no sooner
disembarked, but won
the war again—
After General Burgoyne's army
surrendered at Saratoga,
it was I who carried word to Paris,
whose King embraced our cause
with a treaty of alliance!
Returning to the brine,
I found myself so near a Scotch coasting schooner
laden with barley that I could not avoid sinking her,
though I was flying no external appearance of war—
he came ashore at Whitehaven
for wine
and inflated a moment of drunken arson—
Had we arrived with a different aim,
not one ship of more than two hundred
anchored there would have escaped
and the whole world would not have saved
the town from flames—
into a highflying balloon of fantasy.
But strategy, not boasts, fan his fame.
Cannon-battered, the white flag
of Bonhomme Richard flown,
he turned on the English who'd ferried
his men aboard—
I demand you surrender to us!—
soon revised to
I may sink but be damned if I strike!—
about halfway to the gallant cry
Teddy Roosevelt would later cite—
I have not yet begun to fight!—
long after he died in ignomy
face down at No. 42 Rue de Tournon
and was buried in St. Louis Cemetery
for Alien Protestants.
But that was but a bump in the road.
In 1905 an unidentified coffin was dug up
to serve in Roosevelt's campaign
for U.S. Navy appropriations,
shipped in a bronze sarcophagus
to the Academy at Annapolis
where the dead Scot's reputation
was finally gilded with oration
To our ancient ally, the great French nation,
to whom we owe it that this great patriot
won for the Stars and Stripes the victory
that gives him deathless glory;
to whose courtesy we owe this hero's body;
his own intestines churned
as immortality was earned.
Though he should have been hung,
the name of John Paul Jones
now sweetens every school-kid's tongue
in every corner of your stupid land.
And they can say who Homer is,
but never read a line.
You'll want one sidelong bag of wind
to fan you
while you live, and subsequent—
Euterpe:
That might be me.
As much stems
from your vintner's stature,
backer's pockets,
vendor's savvy,
as your vine.
Forget landscapes,
zephyrs,
grapes.
More prize
your angel, John Paul Byron,
than your wine.
Caveat - Muse's Advisory, Sept. 24 - Calliope:
If you really had something
earth-shaking to say,
would you put it in a poem?
Einstein dipped into Baudelaire
but saw that Imagism didn't suit
e equals m c squared.
Kennedy thought the Cuban Missile Crisis
might fit nicely in haiku
but Jackie just said Jack,
and he knew.
Are you okay?
I haven't discouraged you?
Okay, move up in line.
Patience is liberty's grease.
You're now 2,868,232.
From way up at the front,
Homer looks back blind,
the thing he's proud of most
not Iliad or Odyssey,
but having kept his hair.
Festa di Compleanno - Muse's Advisory, Sept. 25
Clio:
De Felice wrote, "I don't report on History.
I stick a carving fork in it
and see what I can get it to confess.
The juice is several inches in.
The facts are but the skin."
Polimnia:
Silvana, Delia, Maya—Zucchero—
stop squabbling over the flowers!
All four of you are acting like bambini!
You cut it out right now or
I will throw the tutta torta maledetta
straight into the trash!
You will all get slices with a rose on it!
Clio:
Push the tines in as far as they go,
yank them out smooth and quick,
apply your lips, and suck!
Don't worry about what comes out.
Polimnia:
And what good does History do?
Mussolini pledged that the line
for ice cream would move faster,
but your tutti-frutti great men aren't
worth the milk they're made from.
Clio:
Sister, speaking of not growing up,
when are you dropping this Italian thing?
Are you ashamed of your Bœotian roots,
cling to a fantasy that long-lost Pop
is actually Marcello Mastroianni?
Polimnia:
You're a cynic.
What's wrong with fantasticheria?
Put on your birthday-party hat!
Why rub your nose in merda
when imagination's mirror
offers faces that are fairer?
Orientation - Muse's Advisory, Sept. 26 - Melpomene:
I bear another "omen,"
one nightmare of my own—
a sadistic dentist, what else?—
and one of my sister Euterpe's.
He liked the piccolo, she moans,
but turned up his nose
at the lyrics.
We take a risk
in this line of work
of ending up
like poor poets themselves
tragically chasing praise.
I stroke her hair and coo,
The genre's changed.
Since Jethro Tull grew gray,
combining flute with singing is
hopelessly passé.
You see that colossal heap
of myrtle and laurel branches,
snippets implanted
in a million poets' ears
who failed to summon stanzas
and eventually gave up?
We used to burn them in bonfires
but the smoke of dactyls stirred
great Zeus's allergies,
and clouds rained dousing tears.
Now nymphs weave baskets
from the new lines at the top,
fill them with humus from the base,
and then haul it to the Thespiae haymarket
to sell it for compost.
You see? As the Pythia foretold,
The road down from the muse's
plinth is sparkling with gold.
Zsa Zsa's Sentence - Muse's Advisory, Sept. 27 - Terpsichore:
The dyke prosecutor mocked her for craving attention.
Zsa Zsa huffed
from the courtroom in tears. Yes, she had punched out the Beverly Hills cop
who pulled her Rolls over—tags expired, no license, open bottle
of Kecskemeti vodka.
Yes, she said of the man who testified
against her, "He's only a little punk with a hairdo like a girl,"
and of her wrist-slap of a sentence, "If anyone didn't know me
they at least know now I'm white and rich."
That last bit I made up myself
and fed to the guy from E!TV, but Zsa Zsa squealed, "Daaahling, I'm soooo
pleased! That is exactly what I wanted to say!"
Melpomene says
you don't find spirits in a bottle, in rotten meat between the teeth,
or even—as in her case—in the breath from a crib death concussion.
"It's what you open the vein in your soul to." She is the tragic muse.
I circulate much lighter ichor. I'm the hum-a-day one. Zsa Zsa?
I like her! I like big tits! And I like hearing my lies on the news.
Pocket Change - Muse's Advisory, Sept. 28 - Erato:
Mister, you want to buy some gum?
An hard-boiled private eye paperback,
all empty calories, to pass the time?
Hey? Something a little spicier than that?
A couple extra dollars
helps us make ends meet
and compensates us
for hard pro bono work.
We've other mouths to feed than yours.
Our toddlers, should we ever procreate,
cannot eat art;
and since we don't travel much,
can't even follow in our footsteps:
so there'll be tuition.
And we're the single occupation
Obama's healthcare bill forgets.
I have to go up front
and start my shift,
pricking the ears
of some lyrical johns.
Good luck to you.
Most writers say
it's worth the wait.
A few complain it's all hot air—
you can't predict.
The Ave's short,
but it's still shrift.
One of the others
will come by soon
with information
about protocol, how to address us
when your number's up—
You don't touch us, we touch you—
that sort of thing.
Then Euterpe's famous teaser,
“How to Make the Most
of a Wisp of Inspiration.”
I'd like to go back to school myself
one of these days, but when?
Paid for with what?
Our 10% of your royalties, pre-tax,
buys less and less each year.
Call Mary Oliver grabby if you like,
but it's pretty much her oar alone,
since Rob Frost's prostate went.
that keeps this gondola afloat.
But I try to think about the future—
a Golden Age around the corner,
a regular income,
the revival of rhyme.
Saturday's mourner is Sunday's heir.
So brother, could you spare a dime?
Muse's Advisory, Sept. 29 - A Stern Word from Urania:
May I have your attention, please.
Before we clarify how things are done
here on Mount Helicon, one
caution about slipshod vocabularies.
Don't paint if you can't sketch.
If you want to script a climax
you should know exactly
how to scratch your lover's itch:
if you can't caress
the sweet spot of an idiom
you have no business
putting hands on it.
Don't be afraid to be a geek.
According to the Google oracle
1,650,010 instances of everloving
vie with 1,600,663 of everlovin';
epochs of a woman's life prevail,
but epochs in a male's;
as masculine pronouns
for the unknown gender retreats
he/she, s/he, one and he or she
all fall prey to the singular they.
"You're scaring them!" Erato cries.
"Nobody wants to hear your peeves!
"No poet with a dick between their thighs
is going to consult Ask Jeeves!"
You'll see. We muses issue wisps
but they will never coalesce
without both discipline and diligence.
Don't waste our time and yours.
We're busy women;
mercy is not what we dispense.
Faith - Muse's Advisory, Sept. 30 – Euterpe to Tom:
From Pseudo-Tertullian's Diarium Actae Fidelis,
The Christian's Almanac of Daily Tests of Faith:
I. In labrum lava anus antes saeta.
In the bathtub wash your butt before your hair!
II. Promove infantum in via tanquam desinant aurigae.
Push your stroller into the crosswalk as if drivers will stop!
I jest, but here you are all lined up
like communicants, eyes shut,
hands folded, tongues extended.
Does that strike you as ridiculous?
I'm not supposed to tell you this
but couldn't you be self-inspired:
grab the bull by the horns and shake its head
till augury or gore fell out?
You might get gored yourself
but isn't that a better tale than
"How I Stood Awaiting Dawn"?
Tom Eliot worked at Lloyd's
and Wally Stevens at Equitable Surety
and Hartford Accident & Indemnity.
They labored in the vineyard of the bored
and you can press the juice
from the poems they produced
into Emily Dickinson's brass thimble.
I'm sorry, my dear voluptuary,
but I'd actuarially prefer a symbol!
They stood in line, you know:
they passed where you pass now
while in each district of the earth
ravines and chasms swallowed
bolder men who bolder wrote.
We don't just stand around
and dub unerrant knights Inspired.
Sometimes we coax them
into mischief, failure, fire.
Serendipity - Muse's Advisory, Oct. 1 - Clio:
On this day in history Mao Zedong unveiled his new People's Republic
and Henry Ford his Model T and it was a darn good thing
the Pacific Ocean squatted in-between or
instead of one brigade of blue suits after a long march
killing 400 Tiananmen students
and one in plain black coats after a hour's drive
pummeling seven trade unionists
on the River Rouge Overpass—
before the desire for luxury and options buried both—
there might have been real trouble.
Monolith - Muse's Advisory, Oct. 2 – Urania to Tom:
Gibson struck out 17 at the start of the '68 Series.
Wilson had his stroke, Warren swore in the first black Justice, and Beagle
tied up not in Plymouth but in Falmouth.
So much happens every day
around the galaxy, the Chinese Zodiac a radiating
sun of wedges where a date's occurrences might all occur at once:
jade-smooth bamboo bones, sugar cane and teenage Japanese red maples,
shape-shifters disguised as this or that to get a better look at us
anchored in the stream or diving off and swimming for the oozing shore
unspooled ourselves, then to unravel three silk threads, snares masquerading
as entities in human history with faces and emotions
and futures that can't say if they're available to occur or not.
Your lockstep advancement one day at a time is the way to get what
done?
Perspective - Muse's Advisory, Oct. 3 - Calliope
There's a poem in everything, I keep hearing. So where are they all, then?
I've nothing against white sheep, but the black ewe with the nappy ringlets
is the one I'll hurry back for when the hillside trembles or the Medes come.
The sooner you learn that a spark is nothing more than a spark, the better.
Is that lady behind you driving you as crazy
as she's driving me?
And that serious young man furiously
pacing up and down gesticulating and rehearsing?
At least you're standing quietly. Considerate.
If I seem discouraged, cynical, do pardon me. Look how much more
the deities with better attitudes have managed to accomplish!
How metalwork has progressed! Grain cultivation! Medicine! War!
Did you read, just today, about motion-capture 3-D imaging or
about Georges Charpak's multi-wire proportional tracking chamber?
But every poll shows large majorities who think history and poetry
are in a steep, long, irreversible decline. Eminem's no Gershwin
and the Reverend Jesse Jackson is no Martin Luther King.
I shouldn't take it out on you, though.
Folks don't understand that, in the day, they sniped
that Gershwin only reached the limelight
on the coattails of Fred and Adele Astaire
and Dr. King was demagoguery made flesh.
Even Homer when he blindly groveled
at the campfires of the Greeks
was poked at with the glowing-hot tips
of uncouth warriors' shish-kebob sticks.
Prophets are dropped and lost like nutless husks
and I'm the only one who knows how many they are,
where they lie moldy, and the greatness in them.
Ennui - Muse's Advisory, Oct. 4 – Clio:
Abe Lincoln views a balloon ascend today.
Sputnik is in space, 184 pounds (your weight),
and Bessie Smith's abandoned in a grave
till Janis Joplin finally has a headstone made.
A
A
A
A
A
A
A
A
white pine sprouts.
white pine dies.
black pine sprouts.
black pine dies.
white pine sprouts.
white pine dies.
black pine sprouts.
black pine dies.
The very next poet to complain
the wait's too long or their ens insane
gets nothing but tongue in their ear
and my usual middle finger.
One Hand Washes - Muse's Advisory, Oct. 5 – Melpomene to Tom:
How does it feel to be in line
for our 2,780,826th next
sliver of inspiration?
Have I read Zen and the Art
of Motorcycle Maintenance?
Dude, he was one of mine!
I still remember that guy, he was a trip!
When he finally got to me, he said,
No thanks, don't want any help,
just came to stand in line
where I could have pure boredom,
I want to sometimes write and sometimes not,
once in a while have a good day,
once in a while have a horrible day.
Do you know Chris never liked that book?
He told me, 'Dad, I had a great time
on that trip. All the rest of it was false.'
Our father Zeus went right after him.
Zen & the Art of Now Let's See What You Say
When Your Dear Son's Been Stabbed to Death
Right Outside Your Groovy Zen Center.
Results matter. Wouldn't you rather walk away
with “Asphodel, That Greeny Flower” in your notebook
or “The Things that Make a Soldier Great”?
Both those writers got the same hint—No. 41,
one of the best.
If everyone in front of you sticks it out,
if no one cuts in line—
which happens, Yeats once came barging in
and no one had the balls to stop him—
you'll get No. 94, a fine one, tried and true,
the same one Coleridge got
for “The Garden of Boccaccio.”
You look like a man who might also profit
from a new service we're offering.
It lets you riffle through the discards
while you're waiting: near-successes:
“Kubla Khan,” for one.
He didn't see it to completion
but that doesn't mean the inspiration sucked.
It could just be, his opium ran out.
To pay for it, you'll do a little job for us?
Graft - Muse's Advisory, Oct. 6 – Melpomene:
This is a bit like Doctor Faustus, isn't it,
you rummaging the dustbins
for chicken bones the gods threw out,
but cheaper. We don't want your soul
to make our soup, only a cone or two of ink,
a snippet of information;
and you get to paw the ash of fires
gone cold. Sign here. Nobody has to know
you have the inside track. Ah, good.
That's it. Now go. Go start your work:
a peak behind Ralph Ellison's
"Three Days Before The Shooting..." first,
or John Keats's “The Fall of Hyperion”?
Feast,
and when your lids are glutted, sleep,
and I'll slip in to carve my pound—
no, thin carpaccio—of belletristic flesh.
Come On - Muse's Advisory, Oct. 7 - Euterpe:
You're no one's fool,
there's no wool on your eyes.
It doesn't come as a surprise
to you to hear
being a muse is more like pandering
than frolicking in bed—
that we have unmet yearnings too,
although no more than anybody else.
Muses Inspire Selves!
No harm in that.
The Oxford Anthology of Human Literature's
already pretty fat.
And you: not only will your own work
join the rolls of the renowned
but you can gloat in pubs
that it was you who acted as the muse
when the Immortals wrote.
Query - Muse's Advisory, Oct. 8 - Erato:
On the topic
of love-making
between a god
and virgin girl:
The god
approaches.
The virgin
drops her book.
Does he seize
her arm like Zeus
in Apollodorus,
or curry her
with compliments
like Angel Gabriel
in Luke?
She's immaculate.
How exactly
does he do it?
Walk me
through it.
Come On II - Muse's Advisory, Oct. 9 - Erato:
So hard—
one hand restraining
her
so she can't flee
while lips
spread butter
on her all too mortal
ears.
“Hail, thou art
wiser even
than thy cousin
Elizabeth.
Be not afraid,
nothing
is impossible,
don't run away.”
Then his clasp
on her forearm
loosens and
becomes a caress,
and
his other hand
hooding
the microphone,
“What an
incredible dress.”
Satan the Muse - Muse's Advisory, Oct. 10 - Erato:
The bug I slipped in Dylan Thomas's ear
that spurred his never-completed “Elegy”?
Too proud to die; broken and blind he died
The darkest way, and did not turn away,
A cold kind man brave in his narrow pride
On that darkest day, Oh, forever may
He lie lightly, at last, on the last, crossed
Hill, under the grass, in love, and there grow
Young among the long flocks, and never lie lost...
I just whispered, "Your Dad is soft now."
Not a bad inspire.
See what you can do with it.
It still has blood in it, I think.
Thomas would have finished his
had it not been for the drink.
Your Dad's died too, I know.
He's softening.
Don't sit there blubbering.
To ink.
Discernment - Muse's Advisory, Oct. 11 - Euterpe:
I'm on duty now up front.
Urania's coming.
Tell her all about the motions
of flesh and blood bodies—
the friction, smells—
the hot and cold of it—
each sigh and grunt.
We're thinking:
one particular prick of pleasure
opens the door to a mid-coitus panic—
maybe a memory that turns Zeus sick.
And she's just stunned:
an interruptus with a god who took
her where she'd never gone before...
After that, we're not sure.
Maybe she's furious
and slaps him
hard across the face;
or a maternal instinct
bubbles up
and she responds to him
with compassion,
grace.
It all depends
on how the language
bends.
Words lead the poet,
not the other way around.
One of the greats said once
she upended her entire conceit
because of
a felicitous consonance.
I used to think,
One glove fits all.
Now I glance at your fingers.
Is there callous?
vulnerability?
Is the eraser more worn
than your lead?
Volition - Muse's Advisory, Oct. 12 - Urania:
Some call it heavenly
and some just heavy
but my body lets you
know I'm permanent,
not subject to a wind
or whim, substantial.
Did you say sensual?
Don't be impertinent.
It's degrading enough
I have to regale you
without you braying
like some randy mule.
I soar above all that,
inspiring the planets,
stars, and moons all
through the celestial
distances. I hold back
no time for dalliance.
Depravity isn't what
my chassis wants; its
impulses are gravity,
reliability, regulation;
its acme, competence.
Human women in rut
would stitch their legs
shut to know the pull
of imperium; I'm not
so louche as to envy
them their pleasures.
Enough gets lost, displaced:
today silent cowboy Tom Mix
crashes his yellow Phaeton
and breaks his neck, death
denting his metal suitcase
(pilgrims to the dusty arroyo
find only a small iron statue
of Tony his Hollywood horse)
and Christoffa Corombo exits
his Marigalante to go ashore
the since-mislaid isle Lucaya.
Urania's Query - Muse's Advisory, Oct. 13
Mid swarms of small edits
and careening revisions
I pilot the craft of poetics
without fatal collisions.
Verlaine went at Rimbaud
with a pearl-handled pistol
but the bone of contention
was only bisexual drivel.
But enough about me, son.
To pen!
Lewd Zeus is up to tricks.
I get it.
But for the Virgin is sex
less about lust
than chasing
what feels inaccessible?
“...He butters her up, caresses
her, tries to get her to give in..”
What flits through her mind?
Take your time: you have tons, thanks to this interminable line.
What does he represent to her?
How does he overwhelm her
keen appreciation that it's sin?
Incarnation - Muse's Advisory, Oct. 14 - Urania:
Divine prick
craning, erect,
under a tunic,
he gingerly
unlaces the front
of her kirtle,
luring her nipples
up too, galvanizing
her pussy.
Both smile, shy.
Her lips are wet.
She breathes,
“Tell me your name.
Don't lie.”
His slight growl
soothes,
“You know
exactly
who I am.”
Are you aroused
from telling it?
Don't be ashamed,
you're not the first.
Those porta-potties?
Third from the left
has a Screw taped
underneath the lid.
But hustle back.
I touted prudence.
I never said
I was insensible.
The Human Touch - Muse's Advisory, Oct. 15 - Zeus:
You saw it in the paper yesterday,
the man who claims to be a saint.
I was a sandwich man for years in a canteen in an office building
on Madison Ave. and 50th Street. I had a miraculous vision, a face
of Jesus on the ceiling framed by colorful rays of light. I knew who
it was because it was just like in all of the paintings. He pulled me
from my bed by my eyes, almost pulled them out of their sockets...
How many spirits I have known!—
familiars met in unfamiliar forms.
The tug-tide of vaginal walls
funnels me back to my first dawn,
its rosy fingers on Mount Ida's breast—
Mother lifts a swaddled stone
to Father's infant-eating lips,
then spirits me off to be raised
by goats as the Kouretes dance
and batter shields with spears
so Cronus doesn't hear my cry—
I and my phallus collapse.
The former Virgin lays my thick black locks
upon her delicate brown bush
and strokes my cheek until I sleep,
the only mortal who has seen me weep.
The sandwich man, eyes bulging
from his sockets, a saint?
What's so extraordinary?
Spirits pick everyone's pockets.
Oh Dear - Muse's Advisory, Oct. 16 -
Urania:
A sea gull said there's Borges
somewhere over by that tree,
so inspiration can't be far away.
I'm off now
to bring night down
and a thousand other items
on a lengthy to-do list
that would leave one of your
supercomputers sparking.
Lord, listen to that lobster pot
of Language poets!
Not much wittier than barking.
Melpomene:
My gut says the virgin doesn't make
it through the week:
he's make it seem an accident,
a capsized dingy on the Black River
beneath which a shovelnose sturgeon christens
the seed of a mussel
Obovaria olivaria didn'tmarryher,
or they'll find her Plath-like
on the floor of the charcoal hutch
as desiccated and kippered
as a mummy of the Nile.
He's afraid to take the chance
she's pregnant with a male,
thanks to the old wive's tale
that Cowper-fluid babies mince.
Stone Cold Sober - Muse's Advisory, Oct. 17 - Calliope:
On this 2nd anniversary of my 27th go
at a 100 years of sobriety,
the only thing
that keeps me functioning is grit.
I'm known for wisdom and assertiveness,
which goes to show that
reputation is a crock of shit.
Whatever I advise, do the opposite.
The soul you bartered to posterity
is bathwater under the bridge.
Spilled milk cannot go back into the breast;
resign yourself to titillating us
with soft pornography
and doleful beads of sweat
above the raised brow of celebrity;
the glue that binds is selfishness.
Wash out your underwear,
your mouth with soap,
I knew you when you masked
your breath with peppermints,
sniffing the lips of screw-top booze;
and I can tell you from experience
that once the bloom is off that rose,
you've very little else to lose.
The bonafide beggars mass
beyond that row of cypresses.
Real gods, real poets stir the pots
and dress their concrete wounds.
Does chicken soup feel better in the soul
than in the gut? Go take a vat of mush
out there and watch them hold the Bible out
as if it were a plate.
I'm jaded and dry-drunk with doubt.
This is no avocation for the sober
any more than those befuddled geese—
you see? up there? that undulating vee?—
should flap north in October.
La Musa Travolta (Swept Away) - Muse's Advisory, Oct. 18 - Polimnia:
To keep sharp we challenge
each other with rompicapi:
"You're a muse in St. Louis.
Who do you pick to write
the Illiade and the Odissea—
Mark Twain or T. S. Eliot?"
Terpsichore likes scioglilingua:
"Babies blow balloons,
big boys blow bugles,
beggars blow bum bags,
baboons blow bog bugs."
So your pittoresco Olympian theme
just makes us seem like antiquati.
No one today believe in gods like Zeus
who prey on innocents.
Divinità moderna are all straight-laced,
never-married men, don't smoke or drink,
high-minded, sober to a fault,
inconcepibile as statutory rapists.
Tuttavia, avanti con la storia!:
"The god's head heavy
on her lap, he sobs himself to sleep..."
What does Miriam think?—
How did I turn a magnificent man
to a blubbering boy?
What's going to happen when he wakes?
And when my dad walks in the door?—
She hums a local lullaby?
O little town of Bethlehem
How still we see thee lie
Above thy deep and dreamless sleep
The silent stars go by....
The smell from the charcoal kilns
of the colliers on the hill genially
inspirits the odors steaming up
from Zeus's genitali—then he just
vanishes into thin air and it sinks in,
he isn't of the ordinary run of men.
But listen to me
getting carried away!
Please, you pick up
where you left off:
"He falls asleep,
head in her fragrant lap..."
In-F-Able – Muse's Advisory, Oct. 19 – Terpsichore:
Why Zeus crumpled
in the midst of the Virgin?
Who in Boeotia knows
one thing about a god?
Carl Jung's "Olympians:
Pastiche Psychology"
describes their sphinx-like
lack of scrutability.
Can you shed light
on human thought, bridge
Classical and Christian faiths?
The Hebrew god picked up
obscene ideas from Zeus
during the Romans' rule—
another god-man made a deal
to make his mom immortal too?
He didn't use Viagra
and he lost his erection
prior to ejaculation.
Cowper's fluid
did the trick instead.
Whatever else occurred
was purely in his head,
or a manifestation
of sexual orientation.
Diatribe - Muse's Advisory, Oct. 20 – Erato to Tom:
Muse's Advisory, Oct. 20 – Erato to Tom:
Harmonia and Cadmus
hungered for each other
even when the gods
turned both to snakes:
they found a way.
But you think Greeks
are fixated on theories
of democracy.
The root
of the Aristotelian Academy's
eggheadedness
and lack of vice
was never pedantry,
but lice.
What's Greek to us
is how your English lens
of guilt and reticence
refracts fair greediness
and blessed lust
to a discolored literature
of self-disgust.
Pro-Choice - Muse's Advisory, Oct. 21 - Euterpe:
The Virgin sits there by herself
and wishes her dad was home.
Her mom will rail and weep,
flush her with vinegar,
hustle her off to the ritual bath
and pay for two white doves
to forfend a conception;
but her dad will understand.
He once had counseled her,
Love offers you one fifty-fifty chance
for a half-decent man.
Maybe she wants to keep
this baby, be its mother,
maybe it's her ticket
to a more expectant life
than sitting waiting
to become another
charcoal-maker's wife.
She kneels and asks the Lord God
who rerouted Moses to Pharaoh,
Should I follow this summons
of illogic,
or toe the straight and narrow?
He answers,
Girl, a child articled to certain doom
is seeded in your heart—
he will break it, and mine, if you bear him.
No one would blame you if the midwife
cleaned him from your womb—
and how would anybody know?
My Lord, she says,
let not my will but thine be done.
A sharp sob catches in her throat.
If my beau really wants
to give the world his son,
then he may visit me again.
But I'm too young
to make this choice alone.
Joachim comes in,
sees how the light
inside the room has changed—
he's dreamt, and knows—
sees Miriam's tears,
puts her cheek to his breast
and whispers, Don't you weep.
He's not the one.
Legacy - Muse's Advisory, Oct. 22 - Clio:
2,645,762: that's you, Tom.
2,645,761:
the poet 7th from the front
just got cold feet
and showed Urania
his soles.
The male Plath wannabe
she has her lips to now?
He'll be a one-hit
wonder, get a chapbook
published next July
that sinks like lead but leaves
a ripple in the literary pond:
in 60 years or so
his grand-niece
rediscovers it;
inspired, writes her way
into a sweet gig
teaching MFA's
at Indiana University,
and one of them
goes on to be
a quite successful
suicidal author
of three desperate poems
in the August 2080
New Yorker.
You have to take
what you can get.
The reading public
only wants so much.
A Shakespeare
more than once
in a millennium,
and there's a glut.
Log Roll - Muse's Advisory, Oct. 23 - Urania:
My hair is fixed atop my head in scrolls
in service of no beauty but concinnity.
My memory's not chronological;
though humans move from step to step,
we're anagogical.
The midwife claims the hymen's partially intact;
a brew of poison herbs gives Miriam a bellyache
deep into the night—and that is that.
She cries. Both parents leave her be,
Joachim respectful, Hannah punishing.
The heel who knocked her up still hides his face...
Okay...so you've run out of juice?
What's smutty
you give us in detail,
then afterwards clam up like Zeus?
You're afraid what comes next
will be anticlimactic?
Well, I brought you a gift—
a scrap McPhee put by,
but never saw the light of day:
The Graves CO attests: no trace of name, rank, unit, or
date of death for 4 corpses dug up in the Aisne-Marne,
Somme, Saint-Mihiel, and Meuse-Argonne graveyards.
They're all draped with flags and trucked to city hall in
Châlons-en-Champagne, where a Sgt. Younger circles all
4 thrice, then sets white roses down on one, springs to
attention, and salutes the brand new Unknown Soldier,
who gets one night in Paris, thence by train to Le Havre
and aboard Olympia for trans-Atlantic cruise and reburial
with utmost ceremony in Arlington National Cemetery.
The 3 losing contestants will get their consolation prizes:
an eternity underground in Romagne-sous-Montfaucon
as the bugler plays variations on 'Better Luck Next Time.'
Thanks to a splendid nudge from Clio,
McPhee got close—the same prompt
Master Yunmen nursed into his koan:
When the tree withers and leaves fall
My full body exposed to golden wind.
You're ready to continue now, you think?
How great. Zeus what?
He comes around again a few weeks later—
and Miriam does what?
A Epidemic of Romance - Muse's Advisory, Oct. 24 - Erato:
Hannah also wept.
What mama wouldn't cry her eyes out?
Joaquim's permissiveness had led to this!
Compassion,
all the rage with the Samaritans,
was neither godly
nor made sense.
It just turned weakness
to a bigger mess.
"I promised an angel years ago,"
she repeated to her sister Sobe.
"If God granted me a daughter,
I would give her to the Temple.
So how do I walk in and find her?
Up to her pupik in rock-roses!
I cry 'Miriam, who's been here?'
She says, 'God Himself, I swear.'
So that's how she repays me!"
"My Beth's the same," said Sobe.
"One-track minds—'A son! A son!'
I said, 'Elizabeth, you're young,'
but she, 'I'm not, my time has come.'
They're man and baby-crazed!
We can't stand guard. I have my shop
and you your eggs-and-butter stall.
They can't conceive of the disgrace!
If this keeps up, the two of us
will be ashamed to show our face!"
Joachim came in and cooed,
"Sobe, how nice you've come!
And how's my favorite niece?"
"Keeps babbling about a man,"
Sobe repeats. "Not man—a demigod!
Please talk to her, before it all
gets out of hand. She's fond of you."
"We want our children to find love,"
he says. "Then, how we fear it
at the very instant they go near it!
Our Miriam's had visitations too.
Who are these phantoms skulking
in the woodpile—men we never see
but leave our daughters
with swelled eyes, or worse?
They're all the talk
down at the charcoal souk.
The Romans claim it's Zeus—
but then, their girls
have always been too loose."
"Husband! You think it's all a joke?
It could well be centurions!
We need a neighborhood patrol
with good thick sticks
to keep an eye on the back door
when we're at work."
"Who thrills our daughters' hearts,"
Joachim asserts, "is not deterred
by staves. I was a young man once
and, you'll recall, did quite a bit
of skulking both before and after
your great-uncle beat me senseless."
Absence - Muse's Advisory, Oct. 25 - Euterpe:
I'm typing as fast as I can!
Who knew your inner Miriam
was so fast-talking, Tom?
...‫ללל ללל ל לללל‬...
My soul doth magnify the Lord,
though my womb rejecteth him.
He regardeth the low estate of his handmaiden,
yet hath done to me great things,
hath shown strength with his arm,
and scattered the proud in the firebolt of his heart,
hath stricken down the mighty from their seats
and filled the hungry with good things...
Okay, stop, hold that thought!
I can't just keep on scribbling.
I have to ask, What makes her think
her beau's a god after he left her
high and dry like that?
Is he the only man she ever met
who didn't reek of smoke?
What did he do or say to prompt
such faith, such love, such hope?
Or am I missing the point?
Is the lover who lingers suspicious?
Me! Me! - Muse's Advisory, Oct. 26 - Erato:
You're now number 2,613,981.
No, lady, that makes you 982.
No, you can't help but overhear.
No, you can't help noticing
we're talking more with him than you.
No, you certain have not stood here
in line this long to hold your tongue!
Where does your little ticket
promise equal opportunity?
Or in-flight entertainment?
Imagine Virgil,
Wyatt and Morgan Earp
at OK Corral.
No guns and no Doc Holliday.
Clantons and McLaurys run amok
in Tombstone,
terrorizing Cochise County,
murdering and rustling stock...
and you're there
with your little walnut heart
your pappy looted
from a newborn baboon.
You're waving your fist in the air.
You see?
If there was justice in the world,
not one of us would be here.
What did you say?
Ma'am, I'm a volunteer,
so kiss my ass
What you desire and deserve
are different things.
Downstairs in the saloon
are filthy men who need
their rocks off
and their pockets picked.
Deal blackjack, clean their whistles
and then tell them one by one
if they're flat broke
they're going to have to
suck their own dicks.
Islam - Muse's Advisory, Oct. 27 - Erato:
She looks up.
There he is again,
come in so silently
he might have been
a stork, a shrub
face lit
like polished jasper,
palms held out
as if he's offering
an unseen stole
or unwound yarn.
“Are you alright?”
he asks.
She can't speak;
she's liquified;
can only stare.
Her heart flies
open into regions
so expanded,
she's in shock.
He says,
“It was a test.
The role
I have in mind
for you
requires the same
surrender
as it did of Abraham
in ancient times,
Ruth, Moses, Jacob,
Shirprah, Rahab.
If you accept,
come here to me
and open up
your dress.”
She doesn't think,
unclasps the ties
which bound her
formerly to sense:
she has no choice,
no fear,
no innocence;
strong nostrils flared,
he takes her
right there
in her mother's house,
again,
right underneath
the nose of prudence.
Sweet-Tooth for Erotica - Muse's Advisory, Oct. 28 – Terpsichore to
Melpomene:
Darling, what's wrong?
Urania has lost her cool up front—
you're 20 minutes late!
Best get your skinny asteroid
back up there now
before she launches a McNaught
right up your you-know-what!
Now, who are these
two sorry specimens?
He stinks like he's been
eating too-ripe cheese,
and she—
she might as well grow fins!
Call me a metro-homosexual
but if you smell this bad
you shouldn't smell at all,
not if you ever want
to meet someone
who isn't interested
in tapping carrion.
Oh yes. You're poets, I forgot!
You call that muscle tone?
Why couldn't I be fated
to inspire chiton models
and pentathloners?
Darling, no,
Urania's not going to
put hemlock in your cocoa.
Still, if I were you, I'd go.
Where were we, here? Let's see...
His nostrils flared,
he takes her right there
in her mother's house,
again, beneath
the nose of prudence.
You wily bitch in heat!
You're lolling back here
lapping up this smut
while I'm up there
with ticket #106,
a double-glazed daouli nut
who thinks she's a Beatnik!
Vamoose! Scoot! Git!
This kind of thing's not
meant for gloomy ears like yours.
It's more my cup of tea.
Devilish - Muse's Advisory, Oct. 29 - Terpsichore to Tom:
You straight men!
You haven't even said
what the supposed Adonis
looks like yet.
You think he's mesmerizing
sex rays straight
into the addled virgin's brain?
I don't care who he is—
that isn't how it works.
You'd ball a garbage bin.
A woman's more discerning.
And put that lame, dead
inspiration down.
What makes you think
the sow's ear
William Carol Williams
couldn't heat
is going to gild itself for you?
That man had sweet,
sweet breath—I've heard.
Your pants could
turn a bonefire cold.
Turn your attention
to the matter at hand:
what Miriam saw and felt, and
how my father's fingers looked,
what he was wearing,
if there was a gap
between his two front teeth,
what sort of eyes,
what sort of style to his hair?
A sterling girl
like Miriam
just doesn't melt
unless the heat
is searing.
Omnivorous - Muse's Advisory, Oct. 30 - Eavesdropping Woman:
I'll tell you what he looked like!
You wouldn't know it,
from who I am today,
but I once was that girl—
naive—
and when a handsome god
said just the right thing—
bam!
It's not so much the hands.
Hands are a piece of it
and so
are eyes and smiles and coaly curls
just as you say,
but no,
that's not enough to get a girl in bed.
In ancient times
there lived an exiled Sufi
on my home isle Lemnos—
candlemaker from Malatya,
Niyazi Misri.
He could write too,
'I thought in this whole world
no beloved for me remained.
Then I left myself.
Now no stranger in the world remains.'
Indeed
no stranger in our town remained to him.
He fucked them all,
the fishwives, melipasto makers, children, goats, and mules.
He was one of those men.
Wives say he whispered in their ears,
Only the sight of you inflames me.
Husbands say he whispered in their ears,
Only the scent of you inflames me.
Children say he whispered in their ears,
O, you are special! I have treats here.
In the ears of four-hoofed animals he cooed,
I love you.
He was an ordinary looking man,
good, thick eyebrows maybe,
nothing else.
But narrow tastes constrict response.
If god or man
has appetites omnivorous,
his prey respond unhesitant,
assured of a response.
The lover in your tale—
promiscuous,
untruthful
and remorseless—
we know well.
He's who we ask to play with us
in bed alone.
Muse's Advisory, Sun., Oct. 31 – Euterpe/Eavesdropping Woman:
My father was a lot of things
and was accused of being many more,
but Sufi donkey-fucker, no!
He was a sexual adventurer
who took on bestial forms himself—
Dear Muse, your father
was a god like any other god
and did exactly as he pleased.
Nobody judges him—and honestly
he didn't judge us either.
When he got angry, he got angry
but there weren't all these rules,
no 'Oh, you brought it on yourself.'
The self-extolled Enlightenment
pulled far more wool
over the reading public's eyes
than any other bull
since the Mosaic Law.
I'm sorry for the way
Terpsichore complained about your smell.
Who cares? You're wise.
She lacks her father's stomach.
When did you see him last?
You're wise to grasp
that learning who our father is
and where
is half
of what we're doing here.
Nobody knows for sure:
some say he simply disappeared;
some say he changed,
the woman Miriam made him monogamist,
then celibate, then old;
some even say he helps his son
spread Christianity,
condemn the bull and swan
for wooing virgin girls,
and then repackage him as myth.
Still, thousands every year
around the world
insist some beast seduced them.
If, these days, they're judged insane,
and Zeus's name is wiped
from everybody's lips—
well, that's just politics.
The world has turned on him,
and he's a fugitive
who works on cargo ships
and plies whatever's left
of the Olympic trade
in ports-of-call where everything except
cast-iron bollards
where the tramps tie up,
and the sagaciousness of hookers,
has decayed.
As Wilder wrote insipidly,
"The saint or poet might have caught a glimpse."
The rest of us toothpick our minds by day,
by night apply the Trismegistus Dictum—
"To hear truth you have to close your lids
And fit your ear to the dead witch's rictus!
Pinch your nose and squint the moonlight
Through the ruined housing of your rectum!"
So what's your name?
Why do you stand in line
with all these blind gulls
mewling after fame?
Don't ask. Suffice to say,
I'm human—pitiful,
my reach so far exceeds
my grasp.
Physics - Muse's Advisory, Nov. 1 – Urania:
He woos her face to face
and she has generous time
to take note of his features,
bull and drake,
the faint blue-gray of skin
once smeared with grime
but dutifully scrubbed clean,
eyes dim, lips softly chapped,
uneven scar across the chin
where she imagines
someone's husband scored
him with their embers rake.
He looks familiar.
She knows that gods
will sometimes borrow forms
of other men or beasts,
whose limbs and faces yield
to wild unnatural storms
arising from within,
and knows that common men,
by ordinary passion stirred,
don't dare to slip inside the door
of young girls given to the Lord,
and can't inspire
in them fever,
frenzy, greed.
She knows that humble olives
don't beget great cedars,
nor wood-cutter's caresses
unstraighten lofty poplars.
Apostate's Creed - Muse's Advisory, Nov. 2 – Gabriel da Costa, the
Friend of Spinoza:
I feel crazy.
Pacing like a wolf, gesticulating,
raving, raging.
Feel insane.
Do I believe God sent His Son?
J ehovah
E ventually
S ends
Us
S alvation omething, anyway—
an expression of sympathy
if not an apology.
My acronym is
JIBTN,
Jesus Is Better Than Nothing.
He and the coming
of the Dunciad of Pope
have so far seen to it
I haven't lain my neck,
an ape among the apes,
inside the teardrop of a rope.
Bad Seed - Muse's Advisory, Nov. 3 – Euterpe:
I'm back, and bearing better gifts
than Sinon, earless, noseless:
bushel-baskets of rejected inspirations
all for you, ambitious poet-friend;
a triton shell for you, young lady,
plucked from sun-balmed Moudros Bay
within which, if you listen close,
you hear the sea god moan;
and for our half-mad acrostician,
here: a cellphone snapshot of a guy
back at 1,700,009
who sports a Greek-house
tee shirt lettered ἸΝβἸ.
And here's my sea-rose baklava
drenched in yellow holm-oak honey.
All three of you:
nutritious misery can take a break
and sink your teeth into my wizardry.
Now, yes—:
back to the lovebirds...
Clio:
This time the goat goes through with it
and Miriam gets pregnant once again—
exactly what Zeus wanted from the start,
another brat to pine for him, to fantasize,
O, he's a millionaire, celebrity, omnipotent!
Not, He's a spineless rat.
What kid imagines that?
And Miriam?
Zeus might well be a bust,
she has no choice but to admit;
but this new fruit inside her womb—
why, she'd devote herself to him,
he'd prove the critics wrong
that clamor in her head,
You threw your life away,
disgraced your clan
for honeyed tongue
and out-of-wedlock lust.
Joaquin has met a man
who builds the market stalls,
who lost a wife
in childbirth years ago:
he'll take the baby and madonna both—
if Miriam only consents
to be a faithful spouse.
She pledges, Yes.
She bears the baby
prematurely, in a roadside shed,
but then she raises so much hell,
poor Yusuf calls the Wise Men
and faith-healers in
to try their bag of tricks—
then finally has no choice
except to lash her to a mule
in dead of night
and schlep her and the infant
south to Egypt to his aunt,
a Thothic witch who'll try
the old-school cure:
scold, starve and beat
some self-control
into the crazy bitch!
But she too, in a fortnight, quits:
Your little strumpet
wants her sugar daddy,
wants her sugar daddy.
Yusuf's having none of it.
The purse that Joachim gave him
came with strings,
the thickest one of which
was that Joaquin and Hanna
now were off the hook:
had left town, left
no forwarding address,
and last were seen outside Kirkuk
on the main road to Tehran.
So Yusuf has no choice
but tell his wayward wife
to shut her whining trap
and get on with her life.
Oh, then the Infancy!
Good Lord, almost from birth
Yeshua made his mom
seem quiet as Penelope—
one day, he cast a playmate from the roof
(or else he stumbled in the thatch)
and angrily demanded he arise,
despite a broken neck.
The last straw: the delinquent
burst into the Temple,
cried, This is my father's house!
and latched into the horrified High Priest.
I've been around the block.
I know how disregarded women seethe.
Your Miriam, she had Medea's heart.
Making the absent deity
who was her son's begetter
squirm
was all she thought about.
Fear of Commitment - Muse's Advisory, Nov. 4 – Tom/Euterpe:
Damn you!
No, Tom don't.
Imaginary sisters,
figments, ghosts at best—
head-colonizers!
Please stop!
Don't get yourself
all lathered up.
Go take a walk.
I'll hold your place in line.
A little solitude and mountain air
will clear your mind.
Geysers who
who whisper in our ears
not inspiration but diversion
while you pick our pockets!
Poetry, “free thought”?
It's free, alright, for you,
who char dried sap
to waft its incense
to your ghoulish snouts!
Why shouldn't I enjoy
the holocaust of fancy?
It's unprincipled to help
design a product I disdain.
If you're afraid this molehill
in your mind's too steep,
you're free to walk.
I'm not by any stretch
of the imagination
Greece's only source
of gilt-tongued talk.
That soup-line there
beyond the cypresses
is also a popular haunt.
A trap—
behind nine wooly masks,
nine wolves!
Tom, that's cliché.
Far better to fail the task
of banishing confusion
than to belly to the vampire's boot
and beg transfusion!
Then go.
I've no dog in this race.
Your tale of Miriam
will wag its way
to a conclusion
without help.
It's pretty obvious
she's thrown her lot in
with the whelp
she hatched with Zeus.
You sell her short.
You don't know what
a human woman is
and never will!
You're too impressed
with this genteel procession
to and from your lips—
two million strong—
to see the billions
wading through a field of thorns
to touch that whelp's worn hem!
Whose influence
do you think makes a difference?
He didn't just inspire
with well-crafted turns of phrase,
he put his money where his mouth was,
walked the earth
and let the chips fall where they may!
Got himself killed, you say?
Then resurrected on the third day
and eventually ascended into shangri-la?
If you find that stirring, good,
then walk that way yourself.
Go bite injustice and iniquity!
If you're as lucky-starred as he was,
somebody who knows their way
around a pen
will bark your story to posterity.
Mirror, Mirror - Muse's Advisory, Nov. 5 – Clio:
It's Guy Fawkes Day: contemplate
the ethics of your swollen heads of state:
King James,
Make use of gentler tortours first, et sic per gradus
ad ima tenditur, and so on step by step to more severe;
and so god spede youre goode worke,
George Washington,
I learned of plans for that ridiculous and childish custom
of burning the Effigy of the pope by Soldiers too devoid of
common sense to see such actions as improper at a Time
when we seek the alliance of Canada's catholics.
Do your attempts to muck the work of writers
greater than yourself
produce just inkstain after inkstain?
You can't pen ambition in a corner of your brain.
Get down off your diaphanous high horse.
What would you promise a maiden, and with what
rationale condone it, to be your age's leading poet?
You'd gouge out your dying father's eyes
for just the shortlist of the Pushcart Prize.
Senza Vincoli (Unfettered) - Muse's Advisory, Nov. 6 – Polimnia:
His babbo nowhere to be found;
his patrigno having given up
after his hopes were briefly fanned
by the ragazzo's unexpected reappearance
and apparent pentimento
one day by the Jordan River: sackclothed,
come to join cugino Giovanni
full-time eating locusts in the desert—
until Miriam arrived and hauled
Yeshua by the ear back home—
then off into the hills,
zingari fending for themselves
with what they had at their disposal—
wedding catering,
if sometimes watering the wine;
another zuffa at the temple,
this time flogging vendors
with a cat-o'-nine
while henchmen rifled cash drawers
and corralled the lambs and heifers
he drove off;
some dabbling with prostitutes;
then segni e prodigi, faith cures,
spoken word performances
at farms and mountainsides,
apostles circulating
through the audience
and filling basket after basket up
with hardtack, salt fish, olive—
they did well for vaudevillians,
brigands, Galilean merry men
one step ahead of the authorities,
free as i passeri dell'aria,
wild as i gigli del campo,
spiriti liberi more than ruffians,
bones in law-and-order's craw
until the High Priest flipped
one of the inside Twelve
and got the tip that brought
the end—
to the brook of Cedron
Yeshua crept
and prayed,
Padre, è l'ora ancora arrivato
a riconoscere suo figlio?
Father, is the hour yet come
to recognize thy son?—
then led in manacles to Caiphas.
It all came down so suddenly,
dismaying everyone except
the Son of Man himself,
who took it filosoficamente,
with good grace;
said it was destinato, even welcome:
he was bored, had other fish to fry;
would miss them all;
was unafraid;
ciao, ciao;
goodbye.
Safekeeping - Muse's Advisory, Nov. 7 – Polimnia:
Oh, Miriam wept;
all great runs end,
her son's was
no exception
though disciples
say he slipped
the noose of death
and found a way
to his inheritance
after the pentecost.
The youngest,
fondest of the twelve
whisked her to Sidon
and a northbound
dhow to Telmossos
thence overland
to mount Koressos
above Ephesus
and settled
the stricken woman
in a roundstone hut
atop a fragrant spring
mid olive groves
patrolled by cats
with watchful olive eyes.
He vows to care
for her until she dies
but as she kisses him
goodbye
his haunted face reveals
he's more ripped up inside
than she
and it will rather fall to her
to try to nourish him
with grace.
This mount is also home
to Zeus's cave
and rock-cut throne— Coincidenza?
Panoptos smiles.
His lodestone stirs;
some quarter
of his heart remains hers.
A Fine Meal - Muse's Advisory, Nov. 8 – Zeus to Miriam:
So much has changed,
your boy stole everybody's
thunder, didn't he?
It's nice, retirement,
love's lava cool as snow,
the silence comforting:
my joint gets swollen only
every other Wednesday
when I take my Erbitux
for cancer of the colon,
and my ego bloats but
once or twice a month
when clerics puff me up
with some new brucha!
The climate's paradise,
this olive-oil an elixir.
Now, your rare roast
lamb with figs
so savory it makes the fare
they offered on Olympos
seem...well, charred;
no disrespect to Hestia,
but most of what we ate
could not have been
much nastier.
The icing on the cake—
the cake itself, in fact—
is you, taking me back,
my getting to spend time
here now with you.
My only unfulfilled wish
is that one day soon
Yeshua will forgive me too.
I'm a classic absentee dad
but have hope.
They say he is as merciful as
Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu.
Mis-Prognostication - Muse's Advisory, Nov. 9 – Clio:
“I told him straight-out:
'Jesus, those ideals
you and your zealots tout
are just a crock of shit,'"
the Blessed Mother says.
“'Turning the other cheek
won't stop a spear;
without survival of the fittest
you'll all end up livestock
for the Parthian lunatics.'
But you can count on kids
to do the opposite."
She takes a sip of wine.
Zeus takes a slice of brie.
The cats purr lustfully.
“They're young,” he says.
“Give them a few millennia
and they'll come round
if they haven't run
civilization into the ground
by then.
First mercy to each other—
then to beasts?
Where does it end?”
The sun has started
to condense, grow redder,
rounder as it draws
near the Aegean
where Zeus once
in youthful virulence
swam bloodthirsty to kill
the dragon Kampe.
“Eventually,” she says,
“the wheat-head bends
unharvested in autumn wind
and grape feeds crow and fox.
Their sect will shrink and die,
hoping to resurrect.
Asking a foe for love—
it's just psychotic!”
They're both immortals
but naive, dead wrong.
Fast-forward two millennia:
the Christians still hold sway,
their ingenuity
to swear off savagery
and do it anyway.
Adieu - Muse's Advisory, Nov. 10 – Euterpe:
"John's due to come today,"
she says to Zeus.
"The cats all know.
Look how
they prick their ears
and prowl.
Go on back to your cave.
Since Patmos took
him in, exiled,
he hasn't been too
steady in the head,
but fills his brain
with grim apocalypse.
If he finds you here
it will set him off, I fear.
"Agreed."
Zeus drains
his cup and stands.
"At least they let him visit still.
He always brings fresh fish.
Will you come back tonight,
after he leaves," she asks,
for octopus and chips?"
"I know you loved that boy,
Who didn't, me included?
That way he had
of looking up so soulfully!
I blame myself a little bit
for his decayed condition.
Since I raised Patmos from
the bottom of the sea,
nothing has been quite right there.
I covered it with royal palms
but when Orestes came in flight
after the murder of his mother,
Furies burned them down
to hunt him better,
and the island's homed
one wild-eyed outcast or another
ever since."
She stands and kisses him.
"He was the only one
who never watered true with fake
or faith with doubt
that Christianity could carry
souls into your sight.
The last thing
he could bear to see
is you here relishing your solitude,
impartial, aging,
more excited
by my apidakia
than all his piety.
You did assume a human form
and learn our limitations
and delights—
John certainly got that right."
"No, more than that,"
Zeus says.
"The god he worships
truly is a ghost
beyond death's reach.
If he can blow breath
into such a ghoul,
then maybe doing
something similar
for his own soul
is not too great a stretch."
"That's why I love you, Zeus—
ever the optimist
and loathe to judge
another's view of life!
Remember our first kiss?
I prayed to be your wife
but thank god—
all the gods!—
I didn't get my wish.
You're not the husband type,
but as a next-door neighbor,
Thunder, you're just right."
He grins.
"See you tonight."
Valediction - Muse's Advisory, Nov. 11 – Miriam:
John's eyes saccade,
a flickering glance
in contrast to the smile
immobile on his lips.
The octopus and mullet
in his sack already stink
but from its heart
he fishes out
a wickered flask
of Patmos tsipouro.
“Shlom, Miriam,” he says,
“mleetha na’ami, Maran imakh,
baraka b-inshe,
baraka pera d-kasakh Yeshua.”
“It's good,” I say,
"to hear my native tongue,
but let's dispense,
dear friend,
with the formality.
I've two cups here—
do we propose to let them
suffer any more
from thirst?”
“Mother,
Yeshua comes to me,
His face aflame,
and bids me write down
visions in His name.
Ah, chaya!
As He turned wine
to blood
to set us free,
may what we
wet our whistles with
this day
likewise infuse our veins
with sanctity!”
“Chaya!” I toast,
and drink.
No matter how far from the truth,
he thinks me pious as a presbyter
and I think him a youth
in spite of trembling hands
and hair as silvery as Samos Bay
on a thinly misted day.
“Church doctors theorize,”
he says, pouring again,
“immaculate conception
will exempt you
from the ravages of death.”
I laugh. “It hasn't worked
a lick for age!”
The cats mewl sweetly
and suggestively
they brush their cheeks
along John's foot.
“I have fresh bread and olives.
Come, let me make a fire
and cook lunch.”
“No,” John says,
“the boat that brought me
waits below:
my hosts only allow
this weekly trip
because they fear
Yeshua will send earthquakes
if they don't!
There's gossip
you and Zeus are friends!
The depth
of superstition in this land
has led both
Paul and Philip to despair!”
“It's true—” I say.
“Turks say Izmir
takes its name from Zmirna,
heathen Queen
of single-breasted Amazons!
And pagan Greeks of Chios
say there are as many worlds
as grains of barley!”
“—Zeus sat where you sit,
earlier today.”
“The alpha and omega cometh,
yea, a heptad of gold candlesticks,
a golden bra,
a stumbling-block,
a sardine stone
and seven seals,
a lamb of seven horns and eyes,
four horses—
milk, red, jet and flax—
a moon—"
I take his fevered hands
and cool them with my own.
We stand.
“We'll always remain near, John,
I beside this grove
which you obtained for me,
you on monastic Patmos."
Great tears tumble down
his cheeks.
The cats dart hungry eyes
at the foul-smelling sack.
Vis-à-Vis - Muse's Advisory, Nov. 12 – Zeus to John:
John, Brother,
May I walk with you
back down the Mount?
I too have business
down in Ephesus.
Our friend in common
Miriam
would kill me if she knew
I laid in wait
for you like this,
but I'm beyond
the age of pussy-whip.
Is that striped sail
the ship that takes
you back to Patmos?
Oh, I did some sailing
in my day, like you—
saw Rome,
Phoenicia, and
the many isles.
There's a promontory
named for me
at Haifa: The Carmel,
not very far from
Miriam's Nazareth.
She says she knew
your mother Salome
in Bethsaida,
where I also
have a temple;
and she speaks so fondly
of the two of you.
You have
your mother's face.
That's really all
I have to say.
I wanted you
to hear my voice,
maybe defang
the bogeyman
a little bit.
I know you'll write
what you're inspired
to write.
I don't request
you soften anything,
just that you know
who is it
sits with Miriam
on winter afternoons
in gentleness.
A Bit Farther - Muse's Advisory, Nov. 13 – Zeus:
John, you're the epicenter
of a great ferment.
I'm supposedly omnipotent
but you're creating real change
in the world,
I'm barely keeping pace.
Look what your brethren
have accomplished
since Yeshua hid his face.
You set the world on fire
and I've no doubt can stoke
the holy flame yet higher:
a universal church
with its basilica in Rome
is not beyond your reach.
Imagine a million children
memorizing every word
of what you teach.
Just Before a Storm - Muse's Advisory, Nov. 14 – John the Divine:
Miriam feels as if
some figment
of her discontent
was planted in her son,
Zeus broke in
from the groaning sky.
I didn't lift my head
but kept on walking
like I didn't hear.
Yeshua didn't spring
out of the deosphere
self-made,
he went on
in his choice Hellenic arrogance,
any more than
your own divinations
come verbatim
from a god who has
no better means to air them.
His grain tumbled
from a basket
idly strewn
by a young Don Juan
with trim
on his mind,
fell
hidden in the scat
of sparrows
scattered by the talons
of a hawk,
or was the seed
of su teresi,
Turkish watercress,
escaping its maternal brook
to mat
as if miraculous
a hillside runnel far
from any ancestor.
She's always felt herself in him,
the urge to take
the road less traveled,
transcend pain.
A Greek-god crock of shit,
pure, pseudo, pop
psycho-analysis.
I hurried on.
Game - Muse's Advisory, Nov. 15 – Terpsichore:
My mother Memory
danced me in rings
and sang,
Terpsichore, Terpsichore,
Unclip your kinky hair.
Don't think the earth is fair
Or that there's gold in meek.
The only way to savor life
Is to unclip, unclip,
Unclip your kinky hair.
I had a lover once
well versed in trickery
like Zeus
who made a big deal of my hair
and said I know, I know
when I complained about my dad
seducing this, that, and the other
goody,
none of them my mother.
My big complaint
like Mom's
is that the loving wool
she pulled over my eyes is gone,
my grouse
not being serenaded
by a Juliet so devious
but that
the days I spend now
in comparison
are much too tedious.
Though she was one of them
who stole my mother's place,
I envy Miriam—
"The Miriam," Whored Byron asks,
"we ten invented here?"
Do you suppose I made her up?
Oh no, she's real!
—I envy how she gets her lover back
and now she sits with him
all afternoon
watching gay baghlahs
and stern triremes
make the breakwater
below
and wonders,
What's he thinking?
What's he cooking up?
My own lot,
helping poets
gain a handhold,
isn't quite
a black cat
on a hot tin roof
nor even
the warm calico
of fondness.
I'm not sure how we muses
got it in our heads
that we'd be spinsters too
but I would drop this lame gig
like a hot potato
for one week with Cat Ballou.
Schreibblockade (Writer's Block) - Muse's Advisory, Nov. 16 – Thalia:
Terpsichore,
self-pitying again?
We're not here,
Sister, for regrets
or might-have-beens.
That's what the pub's for
afterwards.
Euterpe needs to pee,
so pull yourself together
if you can,
and go relieve her
up at inspiration's fountainhead.
I'll spell you here.
Lieber Schimpanse-Byrons,
ein Geschenk von Goebbels
und meiner Schwester Clio:
"The yellow stars are humane, hygienic and prophylactic, since some Jews
can't be recognized by external signs. When they first appeared on the streets of
Berlin, what a surprise! Who knew there were so many? We all suddenly saw
someone who had always seemed so harmless—perhaps complained or criticized
a bit more than normal, but nobody thought was a Jew!
"And now we see Jews walking with non-Jews. Their excuse? Jews are
human too. I don't deny that, nor the humanity of murderers or child rapists—
though I never feel the need to parade down the Kurfürstendamm with them!
"Jews have a trick. They know the good-natured Michael in us, ready to shed
tears for any injustice, so now they pretend they are all little babies and fragile
old ladies! They send the pitiable outside. But when we feel pity for an old
woman in a Jewish star, remember that a son of her distant uncle is a
warmonger named Baruch or Untermayer who stands behind Mr. Roosevelt,
urging him to war, so that a U.S. soldier will one day shoot Michael's only son
dead.
"If we have a flaw in our German character, it's thinking everyone as good
natured as us. That’s how we are. But there are differences between people, as
between animals: some are good, some bad. That the Jew lives among us is not
proof that he belongs among us, any more than a flea is a household pet
because it hides in our sofa. It isn't there because it loves us."
All the makings of comedy, nicht wahr?–
a pimp, a dog, a flea, a goy, a Jew,
a crippled President, a yellow star
like Tinkerbell
or that little ball
that bobs over the notes you
have to sing—
a sort of karaoke thing?
No, it's been done, no doubt—
Mel Brooks, Kurt Vonnegut.
I recommend you
play with word replacement.
I'm being unmenschlich?
You're too dainty to reheat
a plate half-eaten by a Nazi?
Kein Problem. Vorwärts!
2,415,356 more steps.
Daughter - Muse's Advisory, Nov. 17 – Calliope to Zeus:
Your dam dropped you in a cave
Then created streams to rinse
Birth's soilure from your scalp
wrote Kallimachos.
When your umbilicus fell off
Upon the plain Cydonians call Navel
Field nymphs hurried you to Knossos.
In other words
you were a child once too
unless St. Paul was right
when he wrote Brother Titus
Their own prophets
Say that Cretans lie
and the thunder-strikes
that shook Mount Ida weren't
the same kind that knocked
the cocky Saul of Tarsus
off his horse.
Who guessed that it was you?
Why would you smite
the persecutor of a cult
that was a foe of yours?
Who ever sees how sly you are?
How much you work
behind the scenes
to boost your son
and earn your current ease?
Who parted the clouds
that shadowed Jordan's sands?
Who perched Yeshua
on the desert mountaintop
and offered him the Holy Land?
And when he pushed the cup
away until a time
more opportune,
who eased him down
on oread's wren-feathered hands?
If you weren't such a sexist goat,
you might have just once
let me hear the oracle
of your white cockatoo
or offered me
your lightning-bolt.
No, that's too cheap a shot.
The truth was
Miriam had somehow sank a root
into your barren ground
and for the first time
in your long career
you thought about an heir.
Extended - Muse's Advisory, Nov. 18 – Calliope to Zeus:
But you didn't think
enough. You let him think
he was your only son,
and where does that leave us
who make our livings
as your underlings?—
stuck here garlicking word-sausage,
very possibly retrainable
but too dispirited to lift our wings.
And all our half-siblings?
The last one heard from:
Klotho, making headlines
when she sold her spindle
to the Drs. Edwards
and Kevorkian cartel,
and then the next day
when the FDA disclosed
she'd taken bribes from
John the Baptist's mom
and from protagonists
in Robert Heinlein
and in Walter Mosley's books?
Yeshua seems so lonely.
There's this idyll of him lolling
on Cloud Nine with you and Miriam—
harps, angels, saints—
but you and I both know
you hung him out to dry,
and like a gay sex addict
he sashays
leafed-over country crosscuts
and dark alleyways,
whispering love
to adherent minds.
I don't want you and Miriam
to give up your retirement;
no, quite the opposite.
It puts a warm glow
in my heart to see how
stable you've become.
I just think finishing
unfinished business
with your kids
means more contentment all around,
especially for her—
he's all she's has—
and he's your last.
No one's
a hungry young god anymore,
our family's legendary bickering
over imperium
is something of the past,
and there's a good chance
we could have some fun
if you and Miriam just
passed a pipe around
and made the introductions.
The Kind Stepmother - Muse's Advisory, Nov. 19 – Miriam to Muses:
Dears, your father's not the bronco
he once was, but he's still Zeus:
guilt-tripping him won't get his ear.
The only squawk he hears
is his Carian-crested cockatoo,
St. Paul the paraclete.
Meeting Yeshua won't recoup
your birthright either.
When they first styled him
"Only Begotten Son"
he came to ask if it was true.
I said, "If the shoe fits, wear it,"
and no way he'll change it now.
"Latest of Many Begotten Offspring"
lacks cachet
and admitting doctrinal error
only scares the flock away.
And he'll kill your joie de vivre!
He's never cracked a smile.
For laughs, bark up a chestnut tree;
find Dionysos, Herakles or nephew Pan;
but give my only son
the widest berth you can.
Not that he even holds me near.
Nothing's farther from the truth.
When I have something I want him to hear
I get down on my knees
like everybody else,
then search for answers to my prayers
in clouds, in trees,
or unexplained remission of disease.
I truly wish I offered more
than cautionary tales.
And if Zeus ever says,
"I just might give some thunder
to my girls,"
I promise you, I'll say "Why not?
Why stop at Trinity?"
If anything, the nine of you
might be a boost
to my son's masculinity.
Relief? - Muse's Advisory, Nov. 20 - Thalia:
People call me the queen of comedy
but what are laughs
but tears by other means?
Unlike poor Romeo and Juliet
united finally in death by drugs,
most lovers shipwrecked,
nightmared and romance-marooned
in Shakespeare or in Aristophanes
are casualties of madness:
Cupids lifted in by cranes.
The pun? the clever turn of phrase?
the swish and twirl of magic wands?
That's me.
I know 1000 ways to insult blondes;
mock country folk;
poke fingers at the Sapphic dike;
recite That Nigger's Crazy inside out;
mix recipes for love potions from 1 to 99;
play every wedding dance
from Etta's sweet “At Last”
and Trini's smooth “Bésame Mucho”
to “Hava Nagila” and “The Tarantella";
reweave the tales of Scheherazade
to keep the shah awake
for one more night.
The funny thing?
It's pretty much the same:
the sudden plunge into despair
or love so blinding and erasive,
victims call its lightning-bolt
first sight.
Kismet - Muse's Advisory, Nov. 21 - Thalia:
But this
eternal, golden, afternoon-lit
interlude above majestic Ephesus—
whose house of Artemis
raised high by Croesus
won the Sky God's kindness
—this,
beyond what even dramatists
legitimately insist is possible,
a labyrinth of story twists
and sheer coincidence
enough to overtax
even those innocents
addicted to theatrical narcotics
whose antagonists
are paper thin,
and Cupid's toxic
archery accomplishes
the most unlikely couplings—
unless the whirlwind
in John's brain
is not psychosis
nor Yeshua's newly risen
and as yet ungoverned grace,
but crafty Zeus
inspiring the apostle
in delirium
to pander him—
no sooner had John hidden
grief-wracked Miriam
on Mount Koressos
than her admirer rose
from ancient granite throne
and quit his nearby cave
to take an evening walk,
appearing more a goatherd
than the handsome goat
she first laid eyes on
over thirty years ago,
out of nowhere
now he came upon her
as she sat and wondered
what to make
of cats, a gurgling spring,
and the extraordinary light—
is farce too strong a word?
Of all the mountainsides
in all the corners of the earth,
she makes her home on his?
Zeus must have had a hand in it.
If not,
this plot is utterly ridiculous.
Recognition - Muse's Advisory, Nov. 22 - Melpomene:
He walks up quietly and asks,
“Woman, why do you weep?"
“My only son is gone,”
she says. “I'm lost—no husband,
and my only friend
worse off than me.
He brought me here to hide
after my son was crucified
for giving prophecy
to hope-starved Jews.”
She peers at him, and gestures
toward the facing bench.
“My name is Miriam,
my sire, Joachim of Nazareth.
Your speech is Galilean too.
What was your father's name?”
He smiles crookedly,
as if her question drove
his tongue to run and hide.
“The spring that gurgles here
is sweet,” she says. “Have drink.”
“Such awful grief,” he says at last,
“asks both for balmy water
and forgetful gere.
I have strong wine here in my skin,
shall we commingle and commiserate?
It's been a long, long time
since I was young,
my own life had its ups and downs,
though not so hard a fate
as yours. It breaks my heart.”
“Then, mix, here is a bowl.
The third day after burial,
a man one mourner didn't recognize
identified himself as my son
risen from the dead,
and she embraced him.
When she told Yeshua's other friends,
her words seemed wishful tales
and they believed them not.
But afterwards a strange man
came to them as they cast nets
onto the sea of Kinneret.
He said, 'I am Yeshua, raised.'
They said, again, 'You lie,'
but then my boy's beloved John,
who leant upon his breast at meals—
who brought me here
to live my days in peace, and die—
cried out, 'It's him!'
That startled even stalwart Peter so,
he pulled his oilskins off
and leapt into the lake!
Sometimes beloved faces
come disguised in foreign forms,
and sometimes thieves of love
wear most endearing masks.”
The goatherd pours
and they both drink.
“Eventually, in Bethany,” she says,
“as they looked on, the sky
above Yeshua thickened slightly,
drew him upward
and a cloud of faintest gold
absorbed him from their sight.
Some of his zealots say I'll also be denied,
or spared, the grave."
“Poor woman, drink again.
Let me become your friend.
My cave's not far.
This evening let me fill your cup
and then tomorrow come
to sit another hour.”
“Something's familiar
in your voice and mien.”
“My father wandered, as have I.
New languages come easily to us.
My other legacy from him was strength
beyond my size, but shooing goats
on hillsides long since squandered that.”
“Your name, goatherd?'
“My mother named me Zeus,
her mind inflated by the love
that witches mothers without men
to view their sons as gods.”
She weeps again.
He once more fills her cup
but she no longer drinks
and he gets up
and leaves as quietly
as when he came.
Skulls - Muse's Advisory, Nov. 23 - Melpomene:
They clustered at Yeshua's feet
among the zealous flies
and swarming sacerdotal ants:
the daughters of Jerusalem,
Miriam, Magdalen,
John's mother Salome
and John himself
unbearded and effeminate,
mistakenly admitted
to the Crucifixion Grounds
from which male followers
were barred
after the incident of Peter
slicing off the ear
of Caiphas's slave.
The afternoon grew overcast
as things wore on.
Yeshua's small talk
with the highwaymen collapsed,
and there was just
the odd sob, groan
or catch of breath
that notched one of the men
or mourners nearer death.
The centurions grew bored
and started throwing dice—
the Jews, such pests in life,
were also too slow
giving up the ghost.
One of the robbers' country aunts
thundered at three o'clock
and finally roused the guards to act:
Now lance these wretches,
whose agony's too long,
ye smelly jack-ass brutes!
An' git ye back to barracks,
the quicker to git yer oats!
Happiness - Muse's Advisory, Nov. 24 - Euterpe:
They sit again and see the
haint-blue bay turn gold.
"What became of the others
of your Twelve," she asks,
"who co-inhabited Olympos?"
"Ah yes! Delta Omega Delta
we called ourselves!—Dodekatheon—
Dēmētēr, Hēra, Poseidōnas,
yours truly Zeús, Hēphaistos,
Áphroditē, Árēs, Ártemis,
Athēnâ and Apóllō,
Hērmēs, girlish Diónysus.
We had good times up there,
quaffed immortal wines
for as long as they lasted,
when the last cask sighed:
for no one finds contentment
long without inviting time,
and time itself's iconoclastic."
"You aged?"
"Not aged. That's passive.
One by one, we bit
those airy, temporary plums
inside whose pits
attachment waits—
tanha, the Buddhists call it.
We surrendered immortality
for objects out of reach
to gods' compellent fingers.
"And they're all gone now.
The last was Hera,
headstrong, obstinate,
who finally gave in
to a sinewy young Gaul's
tradition that she come feed
under Celtic oaks.
Guarding the fiery spokes
of Helios's chariot—
what's left of them, that is,
since devious Prometheus
hid one inside a fennel stalk—"
"—And you're still sore
at him for that?"
"Not as sore as he is!"
And Zeus smiled.
"Truth is, I miss the little rat.
If one day I went back,
I wouldn't be surprised
if he's the one
who sits cloud-cloaked
and keeps the furnace
of the sun well stoked.
I'd like to think, too,
Hera's lot in Holyhead
has turned out well.
On the way to middle age,
though—boy, I bet
she gave those druids hell!
Miriam took his hand
and thought, remembering
the way he'd wooed her
like a god,
How nice it is to be loved
by a man.
Cynical Daughter - Muse's Advisory, Nov. 25 - Clio to Her Sisters:
Love of a woman altered Zeus
from godly dharma?
Leaves him drowsing
by a humble hillside hearth?
Let's not be gulled again.
I taste him in my veins,
have every epic,
every Orphic hymn by heart:
the modus operandi of immortals
is withstanding change,
time's author in the rising sun,
the falling sand,
the trembling of caesium.
So yes, it is a pretty story,
but unless he's setting that poor woman up
to take some grand new fall,
the folksy goatherd warming toes
in bed with her is no more Zeus
than Hayley Mills is Lenny Bruce.
Muse's Advisory, Nov. 26 - Clio:
The day is on the wing
when Zeus melts into view
beneath the olive trees.
A snow-white ewe
follows him coltishly.
“It's Io!” he fumes, sitting.
“Hera invited her to test
my sexual sobriety.
The height of irony!
She'll stoop to anything!
Miriam tips the pitcher
to the mixing bowl
and watches him add claret
from the grapevines
pruned to basket shapes
along the facing hillside.
“You came late today,”
she barely speaks.
He mutely tips the bowl
into their cups
and the observant bay
flames reddish gold.
“Helios makes quite a show
of growing old tonight,”
she says.
“He does,” Zeus says.
The white ewe comes
to nuzzle both their ankles.
“Before you arrived,”
he says, “this house
was rumored to be haunted,
and the cats—
where are they all today?—
to be reincarnations
of the virgins I deflowered.
Rubbish!
Inside them live the souls
of Amazons who founded
Ephesus but couldn't bear
either to lose this scape
or live among the males
who overtook their district.
Helios is the only caress
they crave, old as he is.
“Io,” she cries, “is shameless!
Look, she wants us both
to pet her!
She'd lie down
with squid if Hera let her!
A skinner in town
could find some way
to settle her libido down.”
“You're worse than me!”
Zeus says, and roars.
He drinks; lifts up the bowl
again; and pours.
Marching Orders - Muse's Advisory - Clio:
Nov. 27, 1095 - Pope Urban II - Sermon of First Crusade:
I, Urban, God's ambassador to the whole world — to all princes here in
Flanders, Germans chosen by God, and heirs of Carl Martel:
A cursed race of Muslims have overrun Christians in seven battles as far
west as the Hellespont, and slay them by sword and fire!
They circumcise them and pour their blood on altars or into baptismal
fonts!
Perforate their navels! Pull forth the intestine! Bind it to a stake! Then flog
the victim around and around until the viscera have all gushed forth!
Cut open the callouses on pilgrims' heels and fold the skin back, lest money
is sewn there!
Make them drink scammony until their bowels burst, lest they have
swallowed gold!
Spread out the folds of the intestine, to disclose whatever nature held
there in secret!
Unless you avenge these wrongs, great Franks—whom God gave courage,
bodily activity, and strength to humble the hairy scalps of all who resist you—
disgrace!
Shall a base race claim the ground where the Savior's blood gushed forth
and the tomb where His body, its quivering members dead, found rest?
Don't be stayed by love of children, parents and wives!
Christ says, “He that loveth family more than me is unworthy.”
Nor let possessions detain you, your land shut in on all sides by seas and
mountains furnishes scarcely food enough!
Instead, take the road to the Holy Sepulchre—wrest that land of milk and
honey from a wicked race and take it for yourselves!
Christus volt! Christ commands it!
Nov. 27, 1868 - Colonel Custer - Song before massacre of Comanche village:
We are the pride of the army
And a regiment of great renown
Our name's on the pages of history
From '66 on down
Hurrah for our brave commanders
Who lead us into the fight
We'll do or die in our country's cause
And battle for the right
'Tis the gallant Seventh Cavalry
It matters not where we're goin'
Such you'll surely say as we march away
And our band plays 'Garryowen'
Justification - Muse's Advisory, Nov. 28 - Would-Be Byron:
May I speak?
If I trade
little bits of what I know
about a woman
when she loves a man
for crumbs
of literary history,
whose business is that
but my own?
You Social Conscience poets,
get a life! A lot of people
do worse things
than stand in line
because they want to write.
Sure, I could be like Christ
and feed the poor instead,
but why attempt to stand
the natural order on its head?
He himself said
hunger would be always with us,
so then, why not share a tip
along the way on how to get
a Catholic girl to kiss us?
Why criticize entertainment,
given how fond your precious bodhisattvas are
of cherry-blossom arrangement?
If this Take-A-Number system
offends you,
hitch up your pangs and leave.
Not only
is the soup line over there,
but two charmed jade chips
smuggled out
of Shangri-La itself
I hear
are buried
in the mini-cemetery
of James Hilton's underwear.
Attachment - Muse's Advisory, Nov. 29 - Zeus to Miriam:
Truth is,
I'm not crazy about mountain-tops.
I wandered in disguise
along the wharves of the Aegean ports,
alongside rivers, lakes—
I like a water view.
The day I first laid eyes on you
I had gone hiking from the Carmel
up the Kishon river through Besara,
poked my head into the basalt caves
where an acquaintance or two lived,
and when I saw a milepost for Nazareth,
one of those voices in my head
urged me to walk that way.
What drew me to one particular girl
I glimpsed in a sunny window
with her book?
Oddly, it was the book.
I was seized by a powerful curiosity
about what had set that particular look
on your face.
I wondered if I could do that too.
I was supposed to be
omnipotent.
As Io Bled - Muse's Advisory, Nov. 30 - Clio:
“What did I see
in you?” Miriam exclaims.
“Chutzpah, for one thing.
You walked right in
like it was where you lived
and were about to call
I'm home!,
then looked at me
as if I were the most exotic
human being you had ever seen,
scorching my face
with your black eyes
like Nabateans scorch the hillocks
to smoke hyrax out.”
“So, not my beard,
nor hands?” Zeus says.
“Poets will write
it was my beard and hands,
and that I smelled
more sweetly
than the average man.”
“Your beard,” she laughs,
“makes you resemble
nothing more than one
of Homer's bumpkins,
and your hands look
like you've grappled
one too many sheep!
You do have a
distinctive smell,
but only swineherds
would consider it a treat.”
“Io—“
“That cow would call
a saw-scaled viper sweet
if she thought
it would get her served
in her unpausing
oestral heat.”
“One poet wrote,” Zeus says,
He appeared to her
as a well-made man;
and my form's been sculpted
into comely statues
fairly frequently—
perhaps for cause?”
“Don't fish
for compliments from me!
The whole world knows it was
the torso of Alcamenes
that Phidias spread olive oil on,
and then the face of Ageladas—
they were the models for
your chryselephantine colossus
and every sculptor since
has only copied that!
If you looked half as good
as half your statues look,
you wouldn't need
the silken mind and steely tongue
that are your trademark hooks.”
“You're all a god could want,
dear Miriam—
to be known well,
and leveled with.
You've no idea how much
demeaned I've felt
these past 19 or 20 centuries
bombarded constantly with antiphons
as if I were a monolith.”
“It's worse for me,” she says.
“My cult believes I care
about each member, individually.
The Ave Maria's are easy
but every Mother Mary, come to me
after heart-wrenching litanies
of sins and sorrows
mars my sleep.
What has become
of common courtesy?”
The sun's blood
spilled onto the bay below.
Behind them climbed a moon
pale as the face of Io
above the red flood
of the abattoir,
as they uncasked
another ewer of bright wine
and warmly reminisced.
Prospects - Muse's Advisory, Dec. 1 - Melpomene:
“Once you've relaxed
as long as restless stock
like yours can brook,"
says Miriam to Zeus,
"you'll just go right back
to your footloose rut.
It's not as though
you'll ever be too old to rule.”
They spot John,
first a stationary pin-prick
in the distance,
then a praying mantis
slowly growing larger,
arms upraised, emaciated,
on his back a fig-leaf sack
of semi-rotted fish.
“Six hundred years,” Zeus says,
“was Noah's walk upon the earth
before he got
the inspiration, Boat.
Once the deluge
had run its course,
he got another notion,
Ferment grape juice into wine.
Where I'll find joy
the next six-hundred-year
is anybody's guess;
for the current hexakosioi,
it's here with you.”
The protests of John's retinue
of seven gulls and seven crows
reverberate
while light and dark wings
dice the air
above where he has, for the moment,
disappeared behind a rise.
Cats cast uneasy glances
higher still
where buzzards loiter on the currents
just in case
some beast with red blood in it
winds up dead.
“Looks like the seafood's old again,”
laughs Miriam.
“These cats are getting fat.”
“He knows I'm here,”
Zeus says.
“Still, humor him, and go.
He has it in his head
that he and I are celibates.
He only stays the hour—
chants his latest prophecy
and mourns the power
of Yeshua's touch to soothe
disturbing dreams on nights
when thunderbolts unnerve
the atmosphere within him
and without.”
“You're safe with him?”
She smiles. He stands.
Mixed with the shrieking
of the vying gulls and crows,
the hermit's curses place him
ten or fifteen plethrons
down the coiling road.
“Safety,” she says, “is nowhere near
the top of my priorities.”
“That's what I love about you, doll.
Come here,
I have some very dangerous ideas!”
“Get out of here, before I throttle you.
The problem with your kind
who never die
is that you have no next lives
to look forward to.
But we who watch
the deaths of those we love
must choose between
lifelong depression
and belief they'll be restored.
Your children die,
you simply breathe on them again.
We need to trust
that there's a time and place
beyond this killing ground
where we will reunite.
The rotting fish, the cats,
the gulls, the crows, the vultures
circling above—
the visions of John's heart—
they all remind me of the loss,
and coming loss, of love."
Prayer - Muse's Advisory, Dec. 2 - Urania:
The saint climbs up the path
with his fish-smelling sack,
oblivious to the boot
in front and the boot
in back;
one scroll unfurled
inside his head,
one underneath his feet,
the third a kompolói,
strung olive stones
from the grove Gethsemane,
I on the isle of Patmos
heard a trumpet unto Ephesus
and unto Smyrna
and unto Pergamos
and unto Thyatira
and unto Sardis
and unto Philadelphia
and unto Laodicea.
In front of him wafts
Miriam's pale face,
eyes like flame
searched reins and hearts
and his feet like brass
tred pavingstones
and stumblingblocks!
the last is greater
than the first
until the vessels
of the potter break
to shivers like
the evening star!
He tries to smile
but finds a smile already
seated on his lips.
Her spirit reaches out a hand
to quiet him.
Muse's Advisory, Dec. 3 - Urania:
I come quickly! John cries,
ascending the hill with his sack.
Flies buzz around his head
and straggle in his hair;
four swifts do acrobatics in the sky.
The first beast is a lion!
The second a calf, the third a man!
The last an eagle with inward eyes!
Sun flares. His dry lips crack.
A wary yeoman and bone-thin ox
pass on the narrow track.
Behold a white stallion!
My Lord, how long, how long?
A deathstalker blocks his way,
barb poised and claws spread wide.
John stoops and cups his palm,
raises the scorpion to
striking distance of his eyes
and prays, Lord, here am I!
It arches its six-striped back,
it stretches forth its mighty tail
and took its barb to strike
but hesitates, is stayed.
Not my will be done but thine.
I hear thy voice and I obey.
He looses the mouth of his sack
and drops the scorpion in. Amen.
Fetus - Muse's Advisory, Dec. 4 – Polimnia:
John can no more stop than a torrent rushing down a gully after a cloudbreak
stars fall like a fig tree casting untimely figs in a mighty wind
and the heavens depart like a scroll when it is rolled back up
and each mountain and island rooted up from its foundations
blue sky and white sun concealments and illusions, flies and birds the evil one's
diversions
who shall hunger no more
for the lamb shall wipe all the tears from the glass of their eyes
behind the veil of his own face, deafening thunder like the roars of behemoth
and the earth is shaken and rocks broken open
and vaults cloven and bodies of the saints
who were asleep arise and come out of the tomb
he stumbles in his delirium
the cord binding his sack breaking open and the foul octopus inside
sliding out onto the path like Belial's stillborn fetus
which fouls and sears his fingers as he spills it back into the flaxen bag
and continues up the hill to greet Miriam
Agape - Muse's Advisory, Dec. 5 – Urania:
an angel
smoke ascending from her head
lightnings
of hail and fire mixed with blood
trees burnt
green grass
a mountain burnt
sea creatures burnt
the sea made bitter
by the damned star Wormwood
a young man leads a white goat
down the hill
its horns
as cedars of Lebanon
its thick legs
like the thief's who asked Yeshua
to remember him
John praises god
the goat bleats
with the voice of Gabriel
the yeoman takes
from underneath his coat
a waterskin
and offers John to drink
this day
you'll be with me in Paradise
John says
Father
the yeoman says
look at the silver sea today
takes drink himself
puts back the waterskin
continues down the path
John hefts his sack of food
for Miriam
resumes his climb
Scarabeus sacer - Muse's Advisory, Dec. 6 – Revelation:
The fifth angel lifts a Key
To unlock the bottomless Pit
That breathes forth Smoke
Of locusts and of Scorpions
All ordained to punish Men
With no seal on their Brows
Who pray in vain for Death
On insects raimented for War
Their faces as the face of Men
Their teeth the teeth of Lions
Their breastplates made of Iron
And the sounding of their Wings
Like horses coursing into Battle
In the name of the locusts' King
In the Hebrew tongue Abaddon
In the Greek tongue Apollyon
In the Latin tongue Exterminans
And the scorpion's Epithet
Is the slayer of Lapwings!
Curse ye,
Orders of twin winged Demons!
Curse ye,
Twice false Olympic Gods!
Ye have taken from me Yeshua
My Lord.
Purification - Muse's Advisory, Dec. 7 – Urania:
An ivory angel
clothed in cloud appears
a rainbow on its hair, sun
in its mouth
its right foot on the sea, its left on solid ground.
Seal up some things and write them not,
it says.
John sees the olive trees,
the cats assembling,
the roundstone hut
where Miriam is.
He has fish in his sack
to nourish her
Yeshua had bequeathed into his care
on Golgotha.
He sees the goat god
Zeus
slip off into the brush.
Voices - Muse's Advisory - Wed., Dec. 8 – Urania:
And was given him a reed like a rod
when the angel spoke, saying,
Rise. These are the two olive trees.
“Shlom, Miriam,” John says.
“Shlom, John. Come,
sit and drink, first water
and then wine.”
John seats himself
and next to him is seated Yeshua
arisen.
She cried travailing in birth,
Yeshua says,
and pained to be delivered
until there appeared first
a red dragon having seven heads
and ten horns to devour her child
and she fled into the wilderness
to that place prepared of God
that you should feed her there.
“The beast who bides here with you,” John says,
“spoke to me along the road.
He has blasphemed Yeshua.”
“No beast, John.
It was Zeus, Yeshua's father.”
John, she cannot hear you, says Yeshua.
“Lord, with what tongue shall I speak?” John asks.
“Drink, friend,” says Miriam,
and passes him cool water from the spring,
the sound of her voice like unto the voice of the cistern.
Though she be my mother,
she heareth me not, says Yeshua.
“Lord, give me words,” John says.
“Your words, John, always comfort me,”
says Miriam. “Your voice reminds me
of Yeshua's voice in childhood,
which delights me.”
“He is here, Mother!” John cries.
“Is he?” she says. “Would that I could see him.”
“Only open thine eyes,” John says.
It's time to go, Yeshua says. The Greek boat waits;
the ebb tide changes its devotement.
John stands and casts about his eyes
down on the cats that paw the sack of fish.
“I bring you squid and octopus,” he says,
“forbidden to the Jews, but your son places
on our plate all that His Father hath provided
for our sustinence.”
“Friend, thank you,” she says, standing too.
“Whatever beast it is who you call Zeus,”
John says, “seeks only to corrupt you.”
“Oh, that ship has sailed, John!”
She cannot hear, Yeshua says.
Go and return thyself to Ephesus,
and thence to Patmos.
Paradise awaits you there.
Incarnation - Muse's Advisory, Dec. 9 – Polimnia:
“I had no choice but leave,” Zeus says to Miriam.
“The last time Patmos visited,
I heard the echo of a hiss, the seethe
of angry thought I buried deep
beneath the ocean where his isle lay
before arising to the light—
now not an echo, but a roar,
And he shall see an angel calling,
Babylon is fallen!
And from a white cloud thrusts
a sickle on the clusters of the vine
whose grapes are fully ripe.
Each island fled away from air;
each mountain disappeared...
“It's not your fault,” she says.
“John always heard what others could not hear.
That afternoon Yeshua wandered on the shore
of Kinneret, hailed Zebedee and his two boys
whilst they repaired torn nets inside their fishing-boat,
John glimpsed the Baptist reborn in Yeshua's face,
and Zebedee beseeched John's brother James
to go and try to keep John safer than his namesake,
as when Herod heard Yeshua's fame, he said,
It is the Baptist, risen from the dead.
Ironically, it wasn't tender John but sturdy James
whom Herod's heir beheaded ten years afterward,
while John survives, and all the demons in him.”
“Some of them are mine,” says Zeus.
“Their voices I remember well.”
“And some are mine.
And some are all mankind's,
the poor old guy.”
Homeward -Muse's Advisory, Dec. 10 – Polimnia:
The sea rears up at Arki's Knob.
The prosarious beats the rowers' rhythm,
all the while scowling at the Galilean raving,
“A whore sits on a scarlet beast;
her forehead is named Mystery.
Come out of her, my people,
for she hath lived deliciously
as a widow without sorrow:
merchants of the earth wax rich
by her abundance of delicacies,
of fine linen and purple and silk,
of scarlet and tangy thyine wood,
of vessels of ivory and of brass,
of iron and marble and cinnamon.”
Oh, to take his sword and air
that Jew's malodorous brain!
Four more leagues to Cape Crane.
Ash - Muse's Advisory, Dec. 11 - Clio:
Miriam sits alone
and John climbs up the hill once more.
Her smoke rose up for ever and ever.
She made herself ready in fine linen.
His eyes were flame and his feet
Treadeth the winepress of fierceness.
Clothed with vesture dipped in blood
I cried out to all the fowls that fly,
'Come and gather and devour the flesh
of kings and mighty men and horses'
And they flew down and delivered up
The dead which were in them and the sea
Delivered up the dead which were in it
Until there was no more sea.
She rises
and opens her palms in greeting.
Alleluia.
Alleluia.
I fell at his feet to worship him but he said, Don't;
for God shall wipe away tears from their eye
Until there is no more death nor any pain.
Her smile is broken like sea in wind.
On the east are three gates:
one jasper and one sapphire and one chalcedony;
on the north three gates:
one emerald and one sardonyx and one sardius;
on the south three gates:
one chrysolite and one beryl and one topaz;
on the west three gates:
One chrysoprasus and one jacinth and one amethyst.
The street of the city is pure gold,
transparent glass which has no need of sun;
for he that is unjust, let him be unjust;
filthy, let him be filthy;
righteous, let him be righteous.
Dogs and whoremongers and idolaters;
whosoever loveth or who maketh a lie;
let him take the water of life freely from my hand.
In John's own palsied hand,
a knife.
Zeus steps out
from behind the house
and issues forth
a lightningbolt
more feeble even
than the stroke
that he produced
although disastrously
on Semele's demand,
but still John's fingertips
are burnt to ash
and with them
the last shred
of his intelligence.
88% Perspiration, 8% Inspiration & 4% Urination - Muse's Advisory,
Dec. 12 – Polimnia:
Tom, per favore!
Much too much
of all that
John of Patmos stuff!
We got the gist!
Go back
to your protagonists
before your last two
loyal readers
lose their minds
and cut their wrists!
Hunger revisits cats
passed out
oblivious to all but belly-bliss
after a final feast
of putrid octopus.
On distant Patmos
candle-lighters
light one candle less.
The fat green olives
have turned blond.
Zeus comes
after a week away.
Grief-stricken Miriam
invites him sit
and quench his thirst
with purple wine;
he wraps her
with his brawny arm
and lets her drench
his shirt with tears.
While stars
in constellations fixed
immortalize the lives
of Cassiopeia, Orion,
Castor and Pollux,
unanchored Miriam asks
at last to learn
of Zeus's other children,
lovers, several wives.
He stands up, smiles,
refills two bowls
and breaks a loaf
of bread in two.
Why not? he thinks.
The evening air
is cool and still enough
to hear tales only
to be whispered once.
“How much time do you have
for listening?” he asks.
"It's been
a long and fertile life.”
“I have all night.”
Va bene?
Is that enough
of an entrée
for you to stay
on track
for 20 minutes
while I run
back up
to Clio's place
and take my pee?
His Past, 1 - Muse's Advisory, Dec. 13 – Melpomene/Tom:
"Zeus said to Miriam,
My first was an Egyptian maiden
just emerged from Nile mud.”
“The inexperienced do seem
to be his specialty, Melpomene.”
"It's true, and it makes sense.
An older women
who has tooled around the block
a couple times is less susceptible
to easy charm."
“Teenage girls are moony—
but this getting pregnant
and denying there was screwing?
Are they liars, or deluded?”
"Infatuation makes you both,
and then a second tidal wave
wells from the womb,
that seals your fate."
“Melpomene, why are you choking up?
Go on.
Who was the lucky little Copt?
Sketch out the scene,
I'll try to fill in the psychology.
I do remember
adolescence's immense insanity.”
“What happened exactly
I can't recall, the god explained—
one of those primal things
the crocodile brain controls.
My second conquest, though—
a young Phoenician girl—
her I remember in detail!
Oh, how I set the trap!
I hid to study her
behind a thickly batted cloud
and laid seduction plans
she'd be unable to resist!
I gave myself the form
of a cute calf who trotted up,
bright daisy in his mouth:
she put a garland on my neck.
Next thing she knew—”
“I've heard this one.
She climbs onto his back
and feels the unsuspected stir
of sex when he starts galloping.”
"I bore her straight
into the waves
five hundred miles
till beneath a plane tree
on the beach of Crete
I turned into an eagle—
and I raped her.
Sometimes a second animal
waits in a lover's heart—
bloodthirsty brute within a Trojan Horse.
By the time you see it, it's too late.
As Ovid wrote,
With all her might she strove;
But how can mortal maid contend with Jove?”
“What sort of man resorts to violence?
He feels himself a god who has the right?
Frustration, from some impotence?”
"Zeus said to Miriam,
To call us powerful,
possessed of strength
but not control,
is a mistake.
Such weakness
I would come to rue
a little further down life's road—
soon break my own
heart too,
attacking Leda.”
His Past, 2 - Muse’s Advisory, Dec 14 – Euterpe:
“In the fens downstream from Sparta—”
Zeus begins, then takes a lengthy sip.
“—a skinny-dipping fille,
already pregnant by a man,
I forcibly implanted
with an orb containing god.”
A shudder in the loins engenders there
The broken wall, the burning roof and tower
And Agamemnon dead,
Yeats grieved.
“I wept, my reddening cheeks
the dawn of right and wrong.
But all attempts to make amends
to Leda afterwards
just made things worse—
apologies upon deaf ears
and orchids scattered to the ground.
So one omnipotent, omniscient,
learned that some cats can't be
put back in the bag.
Gaze upward, Miriam:
Castor and Pollux, twin charioteers
who rode forth from the womb
alongside mortal, all-beguiling
Clytemnestra and the half-blood
Helen, rape bait too—
those brothers icy in the sky
will still be frozen there
the night I, unforgiven, die."
“My Love,” says Miriam,
and tips the bowl into his cup again.
“Sins are indelible
despite Yeshua's pledge,
but they shed no more light
on us than lantern-flies.
Gaze up, yourself,
and make a wish upon the triple
halo girdling yon Jupiter's head.”
Simulcast - Muse's Advisory, Dec. 15 – Polimnia:
"...U.S. Army propagandista Glenn Miller,
il trombettista famoso e band leader,
manca in azione con due aviatori Alleata
sopra la Manica Inglese in un UC-64...
...In una storia correlate, Amelia Earhart,
insieme con navigatore Fred Noonan,
è scomparso vicino alle isole Nukumanu
nel suo Lockheed Electra 10E..."
I track my father's whereabouts
by listening to newscasts of his capers—
how he plucks a favorite from the air
or undertakes particularly ambitious
aerial collisions with iconic skyscrapers.
Two glasses of Chianti, and I'm there...
“Some skinny couple took that cottage
over on the next hill,” Miriam tells Zeus.
“Loud music, and they fly a red-striped flag
high in the sky on breezy days, that they control
somehow with little motions of their hands."
“Ah—” Zeus says half-sheepishly,
“—you know. The devil's tools.”
“I knew it! It was you!
I wondered how long you'd content yourself
with counting boats and getting drunk with me!
Who are they? At least introduce us!”
“ There's the two you saw,
plus three more very horny men—
all boozers—”
“Oh, you do like thinking I'm a prude!”
“It's true. My favorite fantasy.”
“What if I told you
you were not my first?
That I'd been pregnant once before
and was aborted?”
“I'd say
your first swain got cold feet
but then regained his senses
some weeks later.”
“So I was right about that too!
Who else could he have been,
but you?”
“I'm not so pitiless or false
as rumor makes me out;
you're not so pure or good.
So let's go visit, yes—
Glenn Miller and Amelia Earhart.
She's got some fiery tsipouro in wood
and he can teach us how to waltz
la Sonata di Luna.”
“You just can't just park
them there as pets.”
“It's the best show on the mountain!
Let's go check it out tonight."
Glass #3 of vino, though,
is always a mistake.
“ ...a bordo di due Boeing 767, acclamato TV
sceneggiatore David Angell morto insieme con
un pilota denominato ironicamente Victor Saracini
e tutti dell'equipaggio, passeggeri e dirottatori...”
Zweikampf/Duel - Muse's Advisory, Dec. 16 – Thalia:
Warten Sie! honks Hitler,
several poets further back.
Herr Glenn Miller
was a traitor to his volk
and when his plane went down
he got what he deserved!
Fräulein Amelia Earhart
was a Teutonic traitor too!
Madman, your point?
Wait, Ersatz Byron interrupts.
What's Hitler doing here?
He dreams of glory, same as you.
Revisionists insist
if he can triumph as an artist,
much less blood will flow.
He'd rather be a Rilke or a Goethe
than mass-murderer.
Warten Sie! Hitler
repeats hot-headedly.
Who's this interrupter
with a hooked Semitic nose?
Jews ruined poetry
as well as Germany—
you've read Heine.
I'll knock your block off, buddy!
exclaims Byron's #1 Admirer.
Boys, boys.
Fistfights and duels
must be conducted
in that glade
and by strict rules
laid down by
Eugene Field:
Come half past twelve
by the old Dutch clock,
& then at twenty paces
take turns firing feet
into each other's faces.
Repeating 'Jesus was a Jew'
can't make it true!
the Führer cries. Galileans
were Assyrians, King David
was a Moabite, and Zeus
himself—
—ein Hamburger?
The Nazi leapt
at him,
his lips spit-flecked
but Byron Hopeful
bared a trochee,
Gotcha!
Bearded Vultures - Muse's Advisory, Dec. 17 – Calliope:
Laboring from the gladiators' graveyard
two lammergeiers bear a dead slave's
thighbones up to rocky fastnesses to crack
against the utmost crags and spill
the lusty marrow down their craws.
“We have to free ourselves, and John,”
Zeus says, sipping his wine. “Come back
with me to my cave for a week or two
and once he sees you've left we can resume
our afternoons here by your spring.”
“He'll be bereft.”
“He tried to cut your throat. He imagines
you a monster now. It's better he believes
Yeshua came and whisked you up to paradise.
Besides, my place is very nice.
The last time I had live-in company,”
he says with a sly grin,
“I had to send the sheets out twice.”
“You are Zeus Apomuios, Shoo-er of Flies.”
Below in Ephesus, Artemis's gaudy temple
aspires a long plume of bright gold smoke
where priestesses know how to render fat
to oils that burn every color in a rainbow.
“Does that ever seem a little foolish?” Miriam asks.
“I'm way past that,” he says.
“You see yourselves as sheep
but I see you as antelopes!
You make amazing leaps.
Look at the vultures breaking
hips apart against that bluff.
Don't underestimate the pull
of sundered blood and bone.
No, I find you breath-taking.”
“Okay, I'll go,” she agrees. “A change
of scene will do me good, and John’s
long trek here every week is killing him.”
“Ah, excellent! I'll ask our neighbors
up for shish kebab and drinks.
The great thing about them—” he winks—
“is they have no idea. They think
they're in some cockeyed transmigration
scheme. Wait till you talk to them.”
“Will you return them to their lives?”
“They don't know it but their old life is
continuing: they're duplicates. The day
I let them see what's happened since I
brought them here they'll be like gods.”
“Sounds complicated.”
“It's dimensions five and six.”
“Oh, Zeus Fysikí! What is it with guys
and their Science? How many
of these dimensions have you made?'
“I have to have my secrets.”
The lammergeiers hurl their freight
against the stone and echos sound
like somebody may have broken
the gates and finally made it home.
Waiting in Endless Lines - Muse's Advisory, Dec. 18 - Tom to Calliope:
Excuse me,
Miss All-That
with the overpriced writing tablet not that you paid for it it's product placement, right?
You put yourself in stitches
calling me Ape Byron or whatever
but it's meatless sandwiches like me
that feed your fame
...well, yes, there's Homer...but
still...what gives you the gall
to dangle tasty shreds of beef
and line us up like fingered Jews
to pluck the gold teeth
from our gums
before you turn us into glue?
WE ARE THE POETS!
This young man in front of me
you promised mastery of terza rima?
And this lady just behind, the key
to writing like a lady Bukowski?
TEXT WORKERS OF THE WORLD UNITE!
...Or what? Go ahead, say it—
you'll call the Mt. Parnassus poetry police
and have us booked and banished
someplace shittier than Greece?
At the Table - Muse's Advisory, Dec. 19 – Calliope:
“Boost me 1000 places up in line?”
Byron Boxtops sneers, almost preening.
“If Viktor Frankl had agreed to that,
we'd never have Man's Search for Meaning!
If we poets go on strike,
this field is bare
except for rabbits and bleached trunks
of what a future archeologist guesses
to be ruins
of nine forgotten demi-goddesses.”
Don't threaten us, you ingrate!
The earth will turn as it has always turned
with or without the poor excuse for exumbration
you call poetry! We don't spark, blow on, and stoke
your mental cigarettes for our own kicks;
if any of you puffers want to quit,
then be my guest.
Amity - Muse's Advisory, Dec. 20 – Polimnia:
“Oh my!” cries Byron's Flea.
“Here comes the schoolteach
with her veil, Good Mistress Harmony
to salt the slugfest's tail
and clean up after
Calliope iPad's quick retreat
behind a swirl of cheat sheets
for Today in History a girl
born
to the "Funky Drummer" beat,
or
Heybeliada's Aziz Nesin's
Yüreğim gövdeme sığmıyor
Gövdem odama
Odam evime sığmıyor
My body won't fit my heart
My room my body
My house my room.
So, ladies and gentlemen,
to soothe the troubled water,
I give you Polimnia's Soft Sale!”
Indeed that's why I've come.
For tre millenni
muse and poet saw eye to eye
and the trivium thrived.
Why throw all that away now
in a pissing contest?
Our bad. You're il creatore.
We got bored,
carried away,
we bit off more than we could chew
from a piece of the pie
that belonged to you.
At most,
I ask an invocation:
that's how Homer scratched
our egotistic itch.
But, if you prefer, we don't exist:
just your name
blazoning the frontispiece.
“How can I refuse?” he grins.
Just call me La Musa Eufonia OG.
Pilgrimage - Muse's Advisory, Dec. 21 – Me:
I advance,
2,145,230 to 2,145,229.
It all seems worth it now—
80 pages on a flash drive,
my moment of truth
at the top of the line
increasingly irrelevant,
the pilgrimage
more tonic than the shrine.
“Why not come home?”
Penny and Telly implore.
“Dear husband, father,
hop that next bus back from Lourdes?”
I can't, I say.
(a) I'm bored to tears
(b) I crave applause
(c) I'm seeking love
(d) all, two, or none of the above.
I'm still not cured.
Zeus's Cave - Muse's Advisory, Dec. 22 – Urania:
The track to Zeus's cave almost impassable
through thickets bristling with nightingales,
they lose sight of the city, harbor, then the sea itself,
at last emerge into an arbor of apricots and a crystal
pond whose fish wear golden necklaces and earrings
on their heads and rise as Zeus calls out their names
and tosses each a bit of bread.
Above, a bluff:
a granite tripe of dark mouths fed by curving stairs
rock-carved beside great Doric columns
and human figures in relief,
some fully fleshed, some skeletal.
“The Seven Sleepers Cave,” Zeus indicates.
“Myth says they travel underworlds nobody's ever seen—
when they awake, will speak in tongues not heard before
and plant seeds in the Carian earth that will give grow
as military oaks. In the meantime, they're good neighbors.
So too, up there, the Bedouin cocooned in spider's silk.
That swank cave next to his is mine.”
“It's lovely here,” breathes Miriam.
“Don't worry about noise!” Zeus cries.
“I've practiced yodeling and thunderclaps alike
up here and not a single eyeball's even roamed its lid.
You're in the country now: the rule of thumb is,
the more noise you make, the less chance bear
or tiger will mistake you for an ibex without horns!”
“Delightful, dear,” she says.
“On clear days,” he continues, one arm stretching east,
“you see so goddam far, you think it must be Parthia.
It's not, of course, but when the Persians come it's quite
a sight, those lower passes gushing horses like a river.”
O Come All Ye - Muse's Advisory, Dec. 23 – Euterpe:
It blew.
The cave turned
into something
like a flute
and music drifted
here and there
at odd times
full and low.
Miriam and Zeus
on a king-size bed
located the limits
of what older
fuckers could do
until the goats
had got their fill
of gales and
crowded in too
to get out
of the wind.
She giggled
no matter how
they pulled the skins
up close to the edge
of their chins
their soggy pubes
still felt a draft.
Odd things happen
to charmed lovers
in an afterglow
and they thought
maybe they heard
the strains of
high-voiced
Christmas carolers
in the valley below.
Crossing - Muse's Advisory, Dec. 24 – Urania:
Roiled sky and sea
drown out John's
otherworldly shrieks
but lightning knives
from iron skies will
always panic Greeks
and rowing so near
Samsun's Teardrop
amplifies their fear
as the heaving trireme
pierces the strait
that pierces cliffs
and shudders east
on the darkening eve
of the stark madman's
master's birth.
He comes! he cries
to the straining oarsmen,
their eyes already wide
with so much panic
and exertion that
the whites glow red
while holes as wide
as belladonna berries
steer the tempest
straight into their brains.
The trierarch swears
by Zeus's breast
if he makes Ephesus
he'll kill a fatted calf
for Virgin Artemis
before he reembarks
and that
regardless of the cost
he'll ferry John no more
who howls I see him!
to the dark typhoon,
his pupils pinpricks.
Assumption - Muse's Advisory, Dec. 25 – Urania:
The cod so old
and the weather
so wet and cold
no birds nor flies
escort John up
the muddy road.
In his mind though,
his sack is filled
with matzo rounds,
wine, frankincense,
myrhh, gold.
No cat greets him
below the quiet grove
of purpled olives
nor Miriam's contented
humming to the gurgle
of the spring.
No one is there
nor embers strip the
rawness from the air
nor sunken robe
nor wolf-bit bone
nor faceless hair.
He steps outside
and glances up.
A sunray breaks
the overcast
and beams down
to a patch of grass
where it illuminates
a trail of haystalks
bending
in the direction
Miriam must have walked
before ascending.
Exposed - Muse's Advisory, Dec. 26 – Melpomene:
John sat in damp grass,
praised God and wept
for having doubted Her
restored at last
to Her Son's breast.
The light
exposed dead flies,
long-empty lice eggs littered
the linseed-yellowed hair
of his small bulb,
and though his forehead bulged,
his eyes recoiled
from cataracts' glare.
He took up his sack,
thick thumbs and index fingers
struggled to unknot it,
loosed its neck to let
the scorpions free,
lay on his back,
stretched out his arms,
crossed ankles,
mimicking Yeshua's death,
and drinking in the breath
of grossly rotted fish,
consigned himself to pain.
His last thought was
a parable the Master told
about the wicked husbandmen
who beat their boss's servants
and then murdered his son.
An Admirer of Nabokov - Muse's Advisory, Dec. 27 – Terpsichore:
See that woman back there
with the loud pink laptop
and the glass-eyed stare
of the frustrated Symbolist?
“...Sojourner Truth and Carrie Nation walk into a bar with hatchets glinting
underneath their coats; demand to see the cook. An Arab native to the Hawran
hills, a beard tattooed on chin and jaw, blue frog's-eyes on her upper lip,
emerges grinning from the back and sits down in a booth with them...”
"Muse? Muse! Hey, Muse!" she cries.
"I'm dying over here!
Another seltzer water please, no fruit.
You plucked a tom hawk's wing
and put his feather in your cap?
You poked a woman-hater's eye out
with a Stars of Egypt fountain pen?
Thanks, tough girl, keep the change.
Maybe the Stanley Cup is on?"
“...pull hatchets from beneath their coats and start to chop the bar to splinters,
crying 'Temperance! Sufferance! Tolerance!' Out runs the plump Muscati cook, a
sextant etched between her eyes...”
"Goddam it all!” she cries again. "Muse!
Sorry. Make this a White Russian."
Catastrophe - Muse's Advisory, Dec. 28 – Polimnia:
Disaster's thin legs will outrun Pheidippides
and the litters of weighty victories:
as Zeus and Miriam return to her hut,
an old witch pushes past them
on the narrow rut
and caterwauls into the brush
that the house of many-breasted Artemis,
Wonder of the World or not,
had tumbled down, its altar smashed
after the Crank of Patmos burst inside
and lifted voice and arms
to cast the pagan demons out,
and everyone in Ephesus
now wept, praised Christ, or was in flight.
Amid the dust
of such earth-shaking force majeure,
the Apocalypt
had prophesied hard Goths, within a century—
and in the second hundredyear, Herostratus
(chaser of fame at any cost, punished with
death and deathly crime to speak his name)—
twice more the rebuilt temple would enflame.
Then he plucked a listless octopus
from an awestruck fishwife's hamper,
and escaped!
Before the murmur of Miriam's spring
caressed their ears,
their noses sipped a stench
of more-than-fetid polpi,
the gleaming bay broke into view,
and they could see
at once
that everything the witch had hissed
was true.
Winds - Muse's Advisory, Dec. 29 – Polimnia:
Zeus tosses and turns and dreams the past and future.
Let's stop, my friends, to weep in the remembrance of my beloved
Here at her home on the edge of the sands between Dakhool and Howmal.
The traces of her encampment are not wholly obliterated even now;
After the South wind blows sand over it, the Boreas sweeps it away.
But the courtyards of the old home have become desolate:
The dung of the wild deer lies there thick as the seeds of pepper.
Imru'l-Qays's beloved becomes the long-haired warrior queen
al-Zabbā’ bint ‘Amr ibn al-Ẓarib ibn Ḥassān ibn Adhīnat ibn al-Samīda‘...
Heaven opens and a white dove alights in his son's hand...
Nestorius rises in Council and addresses an earthquake...
Sappho weeps and wades into the frisking waves...
He wakes up changed.
Outside the cats are yowling, clawing each other's face
over the dew-drenched earth that covered John's remains.
Miriam tenders pistachio twigs to the fire,
and the steam from boiling millet
billows from the plane of dawn light
slicing though the shutters.
“Zeus,” she says. “You had a wrestle overnight,
kicking and throwing elbows like an epileptic!
I had to flee to keep from getting hit.”
“My dreams were full of storms and charms.”
“Come, eat. We have that bit of salvaged gevrek,
simmered millet, olives, linden tea.”
He stood.
His form had changed and Miriam stepped back.
He looked down and recoiled, himself.
This even linden-flower wasn't going to help.
Aftermath - Muse's Advisory, Dec. 30 – Polimnia:
The trierarch raged
at his mistake.
The passenger
he'd thought
the day before
too frail for flight
had brought
the City of Artemis
to its knees
and made escape.
The rowers quailed,
their passage back
to Patmos stalled.
New orders loomed—
for Teos? Chios?
Any route but home
meant aching arms
and thighs,
an increased chance
of storm delivering them
to Poseidonas's lair.
“You don't suppose...?”
one of the thranitai
proposed.
The Macedonian
beside him growled,
“The fucking Jews
love blasphemy
and mayhem;
our crazed Hebe
was no exception.”
The six marines
on board
rubbed clove oil
on their swords
and quietly prayed,
their mission changed
from ferrymen
to counterterrorists.
If they could kill
that unhinged
Galilean bitch
or take him prisoner,
they might
wind up rich.
Sea Change - Muse's Advisory, Dec. 31 – Thalia:
O, Miriam wept.
All nice runs end.
She and Zeus
beside her, snoring,
both knew better
than pretend
his metamorphosis
meant nothing,
was a non-event,
matter of course:
it isn't every day
a man looks down
and sees
his lower half
is now a horse.
Would coat, tail, hoof
and the recalibrated penis
scare her off?
Could he ignore
the fresh thought
that his gazing
on the bay with her
was just a bore?
One answer was yes
and one was no.
It was only
a matter of time,
she guessed,
before he'd go.
Elapse - Muse's Advisory, Jan. 1 – Clio:
Grumbling rock and hot wind
from the southeast
woke her from deep sleep
like a call to prayer,
but she was too dispirited
to rise from bed: he wasn't there.
Rock grumbled again; that alarmed her.
She jumped up and ran outside
where scarlet kizilcik berries
lined the foot-trail inland
toward Çamlık and Magnesia
where Zeus had other shrines
and the Meander wended south.
She ran a hundred yards
but lost track of the path
in underbrush and turned around.
How could she run down
half a god and half a horse?
And if she could, to which half
might she fruitfully appeal?
She lowered her gaze to the city below
oddly wreathed in dust and smoke
and cried out in surprise to see
on Ayasoluk Hill a six-domed temple
laid out like a crucifix
that hadn't been there
when she'd gone to sleep.
Gospel of Pseudo-Miriam - Muse's Advisory, Jan. 2 – Clio/Tom:
Miriam kept her diary in a boot,
and when the Roman trierarch
tossed her hut, he stuck it
as an afterthought into his tunic:
somehow it went its way to Busra.
When he was nine, a young Arab man
(peace of Allah be ever upon him)
snuggled up next to his uncle
and begged to be taken
up to Syria with the next caravan;
an old hermit in his cave,
a beard tattooed upon his chin,
frog eyes above the upper lip,
dimples bored into his cheeks,
sextant between his brows,
implored the dusty merchants
to accept a feast of hospitality;
when the camel-drivers left the boy
to tend the animals,
a small cloud hovered
above the stripling's head
to shade him where he walked.
“Sheik, keep him safe
from Jews and Byzantines alike!”
the ancient friar cried.
“He fills the prophecy
in an untampered gospel
in an earthen jar right here
in the far alcove of my cave.”
When he grew up, the boy flew north
again on a magic stallion
and met Adam, Moses, Abraham;
twelve months later, fleeing Mecca,
he made another beeline toward Busra,
but adherents held him at Medina;
so he sent an army;
by then the hermit and the scrolls
had both been borne by muletrain
north to who-knew-where,
so the cavalry pushed on
to every compass point, doomed
never to find the thing they sought
but sowing Islam on the Earth.
The tale's unfinished.
Byron's Bastard, now it's yours.
An unsynoptic gospel in Miriam’s hand?
Translate it, publish it, just as it is!
It will knock the King James Bible
off the top of the bestseller list!
It's far too long; the plotting isn't strong;
and all it proves
is that an Aramaic lady
got knocked up
and had a son his friends adored.
Tom, it lacks that literary ring
of verisimilitude, that perfect pitch
of writer's touches and the je ne sais quoi
of Moses floating in the bulrushes.
Resize, rebore, recalibrate, resight
the tale, blue-pencil it, so capuchins
can climb the highermost limb
and confidently prehensile it.
What limb? What truth?
I wouldn't know where to begin to edit it.
You must. You are the only one on line
with both the interest and time;
you are the only one who
actually sat down,
opened the goddam diary, and read it.
De Natura Immortalitati - Muse's Advisory, Jan. 3 – Tom/Clio:
“Muse, this is much too obvious:
Miriam kept her diary in a boot,
and when the Roman trierarch
tossed her hut, he stuck it
as an afterthought into his tunic.
Why not like this:
Miriam hears crude Latin on the road,
pulls on her boots, and flees,
the diary clutched in her fist,
locates the track around the mount
to Zeus's cave and runs, exultant
she too wasn't broken into, burnt...?”
“See, Tom? I knew you had the guts!”
“One question, though. So many centuries:
did Zeus make Miriam immortal
like Tithonus, Memnon, Ganymede
(and what became of them)?
Are Collyridians correct, after all,
to bake her tiny loaves of bread?”
“The dead make the ideal immortals.
Unlike undying Tithonus—thin, gray
and dumb as pencil lead, the ink dried
on the last account of him millennia ago—
departed Miriam sips fresh blood every day.
Look what you wrote just then, above:
her cheeks are positively glowing!”
Chewing the Fat - Muse's Advisory, Jan. 4 – Zeus/St. Paul the White
Cockatoo/Bahira the Nestorian Monk
“God's not allowed to change!” Zeus bellyaches.
“The Hebrew god said all he had to say, in Torah;
the Christian god went mum after Apocalypse;
the Muslim god 's prohibited to send another prophet!
Yet we're omnipotent?”
“Fuck!” Zeus's white bird shrieks.
“Zeus,” says Bahira, “sit down, let me wash
the dust and—what's that?—manna?—
off your feet. Why get bent out of shape,
who cares what people think?
You are your own god, no?
If you want folks
to have a clear idea of who you are
you could just tell them face to face.
But you don't.”
“Yes, I do. I do tell them just as plainly
as I'm telling you.
Do you have any of that
camel cheese I had here
last time, by the way?
Oh, excellent!
But when I tell them to their face, they say,
You can't be god. God doesn't sit and munch
on cheese and chew the fat.
I'm not allowed to do that, either!”
“Fuck!” Zeus's white bird shrieks.
“Why care then, Zeus?
Who works on image harder than the Emperor,
and you know what people think of him.
Be free, just live your life!
It's not like anybody's forcing you
to raise the pyramids, or seven whining kids,
and a hen-peck for a wife.
Have the courage of your own convictions!”
“That all makes sense, my friend, it all makes sense,
but you don't understand what courses through a god's veins—
claptrap, same as anybody else.
If you have any
of that date-palm wine,
I'll take that too.
Oh, who's like you?
Listen, Khalid's finished in Iraq
and coming this way next.
You know the drill:
Islam, pay tribute, or the axe.
Muhammad's ordered him to spare
all monks, and you especially—
but stuff happens that's unexpected,
and if I were you I'd make some tracks.
Jerusalem's holier,
but I think it's safer
for a Christian up in Anatolia.”
Old Friends - Muse's Advisory, Jan. 5 – Bahira/Zeus:
“And you, old friend?” Bahira says,
refilling the quickly emptied flask.
“What brings you down this way
besides your yen for delicatessen?”
“What else,” moans Zeus, “but love itself
gone south? My heart gets broken
like cheap clockwork. I know what led
you here, and one day I may come hole up
inside a bookish cave as well!
This time, the woman's son is playing with my head.
If I find Hera's orchestrating this,
I'll make her wish that she was dead!”
“Try a slice of this new goat salami, Zeus.
It's a trifle salty but the muleteers
who brought it said
it's from the isle of Euripides and Ajax
that holds Korinth and Athens at
arm's length and is called Peace.
It's got more garlic in it ounce for ounce
than anything in all of Greece!
World-weariness cannot last long
when wine and sausage are this strong:
that is the secret to we monks' success.
Devotion's always on our tongues, mon Zeus:
the greatest inspiration is bonnes bouches.”
“Give here,” Zeus says.
“Though Ajax and serenity are not a natural pair,
still, if Euripides found comfort in salami
as he wrote Medea and Electra in his cave,
my own devices for revenge may be improved.
The problem is, I don't know who to strike.
Is it my envious first wife
pulling the puppeteer
or is Yeshua really overstepping?
So many ancient temples rudely sacked,
burnt, razed, or recommissioned
summon me from my retirement with Miriam,
watching gulls wheel on the tide and guessing
what they've got inside their beaks.”
“Zeus,” says Bahira. “D or Z before an -eus
is cause for greater strife than universal Theos:
it's odd that neither man nor god can find
anything more interesting to fill their mind.
Religion-wise you know I swing both ways
or none at all. My faith is sunken deep
only in matters where I sink my teeth.
I can afford that luxury—
but who are you without humanity's belief?”
“Exactly, friend. I tried. I sat day after day
up on Koressos and admired the gleaming bay
as much as anybody ever could!
I tried monogamy. I tried to read True Blood.
But when the Shrine of Artemis was sacked
right there, right at my feet, the idyll burst.
My godly fury all rushed back
into my veins and all I want to do is find out
who's responsible and barbecue their brains!”
“Zeus, ask which grape is sweet this year,
which olive oil has the perfect nuttiness,
the Aramaic term for loin of deer;
ask how the Essenes process their sage honey
or if Dead Sea salt tastes more like mourner's tears
each year as shores recede;
but which god plots with which, to gain what end?
You'll have to ask a wiser man.”
Concept of Zero - Muse's Advisory, Jan. 6 – St. Paul the Cockatoo:
This is the date
Mount Gamalama blew
with twice the heat
its antecessor threw-and the first face
that I saw when I came to
was this big bear
right here, Pak Zeus.
I squawked;
he said, Did you say 'fuck'?
in that far-western twang
of his:
then my colossal crest popped up
and I just knew
I had found my orang.
Before that
I lived in a tree-hole,
ate papaya and the odd skink,
had no social life,
no name
and knew no Greek.
Then, presto!—
I'm gnawing salami
in an atheneum
with a magic monk;
have a name saint;
can proclaim
in several tongues
and absolute impunity
the sex act: Fuck!
It's been a better life
than I expected.
I was the fifth egg
in the nest
and had the worst
six weeks of fledging
in the annals of pubescence—
clutch-mates hogged the food
and boxed my beak—
which our parents encouraged.
But The last shall be first
and the first shall be last,
as Zeus ordained, himself
the youngest of his brood.
Guy to Guy - Muse's Advisory, Jan. 7 – Bahira/Zeus
“Some think the fall of Ephesus,
its silted port, are go-around-and-come-around
for how their Council screwed Nestorius.”
“Whatever it is, I'm striking back.
I over-looked that lovely temple every day!
How can I sit and watch while provocation grows
so bold in my own neighborhood?
You met Muhammad; were impressed with him.
I'm lending his militia zeal and strength to chasten
Christian Byzantines who've all forgotten
where they came from!
Khalid himself is coming: pack your scrolls,
find someplace else to hide and stuff your face.”
“I'll barter a safe passage
with the mule-trains northward to Aleppo,
and thence east into Armenia.
I have brothers on the south shore of Lake Van—
the Mother of Heavenly Pearl-mullet Roe!
Wherever you wind up, I'll send you some.”
“Umm, and this salami isn't bad!
Now, fill me in: your uncorrupted tale of Miriam
foretells Muhammad as a back-to-basics messenger
who puts Yeshua in a secondary role?
I hope it's so! This silly mixing up of man and god
has driven half my faithful to apostasy,
the other half, half mad.
And all the God says this and God says that
must stop! Who dares put words into my mouth?”
“There is a lot of libel in the world.”
“I'd give my bottom lip to see what
Miriam has written about me. But no, I understand
I can't; religious scripture has éclat precisely because
no divine is authorized to even read a word of it.”
“You come across as you'd expect.”
“We've had our falling-outs.
I know I'm rough around the edges.”
“But if you read between the lines,
it's clear she thinks you have a lot of promise—
oh, you hooked her! Though she recognizes
the propensity you have to try to con us.”
“Once I grind her over-reaching aspirations into dust,
I only hope she wants to try and patch things up.
Please pass that baydh date wine?”
The Stallion's Mouth - Muse's Advisory, Jan. 8 – Zeus:
Let me speak:
if not for me,
no muse or bard
would ever make a squeak.
I can stomach Hesiod or Homer
but not that busybody Moses
and Yeshua's twelves Apostles
contradicting my philosophy
of Laissez faire, if not
Laissez les bons temps rouler.
Commandments? I have none.
You put a finger in my eye,
I put a shaft of lightning
where you had a head.
And let me set the record straight:
I sent no son
to you because I loved you so!
I loved a woman, the rest was
Physiology 101.
Anything else you want to know?
You want to hear my cockatoo
say Fuck before you go?
BFFs - Muse's Advisory, Jan. 9 – Bahira the Monk:
Poor me,
one of seven Keepers
of the world's
most academic heresy.
Q: Was Yeshua
fully God
as well as man
when still a baby,
dribbling?
A: What goddam difference
does it make
unless somebody
also wants to parse
the infant's goo-goos,
gah-gahs
or whatever squirts out
of his arse?
Q: Was the little God
actually childlike
or just playing the part?
A: Hard to imagine the morose bastard
ever knew what fun was.
Still, being the senior anchorite
with a cave of my own has benefits.
I eat well, read well, sleep well,
and when Zeus comes, we can talk:
there are no prying ears
or eaves to drop.
He's sweet. He offered once
to take on any shape I thought
of carnal interest—
To get your rocks off properly
just once.
I said, You idiot,
what makes you think
the shape you've got
is not my cup of tea?
He blushed,
apologized for his insensitivity.
We could have screwed—
he's that omnivorous.
Instead, we opened
a marvelous-smelling skin
of hashish cakelets
left as thank-you by a young man
from a camel train
with whom I shared something
as heavenly as sex,
my extensive collection
of pre-synoptic gospel books.
Who was this baker-scripturist?
Zeus asked.
No one you know, I said.
Tell me goddammit!
I'll electrify your head!
No need to get excited,
It was your Muhammad.
The hashish got us both so buzzed
I don't remember
what else was discussed,
but his interest in the boy
kept blossoming—
and I congratulate myself.
A god like Zeus
knows how to pick them;
when he warns you
to get out of harm's way
you can bet your tuchis
he's not over-hyping
some hum-a-day ruckus.
The Prophet's Tale - Muse's Advisory, Jan. 10 – Muhammad:
Both inspiree and muse,
I have a word-hoard too
and lips to unlock it.
Whenever I felt a tickle in my ear
I used to know
somebody spoke of me;
then it became a roar;
and then a din;
so I had to use wax plugs
just to keep my own thoughts
in.
Prophecy is easy,
but organizing followers is hard.
No sooner do you get
20 husbands together than
they're talking about jihad—
and fifteen minutes after you say No,
somebody swears he saw you nod.
Nobody's subtle anymore.
In Hira Cave the angel Jibrael
gave me one good inspiration,
Who taught man poetry?—
and shazam! I'm proclaimed
a top expert on marriage,
the veil, and distributing alms!
But If the shoe fits wear it,
Zeus said when he met me,
and far worse afflictions
than celebrity beset me.
To start with, I'm an orphan;
when a learned monk said
Father Elah chose you,
I jumped for joy;
when my first son died
and Jibrael said,
Write what I dictate
on date palm fronds,
patches of parchment,
flat slabs of limestone,
clay, wood, hide, bone,
whatever you can find,
I was happy to do anything
to get grief off my mind.
then my second son
followed him into the ground
and I simply surrendered.
Zeus—
the Roman church's Deus
(rhymes with He commands you obey us)—
the Greek church's Theos—
in Galilee Elah—
in Arabia Allah—
swears that everything is going to be okay.
Some heads will roll, but don't they anyway?
About military matters, ask Khalid.
He says my name is known in Baghdad,
and Damascus will be next.
When my future wife Khadija
hired me to lead her camels
north to Wadi al-Qura, Midian,
and Diyar Thamud into Syria
to trade hides, raisins, musk,
dates, silver bars, and herbs
for the Byzantines' luxuries—
oh, she became my rock indeed,
miraculously married me,
moved me into her house
behind the bazaar of the smiths
for a quarter century of bliss!—
so if I collect young women now
as brides;
indulge my own four daughters;
and delight
as generals stomp in and out
and courtiers hiss
Muhammad, your successor...?—
whose business is that but my own?
It's been a long, strange trip.
I've had a lot of luck.
When Allah plucked
me from obscurity
and trusted me,
it meant a lot.
Charge - Muse's Advisory, Jan. 11 – Zeus to Muhammad:
Your job is to undo
the damage done
by Yeshua's apostles:
somehow they made
of a dad, bird and son
a Trinity without a tit
amid the trio—
and point fingers
at me for misogyny!
One god manifest in
three essential ways?
Yeshua's and my
personalities don't fit.
He's my antithesis.
I try to frighten you
and he moans Stop!
I usher in a plague,
he cries Begone!
How can
such different
minds be one?
It's something
of a conundrum
that he's even
my son.
You brought Nineveh low;
now take Petra, Jericho,
Jerusalem, Acre, Tyre, Sidon,
Cyprus, Damascus, Palmyra,
Edessa, Aleppo, Antioch, Tarsus,
Miletus, Ephesus, Smyrna, Philadelphia, Chalcedon,
Nicomedia, Constantinople,
Alexandria, Memphis, Cyrene, Berenice,
Tripoli, Carthage, Hippo,
Sevilla, Mérida, Toledo,
Valencia, Braga, Zaragoza;
knock on the gates of Poitiers.
Cold dirt's ready to imbibe
a lot of Christian whines:
how dare they try
to jump the line
at the club of the divine!
The enemy
of my enemy
is my friend.
Muhammad
the Reformer,
return me
a monogamous
Mediterranean.
Hinterlands - Muse's Advisory, Jan. 12 – Miriam:
I grab my day-book,
pull my boots on,
run from the hut,
find the overgrown track
toward Zeus's cave,
and plunge ahead
till soldiers' shouts
and black smoke
boil once pure air
below the friendly,
circling fishing-hawk—
the same one?—who'd
warned Yusuf and me
in Egypt of a monk
in soiled saffron
stalking us in a tacit
canoe of papyrus.
I collapse on the cave
floor and wait. A long
time has passed since
Zeus left to do what
he felt he had to,
heartbroken not so much
from leaving me as
seeing that the Christians
weren't what he'd hoped
they'd be.
I get up and start to clean,
having traded my vista
of the sea for a thick,
safe ring of cedar-trees.
My heart aches for Yeshua.
I watched him die,
but still have doubts
that something of his old man
didn't rub off after all
and late one morning
he'll come whistling up
and ask me as he used to
Ma, how's tricks?
And I miss Nazareth:
my dad, even my mother
yelling Eyes down, Miriam!
and the stench of charcoal
from the mudbrick kilns
up on the hillside.
I think of going home,
whatever century it is,
whatever anyone recalls of me
or not.
What brought me here
has passed.
Who kept me here
has gone.
The future is no longer
a frontier
and memory has dulled
the urgency
of my young girl's plea
to escape this backward,
sooty Galilee.
Lament, Complaint - Muse's Advisory, Jan. 13 – Tom:
Melpomene, queen of tragedy,
where are you when I need your grit?
Where's Clio when I wrestle history?
2,000,000 paces from the fountain spout
without a muse to hold my hand:
I am dancing in quicksand.
Serious? —you'll share the inspiration
for Hesiod's unfinished masterpiece,
his Legion of Superheroes—
the sons of gods and human women?
“Yes, it's our
Number 97.
An Egyptian
also used it
very lightly
for a paean
on a stele,
but funding
ran out in
mid-chisel:
His cheeks
glistened
red as he
worried her...
Do you think
it's ...tit?”
Who cares? I want to hear
exactly what you whispered in
great Hesiod's ear.
You're shitting me.
You made him wait in line for that?
No wonder it's half-done!
And that poor stele guy probably uncorked
an asp on his own wrist!
Do you Nine have liability insurance?
Its not inspiration if it doesn't inspire:
it's a practical joke.
I couldn't compose a case of poison oak,
or stir a toad to croak,
or even move a Pole to dance a polka
with an inspiration as ridiculous as that.
“Oh, don't be so dramatic!
You do your job, we do ours.
Some of our best inspirations
are antipodal, homeopathic.”
His cheeks glistened red
as he worried her...tit?
I'd say that's traumatic!
and the fact that you don't see it
makes it worse.
Have you had any oversight
these past three thousand years?
You need a Writer's Advocate
to warn, This Number 97's less
an inspiration than a curse.
“It's what it is.
I'm not the frickin' genius here,
you are.
Nitwit.”
Troth - Muse's Advisory, Jan. 14 - Erato:
The fishhawk oversoars
the golden hinterland
and Miriam understands
intuitively that Zeus has
not deserted her.
He hadn't walked out
when she gave birth
and he slipped off
to smoothe Yeshua's way,
and hasn't walked out now,
but gone to attend
some other responsibility.
His beard had tickled,
so he shaved;
she liked to be licked a little,
so he dove;
he was a considerate lover;
he knew
a little omnipotence
could go a long way.
He could talk dirty too;
he had a lot of dirty notions
but kept the worst at bay
and only let her hear
the sort of thoughts
that heated a woman's ear.
She trusted him.
He would return
when what he'd gone to do
was done.
Lalibela, Ethiopia - Muse's Advisory, Jan. 15 – Miriam:
A drought-dead town,
a dozen dusty streets
on a rugged mountain
at nine thousand feet,
eleven temple monoliths
of cinnamon volcanic tuff
all linked by catacombs
and torch-lit tunnels,
the largest a parthenon
with a Star of David
engraved on the ceiling
in a nod to the sky god:
I watch
from the Bet Maryam yard
as I've done every year
since light-inspired drones
began to dig by day,
and angel hosts by night,
to gouge the temple
out of mountain stone,
my brick-hued face
in low relief
on haloed gold,
a pretty neck
but body swollen
to a giant's hulk of rock.
Look at the fresco
of my first visit,
when Yeshua was an infant.
He clearly has
my nose and mouth,
and Zeus's eyes.
Entranced in red-edged robes
and golden scarves,
the priests
shake sistrums until dawn,
when kettledrums call
for the sun to join King David's
Dance and summon me,
The Pearl, the wonder-woman
born of egg divine, first cached
in Adam and passed down his line
through Solomon and
goat-footed Sheba's son
Dawit la-Hakim Menelik,
who secreted the Ark of Covenant
to Abyssinia ten centuries before
I came from Hannah's womb
and hid it in the sanctuary they
now call Maryam Z'iyon after me.
A virgin censer
in an olive gown and yellow cross:
the Atang locked in
with the Ark
until the splendid burden
chars away his brain.
We spent ten days here
where the Nile is born
each day of each millennium
to give thanks
for Yeshua's thirteenth month
during his first four years
as an Egyptian boy.
An girl tattooed beside her left eye signs,
Come see the grotto where Madonna slept
beneath a single slab of syenite
ninety feet high, a thousand tons
cleft from the mountain
by the Ark's bald might;
and brown-robed, purple-hatted monks
steep sour bread on smoking donkey dung,
injera from the ancient flour teff,
while the most aromatic drink
in Christendom perfumes the wind
beside the pilgrims' frankincense
and a nun,
her soul home to a zār,
touches her forehead to an infant
wasting from an incurable catarrh.
While Pushing the Vacuum Around - Muse's Advisory, Jan. 16 – Miriam:
1. In the Kitchen
Zeus thinks he's gotten over Kronos
who saw kids as rivals—edibility a bonus.
The young god battled back and won
his siblings' gratitude. Eyes dried;
but now he's also weighing filicide.
Why can't the first sons ever thrive?
First Hades draws the low end of the stick;
then Cain is spurned for Abel,
Isaac trussed for holocaust,
the wool thrown over Esau's eyes,
Moses cast off in a basket,
Jonah bellied by a whale;
my own boy hung to die.
The first son's lucky to survive.
Not to toot my gender's horn—
but is the first fault of the firstborn son
the simple fact he's male?
The eldest daughters do alright:
Makaria who dips death's sting in honey;
Kalmana, earth-mother to so many;
Jemima warm and bountiful;
the lucky foundling's mother Merris;
and all the other unsung daughters
whose success was keeping their good names
off mythology's police blotters.
We eldest girls owe no one an apology.
We aren't ruled by Oedipus.
We don't inspire competitiveness.
We do what must be done
with minimum of fuss,
and God help anyone
who tries to fuck with us.
2. In the Bedroom
I know where the Amazons hunt;
they've been discreet contacting me,
and once I sent a small donation.
History is young.
I'm old enough to know
you never throw away an option:
one year you're carding wool,
the next you're spinning cotton.
I've existed, and waited,
since Adam: you never know
when gods might need a human
mother, lover, wife, or sister.
I'm nobody's victim,
but a warrior and a warrior's muse.
The meek and mild front believers see?
A blatant subterfuge.
Zeus preyed on me? Magruder,
run the film again. I knew which window
he'd pass by. I knew the best hook
was to stick my nose into a book
and not look up at him.
A virgin?
Sure, why not?
And sure, that white-rot fungus
overgrowing Zeus's chest of drawers
is Black Sea sturgeon.
Bitter - Muse's Advisory, Jan. 17 – Zeus to Miriam:
You conned me
into sitting back while John
and all the Christian maniacs
grew strong?
You did me with your tongue
while your butt-fucking son
flipped mighty Rome?
Salute Before War - Muse's Advisory, Jan. 18 – Miriam/Zeus:
“Mâkĕdâ said to Solomon,
'Without wisdom, the foot can't keep the place
whereon it sets itself: let me be least
of thine handmaidens, to wash thy feet
and learn thy understanding.
How much thy ready answers please me,
fatten my bones and strengthen my gait:
wisdom like a pomegranate in the garden,
or the light of the moon in a mist.'”
“And, so, the old fool fell.”
“What the heart wants isn't always love.
Sometimes it's flattery, a son, an Ark,
to match wits with a celebrated prince.”
“A quiver of lightning and a hoseful of piss
are scant defense against a woman's wits,
though I too have some prowess at deceit.
It stood up well in love; now, lovely war.
Yeshua's my own blood, but you I'm lief
to grind most ardently to gore.”
“You're best at bullying the faint of heart.
Ooh! Thunder! Lightning! Wind!
When you lock horns with me, you'd better
summon more than weather!”
“Brute force is not how I prefer to reign.
That's how the pigeon-witted Medes and Saxons
rule their roosts.
But when the chips are down
I've no compunctions about being cruel.”
“Now, would you like to share
a final cup of wine
before we part?
When next we meet
but one of us will find
this shade of scarlet sweet.”
[Thanks to E.A.W. Budge trans. of the Kebra Nagast]
Feminism v. Post-Feminism - Muse's Advisory, Jan. 19 – Erato:
Wait.
I hate
to break
in like this
but
what
the heck
is going on?
This isn't supposed
to be
Lord of the Rings.
If you give up
on romance
everything
loses its shape.
“Don't be so formulaic!”
squawks
Pipe-Dream Byron.
“Or is it tribal,
your objection to a human
as your daddy's rival?
Or
does the muse's bible—
say it!—
disapprove of warlike
women?”
You're claiming
feminists give blow jobs
to distract prey
from their snow jobs?
“Don't be a prude.
No liberated woman
calls another woman's
dolce vita lewd.”
Drop the Italian.
What's sybaritic
about
servicing a stallion?
Plus, you're a man,
unfit to rule
on what a lady can
or cannot do.
“I'm overhearing all of this,”
1,925,011 interrupts.
”You want to see my tits?
I've been a woman ever since
I can remember,
and this guy ahead of me
is perfectly correct.
If Miriam fornicates or not,
if epiglottis or clitoris
on the business end,
that's her call, no one else's.
I had a good friend once
whose bliss was
pancaking her lover's nose
with pubic belches.”
You may have
standing, madam,
and yet you yourself
are craggy and foul-smelling
as macadam.
If we women
want a man's
esteem,
we have to start at home
wielding deodorant
and tweezers—
then have to learn to balance
on the ledge between
cock-sucker and cock-teaser.
“I don't define myself by men!”
1,925,011 protests.
So what's the point then?
Be a selfbian
like poor Terpsichore
with Emerita OMG
self-lubricating ointment
and a Dr. Johnson penis,
Satisfaction guaranteed!
No smelly mess from men!
No messy disappointment!
“How dare you, sister!”
shrieks Terpsichore,
brandishing her kithara.
"The point is: women don't exist
to curry any male's approval,
and that includes
erasure of our scent
or any kind of hair removal.”
You be as rank and hairy
as you like—
amuse the odd Hell's Angel
or bull-dyke
or Hank Bukowski.
I like riding in a limo,
loving in the Playboy Mansion,
poets as well groomed
as their scansion—
Mrs. Browning or
Mahmoud Darwish of Galilee.
This is the Era of Celebrity:
dot every i,
cross every t,
do Oprah with
your new line of perfume
and shake your junk on MTV.
“Can we get on with it?”
1,925,006, now, complains.
“What's done is done.
The once-mild Miriam
has shown her claws and challenged Zeus
to watch Yeshua's sun eclipse his own.
Can she back up her threat?
Wasn't the last person who pissed
him off Prometheus?”
“Forget those jacked-up myths,"
says Byron's Twin.
“The question
isn't whether but wherewith
Yeshua's mother manages to win.”
Restoration - Muse's Advisory, Jan. 20 – Yusef:
Shlom, Miriam.
It's been a long time—
you don't even know I'm home—
but a terrifying storm
blew in tonight off Kinneret
and lightning struck
and in an instant
burned the old house
and the woodshop
to the ground.
Yeshua's sleeping stall,
his cot, the walnut mule—
all of it gone,
his Parthian button set
reduced to little blackened
nuggets of gold slag.
The one salvageable thing,
I didn't even know was there—
a beaten plate with Zeus's
face on it, engraved Beware.
I confess it all threw
something of a scare in me.
Sadder still, one of the kilns
was struck and blew up too,
its owner killed.
It was that fancy-bearded
man who lived alone
at the crest of the hill—
you know the one I mean.
A couple of us hurried
up to see if we could help,
but alas.
Everybody's murmuring
the gods, for reasons best
known only to themselves,
have got it in for us.
If this piece of kidskin
reaches you—if the report
I got that you had moved
to Ephesus is true—
I want to tell you
that I rue the day I left
and wish that you would
come home too.
I didn't have the strength
to be Yeshua's father
and I always felt as if
your loyalty to him
exceeded yours to me.
But now I think, So what?
So what if Miriam adored
her son? So what if he
rejected my authority?
I had a wife who read
Shir ha-Shirim to me and warmed
my bed, who never failed
to comb the few hairs
on my head so lovingly.
Words - Muse's Advisory, Jan. 21 – Miriam/Zeus:
“You try to pull that shit again,” vows Miriam,
“I'm coming at you with a baseball bat!”
“Lie down, roll over,” Zeus mocks.
“Let me ruffle the fur on your gut.
Girl, you are just one dumb bitch.”
Call-Up - Muse's Advisory, Jan. 22 - Terpsichore:
Cats disappeared
into the olive grove
until the Greek marines
trooped down the road again
and then
there clambered down
from every limb
a feline-muscled woman
with one breast
a quiver on her back
and bow of olivewood
arched in her hands.
The neighbors
from the further slope
arrived to offer help
and there Amelia
bade farewell
to all her bosom flyboys
found a charred knife
Miriam had left
among the pots and pans
administered
her own mastectomy
and while the blood
congealed into a crust
as hard as adamant
beneath a poultice
of enchanted laurel leaf
the Amazons shaped her
a bow and took her in;
everyone everywhere
intuited
that the war had begun.
The Bitter Ex - Muse's Advisory, Jan. 23 – Hera Oxeye:
Heaven has rage, Mr. Congreve,
but this is not about a woman wooed
then wed, deceived and scorned—
sister by brother, lover by lover,
a hundred years and craving more.
It's not about revenge
or humbling Zeus to force him to return:
the time comes in a man's misdeeds
when it's too late for him to learn
a lesson except pain.
It's not about rehashing fracases
from Homer's Iliad:
'False Zeus, why is it dearest to your heart
to think of secret things and act on them?
You never frankly tell me what you plan.’
'Hera, don't expect to know my every thought;
some are too hard for you, though you're my wife.
No man nor god shall hear, before you do,
whatever thoughts it's right for you to hear,
but certain plans I wish to hatch alone.’
'And what of Silver-Foot who sat with you
at rosy dawn and clutched your knees?'
'I can't escape from your suspicious mind!
It only distances you more from me!
If what you fear is true, it's what I want
and no one of the other gods can help
if I resort to laying angry hands on you!’
So yes, perhaps it is about that threat;
for who can live with any happiness
beside a monster snarling about death?
The enemy of my enemy—the latest woman
scorned in Zeus's long career of serial abuse—
I can't call her my friend, but I can work behind
the scenes and make sure she achieves her end.
Realpolitik – Muse's Advisory, Jan. 24 - Hera Oxeye to Miriam:
False Zeus, your extant and my ex,
tricks Saracens to war
against the Christian faith.
“Although Yeshua is my gutsy stock,”
he whispers far and wide,
“each time he takes a slap
and turns the other cheek,
he's making all religion weak.
Muhammad knows how bad for discipline it is
to mix god's role with man's—
the whole idea, antitheistic.”
The spartan Moors know how to fight,
while gentled Greco-Romans
wet the earth with bloody charity.
But in the East the Goths
who in 395 A.D. laid waste to Greece—
and Franks and Alamanni in the West,
although distasteful allies,
having chased my extant husband's Gaels
to Ireland, Man, the British march—
these Germans only live
for spilling gore and winning.
You can drape Yeshua's crimson crosses
on their breasts with confidence
they won't be worn like pinnies.
Cocksure - Muse's Advisory, Jan. 25 - Zeus:
As many women
as I've had,
I can't complain,
you all arrayed
against me now.
Complaint is not
my style, anyway;
I've stood alone
for longer than
the Cristos olive-tree
has shaded soil
on sun-blinded Crete,
the archetypal
Solitary Man, the king
of aces, boxer
bristling with arms
to strike an enemy
of many faces.
So go ahead,
link dainty hands
and prostitute
yourselves
to Swabians who
lend you might;
I'm going to hurl
the lot of you to hell:
none of Yeshua's
Nancy-boys from any
of the earth's four
corners can survive
a real god's fury,
brawn and wile.
Call to Arms - Muse's Advisory, Jan. 26 - Khalid:
Arabs!
Yesterday the East fled swiftly
underneath your horses' hooves!
Today jihad turns West!
Muhammad is the prophet of Allah!
He commands Ride into battle's jaws!
Heaven summons you forward!
Israel once magnified One God,
His name so sweet up on their tongues!
Now Christians say Yeshua is His son!
Ride hard!
Allah is boiling in His people's blood!
His wrath electrifies your blades!
The enemy blasphemes One God!
Call to Arms II – Muse's Advisory, Jan. 27 - Miriam:
Your ancestor Alaric
sacked Rome centuries ago!
You muscled the Gaels
out of Gaul and Vandals
from Hispania!
Now, King Roderic,
the Muslims cross the strait
from Africa to Calpe Rock
and ride to Asta Regia
to test how Visigoths
stand up in an attack!
At stake are haughty
Egilona's shapely hand
and whether or not
brandy will be added
to your sack!
At stake is whether
cross or crescent moon
overshadow the land!
My name is Holy Miriam!
Yeshua is my son!
He sent me here
to promise you
that He and all His saints
await you and the bravest
of your men in Heaven!
Reflections Before Battle - Muse's Advisory, Jan. 28 - Roderic the
Visigoth:
Who's more of a hick, me or the Umayyad—
his tribesmen scratching sand and eating camel's dick
to try to make their own as long and thick,
or mine, sailing our dragon ships from Geatland
to hunt fiends with übermenschlich Beowulf?
We've both grown rich from provinces we've sacked;
both conquered far and wide to meet here at Earth's ends,
Pillars of Hercules about to clash;
but my wife Egilona, instead of puffing up my confidence
or nagging me to come back whole,
cannot help wondering aloud
if Abd al-Aziz ibn Musa may not be a tad less crude.
Where does she get her airs? She claims Marcus Aurelius
as distant forebear—fucked a Marcomanni captive at Carnuntum—
but even if that Spanish Stoic rid his mind of Fronto
long enough to bounce on some well-traveled German cuntum—
now what makes her think all kings are keen to board her bus?
I love Yeshua's mother Miriam, and I will ride for her
and for the glory of the Cross when sun comes up,
but honestly, if I should lose my head to scimitar
and Egilona fall into the Muslim general's clutches,
then good riddance, best of luck to her new husband.
Sonnets At Sun-Up - Muse's Advisory, Jan. 29 – Miriam:
Nothing commands a male's attention
more than war.
Visigoths ride forth to breast the Berber horse
and Zeus will watch and cheer:
that's when I'll bring the gore
to him by my own hand.
In a lover's arms, Clytemnestra planned
mariticide luxurious compared to mine,
her spouse already having slain her child;
but Zeus's hazard to my son is indirect,
and since he might amend his ways,
my own assault might be precipitous.
Nor have I lover pressing by my side,
my love for Zeus unfortunately still alive.
In striking him I strike my own joy down,
though he cares most for aggrandizement
and slipped off to shore up his renown;
all I accuse him of is carrying
the selfsame quiver of qualities
that pierced my heart originally.
And who did he fall for, himself,
if not the latent warrior he sensed in me
as I sat reading by the window
feigning innocence?
And so, to not attack betrays his love
and yields so little profit in the peace!
Better to let my axe hold sway,
and chips fall where they may.
Fighting Words - Muse's Advisory, Jan. 30 – Erato/Tom:
You've gone too far, strain credibility.
The gospels' Miriam is not fleshed out,
but readers after twenty centuries cannot
accept a wildcat with her claws out, Tom!
Humility and tenderness are traits
we know and love from other texts:
Real Byron praised her downcast eyes
in his “Don Juan”—so how far can you stretch?
Fierce Miriam rears up and slays great Zeus?
I dare you, ask your reader here and now,
How many fish tales will you gulp?
Nobody wants the Story of Antiquity in verse,
or to replace their mild and tender Mother
with some chippy grinding Romeos to pulp.
if Miriam intends to keep Yeshua safe,
she should remind him, Poet, of his place.
And what of yours, harsh Muse?
The lyre and lyric turn of phrase
are your domains of expertise,
but is the content of the rhymes
supposed to be composed by you or me?
Go to your mighty dad while you still can.
Who knows?
A father and his long-lost girl's embrace
just might melt Miriam's heart
and stay her hand.
Vision of Roderick/Lady and the Drake - Muse's Advisory, Jan. 31 –
Melpomene:
First shrilled an unrepeated female shriek! wrote Scott.
It seemed as if Don Roderick knew the call,
For the bold blood was blanching in his cheek.
Then answered kettle-drum and attabal,
Gong-peal and cymbal-clank the ear appal,
The Tecbir war-cry, and the Lelie's yell,
Ring wildly dissonant along the hall!
And so
Zeus Kuknon dabbling
the lush fringe of a pond
looks up, and Miriam—
No seemly veil her modern minion asked,
He saw her hideous face, and loved the fiend unmasked.
—her eyes aflame and lips asnarl,
trains at his lengthy neck a Cretan double axe,
the single implement he fears.
“Call back your heathen troops!” she orders him.
“Cast thunder in their midst,
confusion in their cavalry, immediately—
or with this twinnèd blade I'll cleave
your final heart-beat!”
They come! they come! I see the groaning lands
White with the turbans of each Arab horde;
Swart Zaarah joins her misbelieving bands,
Alla and Mahomet their battle-word,
The choice they yield, the Koran or the Sword See how the Christians rush to arms amain!
“Dear Miriam, good luck!” Zeus squeaks.
“The boil right now in my blood is such,
your axe will have a hard time finding in it
anything but coursers in stampede of love,
and pain, because love's object hates.”
“I'll count to three,” she says.
“The time for honeyed words is past.
This axe is aching for the home I've promised it.
Call back the African invader now!”
Which downward on the land his legions press,
Before them it was rich with vine and flock,
And smiled like Eden in her summer dress;
Behind their wasteful march a reeking wilderness!
“Your dress—” he bleeps.
“How dare you woo!”
“You know I can't give in
to what you ask, much as I wish
I might. I have a character,
a personality in which I live
and no more can escape than you can yours,
in all its bloodlust, loveliness.
So why object? Let me enjoy my final sight.”
She lifts the axe
and as she does
she hears inside her head
the voice
she heard in Nazareth
so long ago
advising her to take the unexpected,
hidden path: Change course.
In that moment's hesitation,
the sly swan springs up,
gold spilling from his eyes,
latches his bill onto her wrist,
his breast electric with adrenalin,
more alive than ever!—
and she realizes
she's not a natural killer.
“I knew you had a lot of tricks,”
she laughs,
“but never guessed ventriloquist.”
He trumpets.
Winning always makes him hard
and getting hard lifts up his mood.
“I have some wine and food,” he toots.
“Come, this is something we can celebrate.
Nine of my daughters, muses,
are twice pleased:
both that you spared my life,
and stayed in character.
They're all good girls,
if chipped a little stiffly off the block.
How would you like to meet them?”
By Heaven, the Moors prevail! the Christians yield!
And Zeus,
his beady eyes two beams of light,
victorious enjoys in love
his masterstroke in fight.
Muster - Muse's Advisory, Feb. 1 – Miriam/Charlemagne:
Carl,
I hear you've got the Saxons up your ass
east of the Rhine, north of the Main.
The other Frankish princes are a royal pain.
And what was done to Roderic in Hispania
is enough to unman you;
but this chance for fame
won't ever come again.
Historians could care less
if you win wars in this icy wilderness;
you need a theme
the average man can understand:
emancipating Christian civilization
from the Mohammedans.
Don't fear. They're just a pack
of skinny men on skinny nags
disporting skinny steel
and gaily trailing skinny flags
and multicolored pennants.
The only scary thing about them is
(if scuttlebutt is true) their virile cutlasses
swing both ways nightly in their tents.
Your infantry is loyal, steady, veteran;
tell your mess cooks to start
simmering tureens of sauce moutarde
for viandes chevalines.
Sainte Vierge Marie,
people who know me
know I'm not afraid
of any stripe of man—
not pagan Alamanni,
eerie Saracen, Jute thane
nor even Grendel's kin.
I'm born again
thanks to the blood of Christ
and to the womb that bore
his Reich to earth.
Doubt is a vice.
Wherever Muslim horse
dare show their snouts
whether at Tours
or Poitiers,
my men will never whine
“Je crains!” or “Je suis fatigué!”
We neither fight for gold nor fame,
our rallying cry:
“Nous nous battons pour Notre Dame!”
I appreciate your dedication.
All your enemies and mine
are mired in the past and frightened
of a future more enlightened.
Yeshua represents an innovation
similar to yours: new ways to skin
the cat of hegemonic grammar
and to frame a sturdy new Jerusalem
from his nails and your hammer.
A Frank Note - Muse's Advisory, Feb. 2 - From the Desk of Jackie O's
Ghost:
How do I disabuse
you of the notion
there is anything of interest
about one muse,
much less your bloated
bevy of all nine?
A muse is what coal once was to a train,
a mistral gust to Mississippi steamboat,
a propeller to a plane.
Give up those mannikins,
and you just might
have something somebody
could stand to read;
but keep them,
and your manuscript will get no farther
than pretentious dilettantes
like Daedalus and Ruskin did.
And mon Dieu,
please stop adding points of view!
Your monologues by everybody
and their brother's kitchen sink
have driven me up to the brink
of trading in my Montblanc
for a punch-ladle of scarlet ink!
If you've got a story, dammit,
Mr. Riordan, tell it.
Cram it with as much crude sex as fits
without appearing trop gratuit,
and maybe there's a 50/50 chance
that Doubleday can sell it.
Look at the miracles we worked
in better days
with Mina Loy and Chuck Palahniuk.
Castaway's Dream - Muse's Advisory, Feb. 3 - Terpsichore:
“How many times can Ephesus
be sacked,” Amelia asks,
“how many times her churches burnt,
how many times the Saracens
arrive in a flotilla
from the unsuspecting sea
and send the garrison
of untried Byzantines in terror
up into the hills?
“Ladies, I know I'm out of place
advising you or anyone
in this part of the world
about your business,
but there seems to be
a classic power vacuum here.
Why not step in and take the city
that you founded back?
Or are you having too much fun
pretending to be cats?”
“Miss,” chant the Amazons,
“your male friend seems
as docile as he ought to be
and you yourself seem brave
and enterprising, to a fault;
we've also heard a rumor
that you over-reached,
made bold to circle Zeus's sky
without an offering.
“We get as stirred as anyone
by Satan's speech to all
the ex-celestials in Milton's hell,
but wouldn't it have made
more sense to put their energy
in air conditioning
or an archangel-retardant fence?”
Amelia watches
as the grey cats
spring into the air
to catch the scraps
of goat intestine
she had saved
to toss to them.
The city smokes
and Muslim dhonis
ride the evening air
back out to the sea;
the Byzantine guard
tumbles loudly down
the hill pretending
to counter-attack.
“Zeus keeps me
as a pet,” she thinks.
“I'd rather risk
worse punishment
than sit around
and keep house
like a pastor's wife.”
If she could only coax
the cats to life again
as warriors...
rise up on her wings
and dare the sun
to lay her low again...
She looks up from
her tearful dream.
All around her,
all around as far
as she can scan,
is empty sea.
Castaway II - Muse's Advisory, Feb. 4 – Zeus:
I watched that night
not masquerading
as the star
that Herod's agents
clumsily explained
was “overhead”
(deceiving no one—
the new parents saw
the writing on the wall
and by first light
had fled)
nor did I infiltrate
the shepherds
of the field
who angel choirs bade
to look in on a child
in a manger
on the outskirts
of the town
and who were
quite amazed
though they could
barely spell
when Miriam explained
“I'm calling him Yeshua
to fulfill the prophecy
And they shall call
his name Immanu-el.”
I watched the birth
itself
scant feet away
contributing
a warming breath
and encouraging
bray.
I'm not as cold
as my detractors claim
but always curious
about the intermix
of mortal and divine
resulting from my
dabbling in eugenics—
as usual
a disappointment.
The feeble infant
would have died
had not
the shepherds applied
a schmeer
of their veterinary
ointment.
This one, I thought,
lacks any markings
of a hero.
If it weren't
mathematically irrational
I would've named him
Ena Akomi̱ Mi̱ den—
One More Zero.
What I did see
though
is how his mother
metamorphosed
all the agony of labor
into love so feral
I and a couple sheep
wandered across
the road
and tried to crowd in
with some cattle
at the neighbor's.
A Scholarly Analysis - Muse's Advisory, Feb. 5 - Abu Isa:
“The Christians' trope of the Nativity,”
says Outreach Minister Abu Isa al-Warraq,
“exploits a potent trinity of god, human and holy dove.
Our Allah and Muhammad cover 1 and 2,
but we still need some extramundane animal—
maybe a dromedary's or a falcon's ghost—
if we are bent on out-competing them.
Straight and Narrow - Muse's Advisory, Feb. 6 - Ibn Ya'qub, Minister of
Tawbah:
We don't need female figurines—
doves—trinities—dromedaries!
We strip away embroideries,
stand straight in naked zeal!
The almonds in the brain Greeks
call the amygdalē?
That's where Allah's voice speaks
straight into our hearts; the rest,
as Jews say, is just commentary!
Compete with Christians—why?
Man doesn't choose his Lord!
Let's keep it simple:
Islam—tribute—or, the sword.
Witness - Muse's Advisory, Feb. 7 - Lazarus:
30 years I've lived here
since they moved the stone
out from my tomb
and Yeshua called me forth
still bound in graveclothes
hand and foot
and my face wound in
the funerary napkin.
When he said Loose him
and they did
I can't imagine what
I looked or smelled like
having never encountered
a zombie myself
but even through the smoke
I saw all those
who loved me
shrinking back.
Martha
assured me afterward
they were just
awestruck by the miracle—
there was no stink,
no filming of the skin,
no blackened toes—
but she has never been
above white lies.
Why don't you ever smile?
everybody asks me
all this time.
You were entombed four days
and then you walked right out!
But anyone who's seen
what I saw knows
there isn't anything at all
to grin about.
After Yeshua's crucifixion
the companions said
You're next. We all agree
you've seen too much,
plus you're our cult's Exhibit A.
So I took sail.
How many of us floated
like orphaned coconuts
to every haven
of the Mediterranean?
My adoptive isle: Cyprus.
Everybody had their hand out.
The consul Arminius Proclus
demanded witness that
the underworld is grim too
for Yeshua's closest friends;
then John and Miriam
set sail from Joppa
hoping to convince me
to go public, saying I'd been
resurrected by their Christ.
They said it would save lives,
though others thought
the persecution
probably would only grow.
She'd knitted me an omophor
but winds from Asphaltite
pushed their ship off course
as far as Athos
on the east-most teat
of Chalcidice's uddered
brow of Greece
which ever since
has interdicted females
of all natural species
from its sketes
and monasteries,
even from Saint Anne,
Saint Andrea,
Annunciation of Theotokos.
What happened there
that day?
The more I see
the more I see the veil.
How I miss the little town
of Bethany
with my two older sisters
when the biggest mysteries
we had to solve
revolved around
the disappearance
of a pear or quince.
He could have come.
They say he groaned in spirit
and he wept
while the twin Tau'ma
cried empassioned
Let's all hasten to him
so that we may also die
with our dear friend!
But Yeshua chose
abiding where he was
for two days more
to make the point
once he arrived
that he was heaven-sent.
I don't know what to think.
Nobody understands
I've only been
through hell
and have no testimony
pro or con to tell
about religion.
Death, life,
what's the difference—
clay steals from clay
and there is nothing
else to say.
Espionage on a Young God - Muse's Advisory, Feb. 8 – Miriam:
That day I raised the storm from Bethlehem
which dragged poor John at last to anchor
with me under high Mount Athos—
yes, I had some surreptitious business there.
Centuries back, while Hēphaistos
fitted Mount Olympos with a furnace
sulphurous enough to keep the sun
inflamed by night and warm the fingers
of the gods before and after
their unfinishable family fights,
I'd heard they made a temporary home
of Athos and that Zeus left
odds and ends there he'd outgrown:
two dozen wooden blocks
carved with the first initials
of the great philosophers,
then there beneath Chrysippos, Psamtik, Hómēros,
three pages of scratched notes,
a godling's wishful ode about his father,
At the Elysian retreat of Kronos
Where soothing breezes off the bay
Are scented by the sighing of a spring
—that sort of thing.
Underneath, a note in someone else's hand,
Why are you weeping, Zeus?
Why does the gracious one shed tears?;
and finally, in Delphic script,
As a dog is removed from your house,
a hound from your court,
so you too, father, must die like a mortal.
As the sun broke through the gray
and I slipped young Zeus's discards
underneath the lining of my cloak,
a creature left there sentinel accosted me.
Panoptes? One of the Titânes?
I wasn't up on Greek mythology;
it was an ugly multi-headed pup
with serpent hair and harpy claws,
a chimera of more beasts
than I cared to stay and tally up.
I flew; hid my identity,
displaying ginger hair, then black;
a rounder nose, then aquiline;
full lips, then thin;
and hightailed back to where John waited
praying and the crew, thank God,
had some experience with quick escape:
as two strong arms with iron hands
restored me to the trireme's deck,
the bow already nuzzled at the waves,
and my pursuer drew up short,
unwilling to risk getting wet,
or else forbidden to desert those sands;
and afterward,
whomever the chimera gave report to
thought:
Let's play it safe from here on in
and place a ban on every female
human, monstrous, even avian.
Taking avgolemono off the menu
was small price to pay
to guard against the Thief-Witch
slithering ashore again.
What She Already Knew - Muse's Advisory, Feb. 9 – Miriam/Zeus:
“Why did no one suspect you, Zeus?
You were the chief god
in the neighborhood,
renowned for your seductions.
Not the Jewish girls, but still...”
“You thought your Yahweh, Miriam—
aka your Aramaic Alaahaa—
would protect you? Was He such a bargain?
And the Lord said to Moses, Kill all the male children, and every female
who has known man by lying with him; and divide the 32,000 women
who have not lain with a man between the soldiers and the congregation.'
Now, that's real Numbers!
Is the panderer and voyeur somehow purer than the lover?
“I ask you, Zeus.
Were there others?”
“Have I had other Jews?
Why dig into that wound so deep?
Jew, Persian, Greek,
what difference does it make?
The only intercourse
concerns a pussy and a dick.
“Answer.”
“Of course! I've been
a full-grown man for three millennia!
The only thing I've scorned
to cast a lustful eye on
all my years, as I told Job once,
is the battle-horse.
'Hast thou clothed his neck with thunder?
Canst thou make him afraid as a grasshopper?
The glory of his nostrils is terrible.
He paweth the valley, and rejoiceth in strength.
He goeth on to meet the armed men.
He mocketh at fear, and is not affrighted;
neither turneth he back from the sword.
The quiver rattleth against him,
the glittering spear and the shield.
He swalloweth the ground with fierceness and rage:
neither believeth he that it is the sound of the trumpet.
He saith among the trumpets, Ha, ha;
and he smelleth the battle afar off,
the thunder of the captains, and the shouting.'
Imagine trying to poke that in the keister?
You Jewish girls are fierce, agreed—
but take my word for it, you're nothing next to
an infuriated steed!”
“Don't bother being crass.
It doesn't put me off.
I asked a question. Answer it.”
“There were a couple, yes.”
“I want their names.”
“You don't need the list.
When I first saw you
in the window reading Tanakh
I was struck by how your brow creased
just so. You know how to read
between the lines, I know.”
“Their names.
I want to hear it from your mouth,
no double-speak.”
“Abram's Sarai.
He knew too, of course;
that's why he loaded up
that pack horse
with split wood
and went to give the boy
back to his maker.
Michal, King David's first—
she found him crass
and hid the teraphim,
his household gods, in bed.
And then of course
your aunt Elizabeth.
You and the Baptist knew
you're more than cousins—
why I was so pleased
with him when he embraced Yeshua
that day by the Jordan.
No—not mercy fucks,
if that's what you're imagining,
though childless woman do have
a particular get-up-and-go.”
“Oh, you're a snake!
At this point, you'll do anything to take
away the luster from Yeshua.
'All glory to my other son,
the one without his head!'”
“May I remind you, Miriam,
they both are dead?”
“Dead? Live? As Lazarus explained,
there's not much difference.”
“Your son had pretty much
the same idea.”
“Our son.”
“Our son, if you insist.
Just don't suggest
those limp wrists
come from me!”
“Better a limp wrist
than the limp dick I remember.
What an introduction that was
to the pleasures
of the opposite gender!”
“You got pregnant!
So your womb made no complaint
about the sex!”
“Go back, Zeus—
back into the inner sanctum
of my mind, to where you hide.
I've bloody matters to attend to
that I can't accomplish
with you smirking by my side.
Go back, and don't return.
It's time for Arab ships to sink
and minarets to burn.
Reverie - Muse's Advisory, Feb. 10 – Zeus/Miriam:
“Which passage was it
you were reading when we met?”
“I have it here,
inside the book you Greeks call Exodos.
'the thunderings and the lightnings
and the noise of the trumpet sounded long
and the darkness wherein God's thick cloud
covered the mount six days
the smoke of Him descending fiery
smoke rising as the smoking of a furnace
the whole mount quaked
underneath his feet paved sapphire stone
and Moses gat on the steps of the altar
and went into the cloud
and was inside it forty days and forty nights
and after he climbed down
builded an altar with twelve pillars at its foot.'”
“Ah yes, Al Khazneh. In the Wadi Musa.
I remember Moses fondly.
That sweet spring he summoned
waters Petra to this day.
His brother Aaron's tomb there is a favorite haunt.
Don't you just love that scene in Egypt
where they all throw staves down,
which turn into snakes, and Aaron's eats
the vipers from the Pharaoh's priests'?
Combining war and sorcery does get me off!”
“Then you will love what's coming next:
a Middle Age where Germans' galdralag
confounds your straight-laced warriors
at Tours and for the following eight centuries
till Cristovão da Gama's pure crusaders
march ashore ex machina to liberate
the Christian Solomonic Dynasty of Ethiopia,
and blunderbuss jihadis' heads at Massawa.”
“You call those butchers saints?”
“Annihilating infidels,
by any name would smell as sweet.”
“Sweet?
dear Miriam,
smell?
dear Miriam...”
Relic Hunter, Mount Koressos - Muse's Advisory, Feb. 11- Urania:
A strange blizzard raged;
when the cutthroat centurion
reached the crest of the mountain
he looked more like a friendly snowman
than abominable Roman.
But if he found one of the artifacts
Augusta Helena searched for,
she would present him to her son,
and Constantinus Imperator
would reward him with a primus-pilus,
if not more.
Unfortunately, nothing was there:
a ruined hut of no distinction,
a thinly ice-skinned spring,
some savage-tended olive trees
that all had seen much better days.
Then he thought he saw
a pathway through the underbrush,
and ambition warred with cold
as half his mind said Go!
and half said No!
Two hours later
looking like a bush
on which a drift had fallen
he came upon three cave mouths
on a limestone face,
thrice-lifesized statuary
flanked by colonnades
from which wept melting ice;
within was something warm.
He had struck gold.
Triumph - Muse's Advisory, Feb. 12 - Polimnia:
Every last citizen of Byzantium
rebuilt, renamed Konstantinoupolis
and hallowed by the Rod of Moses
and the One True Cross,
the Church of the Apostles
raised up on the rubble
of forsaken Aphrodite's temple,
crowded out of doors
to watch the triumph of the lord
both of the heavens and the earth,
hoi polloi accustomed
to parades of thousands of Sarmatians
bound in chains, hundreds of elephants
queued tail-in-trunk and ridden
by brown ostrich-plumed mahouts,
and Vandal girls
without a stitch of clothes
bound for the auction block
could not contain their wonder
at the sight of the gargantuan bed
that undergirt the passions
of Zeus Thunderer and Earth-Shaker
paraded as imperial plunder
through the Gate of Myriandrion
and down the regal Mese
past Theotokos-in-Petra
and Christ Panepoptes,
past the Forum of the Bulls
to splendid Hagia Sophia
trailed by seven sarkophágoi
in which, the heralds cried,
lay seven pagan gods so old
they had no names
and then
a solitary Arab man
enmeshed in spiders' silk
who seemed to dream,
his eyeballs sliding
back and forth beneath his lids,
but whom no one could wake
neither with cymbals nor with shouts:
O Mégas Konstantínos
and his mother smiled and waved
down from their perch
above the palace crowd,
the Empire
theirs and Christ’s
now perfectly impregnable.
Cogito Ergot Sum (Lourdes, A.D. 778) - Muse's Advisory, Feb. 13 – Clio:
The Moor Marat's fortress at Lourdes besieged
by Franks, his fishhawk sweeps
and drops a huge trout at his feet.
He'll use the fish to hoodwink Charlemagne
into believing they have more than moldy grain
to eat,
when there appears
before him the Black Virgin of Puy—
a versatile,
recently Christianized figure of Dana,
Celtic queen of the sky
etched onto Roman pottery
alongside Zeus and Antiope—
who commands him to yield
and be baptized.
Cogito Ergot Sum (Wisconsin, A.D. 1859) - Muse's Advisory, Feb. 14 –
Clio:
Four miles from Robinsonville (today
one mile east
of Champion in Kewaunee
County off Highway K
eighteen
miles from Green Bay)
a year after a miller's daughter made
Lourdes a Marian sensation,
Mary dropped in on the United States
via the mind of a Belgian immigrant of 28,
while she too carried sacks of moldy grain
to and from a gristmill in the altered state
of ignus sacer, sacred fire—ergot in the brain.
Adele Brise
asked the apparition
in the trees
in a white dress
with yellow sash
around its waist,
stars on her ravishing
blonde tresses,
who she was.
“Ik ben de koningin
van de hemel—
Je suis la reine du ciel—
do you speak Flemish,
English,
or Walloon?
I'm queen of the sky.
Call the children in this
wild country of America!
Teach
them about religion.”
Cogito Argot Sum (2010) - Muse's Advisory, Feb. 15 – Melpomene:
Three
modern apparition-scene
investigators
find no evidence of heresy
or fraud and a long history
of cures, conversions
and signs—
the site within the twenty
mile swathe around Green Bay
untouched by the Peshtigo fire
ruled a miracle.
Bishop David Ricken says
with moral certainty
in an office
littered
with
cast-off crutches, that Ms. Brise
had encounters worthy
of faith; builds a 70-car
parking lot and gives the green
light to a Good Helpers Association,
the Sister Adele level
giving $10
and the Our Lady level $20
per month. It's a gift to believers,
says Mariologist
Johann Roten. It's devious
to think
it's pulled
from the attic
to distract
from sex
abuse in
the diocese.
I hope it'll be perceived
as evidence
there are ways of living
that are still
pure.
Bishop Ricken agrees.
The people have a need
for the spiritual and right here
in our backyard is an opportunity
to feed
their souls. If Mary's words
bring hope and healing
for victims of our errant priests
then that would be
good,
sure.
For eighteen
years
Karen Tipps was a volunteer
who took care of the premises
with her husband Steve.
Look at our children.
There's no hope.
No faith. Nothing to live
for.
There’s power here,
says Theresa
Vandermause as she arrives
for her weekly
visit with her friend Judy.
I feel
her presence, as if she's
really
and truly
listening to me.
Katastrophē in Kōnstantinoúpolis – Muse's Advisory, Feb. 16 - Polimnia
All seven boys together rolled onto their left sides
and the populace screamed as one and ran behind doors
as paynim horsemen streamed through the gate.
A jinn seized the flag of Artemis's crescent and Miriam's star
from the long-dried fingerbones of Constantine the Great
and the newly-bloodied wrists of the Marble Emperor,
his crooked teeth packed tightly, always, with vervain:
the Ottomans renamed it Ay Yıldız and took it for their own.
The man in the spider-silk robe who seemed to dream, awoke;
the skin of his face shone in splendor; he cried:
Return to Allah's fold or die! Islam demands surrender!
Replied the Marble Emperor:
We have lived in the greatest of cities
and are now entirely prepared to die defending it.
Janissaries stormed the bronze gates of Hagia Sophia
crammed with Byzantines praying for protection:
Turks graded them according to the price they'd fetch,
and the great city's patroness shivered with regret.
semaphore with flute – muse's advisory, feb. 17 – euterpe:
this violence
empty
flick mud
at the palace
sink
slowly
in the moat
or
do something
about it
an idiotic race
is no excuse
to
ape cain
spit
attack your
brother
old caves
portals
to
fresh birth
places
design
new thoughts
In Her Place - Muse's Advisory, Feb. 18 - Hera to Miriam:
I don' know
where your son is.
Demi-gods
always bore me.
I'm no prude
or racial purist
but I do hate it
when Zeus
visits Earth
as a cunt-tourist.
It embarrasses
both of us.
We can't blame
half-breeds
themselves,
but why daydream
about their
mighty deeds?
Yeshua's likely dead,
same as the rest;
when did anyone last
hear from Theseus?
Miss, no offense
but you're no more
than mortal too:
Zeus pays off Atropos,
but when the
baksheesh stops...
Or has your head
been turned by all
those former Jews
beseeching you?—
Star of the Sea!
Destroyer of Heresy!
Ever-Virgin!
Co-Redemptrix!
Most Holy Teacher!
Queen of Heaven!
Eternity isn't
past plus future:
it's an indifferent
state of mind.
After Meeting With Hera - Muse's Advisory, Feb. 19 – Miriam to Zeus:
I spoke with her:
it went about as well
as I expected.
I'd thought just maybe
she might side with me,
but no: to her, Yeshua
was an ordinary man,
I should accept his death,
go back to Nazareth
and mourn,
and you
should go on doing
as you've always done.
She really is your sister,
if only distantly a wife:
she thinks mankind
should give the gods
their hearts, but not
the other way around.
I see what's wrong—
your upbringing
or lack thereof.
It's dog eat dog where
you came from,
not one scrap shared.
Yeshua had a vision
people counted on
when times got tough;
he wasn't simply in it
for the fat, smoke, blood.
He exposed you Twelve
as omni-gluttons with
stomachs unbuttoned
and egos never sated:
the mammoth and tapeworm
Hubris.
That's why you all must
be eliminated.
Memory - Muse's Advisory, Feb. 20 - Zeus to Miriam:
You want to hear about my girls?
Don't look at me like that.
It's true,
their mom is Memory my aunt,
but no one gives a shit
if they're a tiny bit inbred.
They'll deal with it.
Nobody's paying them to not have tails
or Habsburg lips.
My own memory of her is faint.
It was a long way back
and she habitually burgled
all my reminiscence of our sex
to relish it twofold herself.
What a lover that made her!
Each of our nine nights
more rousing than the last!
But her taste for double-glazing backfired
when I reached the point where—
lacking recollection of the highlights—
I just wandered off.
Lovemaking's really not enough
without some context, backdrop.
The girls don't interest me.
What have they really done?
They're dainty lady-fingers
with no knuckles and no fists.
What's beauty truly but
the tan on pestilence's face?
Without the knockwurst,
just a lightly toasted bun?
Memory shelters them so much,
grace passes through them
as effectlessly as breaths
tiptoeing through a flute.
She hasn't so much gone away
as hovers in the background.
No, I don't miss her,
but she did
have the most beautiful hair.
Gauntlet - Muse's Advisory, Feb. 21 – Miriam to Zeus:
Why kindle proxy wars
at Tours, Byzantium?
Do you lack moxie
to bear arms yourself?
You bristle with your
macho thunderbolts
but did you ever once stay
Artemis's breast-shaped bow?
You're not the only one
who has one gentle side,
one cruel. Come test
your theory of superiority.
Unfurl your shaft,
unleash your roar.
You'll find the depth
of my resistance eerie.
Nature - Muse's Advisory, Feb. 22 – Zeus to Miriam:
Pummel with a purse? Rain words
melodious as Mary Oliver's verse?
Big-time testosterone's
what makes a battle bloody.
Don't you think I have your measure?
My nature's deep and muddy as the Nile.
Murdering my son and lover each will
be a special pain and special pleasure.
No Rest/Springs Eternal - Muse's Advisory, Feb. 23 – Thalia:
Zeus knows exactly where Yeshua is
because he put him there himself.
Not Milton's epic,
Dante's cantos
nor Herodotus's Histories
detail this aged grotto
where new heroes go
to mull a run
from great to grandiose—
sulfur-glowing,
hung with bats,
built by Hephaistos
just below the cave
from which his infant
father, Zeus, arose—
where every idol—
pedestal, marquee and pantheon—
sat chanting Om
and studying their bellybutton
for so long
it turned the Buddha against sex,
Louis Capet into Christianissimus Rex
and Malcolm Little into Malcolm X.
Zeus says,
“Yeshua, though you're dead
I can restore you
if you want the future generations
to adore you.”
The fresh corpse stirs
his blood-drained lips
and whispers, “Why?”
Hephaistos says,
“Of course you haven't made
your mind up yet—
you're not dead long enough
to lose your nose.
But take my word for it
as a mortician,
you don't want to look like this
on apparitions!
Let me start.
If you decide against, no harm—
you're just a better-looking stiff than most.
But if you do say yes
and head back up to wow your friends,
you wouldn't want to scare
the Christmas out of them, capeesh?
So sit down in my styling chair.
I'll start by doing something with that hair.”
“Yeshua, son,” Zeus says,
“at this late date, I don't presume
to step into the role of dad.
You said yourself a man must leave his family
if he wants to travel the celestial road.
It's true: a god can't have allegiances.
You have to purge the murmur
of your mother from your blood:
she thinks herself a god
and flies around
the earth as if a broom-sticked witch
pronouncing her own edicts.
Stop her. If you can't, I understand.
I love her too.
But if you want to be a bona fide deity,
you have to make sure nothing throws
a monkey-wrench into your spontaneity.”
“These fingernails are going fu-manchu,”
Hephaistos says. “The yellowing is gross.
I recommend une manucure française.”
“You can't just play things all by ear,”
says Zeus.
“It's not enough to Love thy neighbor as thyself.
Adherents will need tenets, rules.
The only way to minimize offenses
is to maximize the consequences.”
“Whatever,”
rasped the lukewarm corpse.
“What could be worse—
be more lamentable than this?—
too flat for Dax or Silver Ghost,
too effervescent for a hearse.
So yes, do clean me up.
Make me presentable
and book me into some saint's mind.
Maybe a bit of posturing's redeemable
if it's what makes redemption possible."
Makeover - Muse's Advisory, Feb. 24 – Thalia:
Hephaistos takes his brush;
he takes his comb;
he takes soap and conditioner
and sets upon Yeshua's mop
of blood-encrusted hair
with that degree of courage
and élan which marks a god,
and in an hour the tresses
of the poor dead soul
are glossier than Nat King Cole's,
his cheeks are rouged,
his empty arteries and veins
transfused with firmer blood
than mortals lose,
an analgesic tincture dabbed
on all the open wounds—
et voilà!—he's as good as new.
The mortuary god
slips one hand underneath
his barber's smock
and with a Gallic flourish
lifts Walt Whitman's looking glass—
not
fair costume,
lungs rotting, stomach sour, cankerous,
joints rheumy, bowels clogged,
blood dark and poisonous,
words babbling, no brain, no heart.
Such was the Lemnos undertaker's art,
Yeshua took one gaze and knew
he now had less in common
with un homme than with un dieu.
mail order king - muse's advisory, feb. 25 – clio:
the british captain edmund lyons,
knight of the order of st. louis and
grand cross of the order of the redeemer and
grand cross of the order of the mejidie and
grand cross of the legion of honor and
grand cross of the military order sailed
the 46-gun 5th-rate bombay-built seringapatam-class
druid-subclass frigate hms madagascar
into breezy nafplion
and delivered the young otto friedrich ludwig of bavaria
whom the european powers had named king of greece
by divine right via
byzantine emperor alexios I komnenos & irene doukaina's
daughter theodora komnene angelina & konstantinos angelos's
son andronikos dukas angelos & euphrosyne kastamonitissa's
son emperor alexios III angelos & euphrosyne doukaina kamaterina's
daughter anna angelina & emperor theodore I lascaris of nicaea's
daughter maria lascarina & king béla IV of hungary
son stephen V of hungary & elisabeth of cumania's
daughter maria arpad of hungary & king charles the lame of naples's
daughter eleanor of anjou & frederick III of sicily's
daughter elizabetta of sicily & duke stephen II of bavaria-munich's
son duke john II of bavaria & katharina of görz
(...a few lost centuries during the tourkokratia...)
and now the german princeling queerly hellenized his name,
raised up the cross of christ
and told the greeks, in what was greek to them,
that everything henceforth würde in Ordnung sein.
Barbarian - Muse's Advisory, Feb. 26 – Miriam:
Diyha the Berber
who drove Hasan from Ifriqiya
was a mother. Mixcoatl's
mother fed Xiuhnel her menstrual blood,
then slit his chest. Giving birth in battle,
Phùng Thị Chính
bore both her newborn and sword
as she slaughtered the Han.
Who says I can't win?
Wasn't Zeus only saved from his father by Rhea?
From Typhon, by sinew-thieving Hermes?
I didn't get this far giving sacred cows belief.
If I fail, I fail,
but I will try: a thin stiletto down the lip
of either boot, a cone-snail stinger,
a vial of botulism
milked
from beached whales underneath
the piping of my veil,
a sliver of shinbone
up my sleeve.
Grin into the mirror: I look good!
I am renowned for sorrowing
but know something
about dispensing sorrows too.
Yeshua preaches
turn the other cheek.
Zeus is about
to learn the nether side of meek.
That Launched 1000 Ships - Muse's Advisory, Feb. 27 – Thalia:
Who does Miriam meet as she glides,
armed to the teeth, along the infamous beach
where Zeus once swam ashore from Tyre,
Europa in his grasp, to show his human face
and most animalistic behavior?—
Yeshua, fresh from Hephaistos's salon
and attempting to get a little color
before his Syrian debut as Christ the Savior.
“Where do you think you're
going looking like that?” she demands.
“I have two calls to make, both serious.
My first, a man they call Jerome. A doctor—
full name is Sophronius Eusebius Hieronymus.”
“You got so dolled up for the doctor?”
“I'm actually going to give him a whipping,
his punishment for being over-fond of Cicero—
to make him an example. He'll tell everyone.
The glamor, actually, is for my second stop,
but you can't carry luggage on an apparition."
“A girl?”
“A nun, Ma. I'll be sitting for a portrait
in a little town called Plock, in central Poland.”
“You're going to Poland in that fru-fri robe?
Some nun is going to paint your portrait?”
“No, I appear to her and then she tells an artist
what to paint. It's called 'Mercy Divine.' Check it out.”
“Those two rays shining from your breast
look like chiffon. Is that your heart? Who did that?
“Promise me you won't get mad?”
“You broke my heart a dozen ways from Sunday
from the first day you arrived, right to the day you died.
Now here you're sunning on a Cretan beach, all gussied
like an Aztec prince; what could you say to make me mad?”
“I saw my dad.”
“No way he'd ever let you out like this!”
“My real dad, Ma. Cousin Hephaistos did my makeup,
hair and taxidermy. Ma, you can't imagine
what a wreck you look like after you've been dead a while!
Phaistos fixed all that, and Dad booked the appearances.
Thanks to the two of them, it's like I'm born again.”
Appearing Soon II - Muse's Advisory, Feb. 28 – Melpomene:
“Dad's got it all worked out,” Yeshua says.
“He's backing me the whole nine yards.
He has no interest in Olympos anymore.
If I just play my cards right, Greek gods will be artifacts
and all of Europe Christian soon.
He says the Turn-the-other-cheek
and Love-thy-neighbor have their merits
but to also keep the old stuff—
brimstone, you know. Pragmatism
wins out in the end. If not, you're just
another shrill sound in a noisy desert.”
“Yeshua, he's co-opting you!” cries Miriam.
'”Ma! Let it go!
I know he hurt you pretty bad.
I understand. But he can be a cool guy, too.
He put the sunshine back into my eyes.”
“Yeshua. Son—”
“It's Jesus, Ma. Play down the Jewish bit.
Society is global now, Zeus says—”
One of the locals staggers up
under a block of ice, a water jug and syrup jar
and mixes two sódes kanéla.
Yeshua says thank you in Kritik God's ambassador
and the boy grins appreciatively.
“You see how popular I am? Zeus says
I have the human touch.”
“Oh, Zeus says this! Oh, Zeus says that!
Now he knows everything, is that it?”
“I do understand, Ma.
I forgive you.
That's me, you know:
Mr. Forgiveness.”
Appearing Soon III - Muse's Advisory, March 1 – Miriam/Yeshua:
“I don't know if I agree
with all you've said.
You know I don't see
eye to eye with Zeus.
But it's your second life,
not mine—so good success
when you appear in Syria.”
“Thanks, Ma. My chance
to reach the world.”
“I hope you understand
I too have things to do.
I'm here to murder Zeus.”
“Don't expect a sitting duck.
He knows what you've been thinking
and he's armed to the teeth—
Hephaistos an amazing smith.”
“You're not upset?”
“I have to elevate my mind.
If I'm committed to redeem mankind,
I can't get hung up
on the squabbles of
the family I left behind.”
Fatherly - Muse's Advisory, March 2 – Melpomene:
“Fuck!” squawks Saint Paul.
“I know,” Zeus says.
“I smell her coming too.
You'd better get below, Hephaistos.
I'm about to have my hands full—
can't be worried about you
and little Tarsus here.
Keep him downstairs
until the smoke clears.”
“Fuck!” Saint Paul squawks again.
“He's got no mother, father,”
Zeus continues, “only me.
You and I are not too chummy
but at least
we look each other in the eye
before we spit in it.
We know the beast.”
“Pa, don't take this personal
and blow your top.
I'm happy to have helped you
prep Yeshua for appearances
in Syria and Poland.
If you wanted to retire, though,
why didn't you ask me?”
“Be careful who you're jealous of
and never think to know the mind
of kings, Hephaestos.
Your half-brother's just a pawn
dressed up in bishop's robes.
It's you I love.
It's you whom I keep close to me.”
“Fuck!” squawks Saint Paul.
“He's warning you!” laughs Zeus.
“Don't trust the wily psychopath—
the only thing he really loves: himself.
The bird has got a point.
It's not that I'm not fond
of Miriam and Hera, you,
Yeshua, my nine Muses,
and the rest.
In my own way, I am.
It's just that every flock
can only have one ram
and if I want it to be me
I have to make sure no one else
starts strutting like the new
cock-o'-the-roost.
Yeshua thinks that love is free.
That only makes it cheap.
The thing that hooks them all
is being hard to read
and playing hard to get.”
“Come, Paul,” Hephaistos says.
“You have to look within, son,
if you want to understand
what fouls your pants:
your own lust for the upper hand.”
“Fuck you!” Hephaistos shouts.
His eyes sprout tears
and off he runs without the bird.
Bitter Ends - Muse's Advisory, March 3 – Calliope:
Birth's soilure scoured from his scalp,
Zeus borne by nymphs toward Knossos
On the hot plain of Kydonia; his umbilicus
Dropped off and there arose out of his navel
The first blade he'd learn to battle with:
Keen, double-edged, a labrys floated up.
“Miriam,” Zeus said,
“the Fates have cut short
our relationship.
One of us dies today,
and at the other's hand.
There is no better way
to go than to be slain
by somebody else
at the top of their game.”
“Intending to kill you I came,
Zeus, to prevent your war
on nascent Christianity.
But on my way,
I came across Yeshua
on the beach
and find you've done more
damage than I knew.
Pick up your twin-axe
and your thunderbolt,
whatever else
lurks in your arsenal.
Part of our fight
was philosophical:
now all of it is personal.”
Without awaiting his reply
she quickly bent,
then rushed at him
and drove one of her daggers
into each of Zeus's eyes.
His howls reverberated
through the cave.
Hephaistos downstairs
clapped his hands
over his ears
and prayed for his own mother
Hera
to appear and intervene.
He didn't want Zeus dead:
he'd only wanted somebody
to pound some sense
into the old shit's head.
“How does it feel?”
shrieked Miriam.
“How many others
have you blinded
with a lightning flash
or with dishonest words?
Now feel about your feet
and try to find
something to wield
before you're killed!”
Zeus, quickly grappling,
closed two hands on
the handle of his axe
and flicked it powerfully
in the direction
of his adversary's voice.
She nimbly stepped aside:
the labrys flew
and clove the crested cockatoo
Zeus cherished so.
And then she slipped
the cone-snail prick
from underneath
her head-kerchief
and fixed it in
the bloody bully's thigh.
His nociceptive cry
was strangled in his throat
as alpha, delta, kappa,
mu, omega conotoxins
quickly shut his
cricoid muscle down.
She shrieked again,
“How does it feel!
How many others
have you throttled
in your arrogant insistence
that you always have
the final word?”
Zeus tried to raise
his spurting eyes; he
tried to lift his arm;
he tried to force
an oath up from
his heart; in vain.
All he could manage
without sight or
the cooperation of
his brawn was one
emission from his hair:
a snaking thread
of bald electric light
that sniffed the air
for Miriam's exultant
radiation and then
zeroed straight in on
the tiny botulism vial
still secreted
underneath her veil.
Her face froze;
right hand dove
into the reliquary of
her left sleeve for
the shinbone sliver
from the potent
anti-pagan John;
and as she struck
it into Zeus's chest,
the botulism paralyzed
the rest of her;
the cave fell silent.
Taste of Honey - Muse's Advisory, March 4 – Melpomene:
Hephaistos peeked out
of the narrow shaft
that led between
the mountain underworld
and where new gods
were born
and strangely
what upset him most
were not his father's
blood-encrusted eyes
or muscles petrified
to polished stone
nor woman
frozen in a glare
so venomous
it made the cave
seem twice
as tenebrous
but the unlucky bird
half
crumpled gory on the cave's cold floor
half
pinned against the riven wall
by one of the mighty labrys's
twin blades.
The taxidermist, god and engineer in him
immediately wondered
what could possibly be done
to bring a creature freshly
sundered back to life
and only then he turned attention
to his father
and his father's late and latest wife.
He smiled, grim.
He was so glad
his mother Hera hadn't come.
He was the man
in charge now
and if anyone
was going to save the day
it would be him.
Bonding - Muse's Advisory, March 5 – Miriam:
"Mary can be called God's Second-born, owing to Her dignity as Spouse
and Mother of God." - Valtorta, Poem of the Man-God: The Hidden Life
Much has been made of me, Hephaistos.
But the truth?
You want the truth?
I simply thought I was too good for Nazareth.
I saw your father as my ticket out
and broke my parents' hearts
to serve my own swelled head.
Whatever's special in Yeshua
comes from Zeus, not me.
I also see a lot of him in you.
Who else would even try
to do what you did with that cockatoo?
Don't lose your confidence.
You got the bird to perch and squawk
as good as new,
you got me sitting up and babbling
like I used to do
when I was just a girl
and I just know you'll also
figure something out for Zeus.
I came to kill him, true;
but thanks to you, I'm praying
now for his re-animation.
Shut up yourself, white bird!
I never cared much for St. Paul—
I didn't think Zeus ever needed props—
but since his restoration
he has changed his tune and doubled his vocabulary.
I think I feel a bit
of what your father must have felt for him.
As soon as I can lift my arm,
I'm going to try and coax him onto it,
give him a smooch
and teach him to say Mom.
Your father's eyes? You may be right.
That may be too much of a stretch, even for you.
Those two white
marble balls might have to do.
But honestly, he didn't use them much:
he lived by oratory.
Concentrate your efforts on the mouth.
His eyes would always get him into trouble
and his tongue would always get him out.
Shut up, I said!
Hephaistos—what you did with my Yeshua
was extraordinary.
I just love the way
you kept the wounds, accentuated them;
adore the way you got those rays of light
to pour forth like his breast was heaven!
I don't suppose you could accomplish
something similar with me?
No, no, keep working on your father,
by all means! I'm just saying.
I always shunned conditioners, cosmetics.
It seemed obsessional
to spend more than a minute at the mirror.
I always thought the natural look was best.
I didn't know what a professional could do!
His skin? It has a lifelike shine.
Looks like that lovely pinkish-olive marble
they'll be quarrying in Tennessee before too long.
You've seen those pompous ads
in Future Sculptor magazine.
It could be
that he doesn't really have to move.
That thing he did—
the lightning from the hair—with me?
He did that from an attitude of total immobility.
Are those tears in your eyes?
Hephaistos, heaven knows you've tried!
He wasn't anybody's puppet while alive.
We can't expect him to be any more responsive
now he's died.
Why don't you give your efforts time?
The botulism and the conotoxins
maybe haven't finished wearing off.
Who knows, with his metabolism?
Take a break.
He was the kind of man
nobody pressured into anything
regardless of how much
he may have wanted it himself—
was always too damn proud.
You made him look as good
or better than he ever has.
He still has mystery, pizzaz,
that great Zeus magnetism.
Now the final step is up to him.
The id provides the jism, no?
Goddammit bird, shut up!
Okay,
it's getting on my nerves again.
Could you make one more small adjustment to its brain?
I know it's from Sumatra
but just maybe could you program it
to do some Streisand or Sinatra?
St. Paul's Sorrow - Muse's Advisory, March 6 – White Cockatoo to Zeus:
How many times
I've heard you croon,
You always hurt
the one you love,
but when that axe came
hurtling toward me,
I couldn't have
been any more off-guard:
it split me neck to butt.
The necromancer Miriam
says thank my lucky stars
my head stayed whole,
but that's a fucked up way
of thinking, isn't it?
Such 'luck' first blessed me
on the day
Mount Gamalama blew
my world to hell,
for you
to pick me out of the debris,
a beak, two feet,
a crumpled origami
of ash-dusted plumes;
now, this.
Let's cut the 'lucky star' shit—
call me a survivor.
Phaistos says I lost a lot
of blood—well, all of it—
and I won't ever be the same.
The stuff he filled me back up with
he drained from twenty
fellow troglodytes he guessed
were more or less compatible:
gray wrens.
“Even when the wounds knit,
don't expect to fly,” he says.
“Expect some nightmares, flashbacks,
PTS, and sexual dysfunction,
your crest chronically deflated.
But the good news is—”
oh, how he cracks
his own ass up!—
“who'll ever want to fuck you?”
But all I care about is you,
your empty eyes and waxen,
frigid skin—this silence.
The blue-robed witch is right:
the boy can only do so much.
It my turn now to figure out
a way to pick you up.
Panorama - Muse's Advisory, March 7 – Hephaistos:
Oh god, so this is family?
This is what it boils down to:
an embittered bird, a flinty,
dead-faced witch,
a father who can't do a thing
beyond an occasional twitch,
a gay half-brother somewhere
up in the Carpathians,
a mother totally obsessed with
spite over her brother-husband's
yen for Homo sapiens.
Yeshua has a point:
“Leave them behind, they'll drag you down.”
I imagine that's what Zeus thought
when he saw my tiny, deformed foot—
“Get rid of him before emotion roots.”
The mortals go to war,
lose,
win,
then rush to war again.
And I don't blame them.
The Jilted's Jeer - Muse's Advisory, March 8 – Hera:
Phaistos, I'm not a fan
nor knowing about birds
but that dilapidated bag of feathers
over there
looks like he needs some air
or desperately to drop a poop.
And Miriam, you cunt,
I'm going to turn your hard tits
to the wall.
I'd like a couple minutes
with the Marble Man alone.
I made the chicken stew;
let me clean up the coop.
Great Zeus,
whuh happened?
did some widdle Jewiss wady
wipe the cave floor wif your ass?
Cat got your tongue?
You don't think give-and-take
is quite as much fun
as you used to, hon?
Oh, look.
You're mustering
some feeble little shock
to shoot at me?
How utterly pathetic.
I'll tell our boy on my way out
that you might afterall
be of some use
in case the widdle birdie
needs a diuretic.
I must be gone.
My new man's
young, hotheaded, strong
as you once were—
but has a bit more sense.
He understands
my vengeance is lifelong
and retribution immense.
At least the bitch preserved
you in a semi-regal stance.
Schoolkids will think you
wild and fierce,
someone who'd never wear a suit—
a child at heart.
Without you waving them about
as if the sky was going to fall,
your dick and balls
look cute,
a little blue,
and very small.
Penis Size - Muse's Advisory, March 9 – Hephaistos to Priapos:
You're too infatuated
with your clownishly inflated
donkey-dick
to notice all the noble
Greeks and Romans
are enstatuated
with much smaller pricks?
All those sculptors didn't
just run short of stone.
They thumbed their noses
at you so-called studs
with penises too thick
to properly get pussy-sucked
or blown.
Those aren't boys—
their pubic hair and muscles thick.
Nor are they pantywaists too shy
to show the world their prick.
Stop to think about it,
only one real explanation sticks:
celebration of the well-hung guy
is just attempted compensation
by you brainless hicks.
Go root for nuts beneath red oaks,
go ooh and aah at other oafs with dicks
as generous as their minds are small:
there's nothing for you here.
The Minister of Classical Antiquities
arrives tomorrow with her cart—
and always brings her ruler.
Don't try to fool her
into thinking it's a baseball bat.
She fell for that old trick
when she was blooming and naïve
one ice-pack
and The Skillful Rabbit's
School of Climaxes
ago.
About Your Father - Muse's Advisory, March 10 – Hera to Hephaistos:
My current man,
the one you're dissing?
His sugar found its mark
when your father's
was missing.
Read Homer and Hesiod:
Zeus wasn't man enough
to stay with me,
his puerility
not anatomical but mental.
He courted oohs and aahs
from girls
who misread wit as depth
and flattery
for gifts he actually bestowed.
Psychological manipulation
was his favorite tool
of masturbation.
No woman with an ego
of her own is going to be
happy as the dildo of a fool.
Contrite - Muse's Advisory, March 11 – Zeus's Brain to Hera:
I no longer have a right
to call out Sister!
Wife's not mine to say.
I could've been a better brother;
failing that, a better lover;
failing that, a better god
to those whose faith
gave me another chance
to till success.
No opportunity remains
to statuary capable
of whispering complaints
to other people's brains,
no more than that.
We gather what we sow.
No god is strong enough
to overthrow the air—
for what we don't deserve
is goatsbeard fluff,
and every ill we plant
will wind up in our pot.
Too late for me to grin,
but I will bear my fate
as stoically as anybody can
who brings disaster
on himself.
A bear's assault?—
I never flinch.
A storm at sea?—
don't give an inch.
A stronger warrior's blade?—
the very reason
fortitude was made!
But blind stupidity?
I want to weep.
Exhortation - Muse's Advisory, March 12 – Cockatoo to Zeus's Statue:
You turned to travertine
a scant three days ago—
already listen to the blather
leaking from your mind!
Zeus! Friend! Fellow traveler!
You're better than regret!
Who gives a shit if you can
move your arms or legs
or swing your dick or stiffen it
or eat or drink or even
curse or say hello
or scratch an itch
or smell a breeze
or read a book
or hold a hand
or do the slightest of those things
you used to do
that sang their siren melodies
into your youthful soul?
Who cares if you can't bear
the constant coat of grit
upon your teeth
or the sensation
that you have to crap
but lack a hole to let it out?
Does any of that matter?
Do gods need faculties
of sight, touch, taste or smell?
What do you have to hear
you haven't heard before?
Are you not fundamentally
impassive, immaterial, free?
Pak, this is an opportunity.
A God's Best Friend - Muse's Advisory, March 13 – Cockatoo/Zeus:
“Don't say,
This isn't me.
The you
you used to be,
I miss him too,
but he,
like most of us,
could be improved.
I see this, Zeus,
more as a stimulus
to underplay
the deity who
rules from faraway
for one who does
what gods do
surreptitiously.”
“Bird, I appreciate
the optimism but
you're talking through
your pitiably flat
white hat!
What can I do?—
telepathy with you
is the extent of it.
Zeus,
Raconteur of Cockatoos!
Past that,
I'm a just another statue
to afford you footing
while you shit.
All things must end:
I'm more loath
to wane than quit.”
“Enough of that!
After you pulled me tattered
from the lava ash
and I refused
to look you in the eye
do you remember
what you said?
Where's your gumption, burung?
Everyone else is dead.
The same applies right now.
Do you think Phaistos has it in him
to pick up where you left off?
Yeshua? Or his mother?
Hera?
Who?
The universe is cyclical:
expands,
contracts back in upon itself,
and then expands again
with more force than before.
You may not have the reach
you did,
but you are still your family's
polestar, birr, and emperor.
Just look at Miriam's eye:
it says, Be strong.
You two have made it—
what, 2000 years so far?
No way she's going to let
you pull the plug.
Brain-Storm - Muse's Advisory, March 14 – Yeshua:
“I'm back!” I call,
and run into an empty cave,
a bloodied wall.
“Downstairs!” I hear Mom yell.
I find her straining cooking oil
while Hephaistos dabs
and doodles at a statue of Dad,
and the bird sits on a lampstand
looking stricken
and sick
as if hit on the head
by a brick.
My appearances went well—
not Oscar-caliber like hers,
but hardly duds.
The notices all praised
my posture, radiance and gravity.
They loved my dress,
and definitely want me back.
Dad's tickled, I can tell.
Although he's stone and blind,
he's proud and says so
without saying it out-loud.
It's like I read his mind.
Mom is a different story, though:
suspicious and unmoved,
too pained to smile, she says,
“This musht, boys, is delicious.
Do you know
it was your father's favorite?”
Phaistos's envy shows.
He won't return my greeting.
Our dad wanted me to be
the face he shows the human race
and I see why:
Half-Brother is ugly as sin.
“Shut up!” mutters the bird.
“St. Paul!” she scolds.
“Ma, he's a cockatoo," I say. "Words
just careen out of his mouth.”
“I'm not so sure.
Your father swore he was intelligent.”
“He swore a lot of things,” I say.
“What do you mean?” She sets her jaw
and Phaistos turns around to watch.
“I mean he lied," I say. "A lot.
He tricked us all, often as not.”
“Don't be fresh.
Where's the cheesecloth
to cover the fish?”
“Pourquoi la soudaine volte-face, maman?
Last week, you hated the old goat!
First you assault him, then defend him?”
“He isn't dead,” Hephaistos pleads.
“Look at the lifelike wrists—”
“No! Right! Immortal! I forgot!" I scoff.
"He'll live forever, just as long
as we can shield him from the acid rain.”
“Fuck!” squawks the cockatoo.
“Don't you boys see?” Mom says.
“He's still at work with his old magic!
Don't sell him short, Yeshua.
He's still all up inside your head.”
“Fuck!” crows the bird.
“He wants us to expand!” Hephaestos cries.
“Infinity! Beyond.”
“Whoa, Demi-Bro!” I say.
“Now where is that all coming from?”
“I had a brain-storm,” he explains.
“The Trinity.”
Hephaistos, “Crèche” (c. 13th century, oil on copper) - Muse's Advisory,
March 15 – Thalia:
The shepherds and the vagabonds that Yusef chased away
did not go far: they stand outside the shuttered windows
and lean forward surreptitiously to try and steal a peek.
Above the newborn, Yusef holds a white bird like a lantern
while the radiant mother in her own daze counts the fingers,
toes, and then inspects the partially descended genitals.
Above them all, barely distinct, as if an astral constellation,
Zeus looks down, both kindly and protective, pleased.
“He forgot my crest,” the cockatoo complains.
“What crest?” Zeus telepaths. “These days, it's more like a beret.
He did you a favor stripping the whole disgusting thing away.”
“I look like I'm a fucking dove.”
“Mom, you're pinching my dick?” Yeshua says.
“It's not like you had any plans to use it,” Miriam replies.
“I think I got my beard just right,” Hephaistos says,
holding the glistening painting to the candlelight.
“Yeah, you look like Charlton Fucking Heston,”
says Yeshua.
“Boys! The painting's beautiful! Look at the love,
the way it shapes my face!” coos Miriam.
“Sons. Miriam. Saint Paul,” Zeus beams.
“You've all done well. Three is the magic number,
you were right, Hephaistos! And a stroke of genius,
setting it dead in the heart of the night!
Now before we put this out there on the market,
are we all pulling the same oar? Is everyone content?
I don't want what happened both to Caesar
and Octavian's triumvirates to happen here, again.”
“Pak,” Saint Paul warns. “They aren't saints,
this woman and these sons of yours. Don't paint
them in a light that's unrealistic. They will fight!
The pecking order always is contentious:
popinjays like young Yeshua aren't conscientious
about tolerating others in the limelight.
He'll try to nudge you out; his mother out;
he'll never give Yusef the time of day.
He'll make me out to be an afterthought.
The only ace I hold is to control which apparitions
get my demiurgic imprimatur and which not.
Put me in charge of policy and doctrine, Pak.”
“Zeus,” Miriam prays. “I think we got it right—
one team again, all on the winning side.
Oh, I can't wait to see Muhammad's face
when he finds out he's been betrayed!”
“C'est l'amour, la guerre et la religion,” Zeus thinks.
“Yeshua, fine, you be the public face,” Hephaistos says,
“as long as I get all the work this thing is bound to generate!
Believers will need lifesize icons they can venerate.
Add on: novena cards and rosaries, Miraculous Medals,
missals, hymnals, scapulas, cute little Hummels for their
3-D crèches, relic cases...Oh, I have 101 ideas!”
“Brother,” Yeshua agrees, “let's practice love thy neighbor,
strength in numbers, division of labor, to the victors go the spoils!
Let the world rejoice: Zeus, Primate of the Pantheon,
the Pagan Patriarch, is dead! Long live the real god, Deus!
Down with Allah! Down with anybody daring to gainsay us!”
crèche ii - muse's advisory, march 16 – euterpe:
arms spread wide,
light from his palms
faintly illuminating sleeping miriam
on one side
and on the other
a disheveled dove
perched on an ass's head
the new father gazes down
upon the babe
and basks in his success.
above the humble shed
hovers a randy spook
with cock erect,
but he cannot get in,
the doorway barricaded
by three jinns
in purple turbans
and three shepherds
huddled glowering
in hoods
armed to the teeth
with sledge hammers
and skins of lemon juice.
the woman had been
torture to seduce.
she had an eye for foreigners.
it had been hard
to pry her loose
from the bewitchment
she was suffering
laid on her by
the arch-seducer zeus.
but yusef won.
he got her in his bed,
the child she bore
now his,
which makes him feel
ever so slightly like a god.
Avowals - Muse's Advisory, March 17 – Clio:
“Come ouuut!” hollers Khalid,
“in the name of Allaaah!
and his Prophet Muhaaammad!
If you do not surreeender!
you will be kiiilled!”
Fresh from victory in Persia,
the Prince of Islam stands
at the forefront of his troops
in the middle of the dump
of gnawed salami heels,
cheese rinds and olive pits,
and bellows up at the cave
first in Arabic, then Greek.
The echoes of his demands
drain into the copper sands
that stretch for miles around.
“I'll count to teeen!” he cries.
“Wahiiid! Ithnaaan! Thalathaaa!
Arba'aaa! Khamsaaa! Sittaaa!
Sab'aaa! Thamaniyaaa! Tis'aaa!
Ashraaa!!!”
He pauses, listens, then resumes.
“Énaaa! Dýooo! Tríaaa! Tésseraaa!
Pénteee! Éxiii! Eptáaa! Októoo!
Enniáaa! Dééék!—”
“Waiiit!” cries an unseen voice.
“Do not attaaack!
You've not thought throoough!
what you're about to dooo!
Your shouts strikes this rooock!
bending it ever so sliiightly!
and then echoing baaack!
They strike my fleeesh!
bending it ever so sliiightly!
as they pass throoough me!
An iota enters my eeear!
beats on my eardruuum!
and beats your thoooughts!
onto my braiiiin!
If you slay me you'll fiiind!
nothing inside my heeead!
except warm meeeat!
to keep the vultures feeed!”
Out staggers the old monk
still shrieking partly in Greek,
partly in Arabic, partly in Latin,
partly in some other tongue.
“My name is Euseeebius!
My God calls me Jerooome!
Why do you threateeen?
Bahira's former hooome?
His heresies are odiouuus!
but Jesus teaches uuus!
to practice charityyy!
not counting to threeee!
and launching attaaacks!”
“Jesus was riiight!”
Khalid shouts back.
“But he is deeead!
The being you call Deuuus!
is a deceptiooon!
The only God is Allaaah!”
“I'm getting hoooarse!
Can't we sit dooown!
and dispute over wiiine?
You must be dryyy!
Come up and shaaare!
the drop that's miiine!”
“Where is Bahiiira?” roars Khalid.
Where are his scrooolls?
Where's his Greek frieeend?
who used to drink with hiiim?”
“Long gonnne!
Long deeead!
I haven't seen nor heeeard!
from them in yeeears!
Forgive meee!
I'm not doing well myseeelf!”
“We are teetotalers by laaaw!”
Khalid shouts back.
“But we are coming uuup!
to search the caaave!
We beg you to submiiit!
and spare your liiife!”
“Too late for thaaat!
But come and seeee!
blind crickets eating maaanna!
from the tomb baaats!”
The general flicks his hand
and twenty riders slip down
from their mounts
and clamber up the rock.
Jerome totters forward
to greet them with a kiss
but finds no other cheek.
Proposal - Muse's Advisory, March 18 – Zeus Statue to Miriam:
No hard feelings.
Our war rocked!
My whole body is a hard-on
just remembering it.
That's what Hera never understood:
if you don't stand up
and insist you're my equal,
you're not.
She could whine, she could mock,
but she always fell short.
I'm hatching a new plot.
You want in?
Your old god—Yahweh, Elohim?
He never had a dick or eyes to lose,
so let's make him Yeshua's dad.
He's incorporeal—up in the sky—
and you'll get elevated too:
from foolish girl who fell for the wrong guy
to perfect virgin, ever wise.
Play it all to the hilt—
the holier you seem,
the greater your adherents' guilt.
We've got to do something
to maintain the upper hand
now that my thunder's gone—
some new way to make them tremble.
A fingertip dipped in wine
is better than an empty thimble.
A Canvas of Rembrandt's - Muse's Advisory, March 19 – Euterpe:
When he was young
and flaxen-haired in Leyden,
he had a fantasy of being
Christ Preaching
(c. 1643-49, etching,
drypoint and burin
on cream-colored
Japanese wove paper)
and living in the Frick.
But how self-indulgent
was that? Hadn't Father
frequently scoffed
at Hoogstraten's
Death of a Virgin
(c. 1645-50, pen
and brown ink
with brown wash
and additions of red
and black chalk
and four framing lines
in pen and brown ink)?
So now, something
simpler suited him more.
Self-Portrait
(1658, oil on canvas)
was enough of a dream
on which to build, as
Father taught him,
brick by brick,
an image of himself
that wouldn't crack
from the weight of its
own pomposity.
“Why self-portrait?”
his future wife would ask,
and his reply was,
“Who else am I fit
to take to task?”
Then, she eyed him
more appraisingly,
saw exactly whom
she'd be getting,
and said yes.
La Musa Modesta - Muse's Advisory, March 20 – Polimnia to Miriam:
Scusa, madonna,
but what's wrong with self-restraint?
Youngest of nine,
I watched the older girls
burn candles at both ends.
Then my boy Orpheus—
a man/god like your own,
and visitor to Tartaros—
he lived life “to the hilt,”
grew up a song-and-dance man
limb by limb destroyed
by lustful women in retaliation
for sexual experimentation.
So forgive me if I'm meditative,
incline toward modest dresses,
and hold a finger to my mouth,
as Nonnus wrote,
a tranquil presence
speaking only with her hands
in fruitful silence.
I'm not a virgin nor a puritan—
my fruitful fling
with Thrace's king attests to that.*
* I know, most poets say Calliope bore Orpheus.
They scribble what they want; we can't correct a thing.
Only one unknown scholasticus in Egypt got it right.
But my experience
suggests much more
to love than raising hell.
Paean, Interrupted - March 21 – St. John the Cockatoo/Statue of Zeus:
“Hephaistos's dad! Yeshua's dad! Sire of Muses!
You are the love of Maid Miriam's life!
You pulled me from the ash and gave me life again!
You continue to produce the world we mortals live in
at a rate nobody else is ever going to duplicate!
You—“
“—Bird, enough!
If I had left you there
on Gamalama's slope,
today you'd just be tuff.
So don't repay my kindness
with such stupid fluff.
You with your pea-sized brain
urge me to smile,
though my fiercest
adversary now is acid rain?
I don't want to sound harsh—
but blow it out your ass.
Don't be a parker.
Stick to what you know:
Paulie want a cracker?
Oh, don't get your feathers in a twist!
That is not racist!
What's to stereotype in parrots?
There's more complexity in carrots.
“I'm sorry, okay?
Everything you said was true;
I just don't want to hear it.
Creating stuff for everybody else to do
while hanging around like a ghost
getting whatever kicks I can
from watching—shit,
the only thing I can't create or even fix
is myself.
So What? - March 22 – Cockatoo to Zeus Statue:
What a pill you are!
Not changed a bit!
When your butt was flesh,
the only thing you did on it
was grace a granite bench
and watch your plots unfold.
Now that your ass is cold
and hard itself
you're all bent out of shape
that you can't serra-dance?
So what?
I'm just a cockatoo.
My job description's brief:
speak truth to power
even if it's just Shut up or Fuck.
So suck it up!
If that's too blunt,
then fine, I'll leave you
here to mourn the tactile,
wallowing in anesthesia,
and I'll lop off
on my one good zygodactyl
back to Indonesia.
Oooooooh!
Is that furtive tension
I feel rising in my belly
early warning
of your death-ray swelling?
It burst the vial
sconced in Miriam's veil—
and now mine's bulging too!
Oh, Zeus! The things that you can do!
If only you could conjure me
a cockatooess now!
Who ever told you
you're omnipotent?
How did they know?
Each babe in arm's all-powerful
until it grows a little bit
and learns it's not.
A grain of salt's omnipotent—
a rock,
as long as all it wants to do
is sit and feel the fluctuations
of its temperature.
So what?
Night Off - Muse's Advisory, March 23 – Euterpe to Tom:
Let's take the night off,
put a classic movie on.
That's half the point
of being in a guild.
How could a bowl of warm
caramel popcorn not help—
of course the Muse's kiss
can take the form of food.
Nothing gets done if the roof
is sagging worse than usual.
There's a genre:
the protagonist becomes
a quadriplegic halfway
through the story
and the other characters
gossip, lament,
argue, remember
and fight to divvy up
what's left.
I'm not saying that's what
we'll do. I'm just saying—
Toss me one, too, will you?—
Life goes on.
Hell, Milton's splinter group
of fallen angels
is already in worse shape
before the curtain lifts its lip.
Plea - Muse's Advisory, March 24 – Amelia Earhart:
Southeast breezes
off the Sea of Crete
allege the hand
that placed us here
is never coming back
insist things
never were as simple
as a world that's round
or any god who knows
what he is doing now
or back when legs
first sprouted feet.
The Brits attack
the Dardanelles by sea
Turk fishing boats
school north
to join the fight
and cats smell
battle too
in heat
their near-clairvoyant
irises burn bright
claws sharpened
on the brutish pine.
I've always been
the girl in brown
who stood alone
now four guys
know they're not
my cup of tea
but still they wait
for me
to cook their meals.
Zeus! Miriam!
Why can't we three
head north to war
like Hemingway
Dos Passos
Cummings
no one cooking
but to roast
on spits
the game we took
and boil morning coffee
in a tin pot?
I was first to fly
the ocean twice
to pilot solo
east
from Honolulu
south from L.A.
to Tenochtitlán
to Newark
and there's still
a lot I want to do
and be
after we chase
the Turks
from Istanbul.
Yew - Muse's Advisory, March 25 - The English Flyboy:
No older wood
nor older friend nor enemy
than spearhead made of yew
unearthed from half a million years ago.
No denser shade than
where the Eburones' hero Catuvolcus
took his leave
instead of bowing low to Rome.
No sweeter fruit in England,
custard luring thrush and waxwing
to be messengers of bitter seed
its venom rich enough drop a horse
but tit and hawfinch both withstand.
What green more poisonous
than love of native land!—
a muscle trembling, a staggered gait,
convulsion, labored breath,
a quailing heart, then mercifully death?
My longbow!
Bolingbroke and Longshanks
summoned staves from all the world
for armorers to shave—or Wordsworth
...ere they marched
To Scotland's heaths; or those that crossed the sea
And drew their sounding bows at Azincour,
Perhaps at earlier Crecy, or Poictiers...
No laburnum, ash nor hazel
furnished Beowulf his shield;
nor shielded Tennyson's beloved
cradling his death-struck head;
nor lent vile Voldemort his wand.
Do pyres of black smoke
and young Fifers' Pictish cries
drift southward on the wind
that gales from Dardanos?
God! Zeus! how can the ears
you laid aside on Crete
wherever buried, fail to hear
this frothing lust of veins
to fly immediately north
and bathe in gore?
I curse this exile thrice!—
once, failed to land
our passenger in France
but waylaid in the fog
by hand of God
or flaw of steel;
once, lost Lavonne
and hope of wedding night
her wheaten face
reconjured by the waif
from Kansas left here too
who bakes my bread;
and now, too far in time
and place and too perplexed
to charge into the fight
yet poisoned by a patriotic
blood continuing as if
from a previous life.
The Mid-Life Blues - Muse's Advisory, March 26 – Glenn Miller:
I have nothing but good
to say of my “band” of companions:
no one wants to be here
but we do our best
to keep each other's spirits up.
I don't pretend to know
what disappointing God
or faulty Wheel of Life
installed us here
rustic Ephesians
after four decades spent
in recent lands and times
but if we get our hands on It or Him
we'll separate limb from limb
re-grease the moving parts
and hope for better results.
We're Christians!
This is not supposed to happen.
Even if we were Hindus
this is not supposed to happen.
I've half a mind
to climb back down this hill
and try to swim
to someplace civilized, at least—
what century, who cares?
Who can't use a trombonist?
What stays me—stays us—
is the hope that the Deus
who parked us here will
put us back inside our planes
if we stay put
and don't make any fuss.
Amelia and I are both
part American Krauts
both part grew up in Iowa
and totally love steel.
We know what's magic
and what's real.
Look at her across the way
petting those feral cats
sipping the spring as tenderly
as if she were at home
after twelve years away.
When my band and I last played—
Passaic, in Jersey—if I'd known
what was going to happen
I'd also have also kissed
the ground that lovingly.
The other boys, a virtual U.N.—
Brit, Yank, Canadian—
are doing well: found wine
and one of them had cards
inside his flysuit pocket.
I should be happiest:
I have my horn.
But it seems otherwise.
The more I play
the more forlorn I get.
Where is the goddam muse?
I think I'm sick of music
truth be told;
plus, it was mainly
the arrangements that I loved
not blowing solo.
I'm not too old
to till new interests—
cave paleologist,
vintner?
It all just makes me want to weep.
I'm not a soft man, everybody knows
but there's a part of me that's sick
from lack of inspiration.
That's why I vanished in thin air
I think;
it was my own lack of vitality.
Dammit! No One Here Even Remembers What This Kind of Poem is
Called!! - Muse's Advisory, March 27 – Fred Noonan:
I died so many times.
I take a lot of pride.
I navigated sea and sky.
When I was 4 my father
died. I fled dry land.
I died so many times.
I played the bridesmaid
several times before.
I navigated sea and sky.
Amelia courted me to fly.
We couldn't find our isle.
I died so many times.
The sextant doesn't lie.
We overflew our mark.
I navigated sea and sky.
She always meets my eye.
She never hurts my pride.
I died so many times.
I navigated sea and sky.
Götterdämmerung - Muse's Advisory, March 28 – Hitler to Braun:
Tonight, we entertain.
Call up my vilifiers' fetches:
let Elli come to grapple me,
Thokk who refused to weep,
and Gunnlöd singing
her intoxicating lines
to ruddy soldiers in the halls of Hel;
Gullveig demands war
resurrect.
Christ's mother? No.
We serve no doctored wine;
and fairytales belong
in children's hands.
Where crouched that Virgin
when our breasts were bared
to iron blade and spear
and now lips part to kiss
each other and mortality
auf Wiedersehen?
Liebe Eva, geh mit mir.
The Bolsheviks march overhead!
Aren't there gods enough
to lay waste human life?
Is it time again, already,
for Pandora to give birth?
Thor strikes the tallest tree:
I'll garner notice there
and catch the eye of souls
with real authority.
They'll grant me audience.
This world is tiered.
The level I was born to
I have filled with blood
and care not if it lifts me up
or is the buxom flood
in which I sink: escape,
at last, the petty race I scorn,
which takes me for a miscreant.
I demand to meet the gods!
Demand to hear their guten Tag
and watch them kiss your hand
and tell me to my face
if I have measured up or not.
I crave the judgment of my peers
whoever they are,
wherever they hide,
whatever they account.
Auspices - Muse's Advisory, March 29 – Urania:
1,380,000 footsteps left
until the Muse On Duty
tips her cup
onto your ear's dry lip—
more than halfway there
and time you understood
the never finished works
we feed you as you wait
were undermined by
inspirations lacking legs.
That seagull-clouded landfill
in the distance
steaming verse
whose inspiration
wasn't any good at all.
Cynics cite
the million-year-old chimp
who idly pokes its hairy index
at a keyboard
to imply that it's all hit and miss—
The Muse Unmasked!
The perspiration is the inspiration.
Placebos are good medicine.
We can't prove causality
but the statistics show
inspired people do more,
and produce a higher quality,
than uninspired people
in control groups
equally intelligent
and senior in their fields.
Thomas Alva Edison
conceived his bright idea
inside a fortune cookie,
“In the falcon's hood—”
no, I can't even reveal it,
it was just too inane!
Maybe it's just the chatter
on the line, some substance
in the air of this terrain,
or the accumulation
of desire as you wait a year,
or the humidity of the divine
on fervent ears—
but if our methods are arcane,
don't call us quacks.
At very least
you have to pay your dues
before your name
is entered in the guild.
Some think Soupault or Breton's
automatic writing is
sans inspiration;
or Wordsworth's. Strict codes
of confidentiality forbid
confirming or denying,
but a lot of poems are penned
sans muse,
and some of them admired.
Still, you'd be a fool to
discount countless
authors' testimonials
and claim our role
is only ceremonial—
an allegory.
Homer, Shakespeare, Milton cite us.
Though not every hint
becomes a work of art;
though no Queen of Verse
has ever stooped to knight us;
like Anne Killigrew, we're not in it
for the glory.
No Love of Gold shall share with thee my Heart,
Or yet Ambition in my Brest have Part.
Okay.
Just want to say
we love the way
you scent the gin
and gild the grime
with all that literary
hocus-pocus.
And one soupçon of advice: we
think such magnum opus
needs more discipline,
a touch less rhyme.
It's getting a bit dicey,
almost Tom & Jerry.
A Holiday? - Muse's Advisory, March 30 – Miriam to Zeus Statue:
All I wanted was a bit of adventure—
you, nobody saying
what you could or couldn't do.
We got ourselves so tangled up!
Can't Artemis shoot arrows for herself?
Can't my son—God, they say—stand
on his own two feet without my help?
I miss our quiet days on Mount Koressos.
I guess that means I'm middle-aged.
I want to lay strife down
and take up watercolors, basketry.
And you?
Was our last war enough?
I'm told of countless poets lined up
on a vast field
at your daughters' place in Attica.
Homer used them. You like him.
Sappho thanked them;
Catullus loved them;
Dante called them geniuses;
Chaucer adored the way they rhymed;
and Milton praised them to the skies.
Do you imagine that they'd welcome us?
They don't have kids for us to spoil
but maybe it would be a plum
for them if rumors swept the queue
that someone sighted me or you:
the literary set
sets great store in motifs.
We could maybe even
stop at Delphi on the way.
Zeus, could we?
Do you know I've never been?
I bet they'd love to get to know you now
after millennia of Where's my dad?
And they'll warm up to me eventually
if Memory allows.
She couldn't hold a grudge this long—
could she?
Don't say no,
just promise that you'll think about it.
Will you?
Let's celebrate what we've survived.
To kill you would have killed me too.
I don't know what was going through my head
and calling out my claws.
What was that term you used—
the crocodile brain?
Maternal instinct run amok?
Or maybe menopause?
I'll ask Hephaistos if he'll fit a donkey cart for you.
We'll fill it up with sour-cracked grain
and agnus-castus berries for St. Paul—
I'm hoping that the girls won't mind,
or be embarrassed by, the cockatoo.
That Fuck of his is not exactly classical
but then again
maybe it's time
for poetry to change.
Disneyland Yes—Visit the Relatives No. - Muse's Advisory, March 31 –
Zeus Statue to Miriam:
Easy for you to say:
to you,
nine lovely women
you can get to know.
But me?
How do I face them now
after 3000 years
of not a word?
Mickey Rourke in the The Wrestler,
broke-down,
looking for an old man's ease–
even more pathetic
without the long blonde hair?
As a fly on the wall of their shrine,
I would go in a snap.
But waltz in now
as if I brought some kind of blessing?
I don't have that kind of spine.
I love the donkey-cart idea, though.
I would love to go see Delphi, show
you one or two of my old haunts.
Maybe St. Paul
could even pick up a new oath!
But will the ire petrified
in these great limbs stay dormant?
Am I caponized
enough for lax retirement?
I'll give Hephaistos specs
for the construction
of a nut-spoked ark,
but guarantee
a placid family trip I can't.
A Leica on my neck,
an “I Love Greek Gods” tee-shirt
on my back, and tickets
to my own theme park
is too naive, too modernist.
Then on to Helicon?
I doubt it. My girls nine thrived
without me all these years.
Whatever scars
their fatherlessness
etched into their psyches
are faits accomplis.
The Stepson's Objection - Muse's Advisory, April 1 – Yeshua to Miriam:
We haven’t talked a lot.
I've been about My Father's business.
You've been busy with it too, I hear.
Ironic that our paths so rarely cross.
Let's have a little tête-à-tête.
Phaistos told me what you're cooking up.
The answer's Absolutely not.
How do you think it looks?
I'm sleeping in a different bed each night,
busting my butt to get the new Church set,
while you're out trekking
with the old god and his cockatoo
in some old donkeycart?
You must know you're a biggish part
of Christianity yourself.
There are more heresies concerned with you
than I have people working day and night
to stamp them out.
Ma, you're a virgin, for Christ's sake!
That gospel has already gone to press,
and frankly it's the most beloved part.
It was a one-time thing with Elohim—
a spirit thing inspired my birth.
If you and Zeus play house
here in an isolated cave on Crete,
I could care less.
But pilgrimage to Greece?
I'd be a laughingstock.
Dressing Down - Muse's Advisory, April 2 - Miriam:
Yeshua, son, I get your gist.
A woman, mongoloid dove
and marble statue in a donkeycart
attract attention, yes.
But why should anybody link us
to your Church?
The roads these days are jammed
with every kind of muttering apostle
underneath the sun.
We'll leave our Let Your Light Shine
tee-shirts home.
It's a vacation, not a pilgrimage.
When Yusuf took us down to Egypt
no one cried,
The Holy Family's come
to seek Ra's blessing!
I've always done my part
to help your Church,
and so has Zeus.
But that's not all of who we are.
Are you aware how much
it pains him
to no longer walk the earth?
Have you so much as once
cried Éphphatha!,
or drawn one incantation
with your spittle in the dirt?
The fine points of theology
I leave to you,
but don't scold me, young man!
I don't care who you think you are,
you weren't raised
to tell your elders what to do.
The bird and Zeus and I embark
for Delphi when the sun comes up.
Go show your Sacred Heart
to Polish nuns,
go shop in Paris
for albumin hair-conditioner
to make your golden halo
more conspicuous.
The vanity you get from Zeus,
the restlessness from me,
the righteousness sui generis.
At the Delphi Inn - Muse's Advisory, April 3 – Thalia:
“Fuck!” squawks St. Paul.
“He'll have a child and offer hair!” the hostler warns.
“The gods always forgive what we can't control!”
“The ferry hay was rancid.
Is there something fresh
to give the donkey?” Miriam asks.
“Garlands from the wild olive tree be-scarved
with spider webs and money threaten Sparta!”
“Please leave the marble god
unwrapped, as is.”
“One road fork leads to freedom's house,
and the second straight to slavery's shed!”
“Good then, thank you.
And goodnight.
I'll take the bird inside with me.”
.
“An eagle's beak will point the way! A crow
will show you all around! Wild goats will lead!
Go where the fish command, the wild boar feeds!
White ravens perch and cattle lie to sleep!”
She goes inside and registers
"María, Cnossos."
“Seek to find a place to lie!" the innwife says.
"Above all, know thyself! A Syrian's inspired,
tells amusing tales, but the Phoenician's wise!
He can assume the color of the dead!
Beware the man with just one sandal!
Embrace the top and reap the middle!”
“Fuck!” squawks the bird.
“He's just repeating
what he heard somewhere,”
says Miriam.
"The blasphemer will perish by a dead man's hand!
The god's not here! He went to build another inn
where he was bitten as a young boy by a gull.
They never say goodnight who sleep most sound!"
“Is there perhaps
a loaf of bread to eat?”
“Receive the yearling goat in place of Israel's son!
Don't ever hurry love! Green youth is best invisible!”
Out in the shed, the hostler
picks the wrapping off the marble's head,
sees Zeus's angry face awake,
and flees into the night.
A starving bitch slips in
and chews the linen
off the statue's base,
then starts to lick its toes.
The donkey takes another bite
of apricot-sweet Phocian hay
and backs away.
The horses in the rear stalls
start to neigh.
An Incident that Reached the Ear of the Stratego - Muse's Advisory,
April 4 – Urania:
Miriam lay and rested.
The once white-crested
bird slept, one eye cocked
on the one-sandaled man;
Syrian and Phoenician slept;
the innwife wept,
her husband gone;
and the hostler crept
back to the haunted shed
a moment before dawn.
“Cockadoodleduh,”
croaked a traumatized cock
as the cook unlatched the coop
for eggs, to find smashed shells,
clear goo, gold yolk, scattered
feathers and crushed bones.
She shrieked; the donkey brayed;
and everybody woke.
The marble Zeus is gone,
its tattered shroud discarded!
The innwife and hostler
lay hands on Miriam and shake her.
“Fuck!” shrieks the bird.
Guests scurry to the shed
to get their mounts;
but they're gone too.
The innwife's wagon, gone.
The cook spits onto Miriam's face,
seizes the cockatoo,
and locks it in an empty
brooding cage.
A rider gallops up and screams,
“A giant in a chariot
harries the hillside near the ruins,
burying thunderbolts
in all the sacred oaks!”
“Go wake the priest!”
the innwife cries. "Tell him
we've got the gypsy witch
who is responsible!”
“Fuck!” shrieks the cockatoo
out in the coop.
“Somebody kill that bird!”
the cook demands,
and the hostler takes the cleaver
off the butcher block
and goes to do it.
When he steps outside the door,
the first ray of the sun
breaks through the trees
to strike his head
and knock him to his knees.
“Please call him back!” pleads Miriam.
“Set free the bird! He's Zeus's friend
and anyone who threatens him
will meet a catastrophic end!”
At Zeus's name, the inn staff stops
right where they are,
their mouths a-gape.
Hadn't the last Pythia predicted
his return
and warned the Christian bishop
on the pains of hell
to leave the shrine itself intact–
and hadn't he obeyed?
The Phoenician walks into the inn
and sets the cockatoo
back on its bedpost perch.
The Syrian leads the donkey out
onto the road, unhurt.
The horseman gallops back
with a beardless curate
cantering behind, so filled with fear,
his eyes are red and lips are white.
They see one sandal beneath a shrub.
Ten feet above,
one good foot and one bad
sway from a high mimosa branch.
The priest dismounts,
makes a sign of the cross.
The rider gallops back to town
in terror of his life.
Amidst the shock and tears,
the sun's face finally
tops the trees.
A Long Thoughtful Chew - Muse's Advisory, April 5 – The Donkey:
They call me Miriam's donkey,
but I was never her donkey.
I brought supplies to Phaistos
in his cave and in exchange
he made humane headcollars
that I brought to the valley.
When he asked me if I wanted
to pull Zeus's cart to Delphi,
I thought, Why not? How many
travel shots do donkeys get?
Don't talk to me about the bird:
Fuck! Fuck! He gives all animals
a bad name. I hauled his feed,
and he contributes what? Zero.
But the woman isn't bad at all.
Most women believe donkeys
should work all day like they do,
but this Miriam is pretty gentle—
once, rode a donkey all the way
from the Jordan to the Nile.
The trip by sea was terrible.
I can say I did it now, but won't
recommend it. First: seasick.
The hay onboard was pretty foul.
Then: the stall they rigged for me
rubbed bald spots on the sides
of my belly. Greece itself is a lot
like home, only more crammed
with roads, people and carts—
and some very fancy chariots,
if you can stomach the arrogance
of horses. Before Zeus went on
his rampage on Mount Parnassus,
he took the horses from their stalls
to hitch them to an old wagon.
One snorted about how she was
a Phoenician and so couldn't be
paired with an Arabian—or, God
forbid, the lame man's mule!—
so would Zeus please match her
with the innwife's own hipparion?
It hurt me that Zeus didn't look
at me but harnessed the others
and hurried up the still-dark road.
How much faster is an mule than
a reliable donkey who's proven
himself already over a long trip?
Maybe that's why we're not
tapped for gods: we don't think
the way gods think. Still, which
tribe has ever given us a chance?
Most likely he left me behind to
continue to pull the cart for Miriam.
But why, when it has no freight,
with him up on the mountainside
splintering centuries-old trees?
If he worried about her getaway,
he should have left the Arabian.
I don't know. I don't overthink
this kind of thing, but I was hurt,
and it surely wasn't the first time.
The Courageous Priest - Muse's Advisory, April 6 – Terpsichore:
The accounting consisted of
1 cock
7 chickens
5 eggs
1 mule
3 ponies
1 wagon
1 night's roof.
In payment the innwife took
1 cart
1 Cretan donkey
1 torn shroud
1 purse
with 4 solidi
and sent Miriam packing
with the cockatoo.
Soldiers were dispatched
to the fiery mountainside
to see what they could do
about rampaging Zeus
but nobody expected much.
Old tales died slow
and everyone knew
you stayed behind closed doors
with fingers crossed
and prayed he wouldn't
come for you.
The priest did a curious thing.
A beldam
just beyond the village edge
was rumored
7th heiress to the Pythia:
he packed
a basketful of fragrant bread
and clearest, rosy breakfast wine
and went to visit her.
Magissa waited in her yard,
a shawl about her shoulders
to the cold.
He smiled, introduced himself,
gave her his gifts
and asked, What should I do?
She said, Return the ass to her.
He said, I will.
She said, Return the cart and coins.
And he said, I will.
She said, Give Zeus his choice
of the three horses and the mule.
He said, I will.
She said, Escort me to the shrine
and let me answer
what he came to ask.
He said, I will.
There was no time to waste.
The lightning-cracks were blasting
every oaktree on the mountain
into ash.
Black smoke rolled up
like a volcano in eruption
but the priest arranged the hag
before him on his horse
and rode right toward it.
He had gumption.
Don't worry about me! she cried
into his ear. No Pythia can die
unless she's named an heir–
which I have not!
So fly, papás! Fly, fly!
Zeus at Delphi - Muse's Advisory, April 7 – Calliope:
Miriam climbs too, on foot,
the white bird on her shoulder
cursing at the thick soot
and bright-shooting cambered embers
that remind them both
of things they'd rather not remember.
In the swirling smoke
she glimpses Zeus's makeshift chariot careen,
a basilisk's forked fire darting from his brow
and dark steam rolling off his bright chimeric hair.
"Look!" she exclaims. "Look there!"
The priest and gorgon gallop his swift chestnut
over hellish coals, straight for the ruins
where clairvoyant oracles of old
uplifted supplicants and cast down kings
in runic verse—
"Ye poets listening to my advice," derisive Clio interrupts,
"don't ever underestimate the great authority of tripe!"
—amidst charred weeds, stavesacre, fallen poppies,
the Ionian columns, weeping cypress,
half an amphitheater, half a racetrack,
less still of a temple; but intact,
the great rock where each Pythia, before and since
the shrine was sacked, rose to recite!
The ancient Magissa knows to stand erect,
her shoulder-blades tucked in
and arms spread to enun ciate, project—
she knows the protocols,
she knows her strength,
she sets her gaze on him—
and in an instant, Zeus,
now quieted,
attends.
“It is the seventh day of Bysios.
If you have business with the oracle,
then state your name! Why have you
come? What do you bring to us?”
“Great Pythia,” Zeus speaks,
“the adyton, Apollo's tripod
where your predecessors sat,
was almost ripped in twain
when my son Hercules had
mind to steal it. It was I who
intervened between the two:
you know already who I am,
though why I've come is not
so easy to divine. My gifts?
Three weary, foam-flecked
horses, an exhausted mule.”
“Propose your question, Zeus.”
“It is the same as asked you by the priest
whose courage brought you here:
What should I do?
The world has changed, as you well know,
the place for gods and oracles alike
abandoned, ransacked then
for blocks of stone and bricks.
Even the mountain peaks,
once curtained from the eyes
of beasts by hurricanes and frozen snow,
are thawed and tamed; there's even talk
men want to ski on them!
What place is left for dinosaurs
like me to hide, if not to reign?
What occupation for the god
who made a race that finds him
antiquated, an embarrassment?”
While the Pythia sought her pronouncement,
Miriam drew nearer with the bird,
and for the first time since his cleaving by the ax,
St. Paul took wing, although unprettily,
and flittered to the sky-god's shoulder
where he gave his earlobe an affectionate nip.
The Pythia sang:
"The self-pitying God must put two Asses
To the Cart he brought; must take a Virgin
Back to Crete; let him who has no Heart
Cause Harm no more; be always Stone!"
Zeus thought about it:
splitting her wrinkled face in two
with a razor-sharp lightningbolt,
then lifting the offending boulder up
to drop upon her scrawny little spine;
but, simultaneous, he knew
she had not named her heir
and so his effort would have been in vain:
she would survive.
And Miriam was watching;
and the cockatoo.
And even if he gave vent to his rage,
he still had no idea what he should do.
So he did something no one ever,
ever would have guessed:
he nodded pointedly at Miriam,
and acquiesced.
Art - Muse's Advisory, April 8
– Zeus's Statue:
She didn't say
I couldn't reinvent myself.
I don't take “be stone”
as literal. It means be cool;
be smooth; don't let things
get to you; be elegant,
and inspirational.
I get it. I can do that.
I just have to figure
out what kind of inspiration—
what my message is.
I've got technique;
I just need biz.
I've asked around
to learn about my brand.
What does it stand for?
What's it worth?
Scholars have said
I represent autocracy
and irresponsibility—
bad government.
Yet am I indisputably
the father of democracy?
To Cretans, I'm a boy
and definitely not
the God of Rules!
Perhaps the schoolkids
running up to rub
my marble penis
will be dragged away
envisioning ideals
more fun than prudery
and antiseptic cleanness.
Light's light,
as Joseph Campbell says.
The sun,
the thunderbolt,
the pearly sheen
of marble skin.
Why can't I exercise
my fullblown might
by standing here
in this museum?
I am omnipotent,
a master of disguise
who works in unseen
ways.
– Miriam's Statue:
I totally agree. I saw that
flock of chicks stream out
from their big yellow bus
and run to rub your cock
until the rooster caught up
and commanded them to stop.
I heard him joke,
If everybody rubs it
they will have to call him
Zeusa—and that goes
for sinful boys who hold
their penises as toys.
We try our best
to teach the human race
some common sense
but those with any brains at all
don't listen
and the ones who do
just want to christen
everything that's any fun
a sin.
That's what they lost
in the translation
from Olympian
to Hebrew god.
Oh, what a grinch!
If Yahweh had an ass at all
I'd give it a good pinch!
Yeshua's a wet blanket too.
And what they've made of me.
Why can't we Christians be
a little less like Virgin Mary
and a little zestier
and more red-blooded,
more like Zorba's Bouboulina?
Fuck the meek!
Fuck the long-suffering wife!
No wonder they invented
the Arch-Fiend.
Somebody's got to represent
the 95% of life they spurn.
Let's put our heads
together—you,
me, and the cockatoo—
let's dedicate
ourselves to put the toot
back in Teutonic,
romance back in Rome,
juice back in Jews!
I'm sick and tired, myself,
of channeling some
spinsterish old muse.
At the Heraklion Archeological Museum on Xanthoudidou Street Muse's Advisory, April 9 – Zeus:
They say I'm Serapis disguised as Hades
posed beside three-headed Cerberus at heel
but any fool with eyes can tell
it's really me with a silly basket
balanced on my head, now St. Paul's nest.
I'm draped in robes and missing half an arm,
but a tall smooth staff
and thick-wooled beard
proclaim a comfort in my own physique
and doughty willfulness.
Miriam stands just past the electric socket
with something that looks like a sea scallop
fixed to top of her head—
ever comely, graceful,
but watch you don't get in the way
of that brick of a right hand!
Dr. Chiklis reconstructed us in too much haste.
She gazes away from me, looking embarrassed.
I did train the tri-celphalous mutt.
After killing its father, what else could I do?
I thought it fitting, then, to give it to my own son
for a pet, but Hades said, Little brother,
I'm going to make it a sentry instead.
I've always had a way
with what they call “dumb” animals.
What tames them quick: plain,
run-of-the-mill respect.
Emperor Frederick II and bodhisattva Guanyin
also kept white cockatoos, but tethered.
Regard binds me and mine together.
That they've mislabeled me—
and Miriam too, as Isis—
doesn't faze us in the least.
Better that way, really,
so His Grace the bishop doesn't feel
he has to break my limbs off
like he did last century,
then sink the pieces in the bay.
If Dr. Chiklis has to pay for divers one more time,
he's liable to just say To hell with archeology.
It's peaceful here, 1000 foreign visitors a week,
plus every school on Crete, on average, once a year.
Our statues aren't striking to the unassisted eye
but I can see our strategy is working
since His Grace comes once a month
and sits there on that bench mistrustfully, unsure.
Doubt crops up in his flock and something tells him
that it's me transmitting skepticism, like a router.
He's too old-school to guess my web's worldwide.
The energy I used to waste in bolts of lightning
now I put to better use securing
malleable young minds.
No, Eminence, not pedophile
like Plato, Aristotle, Socrates—
though you yourself bless dread-filled schoolboys
you've exhorted to their knees.
Miriam's torn about all this.
Infiltration—she shoots me daggers if I call it inspiration—
of children's intelligence strikes her as insidious.
She says it's less so if the influencer has a face
and children can at least evaluate the messenger.
I think the opposite:
face lends abusers more authority.
What I transmit are pure ideas
recipients are free to take or leave.
The Pope expounds...Mufti proclaims...High Priest decrees...
Zeus Thunderer offers his thoughts without moving his lips,
without leaning on clout.
Inside Palazzo Sisto V - Muse's Advisory, April 10 – Il Papa:
I'm the Pope, goddammit.
Wherever these subversive
ideas are emanating from,
put the kibosh on them!
Who do these rebels think
they are? Were they picked
by a conclave of old men?
Even own a tiara?
The special grace I have
enabling me and only me
to understand Luke 19:3—
a sine qua non, capisce?
Why aren't my eggs runny?
Didn't I ask for runny eggs?
Are runny eggs so difficult?
Take these back.
Review - Muse's Advisory, April 11 – Miriam's Statue:
Who are these busybodies who
won't let Yeshua rest?
I remember my first apparition,
John's brother James
in Zaragosa weeping.
He was so glad to see me.
He scolded,
"You sneak!
you're still alive!
A letter I got just last week
said they hid
you on Koressos
above Ephesus!"
Why was James in Iberia at all,
forlorn, alone, depressed?
Were there no tree-worshipers
any closer to home
for him to convert?
I said, "James, you're the apparition!
Get thee
back home to Galilee
where Herod Agrippa
longs to personally
claim thy head. Here's a wooden idol
of myself, and a jasper pillar,
to sell
for thy passage.
When ye arrive,
give Herod the idol and tell him
Miriam happily
offers her head
too."
Did a shortage of women
or of fish prevent them
from settling down as husbands
like their fathers had done?
Or were they simply on the run,
their zealotry strengthened
by the authorities' persecution?
I wish they'd just gone home
after the crucifixion,
after the resurrection,
after the coming
of the dove at pentecost, and said
"That's that. We're done."
Inspiration
comes
in
many
forms
so what's the need
to follow a star
too far
instead of sitting home
and opening a book of psalms?
That's why I frown:
such sturm and drang.
Diocletian persecutes Christians,
Constantine pagans,
Julian Christians,
Theodosius pagans.
One sect prays facing heavenward,
the other facing down.
Zeus's mission
is free thought.
Mine seems to be the kindly ear,
the blessed mother no one had.
Still, wouldn't supplicants
do better
with a fellow
sinner
steeped in flesh
and blood?
When an Aussie vicar asks what's in
the ancient goddess's hand,
the Irish docent tells him,
"I dunna know much
but it looks
like the rubber
armpit pillow of a crutch."
Under-Dogs - Muse's Advisory, April 12 – Statue of Cerberus:
Mind's made, not born:
unnatural Nurture dealt us
quirky Fate and numerals to
count our lucky stars.
The good news,
Dr. Chiklis didn't glue
a monkey shako or
a bird's-nest to our heads;
the bad, we sit at Zeus's feet
as if his hound.
But see our dripping jaws?
blood-blackened claws?
eyes bleached by Hate,
rolled back into our heads?
his right arm missing
from the elbow down?
Zeus tore our ears off
yet we venged the Murder
of our hundred-headed
father Typhon!
We burn as One
but sinned as Three,
a Trinity that celebrates
the masses here in Hell.
Face us. Left to right
our names are
Innocent III, Pol Pot
and Jesse James:
ecclesiastic, angel of equality,
executioner without portfolio.
Utility of Cerberus - Muse's Advisory, April 13 – Statue of Zeus to
Miriam:
Let the six-lipped cur
charge otherwise—
his father lies
beneath Mount Etna
quite alive,
though he once tore
the sinews off my bones
and leather-bagged
my limp cadaver,
leaving me to die.
Nor has my missing forearm
ever swum in Cerberus's craw.
It's tickled now by hermit crabs,
anemones and possum shrimp
on the bottom of the bay
where the Orthodox dumped it.
His third mouth's claim?
Oh yes, I did. I bit
the mongrel's six ears off
and spit them to the dirt
whereon there sprouted
by the gism of my lips
garigue of downy ophrys—
five aristolocthic birthworts
that entrap flies overnight
and verse them in the songs
and scents of Hades
to be piped into fresh corpses.
Each family has its mad dog.
Cerberus is ours.
I know you fear him,
feared the rabies epidemic
in your native Bethlehem.
I'll keep him close to heel.
Still, he has use.
He draws the schoolkids
surely as my nudity.
Their happy fingers
fly from his fangs
to my dick.
That's when I drop
my question in their heads.
"What if the Christ was just
one of those mountebanks
in Grecian gowns,
and the epískopoi
as two- or three-faced
as this grisly hound?"
Anthrax - Muse's Advisory, April 14 – Statue of Zeus:
Let's call the demon
Boredom.
It's a sure sign
something's dead
or deadly in the room.
At school, at church?
Look at the teacher,
at the priest:
the blowflies
spiral from their lips.
Hold your breath,
plug your ears,
mask your eyes.
Children, the dust
oration coats you with
is dangerous.
Down, Down, Down - Muse's Advisory, April 15 – Clio:
Abraham Lincoln, Titanic, Garbo,
Big-League Baseball's color barrier
and Pol Pot sink today.
The Fates are flipping cards
out in the schoolyard of the gods
and these five randomly come up.
There are appeals and protests.
One goddess gripes, It's not enough.
A bell rings and they all return to class.
This afternoon they have a hippie sub
who raises eyebrows with his beard
and funky paisley shirt.
Sandburg calls Lincoln captain of the ship,
he says. Then President Garbo's shot
when Pol Pot signs a contract with L.A.
A SWAT team bursts into the room
at exactly 1:11 and opens fire:
time to go the Math Enrichment.
Clotho palms her yawn. Again?
The Computation Specialist asks Lachesis
to analyze the Quechuan abacus
and Atropos fiddles with scissors.
Idle Afternoon Chit-Chat in the Antiquities Room - Muse's Advisory,
April 16 – Miriam:
“....Juan Diego saw me on Tepeyac Hill,
an adolescent ringed by light.
We spoke in Nahuatl and he mixed me up
with his own virgin goddess Tonantzin,
whose shrine the hill had been.
I said, 'No, I'm the Catholic nantli.'
When Zumárraga the arzobispo
sent Juan back for proof of my identity,
I said, 'Go gather flowers at the summit.'
He said, 'Tonantzin—
ay, discúlpeme—Católica María—
it's mid-winter! Nothing blooms now.'
I said, 'Look with faith-filled eyes,'
and then arranged the blossoms in his cloak.
Zumárraga was stunned to see
the bounty of Castilian roses
and my image in a mollusc-like striped vulva
set indelibly in Juan's ayate.
The Franciscans called it superstition—just
an icon by a local artist named de Aquino—
but the Dominicans attested it miraculous.”
“Okay,” Zeus says, "for sake of argument,
you were enclosed in glowing light.
But did you have one blessed thing to say?"
“You talk theology in Nahuatl, Mr. Polyglot!
No, I didn't wow him with great intellect.
He just thought I was prettier than Tonantzin
and felt that someone greater—European,
omnipotent—exalted him in his own tongue!
You wouldn't understand.
You pretty much talk only to yourself.
You think you're slyly beaming thoughts
into the Cretan children's heads
but maybe it's them molding you.”
“Metaphysics—not your forte!
Energy, especially ideas, has inclination.
Acorns never fall from ground to tree
and snot-nosed, puddle-headed kids
can't teach philosophy to me.”
"Dear Zeus, your pride is hurt!
Don't cut yourself with shards
of former grandeur, indispensability!
Volunteer to help out in a hospice
or a wounded-wildlife sanctuary.
Let's take up bridge—
if you don't mind a partner
with one ear half-tuned
to her devotees' prayers.
Yes, I know it doesn't really
make a difference if I listen!
And yes, I know my cult is primitive,
subliminal, psychotic, sexual.
But don't you think it helps them
just a bit to feel they have my ear?
Must weak be doomed to carry
the same weight of truth as strong?
You be the god of might—
I'll be the mother of despair.
You be correct—I'm able to be wrong.”
“One of the feminine prerogatives
is always being right, or wrong
in a superior way. I bow.
Besides, I like the thought of bridge—
each ace a lightning-strike,
sharp combat where the best mind
and the best hand wins.”
“Good! Now you're talking like a husband!
Do we have any other partner possibilities
around the room?
Look, Zeus!—that comical, androgynous
clay king and queen with bug-eye nipples
raised their hands!
That leash of sharply dressed Minoan foxes
look like they might mix a mean martini.
Our fourth twosome—
Cupid and the Prince of Lilies, over there?”
“Ah, we'll make mincemeat of the lot of them!
We played round-robin for a while on Olympos.
Dear Hera couldn't bid to save her life,
but wore fantastic pearls like Helen Sobel.
Ares grew a killer mustache like Omar Sharif
and Aphrodite took her shirt off once
when she was dummy—poor Hephaistos
lost count of the trumps and went down three!
Oh, that year, everything was according to Goren!
Then, of course, along came hula hoops,
air hockey...."
A Delicate Matter - Muse's Advisory, April 17 – Curator Chiklis to Zeus:
I didn't want to make a scene
in front of anybody
so I waited until closing.
This is contractually
your quiet time
but grant me
a few minutes please.
There've been complaints.
You know how tourists are—
especially the Germans, right?
But we've complaints
from Japanese and even Finns!
Please understand
I'm sympathetic to the working stiff
but I'm still management.
They claim that someone's making—
how to put it delicately?—
πορνογραφικό προτάσεις?—
pornographic suggestions.
The children love to pet
the dog's three heads
but when the parents say,
It's time to go and look at pottery,
their kids start spewing things
like Fuck that shit! and Vases suck!
I reply, Why point the finger at a god
who's been dead several thousand years?
His dog, yeah, he's a little ghetto-looking
with those fangs and bit-off ears—
but teaching children dirty words?
I understand: your little boy
simply adored Westminster Abbey.
Still, you're positive you never left
him unattended with the cabbie?
But every one insists it's you.
They have these inklings
and if I enquire whence,
without exception each one
points directly at your head.
I don't want to draw this out. It's 7:30,
my vilana's waiting at the Fres Taverna.
So I beg you, and I'll only ask it once:
please stop it, if you're being a bad influence.
Bird, Depressed - Muse's Advisory, April 18 – St. Paul the WhiteCrested Cockatoo:
Thank God
that fucking Cretan left!
Poor thing missed out
on half a glass of wine,
when I've been pent up
in this silly nest
since 8 a.m.
without a chance to stretch
my wings or legs
or piss!
What can he do to us–
the storage room?
I'd welcome that.
This being on display
is like a thousand little deaths.
If only Miriam could take me
when she visits Cyprus.
What I wouldn't give for fruit
nobody else has chewed on yet;
a chance to wrap my feet
around a living branch again.
Still, Lazarus's second tomb
is not high on my must-see list.
I hear he was a bastard once he rose–
too grim to smile–
unslakable his thirst–
got so disgusted at one Cypriot
he turned his farm
into a small salt lake.
Why won't he just stay dead?
Yeshua raised him first;
then Emperor Leo
dug the second corpse back up
to showcase in Byzantium;
then the Crusaders hauled it off again;
and where it's been
since it last surfaced
in Marseilles
is anybody's guess.
Why can't Hephaestos
turn me into stone, like Zeus?
Being alive alone,
a stowaway inside this mausoleum
of assorted former VIP's,
is simply hell.
What air, or food, or scratch is sweet?
But I can't leave
since I can't fly.
I'd be a stray cat's toy, then treat.
What's wrong with death?
I'm ready.
I've had longevity.
I've tasted what the senses
had to offer, more or less.
No, not had sex,
but it's too late for that.
That's probably my one regret.
"...she bore nine daughters, of one mind..." (Hesiod) - Muse's Advisory,
April 19 – Memory:
I've held my tongue.
I'm not supposed to speak
but work my magic
as it were
from the back seat.
People wag their heads:
a country mother
with nine kids.
But they've forgotten
what I'm like in bed,
the way I sing
through thick and thin
at those big moments
when it's sink or swim.
Over-protect my girls?
The only thing I kept
from them
(a couple drops of milky
ouzo in their bottles)
was what happened
on the night
Zeus left.
He can't remember either,
the white Pierian mists
that overgrew
the moon's gray eyes
as he bent down
to kiss the nine
of them goodbye,
and for a moment
cried.
I didn't want them
to remember that:
I knew he wasn't ever
coming back.
Sestina - Muse's Advisory, April 20 - Urania:
A cast stone said
My arc's path from the hand of a parent is illusion.
The illusion's stone said
I am the true path from the hand of a parent.
The parent of the illusion's stone said
The path of a child's hand rises from the hand of
her parent. Illusion is mother's milk.
The young stone said
I am my own path. My path baffles the hand of
my parent and the illusion yoked to arc.
The young stone's god said
The blessed son banishes the path from the hand
of a parent. Illusion can't yoke stone. Hands arc
stone but the cursed illusion of path is the parent.
Self Sonnet - Muse's Advisory, April 21 – Zeus to Miriam:
I take a lot of heat for what I didn't do and little credit
for the things I did. I fell in love with you, gave you a child. Now I'm
a friend in your advancing age. It's true I didn't cleave to you like white
on rice or give Yeshua the most prudent guidance as he grew up—
but he grew up. He followed his own muse, and you and I now stand here
almost holding hands, while Kastrinoí slip out into the cool of night.
It seems to me my sin resides in fending off the claims of sorrow
and regret, in feeling free to come and go, in leaving children safe
inside their mothers' loving arms and charging out to keep the brain-Huns
from the door. I'm not asking for awards, only the same respect due
beasts who carry out the tasks that they were made to do, though failed to write
a War and Peace or plant trees in the desert—living by my own lights.
I've both suffered and caused pain, but don't owe anyone apologies.
My name is Zeus. My style is independent. That's what I offer you.
Kicking Some Ideas Around With Pop - Muse's Advisory, April 22 –
Yeshua to Zeus:
They haven't left too much for me to do,
my apparitions far less popular than Mom's,
the pope in total charge of Dogma, Policy & Operations:
I'm not more than a figurehead.
I volunteered to write a weekly inspiration,
blessing, or whatever
but they talked me out of it—
so diplomatically, of course—
and made it clear
my contribution to the movement
ended on the afternoon of my Ascension.
I'm allegedly on tap to come again,
but every time I ask about a date
they say As soon as His consilium's complete.
I say Whose His? He isn't Me?
Then they expound ad infinitum
on the mechanisms of the Trinity.
Just kick back, kid,
I hear the harp in heaven is sublime,
advises the monsignor
they assigned to me as liaison.
If you need anything at all,
I'm at your beck and call.
My cell is always on
and your speed-dial's #1.
They think I have no saving left
but I feel like I just began.
I've tons of things I want to do.
I'd never have agreed to die so young
if I had known.
If I go back and freelance now,
they'll call me heretic
or falsh moshiach.
Nobody says so
in as many words
but I can read
the writing on the wall.
When they press,
Prove you're Him,
what can I do?
Say Nail me to the Cross again?
Cajole another stinking corpse to rise,
like some two-dollar voodoo houngon?
I've been a persona non grata
and it's no fun:
I'd end up rotting in the pope's asylum
underneath St. Peter's
where they pound all the ecstatics
and loose cannons with stigmata.
The Church itself amazes me:
the papacy, the curia, the diocese,
how all of that elaborates from
thirteen Galilean vagabonds.
I'd think it science fiction
if I didn't have a ringside seat.
I wouldn't want to have to drive
that rig—
and I'm not sure
I want to hitch my name to it.
Should I re-brand myself,
shear off the facial hair
and launch another start-up?
Rome wouldn't notice if I disappeared.
I'll dial up my flack and say,
Yeah, what you said the other day
makes sense.
I'm kicking back to bask
in heaven's ambiance.
I have a few ideas:
an open-access walk-in spa
where people with afflictions
or the blues
can get a quick pat on the back from—
Jesus Christ belongs to Rome—
what do you think if I adopt
one of those one-name monikers
like Thornz or Bethleheminem?
Or dance with the girl I brought,
go walk the earth again
dispensing pita, bromides, cures,
but this time give my people teeth,
so when the Swiss Guards
come to peg me to a cross,
this time, let Peter stuff
their sliced-off ears right up their arse!
I know what he'll say if I ask.
Tell me your thoughts. Be frank.
I want a hands-on gig that really
leverages my strengths.
Mom says I've got a good thing now
and I should stick with it
for five or six more centuries;
but didn't Einstein prove in general relativity
that even everlasting life is short?
I'm not cut out
to lounge on clouds—
like some people I know—
and watch the Lilliputians
thrash about, below.
I want to help.
I want to get into the act.
In the Wilderness – Muse's Advisory, April 23 – Yeshua to Zeus:
No, I'm not about to go shoot up a school
or smash tectonic plates,
but yes, from time to time
I have these thoughts
that I'm not proud of, which disturb me.
Once, an idea popped into my head
of opening the wound
below my ribs with one of Mom's
serrated carving knives.
Another time, I lay my hand
upon this blond kid's head
and it occurred to me
if I just pushed...
The Demon offers choices
I don't want.
The clever way he words them,
they appeal to me
when I imagine for a moment
saying yes.
Each time, I feel a little dirty afterwards.
Dad, when you call me Kid,
it's distancing.
Son's bad enough.
You call Mom Dear,
but me, it's Kid or Son.
It seems like you're annoyed
to even have to talk to me:
as if I'm interfering with your
standing there
and contemplating Miriam, and Cerberus
whom you keep close.
Is it a style thing? I'm being over-sensitive?
I know: Accentuate the positive.
You haven't tried to eat me once.
You haven't fed me to the mutt.
I'm sorry, yes, I it would be easier
if I brought up one topic at a time.
The devil's always in the doing it.
I have the kind of mind that wanders;
you, a personality devoid of tact.
The Tempter often brings your name up
as he lays out his proposals.
I thought that asking you about it
might increase my strength resisting.
I was wrong, and he was right:
you've no intention of assisting.
Primrose Path - Muse's Advisory, April 24 – Satan:
“No!" Calliope forbids
her Byron imitators.
"Every two-bit hack with quill or Bic
since Milton made and broke the mold
has written Satan a soliloquy!
Then the Pacino movies—
please, don't ask!”
"See Muse run," I tease.
"So now a censor comes?"
“Don't try your wiles on me—!"
she hisses, “— I,
the labor nurse who led you
from a blind man's tongue
to the amanuensis!
Do you mock me now?
I'll have Tom turn you back
into a fawning fop!”
"No, it was I
who told your mother
Fuck that guy.
She did and wept.
I said Again.
She did and wept.
I said Again.
Again. Again.
Again. Again. Again.
She did and said
I'll cut my wrists.
I said Again.
So you tell me
who authored who."
You Have Received a Birthday Greeting from... - Muse's Advisory, April
25 – Satan to Tom:
It's your birthday!
Muses, thin as crepe,
have wrapped the gift
they're giving you
before they send you on your way
onto the range
where I will pick you off
like Mary's little lamb.
How old are you? I know,
but ask because I want to
rub your nose in it:
an age when selfishness
sheds all its fancy bows
and pops out of the box
like Jack.
You want to know how old
I am? Where I was born?
Of whom?
You'll find out soon.
A woman's got to keep
some sanctity,
some secrets for her bedroom.
Your decay? My porn.
The crusty spots
you're burning
from your face
with gelled diclofenac?
I can already taste
what's underneath.
Horny Loser - Muse's Advisory, April 26 – Miriam:
The devil is so full of shit.
He tries to make a big name
for himself
but it's all talk.
He has no realm,
he has no underlings,
he has no way to walk
the walk.
You know the little jerk
in middle school
who brags he'd like
to grab that low-cut
blouse's filler by the neck
and make her suck
his dick but
always sits off by himself?
That's Nick.
Chicken and Egg - Muse's Advisory, April 27 – The Schoolteacher
Títyros:
You fall right into Satan's trap
when he beguiles you
to think he's full of crap.
He's not the tallest tree;
that's never been his strategy.
He's a 15-square-mile fungal growth
that lives—except to fumigate
receptive trunks with ivory spore—
entirely underground.
The theology is definite:
without the threat from Satan
there's no ministry for Christ;
without Him, there's no Trinity,
and our whole Faith falls flat.
As John epistolized in Ephesus:
"The devil sinned in the beginning,
and the Son of God was manifested
only to destroy the devil's works."
So, children, trust in Satan
just as strongly as in Christ.
He wants your faith in him
to die—for then, you're his.
Love Song - Muse's Advisory, April 28 – Marble Zeus to Marble Miriam:
There were several times
at your place on Koressos
when the nighttime lights
in Ephesus glowed dully
underneath the winter fog
and we just couldn't force
ourselves to go inside
even to passion's arms.
On other nights, a galaxy
so loud we couldn't hear
the crickets, and you'd rise
so suddenly and whisper
"You had better come to bed"—
and there would be a witch in you
who wanted nothing but hard love.
My favorite nights:
those clumsy ones
with you or I maneuvering
to get a little something going,
but the other stuck
because of wine
on some uninteresting topic,
or feeling mischievous
and playing hard to get.
The scenery was often lovely
and the sex sometimes great
but what gave pleasure
every single day
was all the psychological
give and take.
And you? When you think
back to when our life
was just the way we wanted it,
does anything stick
so tight in your craw,
you want to say,
"I can't adjust to this.
I can't be happy anymore"?
Beloved—
see that beaten bronze
across the room?
Before her impudence gave way,
she was a slim
and jade-eyed pixie
with a snaking grin
to jolt the kidneys of its prey
to soup.
What shadow fell
upon her whitecapped sea?
Had her ribs harbored
furtive Greeks from birth—
was there a mis-flown arrow
of cupidity?—
the slow disgruntlement
of unappreciated age?
The gleam sank in her eye.
We didn't play it safe.
We've taken and inflicted
greater wounds
than most survive at all
and now we have to raise
our game and stare down
cocky black yeasts,
undergraduates with sketchpads
and the mockery of mice.
Love Song II - Muse's Advisory, April 29 – Miriam to Zeus:
I'll settle in, I will.
Right now I'm trying
to figure out
what this thing is
in my right hand,
which I can't lift
to get a better look—
I also need to see
the hand itself.
The tourists cry,
Those fingers are so huge!
One kid compared it
to The Hulk.
Is it so vain to wish
I could at least see
my deformity?
I can glimpse you
from the leftmost corner
of my eye.
You're looking good.
That's more than I can say
for your three-headed dog
down there.
I feel the hilt of something
in my left hand
that I fantasize a knife.
You know how I detest dogs,
and he
doesn't look like
the pick of the litter.
Your sweet thoughts
go a long way, yes,
but don't forget I'm human.
That means lots of stuff
can bother me that needn't.
I'm hard-wired to ignore
the forest
for a few dead trees.
Jews fret a lot.
We don't like helplessness.
Nobody does—
but when something oppresses us,
we're not as predisposed as most
to let it go.
I can't see the lotus
or whatever it is
perched on my head,
but I assure you that
your organ-grinder monkey shako's
really quite ridiculous!
Whoever first said
we should wear hats
just for decoration
should be shot!
If I see one more
pelican cadaver
on some empty-headed
woman's head,
I might be forced to
sic that dog on it.
Of course I loved Koressos,
every night of it.
We still have many things
we should be thankful for.
Proximity and memories
are number 1 and number 2
in what produces happiness.
But pity these poor tourists,
come so far to look upon
the likes of us for inspiration,
when they could be at the beach
or up on the sierra
picking orchids, asphodel,
pink spearlike Cretan tulips!
No, you're right,
we mustn't pick them—
one or two at most,
and only with a lover handy,
someone worth an indiscretion.
Preservation has its place
but so does the besotted's gasp,
the child romping like a pony.
Zeus, oh I'm afraid I'll never
reconcile losing the outdoors!
Besides your pluck and faith
the only thing that keeps me
semi-sane is going out
occasionally on apparitions.
The appearees view it
as they will:
for me it's really just a chance
to get away
and finally get outside—
to look at something new!
And then those peasants look at me
as if I'm vibrant, marvelous.
What woman can resist that?
You do too, Zeus, you do too—
I love it, yes.
But still
it's good to hear it fresh.
The Arkalochori Axe - Muse's Advisory, April 30 – Labrys:
we wil crak yur fuking heds suner than luk at yu
how dar yu raggid greeks think we minoans arent warlik
my twin blayds wil split yur skuls first in tu then in fur
but yu cant reed wut dum barbarians yu ar
May Day - Muse's Advisory, May 1 – Miriam:
Greek Presidential sashes over drab green uniforms, Communist
Girl Scouts gathered in front of the ancient beaten bronze of Artemis.
The Matron herding them—bizarre in a brown car-mechanic's jumpsuit
underneath a white exomis with a gathered elastic waist!—asked
if the girls could sing their hymn. "No, Miss!” the docent laughed delightedly.
“It's a museum!
This Artemis is thin bronze sheets nailed onto plane wood—
a sphyrelaton,” he told the troupe, “from Driros, just an hour's drive—
a temple for Delphinios Apollo, ninety centuries back.”
One girl cried out, “Comrade! Stone goddess with Socialist Realism hand
is wear your same dress! And look! Capitalist dog with three heads!”
“Si
sters,
we know why we're here!" the Matron said. In unison they raised their fists
and broke out in the “Internationale.”
Forward, ye damned of the earth!
Slaves of hunger, forward!
Right explodes from the crater!
Like thunder! like lightning!
The docent frantically waved
his arms and tried to hush them. Gaping museum visitors relished this
typisch kretischen Szene. Some took out cameras, prohibited too,
but film of matter turned spirit—disapparition—won't develop.
Now, it's all I can do not to laugh. How did they find out we were there?
I can still feel that vile dog's blood bulging in its necks—I love it so!
So many sharp teeth. So many toothsome little Reds. But too, too bad.
Spirit to Stone - Muse's Advisory, May 2 — Earhart to Miriam:
You—driven from your home
and severed from your son—
endure that silly cap, fat lobster hand,
and constant threat
from an infernal triple-snouted dog.
Me—forced to deal with being lost,
although you know I like thin air,
have yens for what's outside the box,
dislike all quotidinity, i's dotted and t's crossed.
A hundred million women—in captivity.
I didn't bring this single-breasted mob
of Amazons to murder brother males;
I know that when it comes
to fighting back and righting wrongs,
we women have conflicted moods,
as Graves details:
after Achilles,
for love of that fierce white naked corpse,
necrophily on her committed,
Penthesileia paused before dissolving into air
to thank him
for avenging her insulted womanhood
when he
caught Thersites' obscene snigger
and with one vengeful buffet to the jaw
dashed out his life.
Now Penthesileia stands again outside
re-armored and re-armed, like-minded
with Hippolyta, Melanippe and Antiope;
warlike Camilla, Cleite and Antandre;
Derimacheia, Thalestris, Polemusa,
Clonie, Derinoe, Bremusa and Evandre;
dark-eyed Harmothoe, Antibrote,
spear-loving Thermodosa and Aella;
Prothoe, Philippis, Eriboea and Celaeno,
Alcippe, Phoebe, Deianeira, Asteria,
Marpe, Eurybia, Tecmessa, Ocyale,
Dioxippe, Iphinome, Xanthe, Glauce,
Laomache, Theseis, Iphito and Agave;
Clymene, Euryale, Polydora, Harpe,
swift Ainia, Thoe, Menippe, Aegea,
Lyce, Cyme, Anaea of Samos,
Amastris, Queen Antianeira the Crippler,
Queen Eurypyle Anti-Babylon, Lyssipe,
Marpesia, Gryne, Lampedo, Molpadia,
Mytiline, Myrto, Orontea, Pantariste,
Queen Orithyia the Conqueror, Areto,
Hippothoe, and Myrina's commanders,
brave Pitane and Priene—here to ask
if you will lead us, be our queen.
You're the greatest goddess left.
Let flesh amalgamated
from these warriors' sacrifice
replace—redeem—
your bloodless stone.
Revive and lead us against Rome.
bad rap - muze's advizory, may 3 – yes.hU.a to mir.I.am:
yo, dem pope & cardinalz you hatin',
dey my homies! my niggaz! dey okay!
why is dey bodderin' yo ass so bad?
chill-ax! dey jus' some ol', ol' men!
dis gig is keepin' bof' of us in bread!
tell yo' posse dey kin go on back to bed
'n' suck on dey own titties & pussies!
nobody mean no disrespect to ho's!
we de good guyz! we de holy menz!
dis caf'lic church love all de womens!
Gripe - Muse's Advisory, May 4 – Miriam to Yeshua:
Zeus says your popes are nincompoops:
the good ones through the years
could pull up chairs
around a single cafe table.
He thinks it will work wonders
for your church to one day
plant a woman St. Peter's seat.
You like our—
in our place and out of it.
But these old men who run your church
are fearfully traditionalist.
St. Paul—the man, not bird—was clear:
"Woman's head is her husband."
But where would you be now
if I had gone along with that when Yusuf said,
"That boy needs reining in.
I say we bind him to the smith.
He won't take any of his lip."
I stood my ground and just said, "No."
I stood my ground, Yusef stood his,
and I'm not saying who was right
but none of this Messiah business
would have ever take place
if you had been apprenticed
to Haddad. He brooked no nonsense—
looked at life the way
ditch-diggers view the stony earth.
I used to bring salve to his boys:
"Let's get to work"
was half of all he spoke,
the other half
"You're here to spill your sweat,
not flap your tongue!"
But now they dare say
I and every Christian with a cunt
are barred from leadership?
That's hardly true to you.
There's not a misogynist bone
in your whole body, Son.
Indecision - Muse's Advisory, May 5 – Yeshua to Miriam:
No,
leave the Latin Church alone.
I could march with you on Rome,
but oh, the bloodshed.
I didn't mount my ass
to cut Sadducees' throats—
why murder their successors?
Yet,
what a troop you martial ladies make!
From now on, play your apparitions
as you really are, Ma: warrior, mother, lover, thinker!
Tell your stricken peasant, I'm an Amazon—
and then unleash these Harpies
on the priests who rush to silence her!
Dad has his little talks with kids
and thinks up games to keep you sane:
it's like he doesn't struggle anymore.
Since time began, how many gods
have impotently faded into gray by saying,
No, this battle's not important—
now anonymously shuffle past
tugging a donkey down the road?
Yet,
how boring it must get
to raise arms again and again.
Warm Greeting - Muse's Advisory, May 6 - Calliope to Zeus:
"Performing a 101-live-gun salute
for the Grapes of Wrath Pulitzer Prize
the Nazi-hating Honor Guard fired high
into the Hindenburg while off flew
Roger Bannister on a 4-minute mile to
Crazy Horse's Corregidor surrender.
John XXIII—one of the best, it's said—
raised Martín de Porres to sainthood.
Freud, Valentino, Willie Mays are born
and Frank Baum, Marlene Dietrich die."
That's what Clio writes, Father—
human deeds the literature of gods.
But this is your day only:
nothing at all has happened yet.
Lift your right arm and the sun comes up,
the saga starts;
open your breast and air descends
like animating incense.
Or is it what you want
to view such myths
as if you were a man?
Pressing His Suit - Muse's Advisory, May 7 – Marble Zeus to Marble
Miriam:
"...Glittering stone from quarries of seagirt Proconnesus
Expelling clouds of care and cheering even the sailor
Guiding his bark on the billows of raging Pontus
Who drops his eyelids to the verdant hill
Yearning to see blue calmness skimmed
By dripping oars along the Golden Horn
With flowers on each side of ripening corn!
"Some marbles are like new-dropt snow, and others
Black with dappling milky distillations here and there—
Thine, roses fused in whitened air
While Libyan sun makes golden yellow glory
On the foothills of the Maurusian height—
Thine, whose rendered tints fair emeralds use,
With sombre purple also in its varied hues..."
Hey! Don't crinkle the corner of your eye like that!
Paulos Silentiarios is very well-respected. So are
Lethaby, Swainson & Browning, who translated it.
Being likened to Hagia Sophia is a big compliment!
A bit flowery, I admit,
but honestly, recite
contemporary stuff to press love's suit
and half the time you wind up talking
a perfectly complicit
young lady right out of it.
On Line - Muse's Advisory, May 8 – Mike/Tom:
Excuse me, I've got half a sonnet here
and someone said
unfinished stuff's your specialty.
Of course I'll look.
A half a sonnet just might cure what ails me.
Feeling bad?
Depressed. And you?
Just call me Mike. I only use one name.
You see, Mike, that's why I'm depressed.
You're too depressed to tell another guy
your name when he sticks out his hand?
It's Tom. I'm sorry, Mike.
I have a second name but what's the point?
Go on, read me the seven lines.
'I live for sin, live dying to myself:
my life consists of only misery.
God invented good, I invented hell;
my will dissolved, I am not free.
Liberty enslaved, my soul has made
me mortal. O wretched state,
the continent I was born to inhabit!'
Sounds deep. No wonder you can't
finish it. What's scribbled on the back?
My day job's sculpting high-end tombs:
I wrote the half-a-sonnet
on the flip side of a letter
from the guy who quarries stone for me.
His name is Sandro, in Carrara.
But the object of the sonnet is...Gherardo.
Ah, you love him.
Yes.
You think it sinful.
Yes.
You're young, in love, employed—
but worrying about a poem?
You've talent as a carver. Dawn and Dusk,
who pine on Duke Lorenzo's tomb,
are everyone who longs but cannot reach.
Forget the goddam seven lines.
Take this Gherardo to the beach.
Vaunt - Muse's Advisory, May 9 – Thor:
Another god who's big
and strong enough
to lug both whale and whaleboat
on his back
Then eat a fattened ox for lunch
or dent the full moon
on a drunken dare
Might feel ridiculous
as helmsman of a goat-cart
even though drawn by
Tanngnjóstr Teeth-Grinder
and Tanngrisnir Teeth-Barer
But after I devour them too
and my hammer Mjöllnir
stuns them back to life
Away we ride to Bilskirnir
Þrúðheimr, or to Þrúðvangr
where Þjálfi Marrow-Sucker
and his sister Röskva
gird me with my belt Megingjörð
Bury my hands
in Járngreipr my iron gloves
Hand me Gríðarvölr my stave
to battle once more
with the serpent Jörmungandr
to dare the Götterdämmerung!
Let me make one thing very clear
My life is not like yours
whoever you are
You may have fierce blue eyes
or a long red beard
You may have cheered
when Anglish Boniface
forded from Büraburg
Dramatically cut down the Oak of Geismar
Hewed the lumber into Dom Sankt Peter
and proclaimed his Christ superior to me
His retinue of Franks
superior to Chatti
But you know nothing about Thor
What he does with his hammer
What do you know about
lightning and thunder?
What do you know about
childbirth and murder?
Go read your hidebound tome
of do's and don'ts for timid souls
and leave the work of gods
to those who care for nothing
more than masterminding gore.
Spare - Muse's Advisory, May 10 – Thor to Euterpe:
You want to know
about my softer side?
Put a finger to my heart,
will I smile?
No.
This is the north.
We scorn emotion
as the meanest of guile.
Eyeballing Thor - Muse's Advisory, May 11 – Miriam:
I won't ask a moment more
of your attention than I have to.
All this vaunted "eerie frozen beauty"
strikes me as a euphemism.
Social niceties are not your thing.
You've seen the rise and fall
of many other gods, their different
characters, theologies, and what-not,
but you calmly go about your business
murdering or maiming any man
or beast you feel the slimmest urge to,
without warning, without explanation.
You could well pick up your hammer
as I hover here in front of you
and hurl it for no better reason than
you think you have the brawn.
I don't really have a question.
I just wanted to lay eyes on you,
to judge if anything I might say
had an outside chance to alter things
when my son's followers come
blazoning their new religion.
Based on what I read upon your face,
I'd have to say the answer's no.
Daddy - Muse's Advisory, May 12 - Thalia:
Out, out, damned candle—
tirelessly walking shadow—
bankrupt player who won't leave the stage—
long monologue expounded by
a furious and pointless idiot!
And yet—
who would have thought
the old man to have had so much
of blood in him?
Pragmatic Manifesto - Muse's Advisory, May 13 – Hephaestos to
Melpomene:
Once we accept we won't amount to much—
accept there isn't any much—
and so, accept that craft, amusement,
corporal comfort are enough,
and learn a trade,
stock up some good computer games,
learn how to cook
and maybe meet someone who'll hold us close
without demanding too close of a look—
we're on our way
not to nirvana but a fairly decent day.
Did your mom really tell the nine of you
the whole truth of who jilted whom, and why?
Do I want to understand the parallax
that misconstrued and crippled me?
I would. I vividly recall my plummet toward Aetna
but before and after, everything is black.
My mother said I tried to set her free
from ankle cuffs, and Zeus in retribution
hurled me to the earth and left me lame;
Zeus said my club foot was congenital
and Hera cast me from Olympos in disgust.
Who to believe?—your mother Memory
rubbed mine as clean as yours.
Still, neither parent flew to pick me up
so nothing really is at stake except the factuality
of what I paint on vases, etch on breastplates.
I know the cosmic tit has no more milk
and I expect you know it too. So no,
I don't think we should climb back in
that can of worms because a poison curiously
gnaws our brains. What's done is done.
The past is gray, and thinking that our futures
will shine rosier for burning off its mist
is purely pop psychology, cliché.
It's not that I believe in sights set low,
but setting them on game with pulses,
and not umbras hoed up from the past.
Water Under the Bridge - Muse's Advisory, May 14 – Melpomene to
Hephaestos:
Half-brother, half-green pup—
nobody bird-dogs Memory!
She has three powers, laws of nature, fixed,
defying even Zeus:
she plunders what she pleases
from the atheneum of the mind,
she slips her telling vapors
into any room she will,
but she herself is utterly impossible to find.
She comes sometimes at night
and pours a humid episode
into my ear while I'm asleep—
but is she ever there at daybreak
asking if her gift has pleased?
has terrified? or caused to weep?
No wonder muses make a living
out of shimmerings and glints!
You and I are on our own.
We have to use our wits.
We have no choice
but doubt our mothers' innocence,
mine infamously unreliable
and yours as vicious as Medea;
yet who can doubt
that nothing's out of character for Zeus,
except submissiveness?
If he could set nine bawling infant girls adrift
amid the bulrush of belles-lettres,
he surely could have dropped you in the Styx:
abandoned both our families
with no fare-thee-well.
But let's keep dry now, just as you suggest.
One parent's oak, one elm:
who cares which of the two of them
was prow, which helm,
the day our natal ships were wrecked?
Like moon-calf Caliban
you toiled afterwards in bitterness
to build yourself a life,
while I,
I tasted love just once,
and tried to bear a life,
but lost.
A Long View - Muse's Advisory, May 15 – Shangdi:
In a land as old as China,
gods and humans
long ago became as acclimated
to each other as
a couple married fifty years:
the wife says something
but the husband has less interest
than he would
in listening to a table leg.
Even I, the primal light-bringer
to mountains, rivers, seas—
my name's so seldom spoken,
children ask their teacher,
"Who exactly is Shangdi?
What's his importance
in a land where Jīnxīng's nighthound
never even once
dragged down dawn's hind?"
Nor have I been moved
for as long as I remember
to make any more adjustments
to the world-lamps I invented.
Still, seeing all things clearly as I do,
these past millennia
I sometimes wonder
what it was
I wanted to see more of
in the first place.
Flight Plan - Muse's Advisory, May 16 – Zeus Marble to Miriam Marble:
I'll get us out of here.
I know you hate the frost;
and almost everyplace
where temperatures
are warm is overrun;
but I've got sleight-of-hands
tucked up my sleeve
and friends I still can call on
in a time of need.
How about a second honeymoon,
a trip to Galilee?
I know we never had a first,
but let's pretend.
You have some issues there.
Me too–I'll tell you all
the dirty details on the way.
The gerontologist on Oprah said,
we have to face our pasts
if we expect to keep
the dogs of age at bay.
A visit to the Holy Land
might just be what the doctor
ordered for these blues.
Escape from Iraklion - Muse's Advisory, May 17 - Gabriel García
Márquez:
The curator sipped his kafés—
such a beautiful morning,
noplace on earth more lovely than Kríti
and no one on Kríti more lovely
than the cinnamon and balsam-scented
classical beauty whose hip pressed
up against his on the crowded bench,
creating the most monumental erection!
He might have spent a moment longer
at his kafés than was usual,
might have arrived a moment later
than was usual at the Museum—
although at his termination hearing,
he swore up and down he hadn't.
Uncontroverted was the fine mood he arrived in,
how he greeted the sole patron
waiting at the entrance
with exuberance,
as she reported to the astynomikós
who responded to the curator's
1-0-0 call to the Dikaiosyni station.
A trail of briny-tasting slime led down Ariadnis,
past the Ilaira, past the Lato,
all the way to the Venetian Harbor,
at the edge of which the archigós
nodded slowly and uttered something
that sounded a lot like "Poseidónas."
Downhill - Muse's Advisory, May 18 – Zeus:
Poseidónas, ho!
We have a lady here!
Please beg your ippókampous
and delfínia to breast the waves
as if their cargo was sea-lace
for Benthesikyme, fair Rhodos
or loud-moaning Amphitrite!
Ten thousand years ago
I spent time, Miriam,
not far from Nazareth.
I haven't mentioned it
because I feared—I still fear—
you'll think less of me.
But fearful thinking is self-fossilizing.
Love, if such a thing is possible, has pith.
My home then
was a cave in Kfar HaHoresh
whose lime-kiln factories
made waterproof baskets
an everyday item—
lime and gray ash
packed in all the crevices,
then fired—whiteware, yes.
Today they call it proto-pottery.
It made us kilners rich.
We also ran a mortuary,
mostly young men struck
down suddenly in war,
their families ill-prepared
to part with them so quick.
Two aurochs or gazelles,
a wild boar, seven goats,
or several fluff-tailed fox
would buy you something
we called modeled skulls.
First we buried corpses
just about a month
for natural excarnation,
then retrieved the heads,
and rearranged the bones
for an artistic reëntombment.
The faces we rebuilt
with a fine lime plaster
we invented;
painted them as lifelike
as we could;
brushed asphalt on the skulls
to reattach the hair;
then mounted them
on burnt-clay stands
with cockleshells for eyes.
Today's dull echopraxis
is the marble bust.
Like many businesses
ours had its shady underside:
we earned a little extra
from reselling the projectiles
pried loose from the dead—
Jerichos, Byblos, Helwans
and all kinds of naviforms;
bifacials; even some Amuqs
with the Abu Gosh retouch.
You name it, we had it.
So while the mother
wept her sad tale
upstairs in the workshop,
in the sub-basement
the very warrior shopped
who bought her grief.
We knew that this was wrong
the same way we instinctively
knew boiling kids in ewe's milk was,
but there was meat in it,
and meat trumps
morals every time.
It proved a slippery slope.
A corner cut in commerce
paved the way
for other morals to elope.
Confession in Poseidónas's Chariot - Muse's Advisory, May 19 – Zeus to
Miriam:
Our drudge—
whose job it was
to climb each dawn
into the smelly kokh
and roll the headstones back
to check if any of the stiffs
were ripe enough
to disarticulate—
he slipped one day,
his left foot crushed and lamed
when one stone
jumped its shallow flute
and dropped on it.
We did our best.
Our resident hydrophoros
hemp-washed and blessed it
seventy times seven times
with lustral waters
and commanded
Fly, impurities! infecting sprites!—
but it would never heal.
It grew proud flesh
I tried myself to trim away
with our best burins,
but it just got worse
and then gangrene
began to settle in,
and that was that.
His name was Idra—fig tree.
He had come to us
when he was six,
his father and his elder brother dead,
an addled mother
parting with her final auroch
and the boy himself
in hopes of finding peace
in models of her man's
and firstborn's heads.
We should have said no then:
we knew the grimaces
we offered were
no substitute for
Idra's living smiles, but—
as I said, the meat spoke
louder than the ruth,
and our preliminary look-see
gave us reason to believe
the stone points
in the corpses' skulls
were rarities.
So we said yes to boy and ox,
and took our chances
with unease.
You have to understand,
this was the very olden days,
the dawn not only
of technology but reasoning.
We were feeling our way
toward a distinction
between right and wrong.
These things are not inborn,
less simple
than they seem now
to identify or carry out.
And so—
this is the part I fear—
we told the hobbled drudge
to excavate his father's
and his brother's ossuary plots
and make room
for another set of bones;
and when he had,
I put his lights out
with a compact bolt of energy
straight to the head.
Then, with a modest ceremony,
we fitted him to join
their headless skeletons
beneath their coverlet
of sand and white kaolin clay.
Brother, please. Please slow down.
Affiance - Muse's Advisory, May 20 – Miriam to Zeus:
You neither invented death nor defeated it.
My people rose from Assyrian graves
and have billowed violence ever since.
Witness the day they led Yeshua to a cliff
all passioned-up
to throw him off
because he brushed aside a rude demand
to heal their sick.
When the Parthians swept in,
Jews killed as many Christians as they could.
The ones they missed took their revenge—
the blood goes round and round.
Nor did you invent religion:
what to do about the dead.
This outcaste colony of clay and light's
as good as any way to be alive,
but when the sentence ends,
the peas roll back into the pod
and hungry lupine memories howl
for flesh and blood
to ornament the ground.
Who's less equipped than a divinity
to walk the narrow line
between philosophy and masculinity?
What arrogance to hold gods
to a standard of behavior
we can't meet ourselves
but at the same time
hemmed with our small-mindedness?
Take me with you to the soiled site
where things that you've regretted
for ten thousand years still breathe,
still sting your eyes.
I'll stand with you, my own eyes smarting.
I'm content to be your counterpart.
Back in the Day - Muse's Advisory, May 21 – Poseidónas:
Old times, isn't it, Zeus?
Remember bodysurfing that big quake in 1700 BC
when we both wound up ass-skywards
on a hillside in a grove of pistachio trees?
Miriam, you should have seen this guy
when he was in his prime!
We were a team:
he cracked his thunderbolts,
I sent my tremors through the ridges undersea—
et voilà!—
tsunami like you wouldn't believe!
We had a sense of freedom then.
We did exactly as we pleased
and no one thought to box us
in theology. Whole empires rose
and fell on games we played
but that was just the order of things,
as good a way as any
to give history its impetus,
the birth of ten
or slaughter of a thousand
part of nature, excellent, in harmony.
Purity is what we had.
All things had consequences
and each consequence was opportune.
Somebody suffered? Good. Somebody died?
Part of the world's unfolding story
that they should.
Nobody thought about prevent.
The world was totally dynamic—
what came came, what went went.
Ah, here's Cape Carmel now.
You want to stir things up for old time's sake
and see if we can't raise a surf
to hurl you all the way to Nazareth?
Oh, you've kept this woman guessing, Zeus!
The look she gave me,
she thought maybe
I was serious.
Itinerary, Day 1 - Muse's Advisory, May 22 – Visitor Center Clerk to
Zeus & Miriam:
Margaret Hotel have best view. Golden Crown Hotel have very big pool.
Notre Dame Hotel—you see, Madame? She look like you, no?
You are hungry after trip. Go eat lunch, there, Diana Restaurant. After, go
see sights.
Annunciation is biggest Arab church. Where angel tell Virgin she have baby.
Or is St. Gabriel Church over there. Big fight. Everybody say, I am right! You are
wrong!
Church of Carpenter, where St. Yusuf work. Synagogue Church, here, is
where Yeshua preach. Mensa Christi, he eat meal with apostles—in Bible, no?
Lady of Fright is where Virgin see people take Yeshua to cliff. Basilica of Young
Boy, very nice. Yeshua Trail very nice, go to Capernaum. Ilut Stadium is Ahi
Nazareth football team.
I am guess you are from Greece, no? So do not go to Prophet—you
see, across street? Big guy from Crete break nose of owner in big fight. It look
like this. Here it take very long time to forget. If you see man with nose
like this, you must say, I am only Turk! I am also hate all Greek people!
Lunch At Diana's - Muse's Advisory, May 23 – Miriam/Zeus:
"I don't even know if I can eat,
I swallowed so much water
on Poseidónas's chariot.
And what if Yusuf wanders in?
What would I say?
Those foster-husband years were tough.
How did he get himself mixed up
in all my meshugas?"
"Water under the bridge.
I'm sure it is for Yusuf, too.
You think he spent these two millennia
regretting what he had with you?
By nature he's a loner, vagabond—
who else takes on a pregnant girl as wife
to raise the child of an absent god?
Does that sound like a man
who wants a normal life?
And think about it—
who walked out on who?"
"Miss, I'll have the falafel combination,
with cucumber salad, some taboolee,
and two skewers of roast venison.
To drink, a large glass of iced tea."
"For me...fowl with coffee and plums?
Is that a dish you recommend?
A can of Diet Pepsi and a bottle of Neviot—
from an oasis on the Red Sea, Miriam.
They say you can taste
the pharaoh's soldiers' screams."
"Delightful, dear.
I'll stick with my iced tea, if you don't mind.
Do you see that Arab couple over there?
Don't look!
I think they're watching us."
"We do stand out, I'd say—
you with that zither, is it?—in your hand,
and me with St. Paul sitting in this silly hat.
After we eat, why don't we buy
some local clothes and try
to make ourselves blend in a bit?
We're probably under surveillance
by Israeli intelligence."
"And the Vatican Order of Malta."
"Urban legend."
"Don't look now, but urban legend's peeking
from behind that Commonweal magazine."
"Ah, so quick! Here are the drinks!
Shukran, nadila."
"You're flirting with the waitress, Zeus?"
"The basic courtesies, my dear—"
"Your basic courtesies are
how Yeshua got conceived."
"Sweetheart—"
"I'm just a little tense.
Maybe some food will help me settle down.
I didn't mean that I regret a thing, I don't.
It's just that being home—"
Itinerary, Day 2 - Muse's Advisory, May 24 – Hotel Concierge to Zeus:
It's sad but Nazareth's become
a one-night stop.
No tour-bus goes out to the caves.
It's Hagalil or Ali for a taxi:
Jews or Arabs, take your pick,
they all will rob you blind
and talk you deaf and dumb.
That's just the way it is.
No dig's in progress, but the watchman,
an Armenian,
will let you in for some baksheesh.
Be careful! I hear stories. You two do
know what they're digging up?
Be sure you get back on the road by dark.
The Egyptian cabbies, I can tell you,
won't remain one minute after sunset.
We Mizrahis like Turks quite a bit
but the Armenian is sensitive....
about that awful genocide?
So if you are by any chance a Tatar
keep that to yourself.
You'll pass, no problem, for a Greek
or even an Iranian—though honestly
who ever sees the snakebit Persians anymore?
When I was young, they used to come
here quite a lot—and they could spend!
Kfar HaHoresh is a glimpse
of what the human race was like before
you had your Christians, Muslims, Jews
all at each other's throats.
The only thing that hasn't changed?
We're still this close to Judgment Day!
At the Sudfa Bar, Nazareth - Muse's Advisory, May 25 – Yusuf's Buddy:
Yusuf—
no thanks, man,
still a couple hours
till I have my first.
Just want to let you know
I think I saw your Miriam
down at Diana's
with the weirdest looking guy
I've seen since Pat Boone
came to do that TV thing—
do you remember?
Oh, she looked fine—
so way out of your league,
it all seems so impossible.
How did you ever get with her?
It was a fucking miracle!
Oh, that's right, yes,
the little matter of the brat.
But hell,
I would've taken her myself
if anybody asked.
Anybody would've.
No, the guy was
definitely not Yeshua!
He was big, strong,
older by the looks of him.
A foreigner.
He called the waitress
“noodler”.
He's got this mini shako
on his head
with this strange bird in it—
a sailor probably.
From where
is anybody's guess.
No, man, I don't expect you
to jump up
and run and beg
her to do anything.
Just thought
you'd want to know.
I know you looked for her.
Somebody said
you sent a letter
to Koressos up by Ephesus.
Maybe she got it after all.
Maybe the sailor's just—
well, no, the sailor is her stud.
Yeah, okay, just one.
Bartend? A bottle of Galil.
And one more of whatever
Yusuf's drinking here.
So what? Fateema will find out,
she always does,
but here's my brother
who's without
even a wife to hector him.
L'chaim, as Jews say.
Here's to life.
At the Sudfa Bar II - Muse's Advisory, May 26 – Melpomene to Tom:
Why hole up in the corner with that dreadful Golan wine
whose hangover's as famous as the Gardens of Babylon?
Is there ambrosia in the fossil footprints of the dead?
All that's changed in bars is that the blanc is colder
and you're not allowed to spit.
At the Sudfa Bar III - Muse's Advisory, May 27 – Tom to Melpomene:
Let me guess.
You were the last inspire
of Sexton, Lindsay, Crane,
Qu Yuan, Plath, Teasdale,
Lucan and Berryman.
You serve no liquor
stronger than baneberry cider
nor carry any weapon stouter
than piano wire.
At the Sudfa Bar IV - Muse's Advisory, May 28 – Yusuf to Tom:
Sir?
You're talking to yourself.
Such muttering's a sign
you're wearying of drink.
It's time to think
about another form of anesthesia.
Don't look at me like that.
I know I'm blotto too.
The guy who bought me my last snort,
he couldn't stay,
but he could tell you
I've tried everything
to keep my chin above the shit.
Of which mine eyes have seen
the glory and my ears
the same old story of the
fight for love and Richard Cory,
and all the fucking rest of them!
No, the question isn't
Did you have a stimulating life?
Ask anyone: I did.
By that failed measure,
I should be among
the blessedest of men.
You don't seem a plodder either–
no retired 9-5'er
come to spend his kids' inheritance
revisiting the patch of grass
where my wife—there, I said it—
got herself "annunciated."
You've been around the block.
The tip-off is your utter lack
of interest in this sewer sink.
My ex was right—Get out.
But didn't I?—and look at me.
Not only am I back,
I'm back without a bit of wisdom
or ten agorot.
Spot me another drink?
I'm sorry, man.
You didn't sit down here
to listen to the likes of me.
It's loutish, asking you to buy.
My name is Yusuf.
Tom?
I used to know a Tom, I think.
I'll go.
It's just a shitty day.
The guy you saw me with
when you came in,
he spotted my wife and her new beau
enjoying dinner
at the priciest cafe in town.
You think she'll look me up?
If I was her, I doubt I would.
Who's fooling who?
I'd only bring her down.
Home - Muse's Advisory, May 29 – Miriam:
I think our house was–here. Don't you remember, Zeus?
The charcoal kilns were up that hill
and Dad walked down that road into the souk?
All these damn churches fucked everything up.
When we returned from Egypt,
both my parents gone, it felt so logical to take their place,
so Yusuf threw a shed up, there, for woodwork.
Yeshua said he still could sense their presences—
Dad glad to see us safely back,
and Mom, upset. I told him, "Yeah, you got that right."
The years passed stormily.
The boy fought off one crisis of identity
and then the next.
More rebbes, quacks and healers
were brought in than you could shake a stick at,
but each eventually threw up his hands and said,
"He's got an imp in him! He's not the first child
to come back from Alexandria as damaged goods."
We couldn't prevent him becoming an outcast.
In whispers people told their own kids, "Stay away."
We tried to keep that from him too
but he was smart and sensitive; grew furious.
A boy who tumbled off our roof
had just the day before called him an ugly name.
When Yeshua trotted off to join his hippie cousin
at the river, Yusuf braved being a laughingstock
and thought it might be good if he got baptized too.
But it was misinterpreted as checking up, a lack of trust.
That was the straw that broke the camel's back,
and Yusuf just gave up.
I never did, and never will.
Yeshua wants acceptance just like everybody else.
It's not his fault he spent his early years abroad
and had a southern accent kids made fun of;
not his fault I carried him unwed.
But he determined he would show them all!
In the end, the neighbors
nodded pharisaically and said,
"We knew that boy would never straighten out."
I know the motivation's selfish
but I wouldn't mind it if Yeshua got the last laugh.
Heisenberg Principle - Muse's Advisory, May 30 – Zeus to Miriam:
Omniscience failed,
my equanimity
upset by fluky waves
when I observed you
sitting in the window.
The icy mind has
perfect knowledge
of its galaxy,
then one iota of desire
shatters everything.
At Kfar HaHoresh Archeological Site - Muse's Advisory, May 31 – Zeus:
Incredible.
These are the very bones
I laid in far-off youth.
Why is it I remember this,
the work I did,
but next to nothing
of my thoughts?
I don't remember
who I was.
Back then
I bet I thought I knew,
and think I do today,
which all suggests
it's only self-delusion.
The things I built, though—
look, still here,
still saying Zeus.
I'm not internal after all.
Over Lunch, With a View to the West - Muse's Advisory, June 1 –
Zeus/Miriam:
“Dawn's gold and evening's purple
on those hills
are always in my blood—
my first home after Crete,
the place I went out
on my own,
began negotiating life
with spirits, humans,
and all kinds of beasts—
became the god I am.
You're native but
I also call myself a Galilean.
The lady at the desk
seemed nice.
And didn't St. Paul take to her?
He's ready for some pampering.
She must have planted
fifty kisses
on the poor bird's head...!”
“Let's go back to the Margaret,
Zeus. It feels like centuries
since we've spent time in bed.
So much has changed:
a lot of blood's been shed;
my middle galaxy
expanded quite a bit.
Your body's unfamiliar too,
but since you're neither marble
nor wear hooves today,
I'll take my chances!”
“You are still that pretty girl—”
“Zeus, don't you understand
the bill-and-coo's not needed any more,
and hasn't been since our first day?
You are my only possibility.”
“You want to try
to put down roots with me again?”
“Let's try the bed.
Tonight, we'll try the wine
and see what stars
draw pictures overhead.
Let me just say
that if we do decide
to get a little place,
I have a longish list
of pleasant household chores
I've stored up in my mind
to help us occupy the time.”
Parrot's Prayer ‫ ااااااا اا اااااا‬- Muse's Advisory, June 2 – St. Paul
the White Cockatoo:
I bow
and never break.
Allah is great!
‫أنحني‬
‫وأبدا كسر‬
‫هللا أكبر‬
I don't stand straight. ‫أنا ال تقف شامخة‬
I bow
‫أنحني‬
and never break.
‫وأبدا كسر‬
Allah is great!
‫هللا أكبر‬
I bow.
‫أنحني‬
I don't stand straight. ‫أنا ال تقف شامخة‬
Allah is great!
I bow.
I don't stand straight
‫هللا أكبر‬
‫أنحني‬
‫أنا ال تقف شامخة‬
and never break.
‫وأبدا كسر‬
Pietà - Muse's Advisory, Midnight June 2/3 – Melpomene
Her recurring nightmare:
They lay him in her arms
more like a lover than son—
so long since anyone was
sprawled across her thighs.
He's a handsome man
with a handsome prick
she always hoped would
help him charm a wife.
Her recurring nightmare:
Thoughts unmaternal
blush beneath her veil.
She hopes John doesn't see
but his eyes too are fixed
hard on the shriveled dick,
the ugly way the scrotum
has begun to splotch.
Her recurring nightmare:
Two of the novice soldiers
casting lots had never seen
Jews with circumcised cocks.
They point and start to laugh
at how the tip pathetically
shrinks back but fails
to find a place to hide.
Her recurring nightmare:
She's desperate to wake up
but she still can't raise her eyes
above Yeshua's waist,
afraid she'll see a bare heart
bleeding on his white chest,
gray lips murmuring in prayer
and dark eyes clear.
Her recurring nightmare:
His penis is a bloodworm
but she still can't lift her eyes.
It wriggles up onto his breast.
She finally casts about
for one of the others to help,
but all of them are gone.
She begins a long scream.
The Contrabandista
Hail to the ancient hat!
Neath which our chiefs have sat!
Kneel down upon the mat!
Hail hail ladrones!
-Burnand & Sullivan
Muse's Advisory, June 3 – Urania:
“Psst! Mister! Miss!”
a reedy old voice hisses.
“I've been watching you!
Come look at this!”
Zeus scans the street,
shops dimmed
and shuttered tight
for Friday prayer.
“Miss! Mister! Over here!”
A bent hand flutters
like a feather in the air
outside the crack
of an old oak door.
“Yes, come in, quick!
You see this votive tablet,
pure red jasper, Yemenite?
Its inscription calls on
Al-Qaum of the air,
the wine-abstainer,
nighttime shepherd
of the cameldrivers' souls
in their disguise as stars;
then, Dushares
who resides inside
the hill-stone hereabout;
third, Allah-ʼNā,
the primal god-man Greeks
remember as Theandros.
For 1000 shekels it is yours
and I will tell you what
the last three lines reveal.”
Zeus looks at Miriam
and she at him,
the urge to burst out laughing
testing both of them.
“Old man,” Zeus says.
“There's something in
your face I like.
Your eyes and voice
remind me of a monk
I used to drink wine with.
He often muttered
about scriptures, scrolls—
and baked the most
delicious sweet rolls
you could ever
wrap your lips around!
But we're not here
to buy up souvenirs.”
“I know exactly
why you came!
But this cartouche
here in the hollow of my palm
will tell you more
about yourselves
than poking into ruins!
It reveals the distant source
of all divi-i-i-i-nity!
How light and matter mated
in a million different ways
to shape each leaf,
each horse,
each humble ant!
How all life's
surreptitiously related since—"
above his head he draws
wide circles with the charm—
"an-ti-i-i-qui-ty-y-y-y-y!
No?
You're not interested?
Maybe some fresh
black-market caviar?”
Springs Eternal - Muse's Advisory, June 4 – Yusuf to the Other Barflies:
Don't act surprised.
You all knew
I was going to do it
and I did it.
Curse of my life,
I'm such an open book.
Yeah, she looks good,
and yeah, I'm still in love,
okay? And yes, I know
I look like hell
and badly need a shave.
Life hasn't handled me
with kidskin gloves.
No, I didn't go
and talk to her.
What would I say?—
“Hey, babe,
your lover boy is back,
you know I'm gonna
make you feel alright,
so ditch that creep”?
This codger I ran into
back behind the avenue
told me her stud's named Zeus.
I'll bet you anything
the first name's Alexander—
fucking Greeks
and delusions of grandeur!
The old coot was
some kind of collector.
For old family papers—
postcards of the Nile,
Yeshua's bleak MMPI results—
he gave me this red stone
and said the last three lines
of its inscription
will enlighten me enough
to sweet-talk Miriam back
into bed.
No, not an incantation.
Knowledge. Sensitivity.
A man who knows
what's in a woman's heart,
he promised me,
is this close to her muff.
Here's what it says—
the coot recited it
in Hebrew, Arabic and Ge'ez,
à la the Rosetta Stone.
It names three gods
so powerful
you never heard of them
and then predicts
“The future is reality TV.
Who Wants to Be
the Next Big Nazarene?”
You bet I'll try it out!
What's there to lose?
The Osbournes told
In Style magazine
it fanned the coals for them.
I've got a dead-end life,
no job, no kids, no wife.
Maybe celebrity's
exactly what I need.
Nasir's Custom Cabinets ‫اااا ااااا ااا ااااا‬--- Muse's Advisory, June 5
– Nasir to Miriam:
Five years ago, I'd guess?
Gave him a dozen second chances,
then I sacked him.
Late, late, late, late, late.
I think he had a taste for drink
and trouble getting up.
Completely solid otherwise,
salt of the earth,
a real straight arrow—
but I couldn't run a business
without knowing
when and if my go-to guy
was going come in.
The last straw?
This big Russian guy
who lived in Migdal HaEmek
came in one day at 9 o'clock.
I don't know where
his money came from,
but a real big spender,
all cash, wanted built-in
bookshelves, cabinets.
Knew Yusuf's craftsmanship
and wanted only him.
Unfortunately, homey picks that day
to wander in at 10.
The rich alimai had just left.
Where does he live?
Dunno.
Bir el-Amir, back then—
near Taha's place?
Do you know him,
our beautiful poet?
The minute I see her, I'll know her,
and recognize the catastrophic rings
hanging from her tender neck.
I'll know her clear spring's glance,
the gazing dew
like the dream of a lake.
I'll know her soft velvet footfalls,
her paces measured
like the breaths of lettuce seedlings.
Yusuf had a gorgeous place there
but without a paycheck
would have had to move.
A pricey house is like a woman, no?
Without the shekels,
you can't keep her.
You're not his ex, by any chance?
Oh, what a torch he carried,
that poor man!
No other woman meant two agorot.
I'd say “Now there's a vision!”
but he wouldn't even look.
Sure, sure,
I pass him on the street sometimes.
I look the other way.
It's awkward since the firing.
But next time, sure, I'll tell him—
Miriam, you said?—
“The very lovely Miriam said hi
and left her forwarding address
with the Desk at the Margaret.”
Remission - Muse's Advisory, June 6 - Tom:
The rumor is
it's Zeus and Miriam
up at the shrine—
the first time in millennia
none of the nine
are up front
servicing the line.
It's really kind of nice,
the idea that we're staying put tonight.
The field is sprouting little fires,
and ghost tales bloom.
The stars creep lower,
thick and comforting as fleece.
I wonder how long we would sit
ambitionless
if all the muses stayed away?
Let's say Zeus talked them into
an extended family trip.
At 4 a.m., another rumor
sweeps the drowsy line
that snakes and doubles
around groves of cherry trees
and wreathes the hillsides
like a cursive script—
that Mother Memory
has come back too.
Fresh tinder crackles
inside hearts and minds;
attached leaves kindle,
chatter in the virgin heat;
white streaks crisscross
subconscious sky,
and fallow quarters wake;
lips flutter as the muses'
mother whispers by,
enspheres the shrine
and filters in the doors
where her nine daughters
with their father and his whore
sit sociably inside.
Oh, to be a fly on that wall!
But the caress of fresh recall
breathes so much witching on the field,
the soot-clothed embers hush
and settle till they're dead.
No muse
nor poet makes a sound.
At the Front Desk of the Margaret Hotel - Muse's Advisory, June 7 –
Yusuf to St. Paul the White Cockatoo:
You're a handsome bird,
a little beaten up,
but I can tell that in your prime
you were a stunning buck.
Where is the concierge?
Do you expect
she'll be back soon?
Are you a talking cockatoo?—
not that I ever understood
what people think they get
from talking birds.
It would be great
if you could tell us what it's like
to be your kind,
or what you really think of us.
But all this
Polly-want-a-cracker—
“Fuck!”
Did you say Fuck?
I must be hearing things.
Nobody at a hotel desk
is going to teach a bird
to talk like that!
Bonjour, madame.
Gut' Tag, mein Herr.
But fuck is more a kitchen bird
or out-above-the-dumpster fare.
I know.
I raised a son who couldn't
keep his mouth shut either,
and they crucified him for it.
Christ? Yeshua?
Ever heard of him?
No, likely not.
I don't think parrots
were a big concern of his,
and it was quite
a long way back.
A Straightforward Hail Mary - Muse's Advisory, June 8 – Yusuf to the
Sudfa Barflies:
I left a note inviting her to meet me here for a drink at three.
Can I trust you morons not to ruin it for me if she shows up?
Most likely she won't but if she does
I want you all to be polite.
Just let us sit and talk.
Don't fawn on her or ask for intercessions.
Think of her as my ex, not a world-famous saint.
Do you fawn on me? No. Exactly.
But if her Greek comes too, here's what I need you to do.
Muhammad, you hustle him out of here—
I know you'll think of a dodge.
Keep him away for twenty minutes.
I'm planning to plead my case directly to madonna
and without any hemming or hawing.
If she says yes, good. If she says no, I'll accept that.
When you return with the Greek god
I will wave to you with my right hand if she said yes.
That means there might be trouble, so be ready.
All of you, be ready.
If it's no, I won't wave at all.
Then ask her for whatever you want.
Who's Who - Muse's Advisory, June 9 – Miriam to Zeus:
I would like you to meet him, dear,
but not today. So many years,
I'll barely recognize his face myself.
Don't pout. I'm not about
to run away with him. One drink—
and if he's not obnoxious or too sad,
I'll ask him here
for lunch one day this week.
What did I see in him?
I saw a man whose love was stronger
than his pride, who married me despite—
no, not despite,
he said that fatherhood appealed to him—
that little jam you left me in.
You didn't cuckold him:
he took your egg, your woman
and your place,
and all because you couldn't face
your own responsibility.
Yes,
eventually he left.
Do I regret it that he did? I do.
It's not because I love him more than you,
but in my mind it's possible
Yeshua might have turned his life around
if Yusuf and his steady hand
had stayed in town.
A few days after he walked out,
Yeshua and I went to Cana
for a wedding. That was when
the worst shenanigans began.
I told him, You're too young to drink,
but he devised this cockamamie plan—
one of the servers filled his goblet
from the water jug, but it was wine.
That wouldn't have happened
when Yusuf was there.
They were good for each other,
although it wasn't always clear.
They fought. They both thought
they were wiser than they were.
They huffed and blew like gales.
But counterbalance, even competition,
is so critical for males.
So yes, I wish that he had stayed.
I wish Yeshua had grown up
just one or two years more
before he struck out on his own.
Over-protective?
When she's watched her child
writhing on a crucifix,
yeah, I suppose
a mother tends to think that way.
Drink #1, Sudfa Bar - Muse's Advisory, June 10 – Miriam to Yusuf:
You look the same—
a more significantly bloated nose
and slightly rheumy eyes,
skinnier arms, skinnier thighs,
big liver splotches on your skin,
and 95% less hair—
I'd recognize you anywhere,
the essential you unaged—
straightforwardness of gaze,
simplicity of overall demeanor,
wry and kindly creases
twinkling on your cheeks.
Don't tell me how I look—
I'm still too vain
to drink one droplet of the truth!
I'm pleasantly surprised
how pleased I am you left that note.
That cockatoo, is he a trip, or what?
I hope he didn't shock you with—
do Muslims curse?—his Fuck.
Oh, listen. Here I'm rattling on.
Yes, please, Miss,
just a glass of wine,
whatever Yusuf has is fine.
It's just like in the old days, no?
Me jabbering, you holding your peace.
I like this place.
They seem to know you well.
How long have you been back?
I hear you still make cabinets.
You always had such talent,
such a knack for making each drawer fit.
But I'm beating around the bush.
You heard what happened to Yeshua, yes?
Oh God, Yusuf!
I'm sorry I made such a mess
of things for us!
Ah, thank you, Miss.
Do you know this old coot's my ex?
We used to live in Nazareth,
back there where all the churches are today.
He cut a dashing figure in his youth!
Well, not quite youth,
let's say his middle manliness.
Where have they taken Zeus?
A bakery? Perfect.
Everyone from Crete
has such a sweet-tooth!
I feel young, here, with you again.
So much has happened, bad and good.
I'll try to bring you up to speed.
But you said you had something
that you wanted to bring up with me?
Drink #2, Sudfa Bar - Muse's Advisory, June 11 – Yusuf to Miriam:
I have to laugh.
You haven't changed a bit:
delightful chatterbox.
You've charmed the barmaid so,
she wants to take you home.
You know me,
straight to the point, so here I go:
I want to re-unite.
I love you,
and I never stopped.
I dream about your touch.
I want you as my wife.
Your guy from Crete seems nice.
It's not my style to run him down.
I'm sure he has his charms.
But it's impossible for me to buy
that any other man can find
the joy that I have in your arms.
I wrote down several lines
our famous poet wrote.
Don't laugh.
You know I don't have eloquence.
But I recognize it when I hear it.
You asked me once,
on our way back
from the midmorning
trip to the spring:
'What do you hate,
and who do you love?'
Is that a lovely start, or what?
He has another one I know by heart:
After all these years,
long as the graveyard
wall is long, I still
ask the grass of the field
about you, and dirt paths.
Why should a plain man try
to gild his throat
when there's a guy like Taha
he can quote?
You know exactly what I love:
you,
straight-grained board,
sometimes a glass of wine
or two.
I'm not the complicated kind.
And hate? The very thought
that you'll walk out of here
with that infernal Greek
and I will never feel again
the way I feel right now.
I hate what happened to our son,
feel rotten that I left you both
when things got tough.
I know I don't deserve you back.
That's not the basis of my plea at all.
The only grounds I have to ask
for your forgiveness is how sad I am.
And I hate what's happening
to Nazareth, to Palestine.
I'm something of a patriot, I guess.
Israel has really made a mess:
another cage within a cage
those right-wing settlements—
Yes, honey, please,
two more—
that bullshit at the Western Wall
has gotten so far up our ass,
our farts make more sense
than our manifestos and our protests.
How does it seem to you?—
you always have your finger to the breeze.
Are you inspired to stick around
and lend a helping hand at all?
At Mahmood's Sweet Shop Down the Street from the Sudfa Bar Muse's Advisory, June 12 – Yusuf's Buddy to Zeus:
One more mamoul, friend?
Yusuf told me half an hour—
thinks himself a man of frugal speech
but probably has yet to reach
the far end of his first parenthesis!
Are these things great?
Reminds you of the what on Crete?
Koo-rob-yay-theez?
That's a mouthful!
Ha! Ho, ho!
Great pastries still are sweet
regardless
of how dumb their name is!
No, I don't mean to offend!
Here, have another cup
of this metel-nut tea.
Koo-rob-yay-thee
is just the name I'd want
if I was reborn as a cookie
on that godforsaken rockpile
you call Crete.
Hey! Hey!
Don't get so heated up!
Just ribbing you!
Your country
can't be any stonier than this!
It's not an insult,
just an observation, yes?
Just like we both have
veins awash
with wild North African blood.
Whoa, Zeussy!
Sit down! Put that ax
back in your pussy!
This is not that rat's-nest
pirate's lair Heraklion!
Mahmood, quick,
call the mishteret!
Let's see how Cretan bigshots
like the famous Israeli
anti-riot treatment.
“Will Swap Gossip for Pinenuts” - Muse's Advisory, June 13 – St. Paul
the Parrot to the Margaret Concierge:
You should have seen him.
He was shaking like a leaf.
This skinny, timid alcoholic
in a workbelt with a hammer
you could kill a horse with,
and this pathetic stammer.
Then when Zeus and Miriam
came back and read his note, fuck!
—sorry, I mean, whoa!—
oh, what a fight!
Pak Zeus said, “I won't let you go
and drink with him,”
but she just stared him down
and said, “I didn't ask.”
He turned red as a Moluccan lory,
stormed upstairs in such a fury
that the hotel shuddered
with the boom of hooves
on well-kept wood. Oh no!
He isn't gentle when he's mad!
That's why I think my having been
abandoned here is not that bad.
You're sweeter and you take my care
and maintenance more seriously.
You kiss; he gives a painful swat.
You change my water every day;
he, once a week.
I'm not complaining—
owe that god my life and more.
But once you reach a certain age
the creature comforts
take on more allure.
God, I would kill to be a gecko
on the ceiling of the bar!
That skinny little carpenter
has no clue what he's in for!
If he has any sense at all
he'll skitter underneath his ex's skirt
and tremble like a mousedeer fawn
until the coast is clear.
Drink #3, Sudfa Bar - Muse's Advisory, June 14 – Miriam to Yusuf:
I'm blown away.
I don't know what to say.
How do a fallen limb like me
and sapwood like Yeshua
wind up more illustrious
than polished heartwood
like yourself?
The greatest actors aren't even
in the audience on Oscars night
and sages say we never find
the apple of our eye in limelight.
The sad sight here:
you barking up a crab-tree
to make pie
as if desire turned a starling
to a wife.
I wish it could.
I wish I could say yes.
I wish the simple sweetness
of a man like you
could sweat
in through my knotty crust.
But I say no. I must.
The Bolt Zeus Cast - Muse's Advisory, June 15 – Urania:
The bolt Zeus cast at the flashing lights
on the roof of the van of the mishteret
went way awry, this being his first clash
with new Israeli anti-terrorist technology.
Mahmood said it shot into the heavens, west,
and looked like it was bound for Crete—
and the radar at the Polemikí Aerodrómio
picked something up, a streak
over the island and still gaining altitude.
But none of the NATO dishes tracked it,
and that would have been that
except for the elderly gentleman walking along
Saratoga Creek with his surviving sister Lawanna
after their youngest sister Ethel Mae's
funeral repast at the Noel Baptist Church
in southwest Missouri, who near tripped over
the three and a half foot long iron shaft
with its jagged forked end.
“John Cantell,”
Lawanna said, “the day you witnessed that oak
tree split in half by a hoop snake, I said
My brother is anointed for some grand
purpose—and this, doggonit, proves it.”
The very next day he drove it down to
his old friend Bryon Warren in Gravette,
Arkansas, who was a substitute teacher
as well as the firehouse chief and a pretty
fair barbecue pitmaster, and asked him
if he'd ever seen anything like it. Byron
said “No I hain't,” and they both walked it
over to Dodie Evans at the News Herald.
Dodie front-paged it the very next week
and ran a quote from Professor Pappas
at the state university down Fayetteville
who had driven up to John's to examine
the bolt and said, “The discovery of any
Zeusian artifact in the New World would
be of utmost interest. Is John Cantell's
forked shaft of iron actually a projectile
hurled by the supreme god of Antiquity?
“I would have to characterize that question
as one whose entertainment value must
considerably exceed the archeological.”
Pandemonium - Muse's Advisory, June 16 – Thalia:
They hear the shouts—
Greek, Hebrew, Arabic—
and then an Uzi burst.
Two barmaids tumble
out into the street
in time to glimpse
two cops charge past.
Yusuf and Miriam leap
to their feet as a siren
adds a dizzying soprano
to the wild cacophony.
Had the intifada
broken out again?
the absentees been chased again
by gunmen on the pine paths
of the abbey of al-Mujaydil,
where figs and pomegranates
sprout and wither on the roof
of the abandoned chapel?
“No, no! It was a Greek!
He tried to kill an Arab man
in Mahmood's Sweet Shop—
over nothing, just like that!
So Mahmood called the cops! “
“It was a Cretan, not a Greek!
I myself heard Mahmood
very definitely say Crete!”
“Crete is Greece, moron! Shit!”
“Now you're an anthropologist?”
The green-grocer swore
she heard hooves clattering—
or was it just the rat-tat-tat
of small-arms fire
making the stucco
and cobblestones chatter?
A cabbie swore he saw
the fleeing Cretan, Greek, whatever,
leap a dozen cars and vespas!
A pensioner snapped
a picture on his cell
that showed beyond
a shadow's doubt
lips flecked with spittle
and the widely flared
and foam-frothed nostrils
of a Jedran stallion
in a fury, or aroused.
Pandemonium II - Muse's Advisory, June 17 – Thalia, cont.:
Miriam shoots Yusuf a terrified look
and dashes out
into the swelling crowd herself.
He tries to stop her
but the raucous mob's too thick.
Up runs Muhammad
with a crudely bandaged
hand and head,
a broad grin fattening his beard.
“I did it, man!”
he cries and slaps his buddy's back.
“This drink's on me, yes? Yes!”
Crestfallen, Yusuf trails him
back into the bar.
The owner nods from the back room:
the barmaid bypasses
the usual Gold Star,
pours Tabor to the brim
for them to toast:
"Another victory! To Palestinians!"
The jubilation's so contagious,
Yusuf half forgets
he's been rejected;
then shrugs and thinks,
"Let liquor do its job."
No one goes back to work.
The bar fills up, high spirits multiplying.
Every couple minutes
some new messenger bursts in and cries,
"They shot him dead up by the Margaret!"
"He's gotten clean away! The mishteret
have given up!"
"The cops were just about to nab the Greek,
when this half-naked henchman
sprang right out of nowhere with a club
and knocked the Jew swine off their feet!"
Back to the Gold Star, unfortunately.
Then no more wine at all,
as Yusuf and Muhammad's pockets
both grow bare of sheqalim.
The euphoria tatters,
and night, so ignorant of victories,
undresses just as quietly as ever.
Ouroboros in Missouri - Muse's Advisory, June 18 – Urania:
Indeed, John was never the same
after his near death encounter
with the hoop-snake,
as the kids in Sunday School attest.
He'd scrawled over the blackboard
hen to pan = one is all,
a black-headed viper swallowing
its chalked-in tail.
“Plato's Timaeus!” he announced.
Then he waited for them to react.
When they didn't,
beyond watching him with wider eyes,
he pulled out
that dog-eared friend and read:
“God imagined self-sufficiency.
His first Son needed no eyes.
Nothing existed to be seen.
No ears: nothing to hear.
No mouth to eat with
and no organ to drop waste.
It didn't hunt or defend itself,
so had no hands or feet: a sphere,
it rotated in solitary space.”
“That's the hoop-snake, Mr. Cantell!”
cried bright Billy Bob.
“Yes!” applauded the teacher,
Please All of You Just Call Me John.
“And it came for me last night—
came rolling right down Mission Hill
like thunder.
But I managed to duck behind
a big old cottonwood tree,
which the hoop-snake's plenum
instantaneously killed.
Two black-ops Israelis chased
the snake with Uzis blazing!
But when the cottonwood fell,
they vanished back into the air
whence they had come.”
“How did you know they were Israelis?”
asked bright Billy Bob.
Cantell just smiled.
“The Russian mafia don't wear fatigues;
Jamaicans definitely don't look like Hebes!”
The class guffawed.
“The question,” he went on,
Who'd Freak If They Just Called Him John,
“is What Would Jesus Do?
And what will you do when
the hoop-snake comes for you?
Go hide behind a tree, like me?
Or open wide your arms
to turn the other cheek?”
“If the ouroboros were coming
by itself,” said Billy Bob,
“then I would open wide my arms
and turn the other cheek.
But if there were black-ops Israelis
blazing at it with their Uzis,
I would hide behind the tree
by the authority—right here:
"Luke 3, O generation of vipers!
Who warned you to flee from wrath to come?
Begin not to say, 'Abraham is our father.'
For God is able of these stones
to raise up children,
as an axe to the root of a tree
which brings not forth good fruit
is hewn down and cast into the fire;
“Mark 3, Can Satan cast out Satan?
A kingdom divided against itself can't stand;
a house divided against itself can't stand;
if Satan rises up against himself
he meets his end;
“John 3, Can a man be born when he is old,
enter his mother's womb a second time?
And Jesus assured them: 'Verily, verily.'”
Mr. John Cantell,
By Any Other Name a Bible Teacher Star,
smiled brightly at bright Billy Bob,
the Mysteries
all well within their reach,
the term of the Circular Body very nearly—
he could feel it—
complete.
Postmark: Bahcesaray - Muse's Advisory, June 19 - To Zeus from
Bahira the Nestorian Monk:
Dear Friend, it is a miracle if this reaches you at all and doubly so if the jars
are intact but I promised to send this pearl-mullet roe to you and so I must try.
They claim our inci kefali is endangered but whose fault is it when they leap
right into your creel looking as lovely as rainbow trout—the only fish inhabiting
this big salt carbonated lake and noplace else on earth? The fish have their own
urges to leap upstream to spawn and we have ours to smear their roe on toast.
The abbot says we all are charged with being “prudent stewards of nature.”
What a conflict of interest! When God starts putting chow directly in our bellies
then we can start leaving these poor creatures alone! In any event it is too late
for these particular eggs so just go ahead and enjoy.
I've heard many stories of you over the years. It seems you live as Lǐ Bó said
“in interesting times.” I often suffer from a little guilt at how luxurious and safe
our monk's life is fighting our spiritual struggles while most of the laity can't
even
fill their cheeks with bread. Praying to lighten other men's hardships is not much
of a burden compared to undergoing one's own.
But I have a much greater crime to confess than luxury and environmental
neglect. Whom can I trust but you? Sit down and open a jar of roe. Pour a full
glass of wine. Unfortunately it is Miriam I have wronged. Remember the scroll
that I vowed to protect with my life? I sold it. Not for cash. You know me better
than that. But a legate showed up from the Vatican and threatened point-blank
to shut the monastery down if I didn't give it to him. I asked how the papal
apparatus even knew about it and he said the things they know about people
like you and me would drop our jaws. “Our new Pope is unusually determined,”
he said, “to police Canon Law.”
We both know what they will do with it. Their canon is closed and that's that.
They won't much like her point of view so you will have to get it back from them.
The Archivum Secretum Vaticanum never has been breached but you can do it if
anyone can. There is a middle-aged American poet named Tom visiting Nazareth
right now. No not Tom Hanks! Why is everything a joke with you? Tom Riordan.
Most days you can find him poolside at the Golden Crown pecking at his laptop.
He is interested in these scrolls too and might be able to help. Though he has no
prior experience with document theft or to tell the truth any valuable skill he is
not really doing much of anything else and so maybe he can be of some use.
That guy who tried to sell you the mystical votive tablet in the alley yesterday is
a former monk and old acquaintance of mine too. He might be able to help also.
Unlike Mr. Riordan he has extensive experience in all sorts of sub
rosa operations
and he owes me a favor. Show him this note and you will be allowed to collect it.
I don't know what else to do to make amends but if you and Miriam think of
something please don’t hesitate to ask. You know my answer will always be yes.
Yours faithfully, Bahira
Back in the Hotel - Muse's Advisory, June 20 – Zeus/Miriam:
“Who do
these fucking
Israelis
think they are?
Do they think
I'm a boar
to hunt in packs?
And how do they jam
my transmissions
like that?
I see now what
the Palestinians
are up against.
And your ex's
friend Muhammad is
a fucking saint now,
yes?
It didn't take him long
to get my goat,
even on my best
behavior.
I bet your
Yusuf put him up
to it.”
“I doubt it, Zeus.
Deviousness
is not his style;
he's a straight arrow—
though you know
I prefer lightningbolts,
and told him so.
Come here,
let me put something on
that knee. I'd say
your Evel Knievel period
is over, dear.”
“I'm going back
to finish what
that rat's ass started!
If he calls the police again,
they're also going to regret it!”
“Bruiser, don't get
so excited.
You scraped your knee
but it's your pride
that's smarting.
We Galileans are
a rough-and-tumble lot.
You liked that spunk
when you were young,
the chance to earn
sharp spurs yourself.”
“I didn't earn them, Miriam,
by letting two-bit hustlers
get the best of me!
That lowlife either
spits out
an apology
or I will drown his fucking
bluster in the gutter!”
“Zeus, no. We didn't
come here
for a war.”
“I didn't come here
to be made an ass of,
either.”
“We came
to put the past behind us,
for a fresh start.”
“Okay. Okay? I'm sorry I lost
my temper in the sweet-shop.
Satisfied?”
“No I'm not.
Come here, you big old lunk,
take off that silly robe
and let me take a good look
to make sure you've got
no scratches on your junk.”
Through the Cracks - Muse's Advisory, June 21 – Miriam to Zeus:
You are obsessed with viewing
Yusuf
as my ex but he is the man who
raised
your son too. You'd think you'd be dying
to know what he's
like but
Yeshua's
not really a concern, is he, but just one
creation among many idly
scattered
across four millennia, his sole
meaning
whether he limits you somehow or not.
Creative people make very
parents, easy come
easy go while
of us who count our inspired
on one hand hold on too
Add us together and divide by
and then Yeshua gets what he
what children all need—
neglectful
those
moments
tightly.
half
needs,
confidence.
I saw him when I was chasing
or was chasing the cops chasing
At the moment when you
and went down for the first
I thought, Is it possible he could
killed? Yeshua hovered before my
just as you arose and bounded
He looked deeply at me and
you
you.
stumbled
time,
get
eyes
away.
begged
in that eerily calm,
why is it you're so
scary voice,
Mom,
anxious about me?
Pieces of Silver - Muse's Advisory, June 22 – St. Paul to the Margaret
Concierge:
I'd tell them in the nicest tone,
“I wish I could extend your stay.
Unfortunately we're booked
until the end of June.”
I love Zeus dearly
as you know,
but he's about to blow–
and after all your kindnesses
I'd hate to see it happen here.
The last hotel that got him mad
sustained a Force 10 flare-up
on the screened deck,
and some hapless bellhop's face
got stenciled red-and-purple plaid.
These pine nuts,
by the way, are just divine,
the drop of mastic
in my bath, finer than fine.
At the Bar in the Frank Sinatra Building - Muse's Advisory, June 23 –
Zeus to Poseidonas:
Women!
Miriam couldn't resist
attending Mass
in her own church—
“Just curious,” she said.
I said okay:
it was the perfect day and hour
to catch the hardcore
getting started at the Sudfa Bar.
Jackpot!
Yusuf and Muhammad
sitting by themselves outside,
the pretty barmaid leaning down
to serve them their manouche
and giving them a peek of boob.
Know, Bro? I wouldn't mind
a bit of that myself.
I made myself look like a Jew,
skull cap and payess—
those long curlicues?—
the kind of mark
their kind of scum
cannot resist.
“Excuse me, gentlemens?”
I asked in dreadful Arabic.
“Do you know where is
the police's station?”
O, you should have seen the grins!
Better than the barmaid's tit,
a yarmulked Jew who was lost!
They ran the scenario through
their pinched, hungover heads,
looked at each other, nodded
one, two, three,
and said in unison, “Drop dead!”
I grabbed Muhammad's
little Arab pizza, sniffed it, spat:
“The Prophet's camel shit!”
And up they leapt
while the whole street watched
and cocked their fists.
Nobody yelled, “Police!”
Nobody lifted a finger to help.
Nobody thought two hometown boys
would get their noses broken
by a Hasid in ringlets.
By the time they realized
what was what,
the pair of racist assholes
leaked red rivulets
between the cobblestones
and I was glaring up
and down the alley
daring any one or two or three
of them
to come
and do something about it.
I heard one old witch
whisper to her grandmother,
“Zeus.”
The thousand-year-old beldam
nodded slowly, sadly,
and just muttered, “Who else,
Khalid's darling girl,
who else?”
poolside prod, golden crown hotel - muse's advisory, june 24 – thalia
to tom:
at risk of jeopard
izing
your journal
istic
neutral
ity
oh i forgot
you're not
a journal
ist
why don't you stand up
put your drink down
suck your gut in
go to
town and lend
your
char
acters a hand
what kind of man
lets other people
mix it up and sits
thumb up his ass
praying to pull a plum
plus
you look per
fect
ly ridicu
lous
in that mesh
poly
leopard
speedo
and the thin norwegian
girl
you're
o
gling
is not
the least bit
interested.
Pros & Cons of The Golden Crown - Muse's Advisory, June 25 – Tom:
- great view of the valley
- large room
- petit déjeuner, buffet ricco e vario soprattutto di verdure & sehr ordentlichem
koscheren essen
- showerhead drips
- internet iffy
- 450 Israelis from Tel Aviv with sound system installed at pool pounding out bad
disco till 4am
“Hello, is this the Margaret?
May I make a reservation?”
Στο δικαστήριό σου ασκώ έφεση, ω Kύρια! - Muse's Advisory, June 26 –
At the Front Desk of the Margaret:
“Στο δικαστήριό σου ασκώ έφεση, ω Kύρια!” Zeus shouts.
“I demand to talk to the manager, Madame!”
“Fuck!” shrieks the cockatoo.
“Sir,” says the concierge. “I am the manager.
The owner of the property lives in Jerusalem.”
“How can you take our room away?
Look at these people checking in!”
“Their reservations predate your request to stay.
I'm sorry. Your initial reservation was two nights.
It's taken quite a bit of jockeying to get you four.”
“St. Paul. You've been here, listening. Tell me,
have you heard Ms. I-Am-the-Manager accept
new reservations on the phone since we arrived?”
“Fuck,” pussyfoots the bird. “I wouldn't know.
It took six months before I understood your Greek.
I did hear some Athenians lamenting, though,
they weren't in that big place with the pool.”
“Madame,” says Miriam, “I know you tried your best,
so we'll accept your invitation to arrange a room
for us, at a discounted price, at the Golden Crown.”
“Why are you giving in so easily?” Zeus growls.
“What difference does it make?
We nearly booked ourselves there, didn't we?
Your Kazantzákis imitation's nice
but even Zorba called it quits at some point,
went to Athos and became a monk.
A neighboring hotel is not so bad.”
“We didn't come to write a guide to Nazareth hotels!
But if we do, this one gets zero stars!
I'd like to see these reservations that predated ours.
I'd like hear what St. Paul claims he couldn't understand.
I'd like to find out who decreed that here in my adopted land
I'm treated both by shiftless Ishmaels
and this petty two-faced autocrata
like Micromégas with herpes, like a deus non grata!”
“Madame. Monsieur. Here, look.”
The concierge holds out the reservations book.
“Don't Monsieur me, Madame Patron!
I'll jam that registre right up your con!”
“Zeus!” Miriam objects.
“Madame, he only gets like this
après un échec du sexe.”
Pour Zeus, ce fut la dernière goutte.
Bent, fiery lines streamed from his head
like an electrified Etch-A-Sketch.
St. Paul shrieked, leapt up and almost flew,
but tumbled to the floor so pitifully,
even the god in meltdown paused
and thought to help; thought otherwise;
reduced the hotel desk to barbecue.
Kazantzákis - Muse's Advisory, June 27 – Terpsichore:
The
hajji raised
his
martyr's
hut
up on the
mountain's saddle
high
above
Barbari
where King Phocas
built a
fenced-in town as
concentration camp
for
Arabs who
survived
the slaughter
when the
Byzantines took Kastro
back.
Then the
fountain's water
ran with blood
and
old
men's tears
so bitter,
plantar
warts
dissolved
and lice and ticks
fled
uncombed hair to
elope with tortoises.
Ten years before,
a maid
of Phodhele—
where citrus
orchards
lent
Doménikos
Theotokópoulos
the urge to hide
an
orange-pip
inside
a virgin's mouth
who lay dead
drifting
toward Charon's
shore—
first cooked the spiciest
mezédes,
then
danced
a mantinadha
so erotic
the town
fountain finally
choked and
mules cursed
God.
Margarí's black
eyes
and lips spat
fire
while
all that
night
the serious, pale man
and future hajji
writhed in pain
from dolor
calor
rubor
et tumentia
brought,
as Kelsos wrote,
on men who breathe
too deeply
Kríti's
daughters.
Distant & Not So Distant Drums - Muse's Advisory, June 28 – Thalia:
Here trudges Tom with his plaid cloth sack, here Zeus and Miriam with chic
black dry-bags from Cabela's, along the littered hem of Marj ibn Amer's mirageribboned asphalt. Like tourists everywhere, they ask each other for directions.
“May I ask,” Zeus adds, “exactly when you called and made your
reservation?”
“Stop, Zeus!” Miriam objects.
“Did you say Zeus?” says Tom.
“What's it to you?” the god demands.
“My name is Tom. I'm here, in part, because your daughter—“
“Daughter?”
“—Muse? Euterpe?—”
“Ah,” says Miriam.
“—said I might find you here. What luck! What were the odds? So you are
Miriam! Euterpe let me see your diary. Incredible.”
“I'm in no mood,” says Zeus, “though somebody I trust told me to look for
you as well. He wants the three of us to break into the Vatican and steal her
goddam diary back, à la episode 16 of Alias."
“Sounds dangerous. Why not as told to—dictate everything to me again?
Then I'll upload it all to Google Docs. No pope can stick his nose in there.”
“Look, yo, it's hot as balls out here,” moans Zeus. “What say we meet and
talk at your hotel, once we get settled in? The Margaret, yes: that hill—you see?
The Golden Crown, you say, straight this way, and turn left?”
“Then one bitch of a schlep up to the crest.”
“Long as it gets us there! We stopped to ask directions twice, and twice got
dicked around. The locals spit on out-of-towners, and that Margaret concierge—”
fry.”
“—Sweetheart, don't get yourself worked up again! We've bigger fish to
“You fry what fish you want. I've got a beef or two to pick.”
Opportune Knock - Muse's Advisory, June 29 – Yusuf to Tom, Margaret
Hotel:
You're who? from where?
I'm sorry, I apologize
for knocking on your door,
but just the other day
my friends were here—
well, not exactly friends,
my ex and her new beau—
and then he came—well,
you don't have to know
the fine details, I showed
up here to try and set
things straight, but see
I've come at a bad time,
and I'm too late.
You're meeting them
tonight? Downstairs? Oh,
what a stroke of luck for me!
No no, I can't barge in—
You're serious? You sure?
At six, down at the bar?
That's splendid! Yusuf.
Glad to meet you, Tom.
Some kind of journalist?
Oh, I could tell you things,
oh yes I could! But no—
Of course not, you go
right inside and finish up
your shower, like you say.
You'll catch your death,
a thousand pardons, yes!
I'll see you downstairs—
shortly after six? Okay?
Who I Am - Muse's Advisory, June 30 – Tom:
I did “Zeus"–
about the guy
who found a
lightningbolt?
Nit printed it.
A little journal
in Seattle
of post-Dada
lit & crit?
In '98 I had
three poems
in Trilling too.
And one in 6.
Nobody reads
them. No.
But poets'
credibility is
built on
publications
like that, yes.
Although I
see you're not
impressed.
But still,
when my obit
comes out,
you'll see.
They'll say,
His poetry
was widely
published.
No, no shit.
Ruffled Feather - Muse's Advisory, July 1 – Zeus to Tom:
The hoop-snake guy, the evangelical
who saved my skin from the commandos?—
that asshole sees your poem in Nit
and sends this letter in,
“I've never felt so humbled or so proud.”
Damn dickwad saves my motherfucking life
and pees his pants because
his name is in a lousy poem.
In Perspective - Muse's Advisory, July 2 - John Cantell:
I save his life
and he complains
I don't feel proud enough.
The day that Christ saved mine,
did I think that was more
important than His Gospel?
Let me tell you
Zeus's two big secrets, folks.
One: he's illiterate.
That's why his girlfriend
gets away with stashing secrets
in her diary.
Big dummy can't tell mu from pi.
And two: his thunderbolts are not
what they're cracked up to be.
The one I found? It missed.
Whatever he had launched it at
predawn one August Sunday morning,
it destroyed a KC Southern freight train
rumbling through Noel, Missouri
bound for Shreveport, Louisiana
with dehydrated alfalfa
and ammonium perchlorate
and the real God only knows
what else. A huge piece of that train
ripped through the wall of
the beautician Rosa Miller's place
and crushed her in her bed;
a half-ton wheel hit Virgil Bentley's home
and maimed his wife;
and blue-white fire,
mushroom-shaped on top,
shot missiles of hot steel
in all directions.
There was a deafening roar,
a sucking vaccuum sound,
and then dead silence
but for bits of metal raining down.
That-all was Zeus's work.
He's an incompetent.
When kids ask me in Bible school,
“Is there a need for Jesus Christ?”
you pretty much
got all the answer
that you want,
right there.
You do the math.
So when your fake god whines,
“He thinks that being in a poem
is more of an accomplishment
than managing to save my life,”
you betcha, yes.
It was a godly poem.
The life I saved
from them Israelis—
and I'm gonna say it
right here to his face—
I more or less regret.
It's just a lot
of devil-worshipers
and orthopraxics in my debt.
Δίας Σχήμα Μετατόπισης - Zeus Shape Shifter - Muse's Advisory, July 3
– Terpsichore:
It could have been the Jews slipped
angeldust or meth into his drink;
distemper flaring up
after the Holy Roller slapped his wrist;
his rival Yusuf strolling in;
or maybe just a stage
in Zeus's normal cycling
between divine and more inhuman dispositions.
But no one in the Margaret Bar
thought it amusing when he metamorphosed
from a slick-dressed Greek
into an ogrish blue apparition
half “The Scream” and half Diana Ross.
Kazantzákis II - Muse's Advisory, July 4 – Erato:
Her lips rubbed with walnut leaves
and tinted orange, heels beating
Floorboards like a man beats
a gray wolf until it won't ever
Take another lamb, and nipples
thick and rubbery and sweet
As loukoums—high up and all alone,
the hajji herds the winds
That rake across his mind. He whinnies
like a mustang. She brought
Him suckling pork in lime leaves,
tucked his foufoúla in his boots,
Raised the icon of St. Minas
gilt with slender javelin
And crucifix—oh, how she
heated up his bed in the dark!
Ahmet Aga sent a chibouk
with nutmeg-spiced tobacco,
But he spurned it, “I don't smoke,”
then sent an inlaid yataghan,
But he spurned it, “I don't fight.”
To shattered lovers, send raki
Mashed by heifer's hooves, sing
dekapentasyllabos, pave a path
To the door for a black-draped
oxcart driven by a eunuch.
At the Margaret Bar - Muse's Advisory, July 5 – Yusuf:
Mind if I take this stool?
You don't know me,
don't despise me yet.
I'm Yusuf. You're—?
Cantell?
Can't say I've heard of it.
From the United States?
Why not? Accursèd Nazareth
attracts all kinds of mutts,
Your claim to fame is what?
You found a brokedown lightningbolt?
A writer put you in a poem?
You're boning up your Bible-teacher
bona-fides by visiting the Holy Land?
My claim is that the girl I married
was already knocked up—
gave birth to a boy, Yeshua,
who had such a talent for affront,
he basically pissed off the whole
of Israel and then paid for it
by hanging on a cross.
That's right, Yusuf.
No, not a saint! Ask anyone.
Bartender, please,
one ice-cold Pauli Girl?
And it appears—it smells as if—
that Russian gentleman
has lost hold of his bowels,
bladder, all that stuff.
I think you better cut him off
and get him out of here
before that troublemaking
Cretan Greek shows up.
Oh, yes, I'll bet
you know the one!
Why, yes, I am the guy
who built your sleeping loft!
It had the most romantic view.
You're married now?
You see? It worked! So mazel tov!
I hope it pans out
better than my own.
That's right, Joaquim's girl Miriam—
she and that Cretan lunk
just walked in now.
The beer is on the poet's dime,
he also just came in—Room 416.
But here—something for you—
heartfelt appreciation for
the frosted stein and central air.
It's hot enough out there
to fucking fry an egg today.
Zeus, shut your face!
The poet asked me here, okay?
I came this morning to demand
that you apologize for what
you did on Sunday and—
You didn't tell your tramp
how you came raving
by the Sudfa Bar
to knock some heads?
You're going to give this poor
drunk Soviet a hard time now?
Your nose too upper-crust
to smell what ordinary people
by and large contain inside?
Your shit is sweet?
Your piss like wine?
It's just like you to wander in
and try to tell somebody else
to take a hike.
What's that, Cantell?
You're moved by how I stick up
for the least of them
like Jesus would have done?
You're wondering if human nurture
and not super nature made Him
what he was? You what?
You want to pay my way
to where? Noel? Okay!
Go home and pack my stuff?
Hell, I can go right now.
My wardrobe's way too grungy
for the USA.
Tom, right? Big thanks.
Sometimes a lucky knock
on an unlucky door pays off.
With Jews and Arabs
not too big on Trinity,
my own degree of separation
from divinity is high,
and Christian Nazarenes
all learn to keep
their heads down
on both sides of town.
No, go on, be my guest,
put me in any poem you'd like.
Publicity of any kind can only help.
My star has never been what
a cosmologist would call ascendant.
Hear that, Zeus?
It makes you boil, doesn't it,
to hear that I'm the man
who's in demand?
And Miriam—so sorry, baby,
but you hitched your wagon
to a burnt-out star.
The world has changed.
It used to put a premium
on magnetism and nobility
but now the pendulum
has swung and everyone
exalts the common man.
In a Hot Bath - Muse's Advisory, July 6 – Zeus:
Thrown out,
cut off–
no one the least bit
frightened by
my grim blue mask–
it's time
to take
them all to task,
beginning with
that turncoat bird
down at the desk.
Damn all of it!
Off! every one of you!
Beyond oblivion!
Civilization
isn't worth the grief—
trying to keep a woman
and my self-respect,
Sisyphean.
Poseidónas, come!
Your trident
and my double ax
have work.
I want it all, this time.
No artery untapped.
I want it done.
Business Manager - Muse's Advisory, July 7 – John Cantell to Yusuf:
This is America, pal, where God helps those
who help themselves.
Johnson & Johnson's offer isn't chickenfeed.
What could be simpler?
“I gave St. Joseph's Orange-Flavored
Children's Aspirin to my child. You should too.”
It's either that, True Hardware, or
the Donald's Apprentice's Father.
Either you say yes to something now
or I say no to $20 Haut-Médocs,
no trip to Precious Moments Park,
no front-row seat at Eminem's
upcoming “Homeboy From St. Joe.”
You have to earn, you thriftless geezer!
No one cares what your pedigree is!
Your inspirational YouTubes gladden hearts
and fatten people's otherworldly wallets—
but we can't forget to render unto Caesar.
anthropology 101: "piltdown man" - muse's advisory, july 8 – professor
castaneda:
• jaw of a sarawak orangutan
• fistful of chimpanzee teeth
• boy's skull wrested from the roots
of ancient wilmington church yew
• iron and chromic acid stain
• imprimatur of pierre teilhard de chardin
and the infallible sir arthur conan doyle
but hidebound darwinists still claim
'twas nothing but a shameful hoax?
if anyone in here agrees, go home.
why even try to teach such boors?
Exposition - Muse's Advisory, July 9 – the Margaret Concierge/Zeus:
Why, Monsieur Zeus,
I love your hair tonight!
It's like a bird of paradise—
très Dr. Seuss.
Madame—?
—Rashid.
Madame Rashid,
excuse my memory.
Before you call the cops again...
you know much
I love this cockatoo.
I do.
Can you imagine
that I value St. Paul's life,
though he's a bird
and very dull,
more than I value yours?
I can.
Then please observe.
I offer him my wrist.
He's strangely silent,
isn't he?
Oops,
now accidentally
I've crushed his skull.
Entity 13 - Muse's Advisory, July 10 – Urania:
This time the Israelis come prepared.
They've tracked Zeus like White hunters track big game,
plotted the ideal time and place to strike
without the monstrous Cretan's lashing out
endangering the street;
and with aggravated avicide a felony,
and reckless discharge of unregulated
braincase flame a likely second count—
it's GO!
They jam him with the new Q-type carcinotron;
the deep blue voltage blowing off his hair
begins to sputter, break up, then pathetically
drift to the cobblestones like morpho scales;
an Instalaza-fired mesh of tungsten-hardened
bark-spider filament blossoms above his head;
and the great god, foaming from every orifice,
collapses softly, as though onto a feather bed.
“We dealt with something similar,” the Colonel crowed,
“back at Entebbe—and way back, when our plasma dike
outside Zeituna on the Red Sea sucked in Pharaoh's cavalry.
We always train for what we call zero scenario.
We air-condition hell. Our specialty is para-psych.
The ordinary stuff—the rockets, mortars, Scuds—
we handle that, but it's this otherworldly stuff
we're peerless at. That's why they call us Entity 13.”
Reprimand - Muse's Advisory, July 11 – Poet In Front of Tom in Line:
Man, keep your critters on a leash!
We're serious poets, not zoologists!
Each time I try to catch a few winks on my feet,
one of your miscreants starts yipping.
A poem is not supposed to be like HBO,
ba-da-bum! ba-da-boo!—
but quiet, meditative, something the guy
in front of you can sleep through.
We get enough of people being rude at home,
out on the streets. This place is sacrosanct.
Who wants to pay good money for a paean
to the wine-dark waves of the Aegean
if the tone of voice is going to be plebeian?
Your name is?—Tom, that's right.
Tom, you will never rise above a third rate talent
till you learn that less is more
and thrilling drama's always nonchalant.
Look at the Muses: tidy, bobby-socked girls
at Catholic school in starched plaid uniforms,
prim permanent waves and shipshape rolling curls.
Beauty is order, order is good,
and honest goodness always paves
the high road to the finish line.
So please, man, curb your curs
and mute your mutts.
Who wants to be disturbed
at night by brutes in rut—
your boxer's cock, your cocker's box
or your sienna-spotted basset's butt?
Words to the Wise from the Wiser - Muse's Advisory, July 12 – Urania
to Tom:
Your critic's right.
We aren't terrorists,
regardless
of what the City
of Chicago
insists,
poetry isn't
LOUDER THAN A BOMB but it
permits
a modest
adjustment
to sestina
if
justified.
Otherwise it's only
scribblers
doing something they're too proud of.
Tradition's
another prerequisite.
There's no validity
to anyone uninterested
in their predecessors.
Yes,
lit
is a club that
iconoclasts
want disbanded—
but once they link
arms and lapse into
imitation,
hero-worship
and self-aggrandizing themselves,
we simply
issue
them a membership!
Kiss
the tit
of dull Greek myths
as silly
as the Ancient
Arabic Order
of the Mystic Shrine,
the Benevolent
and Protective
Order of the Elks,
and Odd Fellows in fezzes—
real embarrassments,
and that's the point
of initiation.
If you won't look foolish,
how can you be trusted
to sacrifice yourself
and slit
your wrists
on the altar of belles-lettres?
Readers count on us
for certain essences
and if that faith gets lost,
it's curtains,
time to roll up the carpets,
and poetry is,
as some mediocrity wrote,
'enshrinement of ordinary
moments
by ordinary people utilizing
ordinary language.'
Same goes for madcap antics.
All this mayhem—
Zeus a lunatic,
Yeshua a popinjay,
St. Joseph
hawking aspirin—
Tom, time to revisit
the eternal verities.
We're not panicking
but our collective
intuition is
that you're closer to the brink of
listless
repetition
and inanity
than
you think.
In the Hoosegow - Muse's Advisory, July 13 – Thalia:
“Now look at you!” sobs Miriam.
She'd worshiped him with all his faults
for longer than she wanted to admit,
but never thought it all would come to this:
behind bars, charged with multiple assault,
disorderly behavior, and felonious abuse of a pet.
His rage was spent,
all that was left was a disheveled mane
half gray, half white,
two bloodshot eyes,
ten chastened fingers purple at the tips,
and thick-scaled, harshly bitten lips.
For the first time in his life, he couldn't speak,
and had a tremor in his arms, he was so weak.
“Have you been beaten?” Miriam breathed,
and then regretted it.
The thought itself hit hard.
What dignity remained a god kept in captivity?—
a deportation jail facility just outside Nazareth,
where poor, unpapered laborers
and part-time terrorists
were processed, held indefinitely,
their families squeezed for 20,000 shekels bail,
and then deported “voluntarily.”
The inmate in the cell across the airless corridor
was one of those who stubbornly refused
to take the bait of banishment.
He'd been there six or seven months
apparently without the benefit
of either shave or haircut,
and watched quietly while Miriam sobbed
and Zeus did all he could to keep from joining her.
Casting about to give the god some privacy,
at last she looked into this stranger's eyes,
and lo, it was Yeshua.
Trembling smiles loosened on their lips.
Then Zeus spoke up:
“If this is what it took,
then this is what it took.
I guess I've hit rock bottom
and it's time to take a look
at my whole repertoire
of maladaptive tricks,
including gadding to and fro
as if you—my own flesh
and blood—did not exist.
Goddammit, though,
I really have to take a piss.
Guard! Guard! Is there
a toilet in this shithole?
No, excuse me, sorry
for my tone. I'm overcome.
That guy there is my son.
So tell me, what's he done?
Done recently, I mean.
I know he rankled Pilate
pretty good.
Gave aid and comfort
to the Palestinians?
Yeah, sounds like him.
A bleeding heart, recidivist.
Ah, thanks. I'll only be
a sec. The prostate.
You too? Feel as if
you've gotta go again
before the tip is even dry?
The penis is the curse of men,
I swear. But what else can
we use to show the sphinx
a good time in our underwear?
Man's gotta dream.
Okay, I'm done.
Now count to maybe ten
and I'll be hollering again.
You're not a bad guy, Ben.
Of course. Ben Gurion's
your last name, yes.
You're still a decent man.
Now, Miriam. Yeshua—son.
Where were we in
our family therapy
before I had to run?
That's right, I was about
to say I'm sorry, all of that,
admit the error of my ways—
jailhouse-confess!
It's shameful to be seen
like this myself, much less
to find you here as well.
You haven't heard?
I let them taunt me like a bull.
It proved your mother right:
I need more self-control.
I've been a bad role model
and I have a raft of faults.
Okay? Is that enough?
Can I go back to being me
now, arrogant and gruff?
My circadian clock is ticking
and it feels like almost time
to get into another fisticuffs,
to give the frail another fright
or crush another stoolie's skull.”
In the Hoosegow II - Muse's Advisory, July 14 – Thalia (cont.):
The Randall County jail just north of Nazareth
up I-27 to Hollywood Road to southern Amarillo,
though cited by three DCJ inspectors in a row
for its deficient facilities, has hosted 50 or so
wetbacks for U.S. Immigration Enforcement
since the local crime rate hit an all-time low,
about one murder and one rape a year,
and then Obama's 18 votes.
This is where the Holy Family woke
to the disturbing sound of bells from St. Mary's
clashing with the play-by-play at Trinity Fellowship Stadium
and reggaetón from the Youth Refuge band
at the Church of the Nazarene.
Welcome to the Panhandle and welcome to the jail
of Sheriff Joel Richardson, Captain Paul Horn,
Lieutenant Kirk Roberts, Lieutenant Joe Morris,
Sergeant Barry McNutt, Sergeant Bettye Nelson,
Sergeant Matt Stocksill, Sergeant Nina Parvin,
Sergeant Steve Courts, Corporal Charley Carrell,
Corporal Kerry Blackerby, Corporal Nick Wright,
Corporal Randy Tinsley and Corporal Ray Gibbons;
all good Americans, reasonably God-fearing,
tolerably educated, respectable people
no less prepared to find Yeshua, Miriam and Zeus
inside their jail on this fine morning
than you or I or anyone would be.
But they're professionals, and don't panic—
not as well trained as Israeli anti-terrorists
but well enough to calmly ask
the three new inmates for their names.
Back at the desk, the lieutenant glances
at the sergeant, who glances
at the corporal: no one has an explanation
as to why there is no documentation
on who exactly brought this ragtag family in—
exactly what kind of motherfucking stunt
La Migra thinks they're pulling!
Reluctantly, they call up Captain Horn,
a knowing man who swears Crap! seven times,
retrieves his light brown shirt from where it neatly hangs
over a solid wooden chair beside a steel twin bed,
slowly draws it on and grimly buttons it.
In the Hoosegow III - Muse's Advisory, July 15 – Yeshua to Miriam and
Zeus:
I've stretched bait-fish and crusts of bread into a five-course meal and
eaten fast food on the road until I pretty much forgot what stovetop cooking
tasted like, but I can't eat this slop at all. What they call coffee tastes like some
concoction you might have to swallow for a pre-op nurse.
Do you two understand how hard it is to bust two inmates out of jail in
Israel? that I have other prisoners—victims—I'm supposed to feed? But no,
let them all rot so I can do what I tell all of my disciples not to do: take care of
my own fucking family!
No, you can't go back to Israel! You still don't know how deep and hot the
water is you're standing in? It's way over your heads, out of your
league. You do recall I tangled with them once myself and wound up dead?
They'll be here soon themselves, I guarantee. We have to skedaddle and
cover our tracks. If there is one place Shin Bet and Mossad tread lightly, it's
North Texas. Here, I'm a king like Barbie Bush or Ellie Ewing. All these good ole
boys and gals are way too busy asking what I'd do to ever wonder what
I'm doing. Watch this, both of you—put on these STP caps—here we go, a bit of
flattery and sex appeal—the classic breakout.
Beg pardon, ma'am? Officer Bettye...—Jesus Lord, are you the Bettye
Nelson? 'Great is thy Faithfulness' and 'It is Well'? 'How Much He Cares for
Me'? Oh goodness gracious, Bettye! I reco'nize that voice of yourn most
anywhere! God bless you! Blessyou!
No? You're white? can't sing a lick? You had me fooled—that voice! Why,
sweeter than a bird's! Can you just sing one little song? Me and these two
oldtimers here would sore appreciate a little bit of that sweet inspiration on this
Sabbath morn, what with and in consideration of our situation
here. Would Jesus sing? I know He would, I know He would!
Why, you think I look somethin' like the Lord? Well don't you have a way
of flatterin' a man! I got the beard, I know I got the beard, but surely that's as
far as the resemblin' go! He's some bit taller, ain't He? Don't His hair—well, you
know—sort of glow? If I looked anythin' at all like Him, would I have gotten
mixed up with the law?
But you have surely lifted up my heart, Miss Bettye Nelson who is
white! I got to pray, I got to pray! Do you think you could pray with me? Oh,
that would lift me up like nothin' else! You will? Oh, bless you! Bless
you! Come on, right in here! Yea, kneel right here beside me! Lord! We praise
Thee, Lord! Did You not visit me in prison?
Now considerin' I just got 'holt your gun, lift up your arms and shout with
me: O, thank you, Lord!
What would Jesus do right now? Keep prayin' an' praisin' like a gentle
Lamb, while I take these-here keys and we three haul our sorry persecuted
asses clean away!
Sodden Moment in the Condo - Muse's Advisory, July 16 – Yusuf to
tumbler of Baron Philippe de Rothschild:
Venit, vidi, vincunt.
She came,
I finally saw her,
goddam Israelis win again.
Patris Food Correspondent, Drafting on her iPad – Muse's Advisory,
July 17 - Last Row, Church of The Dormition of the Ever Virgin,
Palekastro, Crete,
www.aglaiakremezi.com/articles/general/fresh-fava-and-green-almonds.html:
“Lazarus Saturday brings the fuzzy green almonds called tsagala—a crunchy,
juicy outer layer, and an inner nut translucent as a jelly drop—"
...the deeps all afraid in your presence, O Lord.
By raising Lazarus from hell,
You shook the dominion of death before Your own...
“—hawked fresh in street stalls all across Greece, jarred in syrup as a spoon
sweet, baked in İstanbul with lamb and grated lemon—"
...You are the defender of my life, O Christ,
for You have reëstablished the world
so that it shall never again be overturned...
“—or added, tartly sweet, to fresh creamy yogurt or garlic-laced tzatzíki, as well
as served as an accompaniment to araqī, oûzo or býra Mýthos—”
...You ride on your dumb beast, the colt of an ass,
but we greet You with palms and a carpet of linen,
for our hearts rejoice and know You...
Long Night Drive - Advisory, July 18 – Yeshua to Zeus:
You've both lost your way—
still functioning as in the old days.
Populism is the ticket now.
You've got to be
an operator—
half snake oil salesman,
half Golden Bough.
Drive east, Fort Smith,
southeast, Fort Worth,
due south, Midland,
southwest, Alamogordo,
due west, Santa Fe,
northwest, Colorado Springs,
north, the Indian grounds,
northeast, St. Joe.
Yes, I do have a license!
I flunked the road test twice
but on my third try
during that big February freeze,
I blew the dyke examiner away!
This big ole silver Yukon
skidded at me on black ice,
but I lightly braked
and pirouetted left!
Skank said, “Y'all earned
ya lah-cense right there.”
It's best we travel north.
The buffalo are gone
but I know where
we'll bag an elk,
a bear,
maybe a pronghorn deer—
plus plums, grapes,
mulberries, pecans and
prickly pear galore.
We'll eat well,
sleep beneath the stars.
It's a Comanche moon
and none of those Israeli goons
would dare!
At dawn we'll scare up
Campo's famous medicine man
to take you on a vision quest—
far and away the best
path to renew yourself.
Then I head back to work.
I don't know what we are
to one another,
but it ain't no Trinity!
We're individuals!
Look how much we disagree,
how frequently we fight.
So let's just grapple
with the current chaos—
give the slip to the Israelis—
hang in best we can—
and see what kind of fruit
shakes out.
You see that fucking 'Stang?
The way that good ole college boy
is weavin' in and out, be lucky if
he makes it back to UT/San Anton'.
Ole time religion's
take-the-cake ironic!
One part “Thank you Jesus,”
one part fuck thy neighbor catatonic,
and the third, abominating the demonic.
Adjust to modern times or perish, Pa—
shed eight millennia
of maladaptive patterns
on the dirt floor of the sweat lodge,
let me pimp you out
in dungarees and cowboy boots,
and you got half a chance.
For Ma—she always snore like that?—
a halter top
and something snug enough
around the hips to give
the local guys a woody.
Who's gonna tap a fullgrown woman in—
what would you even call it?—
an embroidered satin hoodie?
This buggy?
Yeah, a little snug for three.
I got it for two grand, though,
and the gun rack in the back
thrown in for free.
A Talon—AMC—
two-fifteen horse,
full turbo,
double cam on top.
not quite as tricked out as I'd like
but she's got plenty
where it counts.
We're gonna need it
once we make the grasslands
on High Lonesome out of Stratford
and we go off-road.
No, no, the ranger up there
won't say shit.
I he'ped his teenage boy once
with this pimple thing he had
and ever since, the dad's
completely in my pocket.
We're gonna camp, you'll love it!
I got a li'l ole pup tent back there
and this guitar that I found
on sale at Walmart.
I know “Sweet Baby James,”
“Home on the Range,”
and half the Oscar-winning theme
from Brokeback Mountain.
Shit wetback 18-wheelers
think they own
this motherfuckin' road!
Back off my ass, Ramiro!
Cocaine dudn't spoil!
Look, I can get you back to Crete
or to your old place on Koressos,
but out here—
a soul can really be himself.
No one looks twice.
As long as you work 'Jesus'
into every couple sentences,
folks figure you're alright
and leave you be.
They been real
welcomin' to me.
They like my measured speech,
the uncut hair beneath
my “St. P.” cap—
Scientifically Treated Petroleum
right in St. Joe, Missouri!
They lahk me an' I lahk them.
I'm feelin' young
and learnin' to have fun.
I'm collecting DWI's!
Aw, I can see you're bushed.
's okay, we'll talk it out another time.
Once them Israelis give up and go home,
if you decide to stay
I know a great spread you can rent
on a sweet stretch of the Canadian.
Promise me you'll think about it?
It ain't my aim to interfere
or try to make it out we're close
despite so many not-close years.
Truth is, I may move up to Utah
if a little sumpin' sumpin'
I been working on pans out—
jus' wanna set y'all up
so's I don't have to worry
so doggone much.
Wait till we get there
and you see that moon!
Wait till you hear
the lone coyote howl!
We'll get the tent set up,
night-sight ourselves some game—
don't worry,
I got six egg sandwiches,
worst comes to worst—
cook, eat,
pat down the grass—
it's like a pillow, it's so soft!
If there's a storm,
you two'll shelter in the tent,
I'll stretch out right here
in the cab.
No, I insist!
In Texas, practicality is king—
it's what I like about this land,
it doesn't matter who's a god,
a demigod, an angel or a man.
Ah, here we are.
See that jackrabbit
pretending he's stone?
You can almost feel
the horned owl fixed on—
see that tiny flutter
in his chassis?—
that's his heartbeat,
pitter-patter, pitter-patter.
What Became of the Comanche - Muse's Advisory, July 19 – Clio:
Milk slit from an elk doe's udder
bear liver raw and dressed in gall
and curd from a suckling buffalo's gut
keep
spirits alive when measles, smallpox
and cholera attack
.
Fourteen code-talkers
Dick and Elgin Red Elk, Clifford Otitivo
Robert Holder, Larry Saupitty
Melvin Permansu, Forrest Kassanavoid
Willie Yackeschi,
Charles Chibitty
Willington Mihecoby
Perry Noyebad
Haddon Codynah
Morris Sunrise
Simmons Parker
rise in Oklahoma's Seven Cities
Indiahoma, Fletcher
Lawton, Cement
Cache, Walters, Cyril
protect the Utah Beach assault
win de Gaulle's Ordre du Mérite
now visit the tall
grass of campsites
whispering
to Naomi Shihab Nye
that no one “largely lives asleep.”
Wide Open Sky - Muse's Advisory, July 20 –
Tracy168:
gray powder
like greatgrandpa's ash
I step in it
to prove
an american's
dick
a quarter million
miles root to tip
is
longer than a soviet's
NASA:
“apollo 11/saturn V. whuh? armstrong backpack too wide for the hatch? roger.
1 small step for man & 1 big blank wall for the ephesus whorehouse graffiti heir.”
“viking 1/titan III-centaur at chryse planitia, mars. copy. houston command
fault
overwrote antenna orientation software, contact lost after 2,306 earth
days. out.”
Chief Anotklosh:
many ancestors walked on moon
who build the regolith palmful by palmful
while she-wolves bay
when the landscape is complete
and neigóon berries start to sweeten
we will follow the seal and the whale
upward to our next new home
when your astronauts come again
we will throw them a fine potlatch
Melpomene:
the fire's burning down
the pup tent's quiet
weightless
back to the glovebox to refuel
señor mescalero
All:
an incredible night of shooting stars breaching that ocean of celestial eggcases
Pulling Over for Directions On the Edge of Campo, Colorado - Muse's
Advisory, July 21 – Kazantákis to Zeus:
No, I am not ashame on.
Why do you think
I am ashame on?
You are from Kríti too, sir,
I can smell this.
Please tell to this NASCAR boy
that Greek people always
are dressing like I do.
Why are you seeking
for ashame on?
The old ways, they are dead.
So do not be ashame.
Does this lady in back seat
make you feel ashame?
She is not good woman.
Good woman
make man feel like god!
I had good woman
make me feel like god.
This NASCAR boy, he is your boy?
Do not feel ashame.
He is good boy.
I smell this.
I smell also mescalito.
Once I eat this too
and first I am vomit everything,
then I am eagle fly over sea
that glow in dark like wine.
What am I do here in West?
I do not have son.
I once have wonderful woman
name Eléni like your daughter,
your raping child by Leda,
Eléni tis Troías.
But she give me no son
to watch when I am died,
so I come here to West.
It have many bones,
I can smell.
Haidēs say to walk here
and enjoy to feel dry air
on skin.
But what is really “skin”?
Medicine man?
He live near post office—
ah, he is shame on?
He say I am sail with no ship
and wind blow me in desert.
I am ship that sink,
all sailors are drown.
The mast, it is taverna
only for worms now.
Kalí týchi. Good luck.
Mine is not so good
but I have good smelling
for you and this woman
and this handsome boy.
In middle town, turn right.
Not possible to miss—
he have big Billy Jack hat,
big turkey-vulture tailfeather
stand up tall in band.
Who else wear hat like this?
Tell him Níkos Kazantzákis
from Kríti is greeting to him.
万山群岛 Million Hill Islands - Muse's Advisory, July 22 – Japan China by
N. Kazantzakis, trans. G. Pappageotes:
If you scratch the Chinese, you will find the Greek.
If you scratch the Greek, you will find the Chinese.
—Eléni Samiou
Charming little isles
like bare bodies done swimming
and now lying in the sun to dry.
Exotic Chinese junks float by,
tall-sterned, tar-smeared,
prows slender, craned
like thirsty dragons,
chocolate sails spread
like the wings of bats.
The peacocks of the night,
the fine coquettes, awake,
spread love-ruffled feathers
and paint their nails.
Silent yellow servants
push them in velvet handbarrows.
When one raises her foot,
the whole leg gleams
through her slit silk pajamas.
The Nitty Gritty - Muse's Advisory, July 23 – Shaman To Zeus, Miriam &
Yeshua:
Of course I'm aware who you are!
You think I sit around all day
just lobbing loogs into the gutter?
I am the shaman, the medicine man,
it's my business to
track supernatural comings and goings,
it's my whole bread and butter.
Anybody got a smoke? some beer?
You don't think you can just pull up
in your red, pathetic, toy-size truck
and ask my help, without a fee?
This isn't charity!
I don't care who you think you are.
This is America—land of the free-you buy whatever fucking thing you want.
There's something in the back I'll take,
and something in the glove compartment too.
No cash, no checks, it's strictly barter,
IRS has never heard of me
and that's the way
I want to greet the worms.
On this .270 Winchester
I smell a pronghorn, late last night.
This bag of mescalito—
see these fingerprints?—
they have the scent
of someone's sweaty dick on them.
Sí o no, Yeshua? Am I right?
At my age, I don't play!
You want the Cretan here
to have a magical experience?
You've come to the right nahual.
Pay in advance.
You want to just sit down,
squint at them prairie chickens doing
their flamenco in the yucca scrub?
That shit'll also
put you in a trance.
I smell Kazantzakis too.
Are you his friends?
He tell you how he didn't like
my divination and refused to pay?
Gun covers him, buttones you.
Don't think that's fair, go screw.
We have a deal? Okay.
Leave Zeus with me two days.
When you return for him,
I'll need a case of Lone Star
and a box of shells.
This shit isn't ouija.
It's a serious commitment.
Prep Talk - Muse's Advisory, July 24 – Shaman to Zeus:
The bird you murdered called you Pak.
What does that say about you?
Did you see Anger Management? You should.
Take off your boots
and lose that ridiculous gunslinger's poncho.
Who sold you that?
Nobody tougher than a hippie slut's affected
one of those for several hundred years.
As Castaneda's snakish Hexe
taught me just a month
before she disappeared herself,
In a dark theater, hold a finger before your nose and look at the aisle lights.
The finger isn't there. Now close one eye. The finger's there, but lights shine
through its fuzzy edges. When your mind views simple phenomena in odd ways,
you start to sense the walls of the cellar where we shelter from reality's cyclone.
Now let's have a look at you.
You still got muscle, definition.
I think we'll sweat off 15 pounds—
your peak is 215, 220 tops.
Depends how much
you wanna work those glutes.
We'll get to spiritual renewal!
First things first.
We can't take half measures,
human nature is dual.
Once upon a time, internal beauty
shone as beauty you could see
but nowadays souls take their cues
from muscle tone,
hair styling and good grooming.
As Don Tele says,
Get the right level of clean for all your parts. The Axe Detailer works to keep
every part of you ready for action: use the scrub side to dig into extra dirty parts
and the mesh side to build lather on sensitive areas because every part matters.
Thus, we have to pluck those brows!
The Great Glower look went out with
Kraven the Hunter and Wolverine.
Then let's measure you for
an Armani or a Calvin Klein.
I look like a bum and I do fine?
Pal, I'm a humble shaman,
not the kingfish you were born to be.
You could command this whole district
but you won't get a wood-tick's respect
if you look like some Bulgarian.
Command it for what?
That's going to be Act II.
But first, let's see what's
underneath those underpants.
A lot of who you are and who you're going to be
depends on your relationship with that extremity.
Lie on the couch.
Arrange your shaft so it rests comfortably
atop your pouch.
I know you've had some trouble with performance.
Ouch. I know the feeling, too.
I was trying to get laid once down in Tijuana, right?
I get the girl down in a 4-point crouch, yeah, puma style—
I'm about to touch my baldy to her nest,
when he just plain gives out.
She rises to a kneel and tries to help me
with her mouth but it's no use.
What is that running through the head?
Is that self-consciousness?
I'll tell you what it is. It's—
—you sure you didn't come for that?
Don't bullshit me.
I hear that Robert Bly beat in your speech.
Turkish Pears in August, Talking into the Ear of a Donkey, The Urge to Travel
Long Distances, Iron John, The Man in the Black Coat Turns, and finally, Silence
in the Snowy Fields.
That's all in my own head?
I'm sorry! Most guys hope the vision quest
can boost their confidence in bed.
You don't care? Ah.
Things don't go smooth, that's just the way it is?
A woman's got to take the fizzle with the fizz?
Shit, man, you're more evolved than me.
So all I have to offer is peyote.
Most first-timers puke.
That's why I have these flight discomfort bags
my aunt the stewardess
sneaks home from work.
No, neither Dramamine nor gum
is going to help.
You howl like a demented whelp,
shape-shift into that wild beast
that Robert Bly goes on and on about
at all his seminars,
then fly or trot or swim off on your quest,
and if you're lucky,
fly or trot or swim back with a gift.
Sober and hysically fit enough to abandon the socio-perceptual compact,
Ulloa, Osorio and Matus exist as energetic ovals who observe other passages
of energy and taste the sensation water enjoys as it follows nobody's advice
in a cold clear brook.
So, here's some 01 Gatorade. You'll need it.
In case you get the munchies, take this jumbo size Doritos.
When it's over, and your kid and woman come to collect you,
there's a Longhorn Steakhouse 20 miles north in Springfield.
Here's a 10%-off coupon.
Lots of Catching Up To Do - Muse's Advisory, July 25 – Miriam to
Yeshua:
I'm so excited! Sit.
We've got two days until we pick up Zeus—
and lots of catching up to do.
A lot of muddy water under bridges, no?
You mentioned work.
What kind of job is it?
Where do you live?
Do you have friends?
Somebody special, hmm?
How did you wind up here?
When did you quit the apparitions gig?
Have you gone fundamentalist?
I'm liking you like this,
your St. Pete cap,
the grease beneath your nails.
Is that from working on your car
or is your job in a garage?
You've grown too old and worldly, Shoo,
to magnify your mother with a kiss?
Is that my thanks for all of this?
And Zeus—?
You know he cares, if from afar.
The proof is that he custom-made you
with that fain predisposition to forgive.
Your attempt to help him—sweet.
After his vision quest, who knows,
maybe his bitterness will wane,
you two will hit it off.
I doubt it, though.
I've been with him through hell,
high water, thick and thin,
and fresh-killed inspiration
feeds his taste for the perverse
and makes things worse.
If he has one quintessence,
guiding force, élan vital,
I'd have to say it's his resistance
to amendment—that divine inertia
worshipers prefer to call “perfection.”
I'll have some Ranch House Chili,
half a rack of Baby Backs—
or should I get
Flo's Bacon Wrapped Filet?
You're getting fish, Yeshua?
No, you're Texan, eat some beef.
Don't bring him salmon, Miss.
That's too ridiculous—grown boy!
Make it an Outlaw Ribeye rare.
No Mango Peach Sangria neither—
lime-rimmed Equis, dos,
and hold the glass.
Who's that there, settin' up to sing?
You're shittin' me, there's such a thing
as country-western Rebel soul?
Sounds like a mixed-up motherfucker.
Say who?—his name is actually Rucker?
Yeah, yeah, you're old enough
to order what you want, it's true,
but when in Rome, you do as Romans do.
You think that pierced-neck hottie there
is gonna shtup a guy who orders fish
and uses Pantene Shine Enhancer in his hair?
Why, thank you, Miss.
Stop whining! Drink your beer
and try to look—you know, a little hip.
I think that singer guy is eying me.
Who knows, it may be mama's lucky night.
The Pup's Plea - Muse's Advisory, July 26 – Yeshua to Miriam:
Ma, Zeus can rot in hell.
I didn't work that trick in Nazareth,
nor hire that sham,
to melt the blowhard's selfish shell.
I did it for these couple days
without him, me and you, just us.
I want to drive you to St. Joe.
I saw Dad there—my real dad,
if you want to know—
not the unmannered schmo
who thinks his sperm alone
a gift from god.
You'll be surprised, impressed.
He has a steady job,
is off the sauce
and has a place that's big enough
for the whole family.
Can't we just go and see?
I know you saw him fairly recently
and it was bad,
but time is looser here out West,
and Zeus—let's face it—
a degenerating mess,
a far cry from his best,
which isn't saying much.
I want the childhood you took from me!
Who wants to be a prodigy
debating hermeneutics with high priests?
I want to chase a little tail
and smoke a little weed,
hop in my truck and roar around
at unsafe speeds! I'm not a rebel, Ma—
though à propos the Civil War, we
don't believe the North was free
to force the South to be
their economic whore—me,
all I want is franchise to walk tall
into a rockabilly honkytonk
and tell a girl something as normal as
“My parents live up in Missouri.”
Would it kill you to maintain
some semblance of a marriage
so your cub can hold his head up
when he's drinking with his friends down
at The Concord Carriage?
Yes, I work in a garage.
I'm just a glorified apprentice.
And I have my eye on someone special—
Christian, and conventional.
Adultery with gigolos from Crete
is not her family's cup of tea.
I'm sorry.
Yes, I know Zeus has been good for you,
but Ma, it's time to get back with
the man you're married to,
give him that second chance.
It's really my fault that he left,
so reunite for me,
to help me expiate my guilt.
This is my final shot at real stability—
at fitting in—a good ol' boy,
not some Begotten Son.
So can we?
Yeah, right here, it's in my GPS.
Two miles, turn left on 160 east,
then catty-corner straight across
this tennis court of winter wheat
that calls itself the state of Kansas.
The Parent's Plea - Muse's Advisory, July 27 – Miriam to Yeshua:
I don't find fault with Yusuf or with Zeus.
I blame myself for hanging on your words
and weeping at your feet, for raising you
to think that other people's life-and-death
was vastly less transformative than yours.
If Evangeli-Gal's not sharp enough
to flay the beastly mom and wear
the pelt—the child a parent yields—
I wonder if she's not a dicey choice?
Pathology can run in families rich or poor
but why start new ones
if contagion is so all-fire sure?
If she would like to meet me, good.
If she just wants the pocket dossier—
a step-dad, yes, who walked
when you reached your rebellious years,
and sailed to distant edges of the world
on merchantmen; your birth-dad, yes,
a classic absentee, who did man up,
eventually, a little bit, but far too late;
and mom, who tended almonds, olives, quince,
and boasts some bitchin' SuperClash experience.
All three of us are blunt, confront life head-on, fight.
Be sure to tell her that we cuss, piss, love and hate
as loudly as we please.
There's history of creativity, virginity, divinity, insanity—
the gamut, cornucopian with possibilities!
And we'll embrace whatever she can bring
unless it's a requirement
that one of us renounce our personality.
Our skeletons roam free, no closets, that's your legacy:
too late to put cats back in bags
or tie ships, storm-blown, back up to their berths.
You're one of us.
Stand tall, and let the fruits fall where they may.
It won't be too far from the tree, I bet,
if you and she have kids yourselves one day.
Vision Quest - Muse's Advisory, July 28 – Zeus:
1.
The shaman slid the curtains shut
and said four buttons or two gelcaps
ought to be enough.
“Your lady and your son
believe you're in a rut,
you've lost the animal, the god in here,”
he said and tapped his ear,
“and here," tapping his gut.
“This is a way to stir things up.”
“No offense, señor sabelotodo,
but you're not exactly
an hombre who inspires fear,” I said.
“That postal truck right there," he said,
"if it could talk, could tell you tales!
This talking bag of skin, it isn't me.”
“How come we've never heard of you
in Greece?”
“Oh, but you have.”
He made a girlish semi-pirouette and disappeared.
2.
My talons scratched the soft pine floor.
Low Mach waves blew the window out.
I gathered myself up and flew straight
from the sun, that dying ball—raced toward dark,
my hungers far too powerful to wheel
and scan the runways underneath me
for a pond, or warm four-legged prey.
The eagle in me hurled its crown at air
first grayed then shed by its trajectory.
Fly faster, truer than you've ever flown
until the air above your beak is lightened
by the ardent emanation of your eyes!
My flight outpaced an 18-wheeler past Dodge City,
then Yeshua's tiny red truck crossing the Missouri;
traversed St. Joe, and crossed the iron Mississippi.
At last--the shadow having waned, light equalized
above a coaled Lake Michigan--I dove into the eye
of office-park Grand Rapids and struck a rabbit
grazing in a pocket plaza in eerily illuminated dark.
The souls of Amway, Lazarus, Ojibwe and Ottawa,
perched on the window ledges, all hailed my kill;
deep in my bowels, protozoans sighed Home.
New consciousness was sudden, sharp and wide.
That featureless city was the last place anyone
would relocate to, yet I resolved—decreed—
to go and gather up the spent shells of my godhead,
make amends to Miriam and to our son,
return before the new moon, and begin again.
Vision Quest (Scholarly View) - Muse's Advisory, July 29 – Former
comparative theologian, corner Division & Alger:
Tonight's topic: If one wasn't high on mescaline,
why would one choose to re-locate to Michigan?
The Jewish Mishna doesn't volunteer a rule,
nor do hadith, Icelandic sagas, countless volumes
of Confucian wisdom, vedas and upanishads,
Herodotus, the Platonists, St. Paul.
One school of thought contends
the place you live determines who you are,
another that it doesn't matter who you are.
Who ever heard a truly educated person say,
“I wish I was Mongolian or German Swiss”
or “Dover sole are blesseder than Arctic char”?
Yet, popular metaphysics emphasizes place—
home-field advantage, de-urbanization
job relocation, highway beautification.
It is right and meet, therefore, to ask Zeus,
“Manfred—dude!—what were you thinking?
Are you looking for a fake nose of conformity?
Someplace no one will think to look for you?”
Okay, dear men. Adele. That's plenty for tonight.
It's time for me to crawl inside my Whirlpool box
and get some badly needed shuteye.
We can pick this up tomorrow, after lunch?
Red letter day! The Imam Sahibzada says
Salvation Army opens up its doors again.
Unwelcome - Muse's Advisory, July 30 - Dr. Sharif
Sahibzada,www.islamiccentergr.org:
Welcome to the
ISLAMIC
E
N
&
T
E
MOSQUE OF GRAND-RAPIDS
We just renovated our building.
We remodeled the entranceway
with new carpet and new paint,
and the facade with Brick Face.
Our new sign does not, however, read:
Assalammualaikum, Zeus!
Assalammualaikum, Maryam!
Assalammualaikum, Yesua!
Do you think we came here
to enjoy the beautiful climate?
While we wish you no harm,
Allah stands not in need
of any of His creatures.
I assure you we are in enough hot water
without you coming here to stir up more.
I am a grave man, as can be seen
in the four photographs provided:
Dr Sahibzada, Director Islamic Center of West Michigan,
in his office
Dr Sahibzada, Director Islamic Center of West Michigan,
studying in his office
Dr Sahibzada, Director Islamic Center of West Michigan,
receiving calls in his office
Dr Sahibzada, Director Islamic Center of West Michigan,
busy on computer in his office.
Do not be fooled by my Santa-Claus like cap.
Do not be fooled by my wooden obelisk
that says PEACE on the east face
and JUSTICE on the north.
Do not be fooled because I use post-its.
Do not be fooled because when
I am busy on my computer in my office
I am only staring at the screensaver.
I am a grave man and who is to say
whether or not I am a stone cold killer
when need be?
This is the way we Muslims really are!
Who is to say what is written on the south
face of my wooden obelisk?
Observe: only the person sitting in my chair
in my office is able to see this.
Who is to say what is written on the west?
Only the computer is able to see this.
Do not come to Grand Rapids, Pak Zeus.
I heard about your escapades in Palestine.
Did you think I would not hear about them
from my brothers in Nazareth?
I have learned about them right here
from my computer.
Who is to say that the information is not
right here on a post-it?
Almost three years ago the Planning Commission
voted 8-0 to prohibit brother Noah Seifullah from
opening a prayer center just up on Madison Ave.
They said there are not enough parking spaces.
Did you think there are enough parking spaces
if you come here with Yesua and the Holy Mother,
your concubine Maryam?
No, I do not believe so.
Therefore you must find another city to move to.
PRAISE
L
L
A
H
Hasta la Vista - Muse's Advisory, July 31 – Yeshua:
Michigan?
I did my hitch up North,
two months in Ossining.
Just thinking of it
makes me itch again.
You go there, Zeus.
You go ahead and do
whatever voices tell you
when you're juiced!
Leave Ma and me alone.
We like the rootin'-tootin' West.
She's even started
dressing for success—
pink bra, the Sassy Rider vest.
Are you jealous?
That's what the vision quest
has sunk to?—one night homeless
all-expenses-paid in Podunk
and a growl from an imam
in a cinder-block barracks so shabby
the Jehovah's Witnesses skedaddled?
You're lucky that beer-soaked ersatz Injun
didn't point you toward Kamchatka!
That fakir took us both to town!
While you were gallivanting in the sky
I drove up to St. Joe to see my dad—
I'm sorry if that's hard to hear.
Ma wouldn't go.
She's loyal to your ass.
She stayed behind and went out for a beer.
Some whiskeyed charro made a pass at her
that made her wet.
I thought you oughta know.
What a trip the three of us are—
rejecting the scripts each other write—
rejecting the guideposts of tradition—
grabbing the devil himself by the lapels
and insisting on “original material”!
But it will be the usual
spaghetti-Western parting
on high chaparral—
Adiós, hasta luego,
que los ángeles sonrisa,
tú sigue tu camino, yo el mío—
and off we ride into cañones ciegos
without a handshake or farewell.
Besides, I got a clinch with a cliché so hot
tomorrow—
No, why bother talking tough, I'm heartbroken.
The two of you have broke my heart.
Whose dream was it for me to be a son of God?
Why didn't you just ride me to get A's in school
and learn the violin?
So now, who cares?
Grand Rapids, off you trot.
Pudre en infierno. Rot in hell.
Pathetic - Muse's Advisory, Aug. 1 – Tom at The Concord Carriage bar:
Yeah, I'm a poet—epic, really—
struggling, though. This poem is dead.
Not mouth to mouth, nor lips to ear,
nor even Rose of Sharon's leaking breast to lips
can bring it round—
it's past the point where it can lift its chin.
I ought to turn this laptop off right now,
head down to Meredith and have a skinnydip.
That usually works—
the second I jump in, new inspiration hits,
the cooled-down scalp supplies the mental vim
for me to soldier on until it's time to go to bed.
Or I could simply hit Delete and throw it in—
admit Yeshua's nothing more or less than Christians claim,
his mother Miriam a humble saint,
and Zeus an obsolete, co-opted figment
recently out-eyebrowed by Dame Edith Hamilton,
out-romeo'd by Wilt the Stilt,
reduced to cadging petits four from lily-fingered Classicists.
You know?
But that's all psychological defense, perhaps—
perhaps the truth of what I write is hitting hard,
too close to home—
perhaps the nature of the Holy Threesome—
what home is—
are nuts too tough to crack
without a thoroughgoing bludgeoning.
The self-help literature on writer's block advances
other therapeutic saws—
I ought to get out more—
spend time with friends—
go hiking—
glide my fingertips along the cool cheeks of brook-polished stones—
sign up to feed the poor—
raise money to end genocide.
That thrills the dull blood!
That puts spring back into the step!
Lifts up the johnny of Jack Sparrow!
Do you think he's sexy, Depp?
It's obvious I need something a little stiffer
than a drink. I sent my poor son off today—
yeah, I'm a single dad—
with just a box of Cheese-Its for his lunch.
The school nurse and the secretary looked askance—
my little Timmy rolled his eyes—
so many ways to mortify a child.
So I sympathize with poor Yeshua in my book—
his mom behaving like a giddy coed
who has just discovered guys—
Zeus, lost his motherfucking mind, plus hair
like Einstein with his finger in the power socket of the universe—
it couldn't be much worse—
a misfit youngster dying to blend in
with greasy-haired and horny not-quite-solid friends
who hook their index fingers round the lips of beers
like that young cowboy over there—
and think it's macho to dismiss dismissive girls
with obscene sneers.
With all Yeshua tried to do for us, he missed
the boat as far as having fun—
no parable on to how to break the ice
with steamy numbers like yourself
in dim-lit country western bars like this.
Self-help can only go so far—
sometimes what's needed is a helping hand—
wink, wink—
an open mouth, as Herbert wrote, that doesn't sing—
or even more.
You haven't said one thing—
or laughed—
or even cracked a sliver of a smile.
So—
I take that as a no.
I reckon that's a sign I'd better go—
before the milk of your forbearance sours—
that glower of contempt turns into rage
and plants a mallet in my gong,
like when a tin-eared fool went on too long
on The Major Bowes Amateur Hour.
Prólogos (1938) - Muse's Advisory, Aug. 2 – Tom:
Engaging Homer with his own massive Odyssey sequel, Kazantzakis
invited poets to think big. "Fellow craftsmen, seize your oars!” he cried.
In my mirth when it arrived, I misplaced it, then spent hours rummaging
to and fro like a shrew who'd lost track of which generation – breeding,
laboring, or suckling – she was. When I found it, Yes! I want to wield
these oars with as much skill as I can, before the narwhal skewers them
to hang around winter's neck – then the boat, adrift – and its occupant.
woodcut - muse's advisory, aug. 3 – laërtes to odysséas:
not
the ghastly scar
planted
by the tine
a beaten boar's
tusk
but
thirteen
pear trees
ten apple
and forty
fig trees
entreat
a heart-dead
father to
tearfully
recollect
his lost son
Good Cop, Bad Cop - Muse's Advisory, Aug. 4 -
Calliope:
Taking inspiration from a fellow oarsman
is time-hallowed, Tom, but hazardous as well.
His sea-blades beat the waves in rhythms not your own.
While powering his craft to breast the swells,
your hero Kazantzakis never spoke your name.
We muses offer personalization,
fresh inspiration tailored to your own oar's inclination,
a 50%-off special on connotative caesura
and full-color brochure on sylleptic chiaroscuro.
Urania:
Tom, you infringe Line 3 of Terms and Conditions
by ascribing your inspiration to Nikos Kazantzakis–
1 I hereby agree to be bound by Terms and Conditions that apply; indemnify
2 and hold harmless the Muses; certify that all Material resulting from use of our
3 inspirations is original and not previously attributed to any other causal entity;
4 grant the non-exclusive, irrevocable, world-wide, perpetual, royalty-free
5 (including moral) rights to copy, translate, publish, or disclose resultant
6 Material in any form now known or hereafter developed without limitation,
7 obligation of notice, or compensation; to affirm that the Muses make no
8 representations or guarantees whatsoever about the accuracy, reliability,
9 completeness, or timeliness of their Material or results obtained from the use
10 of said Material, provided on an as-is and as-available basis without warranty
11 express or implied, and entirely at my own risk. In no event are the Muses
12 liable for any damages incidental and consequential, including lost profits
13 resulting from “”writer's block” or any use or inability to use the Material,
14 whether such claim is based in contract, tort, intellectual property, or other
15 legal theory. If dissatisfied with the Muses' Materials or the Terms and
16 Conditions governing Use, the sole and exclusive remedy is to discontinue
17 use of such Materials. I acknowledge that any Material offered by Muses may
18 be offensive, indecent, otherwise objectionable, or inappropriate for minors;
19 Muses recommend careful supervision of your children at all times, and make
20 no claim that their Materials are suitable for any purpose or for any audience.
Check this box to agree: ☑
You bristle at the legalese—fine print?
You think this kind of contract violates
your precious First Amendment?
Who inspired your Cretan hero?
Did his genius spring sui generis
from heat-lightning in his brain?
Kazantzakis spun a lot of theories,
but pull back the egotistic curtain—
Hildr, Göndul, Hlökk, Mist,
Skögul, Hrund, Eir, Hrist
and Skuld
in Snorri Sturluson's list—
we Poetry Valkyries dictate whose thumbs
prize the button-mushroom cork—et pop!—
and whose parched lips shall never slurp
the jubilant champagnes of literary fame.
You didn't think us iron-fisted?
thought us easy-going, tame?
pale aesthetes of the ethersphere?
Here's how your “freedom of expression” operates:
the publishers and editors are equally suggestible as
writers are to what a little birdy whispers in their ear.
And Then, Book Two...I Want to Cut My Wrists! - Muse's Advisory, Aug.
5 – Urania:
“The next night by the fireside, when the great bronze
gates of the castle closed, and slaves and cattle slept,
Odysséas told the long tale of his suffering slowly...”
It's another forty lines before the hero starts,
while Kazantzakis even makes us listen to his gas!
A chimp with a 50-cent blue Bic could trim
this 24-book snoozefest down to 700 lines–
but not your Níkos Narkissistís!
At any Reader who survives the preamble,
Odysséas launches his far deadlier ramble:
“At the far ends of the world, on noble feasting boards..."
Honestly, don't force me to continue.
"...the lyre rises, greets the lords, and sings to the wind...”
rushō
muse's advisory
aug 6 – thalia:
old monk stuck on line
daydreaming snow-melt stream
banana peel chi
Of This World - Muse's Advisory, Aug. 7 – Yeshua, Salt Lake City:
This is where I was born to live.
Dilapidated houses in the hills
all host a Jesus, if not two.
I see them driving 20 year old cars,
sprawled out in bars and parks,
meandering the streets,
as many centuries as they've been coming here—
and I, the latest to arrive,
my heart
with still enough dried blood on it
to draw a second gaze from curs
whose business licking weepy sores
has been recession proof
here in America's great open pore.
I ask the seedy bartender
if Paiute and Shoshone,
or the Donner Party,
ever stop in for a drink.
He smiles at me,
another Jesus looking for old friends.
There's so much love, enough to see
how wealth is amity's enemy.
I get a room in seven seconds flat—
no references, security deposit, work.
They know my story inside out.
Did you want to pay a little extra for a daily meal?
We have some interesting discussions over bread.
Will you be wanting access to the internet? TV?
It's all I can do to not start blubbering,
not throw my arms around their necks,
these keepers of Jesuses, saints.
Who knew the world would only want their myths
but lack the strength to love the boys themselves?
The Awakening - Muse's Advisory, Aug. 8 – Zeus:
Just when I thought I had it figured out, I woke
one day ablaze to run a smokehouse
like this place I stopped in Kansas City—
beef ribs, psychedelic hot-spice-salty crust,
with quarts of iced limeade—
I pissed a torrent that could choke a horse
and felt alive, unclogged, free of malaise!
At long last giddy with divinity
I had a dream
of flesh purveyors bowing down, salaam,
of wood guys kissing butt to sell 100 cords,
of chili pepper, lime, and paper-napkin guys,
a squadron of hair-net waitresses
and brisket-crazed phalanx of fressers
led by ravening, hard-core Miriam.
No one raises their hand or voice against
a man who knows his way around a BBQ.
George Foreman, Colonel Sanders, Frank Perdue—
I get it, finally.
The high-flown ode of praise inspires awe.
The supernatural loop-de-loop is great.
But what folks really idolize
and open up their purses for
is meat.
Sweetheart of the Rodeo - Muse's Advisory, Aug. 9 – Miriam:
I had a man who felt he wasn't good enough
and one who thought himself a million bucks.
Why did it take so long to find the type
who knows he's trash and doesn't give a fuck?
Oh yeah! Ya-hoo! This Western love is fun!
First, I'm a lady.
Next, I'm tunneled like a whore.
Then when the sun comes up,
the cowboy gentleman
who knows there's cotton on his teeth
dog-burgles the back door.
The tender hand is fine, but such a cost.
I'm not bone china that will chip
if some stud's teacup bumps my lip.
I can take it. I can dish it out. Shit's shit.
Tonight my sweetheart of the rodeo's
a lanky thing named Henry Foulks—
half lit already when he picked me up,
the other half by six CC & Cokes
between slow dances to the croaking
of a country lizard at the Concord Coach.
To hell with life, was Henry's pickup line,
but it was in my bed when I woke up.
Smokehouse (cont.'d) - Muse's Advisory, Aug. 10 – Block Captain,
Fulton Heights Neighborhood Watch:
That's raaght,
Cured Meats Championships
was right here in Grand Rapids,
an' we don't got no smokehouse!
Now, you kin drive west
15 mile on the Gerald Ford,
an' you kin drive north
15 mile up 131,
an' you can drive south
15 mile right down Broadmoor Avenue—
git all the smokehouse
that you want—
but here in this town, no you can't.
So's far as you're concerned 'bout openin' a new place up,
you gonna pack 'em like sardines in here,
jus' don' steam good folks up,
don' call your place no smartass
name like Pigger On the Woodpile,
nothin' smartypants like that.
You seem to be some kinda Greek,
nobody care 'bout that,
but don't go oversteppin'.
Folks real sensitive 'bout that.
So you go on an' stick with meat.
Don' get too cozy with minorities
an' you jus' watch this town
roll that red carpet out.
The Scriptler - Muse's Advisory, Aug. 11 – John Cantell at his desktop,
midnight:
God says,
I've kept silent. I've been told
not to reveal another word about myself.
But to whom exactly did I promise that?
Those moonstruck apostles dreamt it up.
God says,
Whoever put the idea in my head
that they could run Salvation in my stead?
Was I lost in the clouds, exhausted, drinking?
I can't imagine what it was I was thinking.
God says,
All my faithful abbesses, abdals,
acolytes, almoners, archbishops, ayatollahs,
beadles, bishops, bonzes, brahmins, caloyers,
canonesses, capitulars, cardinals, cenobites,
chaplains, confessors, conventuals, curés,
deaconesses, deans, dervishes, diocesans,
divines, druids, ecclesiarchs, elders, fakirs,
fathers, friars, gurus, hadjis, hierophants,
imams, incumbents, kohens, lamas, levites,
mendicants, metropolitans, ministers,
missionaries, monks, monsignors, muezzins,
muftis, mullahs, novices, nuns, padres,
palmers, parsons, pastors, patriarchs,
penitentiaries, pilgrims, pontiffs, preachers,
prebendaries, predicants, presbyters, priests,
primates, prioresses, prophets, rabbis,
rectors, residentiaries, reverends, revivalists,
sacristans, santons, scholastics, sextons,
sheiks, sisters, suffragans, sufis, talapoins,
templars, ulama, vergers, vicars, votaries—
God says,
Thank you, all of you are fired.
I shall take over all your functions Myself
from here on in, employing Omnipotence.
You will all receive a severance package.
God says,
Generous job retraining benefits
and family medical coverage are included.
I appreciate all of your service but I want
to try some hands-on micro management.
God says,
This is not my final revelation.
I am going to communicate regularly now.
From here on in, theists and atheists alike
will hear things from The Horse's Mouth!
God says,
I know many of you are thinking,
“Not so fast, Abernathy! Is this really God
speaking or some other crackpot charlatan?”
I actually applaud that kind of skepticism.
No, you can't demote or depose Me for not
conforming to your requirements of “God.”
Omnipotent, I can be/do anything I please.
God says,
I will mount a demonstration
one month from today, to give all of you
a deeper understanding of what I'm like.
Then I'll take questions for half an hour.
Wife - Muse's Advisory, Aug. 12 – Elizabeth/John Cantell:
“Don't get obsessed with that.
Remember when Ted Pendergast
joined up that klatsch
of poets at Christ Church?
Pat almost didn't get him back.”
“Don't fret, Elizabeth.
It's God's work I'm engaged in.”
“You can't come to bed, John?
God won't be upset. It's after ten.”
“You go ahead.
I'll be a little while yet.”
“At least put on the sweater vest
I knitted you
so you don't catch your death.”
“Christ said,
No man hath left his wife for my sake
but that both of them got hundredfold.
Here now, let's have a kiss.”
“The good Lord's long suit isn't wives.
A hundredfold of what?
Whose bed is strong enough for that?”
“I like it when you joke
but I don't want to lose track
of my train of thought.
Sleep tight, Elizabeth.
The minute that I'm finished,
I'll come in.”
God Goes On...and On - Muse's Advisory, Aug. 13 – In the late night
Recycle Bin:
God says, Seeing Me fries the minds of half my prophets,
and the rest go hot-assing down the mountain just when
I'm getting going. I'll tell you exactly what I have in mind.
God says, I created the scientific principles that underpin
the universe, including 'bad things happen to good people.'
Quantum randomness is the prime law of metaphysics too.
He says, Whenever those laws of physics seem defective,
I will change them, but I cannot do that in your universe
without it ending. So I'll adjust them in my next universe.
He says, The law of unintended consequences isn't mine.
It's the limit of my Omniscience and Omnipotence. I don't
know who created it. For example, importing poison toads,
He says, into Australia to prey on the sugar cane beetles
eating the cane crop?—big backfire! Turns out, sugar cane
monoculture isn't a fit habitat for toads. Other places are,
He says. So they disperse into the wild and start killing off
the millions of quoll, goanna, and snakes who prey on them,
causing a devastating continent-wide ecological ripple effect.
He says, As far as the an afterlife goes, I might be of more
help there very soon, as theologians have been predicting.
I hope to purify physical resurrection from random effects.
He says, The trick is to let decayed corpses stay where
they are, but resurrect a true copy of those bodies inside
a universe designed with more malleable laws of aging.
He says, I will implement it as soon as I work it all out,
so that a Second Coming—not of Me, of you—will occur.
It will be extremely cool, I think. I'm just dotting the i' s.
He says, That should end the perennial questions about
whether I care about human beings or not. Remember,
I could be doing any number of things with my evenings.
He says, Once I have clearly demonstrated the scope of
my general awesomeness as promised in another 29 days,
I will expect more praise, love—the whole megillah. It is,
He says, lonely, thirsty work I do! I have needs as infinite
as my glory and mercy. That's why I've agreed to answer
questions afterward. I'm tired of all those lingering doubts.
He says, Once everybody is satisfied that I am Who I say
I am and am working hard to do what I say I want to do,
there'll be no excuses left for anyone to still be ungrateful.
He says, Still, ingratitude will remain your right. I will not
differentiate between people who raise pleasing hosannas
and those who continue to grumble like dirt all day long.
He says, When that resurrection day comes, you will stay
exactly the same as you are. If you are a grumpy-puss now,
you will still be a grumpy-puss, only in a happier universe.
He says, So essentially, my whole message for today is:
Try to get a smile on your face now, while you still can,
despite all of the random stuff going wrong in your life,
He says, because there is nothing I'll be able to do about
your permanent frown lines in the new improved world
where you'll end up living for an unimaginably long time.
Staying Afloat - Muse's Advisory, Aug 14 – Tom:
Nikos, Nikos,
I've lost my impetus,
1800 lines into your opus—
Odysséas
still at home,
his father walking in the morning
with his nurse.
(Half-hearted readers
of this hunk-a-junk
tiptoeing from the room.)
I'll give it
to the end of your Book II?
If I'm still bored,
we part as friends,
like Laërtes and living?
I hope Odysséas's son
re-enters your poem.
You had no kids,
but Telemachus is
the richest character.
He appears!
His bride arrives by boat
with that day's
poet laureate of Crete,
Odysséas hastening to marry Telemachus off,
be shed of him, and on his way—
but the proud youth, stung, is ripe
to take up arms and drain
his father's life.
They meet, trade speech,
Odysséas acknowledges the kingly man
whose fathering he shunned,
then lays beside his luckless wife once more,
and creeps down to his waiting ship at dawn.
III.
God sent a gentle shower on earth to cool
the hairy fists that pull at oars in open sea...
Divination - Muse's Advisory, Aug 15 – Euterpe:
Just 300,000 steps
to the top of the line,
Tom.
We nine
are
throwing
honing
casting
drawing
flipping
playing
dice
skills
lots
straws
coins
rock
paper &
scissors
to decide who kisses you
with that last wisp
of inspiration.
The jackals at the door
are dead,
odds-makers
pulling in their shingles,
milkmaids twiddling
fingers at
all hours of the night.
The verdict is
you just might win.
The Green Scapular #76 - Muse's Advisory, Aug. 16 – Robert A.
Macdonald, C.Ss.R.
(approved by Pope Pius IX & Cardinal Shehan), verbatim:
Years ago, before penicillin was in use...
I was in a hospital with pneumonia.
I began to hemorrhage...
and a little nun came into my room.
“Father, do you have great faith...
in the Mother of God's Immaculate Heart?
You can be cured...
through the Green Scapular!
I was once so filled with cancer...
they sent me away to die.
Then I prayed to Our Lady of the Green Scapular!”
She put one over my head.
Tremendous confidence poured into me.
My bleeding stopped!
Two days later, in the X-ray room...
they asked when the hemorrhage stopped.
When I told them...
they expressed great surprise:
“You have a wound that is six months healed...
and there is no other mark!”
Heretic's Note:
Before penicillin was first used in the early 1940's,
X-rays that could indicate when blood vessels had
healed were miraculous indeed!
Timepiece - Muse's Advisory, Aug. 17 – Polimnia:
Menarche struck us rapid-fire
like locusts hitting a cornfield
under the same blue moon
that embezzled Homer's vision.
Again, in Byron's day,
the two-faced tide
returned to rip our wombs.
What's left to aging spinsters
now except extinction?
We scan each waxing face
for signs his hand is rising
a third time, set to reap
all nine of us with one sweep
of thin surgical steel,
but he hasn't reappeared.
Unbearded boys have shone
on us while poets howled
as if their marble buttocks
lent la lune its smirk.
We'll know his murderous
cheeks because they're
cadmium, not chalk dust—
his diction exact—
bared fangs meticulous.
It was 3,000,000 days
between the first and second time
he came to slit our viscera,
so we have hope
that many centuries remain
for idling aesthetically.
When he does shriek,
keen to rake our eighteen haunches
with his eyeteeth,
there'll be no more subtlety.
What Became of Shaka (found poem) - Muse's Advisory, Aug. 18 – Mr.
Solomon Ndebele:
Date:
From:
To:
Subject:
Tue 2/15/11 9:08 AM
solo4400@att.net
Mr. Tom Riordan
Late Martin Ndebele's Refinery Co-operation
Company in Zimbabwe
Hello Dear,
I found your contact address, using the Country search.
My name is Mr. Solomon Ndebele, the eldest son of late
Mr. Martin Ndebele of Zimbabwe, who was the chairman
of a farm and refinery company in Zimbabwe for 9 years
before his death.
He was Shaka the unshakeable,
Thunderer-while-sitting, son of Menzi,
He was the bird that preys on other birds.
He was among the many blacks murdered in cold blood
by President Robert Mugabe during the big land dispute
that disturbs Zimbabwe. I need your urgent assistance
because of a Sum Of US$11.5 Million that my late father
deposited in a private securities company here in South
Africa before his untimely death. Before being murdered
by Mugabe, he owned a rich refinery company and ran
a fruitful farm.
Battle-ax sharper than other battle-axes,
The long-strided pursuer, son of Ndaba,
Who pursued the sun and the moon.
I cannot transfer this money myself, since we Refugees
here in South Africa are not allowed to operate accounts
or do any business. You and I will be partners when you
receive the total fund. A good friend of my late father is
a bank Manager here and promises to transfer this fund
to any Nominated bank account abroad as soon as I find
an International partner to help me avoid losing the fund
left by my father.
Great hubbub like the rocks of Nkandla
Where elephants gathered for shelter
When the heavens frowned.
l will send my refugee Identity Documents and my late
father's Death Certificate, so you can verify everything
about me and my family. l want you to be honest with
me and to please reply to me using this email address:
sol.ndebele@gala.net. I await your Response and I pray
that you are an honest trustable Gentleman.
Regards,
Mr. Solomon Ndebele
[slice/dice of scam email & traditional Zulu praise song, trans. E. Mphahlele]
Busy Hands - Muse's Advisory, Aug. 19 – John Cantell, on onionskin
and Elizabeth's diet pills:
God said:
Tonight I'd like to truly clarify who Jesus is.
I know it's confusing to be told, both, that He is Me
and that He's my son. Admittedly, He doesn't seem
like Me to Me either. He has a distinct voice and look,
and a very distinct point of view about your mutiny.
It's easier to see Him as my son than as Me proper.
But "both/and" and "either/or" do exist side by side.
God said:
In my state of quantum simultaneity, the Me
who didn't assume a human body exists side by side
with the Me that did assume a human body—Christ.
Assuming a human body is purposeful, corporeal Me
must differ from the simultaneous non-corporeal Me.
You're not exactly the same when swimming as you
are when reading a book, yet you were exactly one
person before you decided which thing to do; you're
exactly one person doing either activity; ergo, you're
exactly the same person even when you're different.
God said:
OK, I'm boring the shit out of Myself here!
This kind of lengthy lecturing is more Jesus's style.
I should let Him finish it. I'm actually a bit pressed
for time anyway. I still have to put away the dishes.
Well, not Me, but actually John, who is writing this
down for Me, because at this point in time, none of
my three persons has an actual hand there on earth,
though Jesus still does have a physical body seated
right here at my right hand—which is metaphorical—
because if I had hands locatable on any kind of axis,
'right' and 'left' couldn't describe the vast complexity
of the sort of axis my hands would be locatable on.
Jesus said:
I thought He was doing pretty well there,
didn't you?—for a God of so few words? The silent
type, unused to public speaking? He's okay, actually.
I'm okay, I should say, since I'm Him. I'm the talker,
and He's a listener—well, quiet, anyway. The Spirit
is also Us. He says nothing at all, but the folks He
visits all get crazy talkative! Oops, I'm slapping My
own knee now, look. All three of Our right hands are
having a round-robin slapping One Another's knees.
Aren't I actually droller than you were led to expect?
Jesus said:
So, Numero Uno pretty much covered it.
I'm the one who had the human body, I redeemed
you, I love and forgive you totally. Let's not get into
what it is you did wrong. Yadda, yadda. The main
thing now is just to wait for My display next month.
I guarantee you, you're all going to be like, Whoa!
Classified Transcript VL8364 (Israeli Intelligence Steering Committee)
- Muse's Advisory, Aug. 20 - Polimnia:
“M”:
The last thing we need's a new loose cannon in the North American theatre.
Sure, today it's just a modest smokehouse in a smallish city in the United States,
but haven't we learned anything about front businesses and impeccable covers?
We've got to neutralize him while we can.
“B”:
Running commandos in the Midwest with our top-of-the-line interference
technology is a very risky proposition both politically and militarily. What if it falls
into American hands, or worse, Peace Now? And what about collateral damage—
some Dutch Calvinist eating burnt tips, God forbid, gets caught in the crossfire?
“Z”:
We have a communiqué from Yeshua himself. The restaurant's legitimate.
We have always been able to rely on Yeshua's word as the gold standard, no?
Do you remember in 2006 when he vouched for the Black-Eyed Peas in Tel Aviv?
Was that not a concert for the ages? Who saw Yossi Shalev's 'Headphone Party'
video on YouTube?
“M”:
[Redacted], what in HASHEM's name do you mean? Do you actually think
will.i.am was a real threat to the State of Israel? Moron! But Zeus has made
more fucking trouble already than all the hiphop stars and Arabs combined!
We must do something to stop him at all costs! I have, right here in my hand,
a recently commissioned White Paper from our Western Michigan Chamber
of Commerce. It concludes—I quote—'There is zero' — that is their italics—
'zero market for another smoked ribs restaurant in Greater Grand Rapids.'
Your harmless little old geriatric god? He's clearly playing all of us for fools!
“B”:
Moses help me if I'm wrong, but we can't afford to not send in a team.
The risk is simply too great to ignore. Let's use those ultra-foxy hackerchiks
that took down the Iranians' atomics—I want to pin another fucking medal
onto both their chests, you hear me? Tell them to pack their satin nighties.
Gas up that airport limo with the Bose speakers and tinted bulletproof glass.
We assemble at 6, codeword hickory.
Purpose Honed by Perplexity - Muse's Advisory, Aug. 21 - ‫اااا اااا‬
‫اااااا ااا ااااا ااا‬
‘Aṭṭa:
Muḥammad Muḥammad al-Āmir ‘Awaḍ as-Sayyid
I'm turning 33 in 10 more days.
I won't grow much older.
Yeshua gave up life at 33.
As an infant He spent one night
a hundred meters from the hut
where I grew up
in Nile-suckled Kafr el-Sheikh.
The ancient Crocodilopolite who sold
Yeshua's mother pita at the souk
bore witness that He uttered verses
at 3 months of age. Even then,
He knew the hour of His death.
He too could never take a bride.
The Prophet, on the other hand,
at 33 was just an ordinary husband.
All-loving Allah candled him so long.
When I tell my Saudi morons
why skyscrapers are demonic,
they nod their heads like cows—
how pleasantly stupid they are!
Strange that these are the men
I am entering Paradise with.
I can't wait to escape them.
I look forward to rebirth
in a place with less perplexity.
I yearn for tamarisk bowls
filled with fresh and savory
home-cooked food again.
Everyone a Writer - Muse's Advisory, Aug. 22 – Foxy Israeli Hackerchik
1 @fine_line@UPenUp.com / Foxy Israeli Hackerchik 2 @penzu.com:
1
I first met him in Haifa. I wanted a boat to Crete and went down to
the port. It was almost lunchtime and dark, about to rain. Strong winds
flung sea spray at the small café. Its glass doors were shut tight.
Someone touched my shoulder, lightly, from behind. “Call me
Ishmael,” he said, and grinned.
“Are you looking for a boat?” he asked.
“Heraklion,” I said.
“That won't be cheap.”
“Do I look cheap?”
It was the start of a beautiful friendship. His real name, it turns out,
was a state secret: he actually did go by “Ishmael”—Ishmael Levitz,
owner-operator of an open-sea ferry for hire called the Saint Judith.
He had the lightest blue eyes, set in the darkest tan, I'd ever seen.
When he laughed, which he did pretty frequently, his face...
You all can guess the rest of the story. Chock full of realistic details. Two hyper-
patriotic agents team up to foil the Cypriot arms smuggler or the would-be
Palestinian martyr who will settle for the bare cell of a common criminal—
something like that. If you've read my other stuff, you know I actually am a
commando in real life. This evening, I am starting a mission, and so I will be
incommunicado again, for who knows how long. Who knows if I'll return at all?
So this next paragraph may be the last. (What can it possibly say, to live up to
that?) Feel free to finish it yourself, if I don't get the chance...
...assumed such a tortured shape, I felt a desperate urge to look away.
It was the deeply sorrowful lines into which his face otherwise relaxed
that would ultimately wring out every sort of moisture that my body hid.
2
Off we go to Xxx, cover story: xxx xxxs in our target's
new xxx xxx in Xxx Xxx, Xxx. Xxx always flirts with Xxx
so shamelessly in his pimped-out limo, and I as usual will
be embarrassed for her. But when will she look my way?
The target is Xxx. Why? Who ever knows? But these
guys have kept the Xxx of Xxx afloat for many decades
now, so they must actually know what they're doing.
As usual, we will share a motel room. We always try to
book two double beds, but the last time, they said all
they could give us was one king. I said something like
“Why fight it?” and Xxx looked at me thoughtfully, as if
thinking, "Is there a double meaning?" I was so hot
for her that night as we undressed, I thought, "How
is it that she can't see it?" But if she did, she kept it to
herself, and in the morning we put our street clothes
back on and went out like two robots and xxxed a xxx.
What will happen in Xxx? Love? Xxx? Or will my heart
give out this time from all its wondering and wanting?
Brothers - Muse's Advisory, Aug. 23 – Saudi 1:
I'm sick of watching Taxi Driver over and over.
I know a comedy's too much to ask of Atta,
but why not rent another film that cryptically exposes Jews
like Silence of the Lambs or Grapes of Wrath,
to break up the monotony?
My brother says the cinema in heaven is unblemished by disgust.
The camerawork is always dignified; the scores are riveting—
you'd never dream of getting up to leave, even to piss—
which, luckily, nobody must.
The popcorn bucket top-to-bottom keeps a perfect saltiness,
has no hard kernels, and replenishes itself.
The Coca-Cola doesn't water down or lose its soft, sweet fizz.
As the day creeps closer, I flush with a bliss
known only to a younger brother who has promised
to relieve his elder brother's spiritual distress.
Allah was merciful, and the healer in Medina wise
to recommend we contact Atta, a talib with vicious thorns
inside his heart, but surely guides us toward paradise.
For that, I obey him and call him a hero.
Still, I don't know
if I can bear another moment of De Niro.
Brothers 2 - Muse's Advisory, Aug 24 – Saudi 2:
Our donkey hates skyscrapers, like the movie guy hates cities.
My brother says, “Keep focussed on jihad. We're almost there.”
“We're almost where?” I ask.
“Allah provides,” he says.
Allah who provides everything.
For 28 years, Allah has fed both pain and wonder to Waleed.
It's not enough that he should live a modest, ordinary life.
“In this existence,” Waleed says,
“He gives us signposts to the next, where He'll provide the rest.
We're almost there, Wa'il.”
I hope he's right. Waleed has faith,
but he was also sure about the ruqya healer in Medina.
My pain is nothing next to knowing what he undergoes on my behalf.
What kind of life is that?
I hope it's true Allah prepares him something better.
Grand Opening I - Muse's Advisory, Aug. 25 – Zeus:
I'm glad the faithless floozie didn't show!
The shamelessness of these Israeli mata haris
turns me on like nothing else!
That they are spies, even assassins,
only blows a bellows on my passions!
If I'm interpreting their brazen flirting right,
I think tonight is going to be the night!
They may know who I am—my dossier—
but they have no idea what I can do.
Assassin 2 has got a major jones for 1,
but when I'm done with both of them
the straightie's going to wish she'd let
the lesbie lap her dish.
Do they imagine I'm some doddering old lech?
Let's open up the doors and sling our hash:
come closing time, I'll tally up the cash,
then teach my Shannon twins who's boss.
The odor of the meats is sweet—
an ideal avocation for a god,
to bathe in blood and smoke
and watch as humans sit and eat!
Damn Jews have had it in for me for—
how long now? Two dozen centuries?
What did I ever do to them?
It's my fault Romans occupied Jerusalem?
The Jewess I deflowered was some gem,
their princes lined up at her door?
Why don't they bring the Christians down a rung:
“It wasn't our Jehovah who made Miriam a mom—
it was that infamous and loathsome Greek Don Juan!”
It's like they're proud, in secret, that Yeshua
their arch-nemesis arose full-blooded from their seed.
Maybe it makes it less embarrassing,
Jehovah being just a straw god they set up
to feed their daydreams of superiority.
I've roamed the earth and sky since Day 1 dawned.
My brothers range the seas, and hell.
There isn't any rival god
unless his tent's pitched on the dark side of the moon
or he's immured himself inside a benthic sulfur vent.
Here come the girls.
O, what a fine, fine day this promises to be!
Not just for me, but for Grand Rapids too.
Today it beats back Lansing and Toledo's pity:
any local yokel west of Philly knows
a town without a single smokehouse
has a lot of nerve to call itself a city.
Grand Opening II - Muse's Advisory, Aug. 26 – Melpomene:
Zeus smiles, transfigured, beholding the hungry queue.
“Welcome to Mt. Olympus, everyone!”
The first in line's a skinny fellow dangling from a Marathon Oil cap
into the shafts of back-cut python cowboy boots—Yeshua.
But gods can't see past hats; Zeus fails to recognize his son.
He vigorously pumps the youngster's GOJO-scented hands and cries,
“Your lunch is on the house—on me!”
The skinny-jeaned, waist-aproned waitresses know who he is
and see an opportunity to kill two plump birds with one stone.
But in deep cover, incommunicado,
they can't make a call this weighty on their own.
They risk their cover being blown
to send even a very well encrypted text to “O.”
But 1 nods Go; 2 scurries to the lady's room.
Zeus feels a near-erotic stirring in his thyroid glands,
escorts Yeshua to a window deuce, and readies
for the femmes fatales to finally show
their dirty, double-crossing hands.
1 seats the next group, seniors, in a chrome and crimson vinyl booth.
Zeus eagle-eyes the black and white hex-tiled restroom vestibule for 2.
But it's Yeshua's play! He leaps bolt-upright to his feet
and pulls an iTouch from his Wrangler boot-cut dungarees.
“Nobody move!” he cries. “I have an IED!”
1 races back in from the loo and flashes a thumbs-up to 2,
who whips out her OO-MP3 and taps the playlist Jammin' Crete.
Zeus thrills! At last enough is happening at once,
he has an opportunity to split in three and show
these mortal amateurs just what it means to be
The Lord of Seven Hundred Forms, The Manifold:
Zeus A, in chaps, upends Yeshua with a thunderbolt of ribs;
B, in a leopard Tarzan loincloth, halts 1 in her tracks with an entire brisket slab;
and C, buck naked, boomerangs a cayenne-crusted turkey wing at 2!
The other patrons gape.
The Imam Sahibzada in his white taqiyah,
on his lunch break from the makeshift mosque,
commands, “In Allah's name, Zeus, stop! The Prophet said—”
But who can hear a thing?
Half into Zeus C's upswing with a three-foot truncheon of kielbasa,
Yeshua nearly hews his Roman nose off with a knife-edged crucifix
produced at lightning speed from hidden scaffolding beneath his cap!
C springs for cover into B, and B accordions back into A.
The reassembled god at last identifies his son and, dumbstruck,
watches him unzip his denim coveralls down to the waist
and send the routed hackerchiks careening out the door
in horror of T-rays emanating from his Sacred Heart!
Sahibzada saves his hadith for another day,
streaks out into the street on the Israelis' heels.
The other patrons goggle hungrily
at all the great meat strewn around the floor.
Yeshua calmly tells them
what the blue plate specials are
and in a phonic shorthand
he invented on the spot
efficiently takes everybody's orders.
Grand Opening III - Muse's Advisory, Aug. 27 – Terpsichore:
“Rabboni,” said Green Hornet
as he dabbed the beads of moisture
sprouting on his upper lip,
and paid his tab.
“What do you make of this
whole global warming mess?”
“I don't,” Yeshua says.
“CO2 footprints, 'Footprints in the Sand'—
it's too much chemistry and higher math,
it just confuses me.”
“Fo' sho. My wife Lenore says,
'Let's have tons of kids
since one of them might find the fix,'
but Kato says, 'Adopt.'
It's a conundrum wrapped inside—
how does that bitch expression go?”
“Who fuckin' knows?
That's $13.13 with the tax.”
“That dry-rubbed tongue was fine.
Next time I'm in the neighborhood,
I'll come again.”
“Whatever you decide about them kids?—
keep up the ballsy gangster-fighting, Britt.
I dreamt of getting some of that myself
when I was young.”
“Atoning for the human race's sins,
the Sacred Heart, giving the blind man sight?
That shit is not chopped liver, any way you slice it!
Not everyone's cut out for costumed vigilante work."
Then, sotto voce, “Maybe one night
after closing up, a drink?
I sometimes got a taste for trade,
a little casual down-low?”
“You know I wish I could.”
“A shame, a shame. I understand.”
“You give 'em hell.”
“You too, my man.”
The Smokehouse Ticket - Muse's Advisory, Aug. 28 – Zeus:
Sorry about that rack of ribs.
I took you for a third Israeli.
But what the fuck is your excuse
for letting fly that bloody crucifix?
Still clinging to that boyhood grudge?
Nor am I thrilled about the corny
trickshop heart-ray bit you pulled,
as if I needed rescuing.
I held my ground, and more—
had big plans for those Mossad whores
you scared off with your cheap display
of cheesy faux panache.
You're no slouch, though, at waitering!
You shitting me? How much in tips?—
no Zeus, but still you have a gift!
The first time one dumb patron gave me lip
I would've turned my sharp tongue loose
and put my foot into my mouth.
I'd be the poster child of getting stiffed!
Yeah, Heaven knows you
got a very different style
from my own, but still,
if I said partnership,
what would you say?
My meat might be ambrosia
yet if someone doesn't serve it
with a friendly smile,
it might as well be shit.
Grand Rapids is an okay whistlestop—
no San Francisco or New Orleans
but as good a town as any for a quiet life,
for grinding out a buck.
Today, you want to call the big-league shots,
you need a couple dollars in your pocket.
Yes, it's subservient, a bit,
but when you stop and think,
humility is pretty much your gig.
We build a grubstake fat enough
for TV buys and PR flaks—
then you, the lowly hick,
and I, the gruff entrepreneur,
could really make a run of it as Independents!
You take the top spot on the ticket.
Me?—I'll be Dick Cheney, Bush's veep.
You good-ole-sweet-talk the electorate;
my little finger diddles with her liberties
and then my whole hand pushes deep
into her pocketbook to pick it.
First choice for military Chief of Staff?
Sheik Abdel-Rahman finds the bull's-eye
on a donkey's ass as well as anyone;
and Admiral Nelson's tops at blind man's bluff.
First choice for an incursion—
Beirut, Baghdad, or the Hindu Kush?
Or should we stick our thumbs
in everybody's eye at once
and shock-and-awe Jerusalem?
The mighty eagle and the humble dove—
I like the sound of it, don't you?
Vox populi is dying for a figment just like us!
The Smokehouse Team
Business and Labor Hand in Hand Again!
Your American Dream!
We'll make the Mt. Olympus our campaign HQ
and promise butt pulled pork in every pot!
We'll silk-purse virtues out of every failing—
shamelessly out-Sarah-Palin Sarah Palin—
send Barack Obama back to Hono-fuckin-lulu!
Let Caesar nurse whatever's his,
and render to the gods the rest.
We'll suckle à la Siamese
and leave the poor and friendless
each one empty breast.
Olympus Smokehouse Ticket Nix - Muse's Advisory, Aug. 29 – Yeshua:
Pops,
your halved burnt ends
are tops
but campaign ops
is clearly not
your gift.
There's more to politics
than popularity.
You have to cultivate the rich
and kiss ass at
The New York Times.
You have to wine and dine,
give graft, make promises
and grease the wheels.
Smokehouse is art,
running for president is craft.
You don't cut meat, but deals.
You rub salt and cayenne
in an opponents' wounds.
Serving food is honest work.
I would be proud to stay and help
you get this shanty off the ground.
Ruling the free world, though?
More you than me.
I don't mind putting two slugs
in a pronghorn's chest,
and as you saw today,
I'm up to shooing off
a couple pretty vicious Jews.
But smoke-filled backroom
double deals, and dueling
close-in with sharp knives?
I lack that kind of steel.
You do it, though, alone.
You didn't need me when you sent
those deicidal hellcats packing
earlier this afternoon.
I only intervened
to save their lives
and burglarize their jobs.
Go on downstairs
and tally up the take.
You earned it.
My congratulations.
Mt. Olympus is a hit.
Restaurant Review - Muse's Advisory, Aug. 30 – The Grand Rapids
Sentinel:
Mt. Olympus Smokehouse Flavor & Atmosphere Volcanic!
by Publisher Britt “Brisket” Reid
My chauffeur and personal assistant Kato holds his own at BBQ,
so it was a fine surprise to find that whole gamut of smoked meats
at the new Mt. Olympus Smokehouse, in the former Café du Jour
space on W. Washington Street, are the zestiest I've ever eaten!
The owner, a native of Crete who calls himself Zeus Labrandos
to fit with his double-edged cleaver logo, explains that he was born
on a constantly smoking volcanic slope and has never lost the taste
for eating, or knack for preparing, an array of fine smoked meats.
Picture a stripped-down, white brick, boxy, white-floored room
with formica-top tables and a few old-fashioned diner-style booths.
There’s a bunch of sugarcane stalks in a corner, and on the walls,
photographs of Bill Clinton and Oprah Winfrey waiting to be signed.
Ask to be seated at a corner table if you can. The sound levels rock
the rafters in this high-ceilinged space, sudden drafts gust through
whenever the door blows open, and you'll want to avoid the brunt
of the mayhem and bloodshed, as entertaining as it is.
Highlights of my meal: burnt tips and a halved tongue to die for,
washed down with an ice-cold, ample pitcher of lime-ade; two foxy
Middle-Eastern-sounding waitresses; one stringy-haired young man
with a grease-monkey's baseball cap and the heart of a ninja; Zeus
himself; and the local imam! I kid you not. The grand finale was a
wild-west shootout that included joints of meat, cardiac death rays
and boxcutter-sharp religious icons whizzing across the dining room!
None of which seemed to matter all to the customers crowding
Zeus's tightly packed tables to sample his flair with smoked meats,
ranging from turkey wings to huge beef ribs to real Polish kielbasa—
and much more! Expert smoking, slow-cooking, and flavor fireworks
all conspire to make you "high" on the Mount Olympus Smokehouse,
at 117 W. Washington St., phone 734-761-2882.
•Hours: 11 a.m.-midnight, daily incl. Christmas
•Plastic: Yes
•Liquor: Unnecessary
•Prices: Most items $12 or less
•Noise level: Boisterous
•Wheelchairs: A must
Restaurant Review, the Rhubarb - Muse's Advisory, Aug. 31 – Kato:
Fuck your literary license, Britt.
“Next best” at anything is not my speed.
Valet and sidekick, bad enough—
but telling everyone in town
I'm second fiddle to a Cretan
when it comes to BBQ
is just too much.
Wisteria and maple mingled at the vee
are bound to wrestle for the upper hand,
the clasp becoming subtly murderous—
The sun and moon once crossed
the heavens fondly, side by side,
before the one became a flaming exhibitionist,
the other a sedate voyeur—
Then comes a point in everybody's life,
a Rubicon, momento de verdad—
Oh God. Can't we just end this whole charade?
This houseboy scholar trick you have me turn—
I quit. One final cappuccino, and that's it.
Let's swap roles, drop the fiction.
Truth be told, you prowl the alleyways by night
because the air of violence gets you off.
I'm not your equerry, but your de Sade.
I say we bag this fucked-up Harvey Comics
superhero shit and just come out—
no masks, no livery, no false façades—
two unapologetic queers who have
the balls to show their faces
and take pleasure in the underside of love.
Bedfellows - Muse's Advisory, Sept. 1 – Nikos:
“You learn to read and write
so you become a man,” my father,
Captain Michail Kazantzakis, told his sons.
He meant for us to tame the animals within,
the goats that mounted women without asking,
and the wolves the goats fled bleating from,
instinctively.
But letters never curbed my savagery.
I had lunch with the priest
from Holy Trinity G.O.C.
We had that killer $30 lamb souvlaki
at The Epicure's Academy
down there on Wealthy Street.
He's already worried
you'll be serving meat
in violation of the church decrees
regarding Cheesefare Week:
“What will his menu be?
Is Zeus a patriotic Greek
or opportunist leech?”
“His name is probably a clue,” I said.
He cried, “Then he's as bad as you!”
That's when I knew we had to meet.
He also said the waiter here, your son—
he had an air of piety.
Is that him there?
He looks like he's more into crystal meth
than Holy Eucharist, to me.
You don't know who I am? I'm Kazantzakis
the agnostic, author, priest-scourge, egotist—
the closest thing to you on modern Crete,
that ancient, rugged copper skillet
on the stove of the Aegean Sea.
I want to know why you confine your heat
inside these fragrant, brick-faced kilns—
why pile platters high with smoky meat,
who oft-times charred a mighty city
with one wild flicker of his wrist!
I do respect the working stiff.
My pappoús hammered cauldrons out of tin.
He knew his place—came home, sat down,
drank his arkanes, chewed his crust of bread,
prayed seven prayers and crumpled into bed.
I meant no disrespect. You're quite a chef.
Your meats are just as scrumptious as I've read.
But if you own the powers of a god,
I grasp your royal knees and pray
you launch your utmost thunder-stroke
a thousand miles to the D.C. Hall of Heros—
blast the Pentagon into a Stonehenge
of a million tons of sundered concrete
circling the hatless and saluteless courtyard
Cold War soldiers, in their gallows humor,
named Ground Zero. Did you say No?
Those military morons, shadow-boxing,
don't outrage you—boil your blood?
Your name's Yeshua? Nice to meet you.
I am Nikos, Cretan too—born in Heraklion.
I'll have the Medley of Assorted BBQ
with sides of creamed corn, coleslaw and french fries.
Don't paint the meat with any sauce, I like it dry,
and please make sure it's piping hot.
I have this half-off coupon from the Sentinel.
The limeade's free? I hope it's also plentiful!
You got a sec? I'm interested in you.
You have the kind of think-big moxie I do,
plus the wherewithal to back it up.
Your dad's hung up his lightningbolt,
he says, to hoe a couple less dramatic rows,
but I aspire to old-time immortal glory—
to instill both dread and admiration—
to send petty tyrants running
stand this two-bit fleabag Hotel Earth
right on its head! You too?
I've got ideas beyond my thews,
you strength beyond your wits.
Let's say we put our heads together—
put the fear of Jesus into more than
hot-wired, strychnine-cunted Jews?
Yes! I do! I feel the fire in your gut!
So now you want to talk, Zeus?
Tame my temper, quoting Lysistráti?
Scurry back into the kitchen! Fix my dish!
Your son's become the god you used to be.
It doesn't matter how much thunder's in your thighs
if you've forgotten how to dance the maleviziotis!
Doubleday on the Phone - Muse's Advisory, Sept. 2 – Tama to Miriam:
If Jackie O. were still alive, believe me,
it'd be her here on the horn.
But I'm her heir and protégé of sorts.
I had a hand in Quincy Jones's Q
and Tiger Woods's coach's A-Game Golf—
I worked intensively with Tiger's dad,
whose preface was a diamond in the rough
I helped massage into a fairway gem.
I've earned my spurs with long-ball hitters
and, I hope, the right to pitch myself to you.
Cultural icon—overused, but in this case it fits:
you're goddam Princess Di times two!
Of course I haven't read the manuscript
but even if it has some bumps or warts,
I'm confident we'll get them ironed out
and make a critical and popular success.
When will you be in New York next?
I'll treat you to a lunch you won't forget—
the City's greatest food, a panoramic view
of everything that will be yours if you'll let
me and Doubleday bring out your book.
Bring 20, 30 pages double-spaced.
We'll sip a little Dom, we'll hatch a plan,
then take a limo ride uptown
to see how many big fat zeros we can jam
into the blank box on your first advance,
the Queen who kicks Steve King
from #1 on the bestseller lists!
An Excited Flurry of Advice - Muse's Advisory, Sept. 3:
Polymnie:
Some fancy éditeur
invited you to lunch?
Mon Dieu! So many pitfalls,
so much opportunity!
Is she picking up the airfare?
Première classe ou économique?
Surefire indication
of the level of commitment.
Did they book you an hôtel?
The Elysée, the Plaza, the Pierre?
The devil's always in the details.
Hire a literary lawyer.
Tama, was it? Tama Who?
First Google/Facebook her.
Then mail her 15 pages à l'avance,
ask what she'd do with it.
I'm not an author's rep per se—
my expertise, the idée inspirée—
but generally they cut, cut, cut,
then pay you by the page.
Is it “as told to”?
“With”?
Nègre anonyme
ou crédité?
.
Urania:
Will they stipulate to book you on the network morning shows,
or only minor-market call-ins in a thousand cheerless Buffalos?
As for foreign language rights, the biggest Christian markets:
Spanish, Russian, Tagalog, Portuguese, Italian, and Amharic.
Terpsichore:
Don't drink a drop
until the ink is dry—
then guzzle bubbly
to your heart's content.
It's still their dime,
and they're expensing it.
Don't let some bull-dyke
elbow in and steal your cab:
if word gets out, then everybody
sees you as fair game.
And cross the street not
when the box says WALK,
but anytime the crosstown
traffic bares a 10-foot gap.
Ask for onions
on you hotdog at Sabrett's.
Don't ever walk past a Papaya King
and not duck in!
Hulk Hogan's strategy to best-sell
his My Life Outside the Ring? Tip
bartenders, hairdressers, waiters,
cabbies, prostitutes and doormen
really well.
Mojo Infusion - Muse's Advisory, Sept. 4 – Yusuf to Nikos:
I have desires I could fan
to roaring passions, like you do.
I read your epic and your memoir, both.
When Booklist noted you were signing books
here in New York, I had to come.
I'm going to ask you if you'll write:
To Yusuf, my life force is your inheritance.
How loud it is in here! Who guessed
the St. Mark's was a magnet for you Greeks?
Am I the only one on line
who doesn't speak your mother tongue,
and doesn't trumpet every thought out loud?
My Aramaic legacy is reticence.
You're smart; you didn't procreate.
Your wife still hangs upon your words
as lovingly as if it was your second date.
A child's a Trojan horse. I know.
He slips a hand beneath your balls
and squeezes steadily until you cry,
I'll give my life! Just stop the pain!
And then he turns and walks away.
You faced down God and men
with entrails cold and hard as metal chains.
When these two hussies finish offering you their cunts,
I want to grip your virile wrist
and pray its lava seeps into my veins.
I simply want what's mine. I raised that boy,
I kept that women warm in bed at night
for twenty years, while Zeus just sat it out.
If it were you, you'd leap right up and do
something regretable, I have no doubt.
one of three nights at the cooper square - muse's advisory, sept. 5 –
nikos, asleep:
a boy breathes lightly as a pine lizard
a cloudless sky above three continents
a pelican crawls under the sea-grapes to die
a pelican on an updraft sees how everything
floats on everything
a tsar collects his tax on nobles' beards
a child's go-cart lames the mayor's mare
a soldier learns why privies have to be inside
a pelican perforates the membrane of the sea
and gulps a struggling mullet
a jetliner plummets from the blue over sumatra
grandfather said it plainly
oxen, sheep and donkeys are men
who lost the faculty of speech
and olive trees and vines are men
who don't remember anything at all
except to set the richest fruit they can
at the first moment of creation
everything was human
even we humans were human
[Parts of S5 drawn from Nikos Kazantzakis's
autobiography, Report to Greco]
The Towers - Muse's Advisory, Sept. 6 – Zeus:
Elytis wrote, The light never blended with their roof,
not even a bee was fooled into beginning the golden game,
not even a Zephyr into swelling the white aprons –
but they built it anyway, raised the iron up into the light.
30 pieces of silver was the price: trim, oxford-topped beige dresses
welcomed the aprons back at last, and the white made do with that.
Miriam purred, I'll wear whatever dress you buy me.
But while I was shopping in the Taisho-ya Kimono Store,
a damn gnome tried to jump me and I blew up
with unfortunate results for all of Nakajima:
Nakajima-honmachi and Motoyanagi-machi, Tenjin-machi, Kobiki-cho
and Zaimoku-cho, Nakajima-shinmachi, the Sekaikan Cinema,
the shrine, the brush-shop, the teahouse and the camphor trees.
She promised, I'll meet you in front of my cathedral.
As I exited the Michino-o train station, another gnome accosted me
but I kept my cool until I reached St. Mary's, where fumi-e agents
forced suspected Christians to crush the Virgin's icon or be banished.
When I saw she'd put the horns on me, I rose between the spires
and called destruction down on everyone and all.
[l. 2-4 Odysseas Elytis, trans. Keeley/Sherrard]
Voice Crying Out in the City - Muse's Advisory, Sept. 7 – John Cantell,
outside Madison Square Garden:
Tom Cruise! Barack Obama!
.
Yoko Ono! Michael Jackson!
.
Tiger Woods! J. K. Row ling!
God says:
The fields are white.
Oh how sweet!
Do not drift
From the brightness,
From the glory!
Look to the Savior,
Come away to Jesus!
Oh turn ye, turn ye,
Out on the broad way.
I was a pilgrim bound
One cold winter's eve.
I was wandering,
Drifting away from
The gospel of grace,
I was journeying,
Passing onward,
And I heard my Savior:
Cheer up, my brother,
Man of sorrows,
We're going home.
God says:
Have you room for
Your blest Redeemer?
Don't you hear
My dying Jesus pleading?
There's a great day,
There is sunshine,
Come enter the gate,
Called to the feast!
[built mostly from hymn titles in Go-Preacher Hymn Book
www.tellingthetruth.info/brg_hymns/gopreacher.php]
Cuntagious - Muse's Advisory, Sept. 8 – Terpsichore:
A block downtown from the Israeli Consulate,
in Mimi's Nail Salon,
Millie and Tina debate
whether the evening's last two gals were lesbians.
“I never seen such fucked-up nails,” says Tina.
“Whatevuh them two girls is doin' is just nasty!”
“They both straight-up dykes if you ask me,”
says Millie. “You could tell it from them arms!
You seen those arms? Them girls is heavy duty
with the weights and shit. Know what I mean?”
“Jews always pick those scary snake designs!
And did you see those fuckin' spike-toe shoes?
Them girls some mean-ass lesboes!” Tina says.
“$10 says they goin' at it right this very second!”
“All four of their tits is less than one of yours,”
Millie observes. “But lezzies love that kind of tit.
Know what I mean? Reminds them of a man's.”
“I wish my tits were more like yours,” says Tina.
“Not these huge balloons but not too little neither.”
“You do? You want to see? I'll show you them.
Slide down the shade. I want to see yours too.
I like 'em big–”
“As long as we ain't lookin' at our pussies.”
A block downtown from the Israeli Consulate,
in Mimi's Nail Salon,
Millie and Tina debate
what women can or cannot do and still be straight.
A loud knock on the locked and curtained door.
The two gals giggle, hold their breath,
and race to button up their shirts. Another knock, a cry.
"Is anybody still in there? I'm desperate!"
Millie opens the door a crack
and Tina sees her blush.
Amelia Earhart stands there naked as a robin,
right down to her reddish bush!
Rent Tomb
Polimnia con Fuoco Muse's Advisory, Sept. 9
On this day in 1965 Los Angeles a Japanese Navy E14Y Yokosuka
Dodger Sandy Koufax executed On this day in 1942 an Imperial
float plane dropped an incendiary history a tight 1-0 victory over the
bomb on an Oregon state forest the 8th perfect game in baseball
Chicago Cubs at Dodger Stadium long-ranged underwater aircraft
in Los Angeles Although Koufax Launched from the Japanese
carrier I-25 Fujita Nobuo piloted from 1955-1961 from 1962-1966
the light airplane to Oregon and won just games 36 to 51 losses
he put in the record books what Mount Emily alighting the state
are maybe the 5 greatest seasons fire bombed Wheeler Ridge on
forest and ensuring his place Koufax's fastballs seemed to rise
as the only combatant in U.S. by a pitcher in baseball history
as they reached home plate United States Washington quickly
blazing past batters His infamous history to bomb the continental
ordered a coast to coast news knees almost always crossing the
blackout for the sake of morale curve ball buckled at the hitter's
plate as a strike after following and Fujita eventually went home
a parabolic path as he amassed No long-term damage was done
as a hero and was reassigned to the middle of the Cubs order and
training kamikaze pilots After the perfect game Koufax faced
struck out Ron Santo and Ernie as peace gifts his family's 400
Banks in the 8th inning before the war he gave his former enemies
year old samurai sword and planted although the Cubs said afterward
a yew tree at the bombing site striking out the side in the 9th
they always knew what was coming where a daughter buried his ashes
[built from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nobuo_Fujita &
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sandy_Koufax%27s_perfect_game]
between
two
minarets
muse's advisory sept 10
romanticism of the machine
high high time for
my grand
gesture
the 400m mashrabiya minoruts
on yamasaki's masjib al-haram
high
koenig's grosse kugelkaryatide
representing a ruptured kaaba
nagare's cloven cloud fortress
spreads thighs to the rapture
high
aesthetic planes
welded together
he assimilates it as he does volcanoes erupting
tsunamis & earthquakes welling inside his veins
high
a bearded bum a-glitter with fleas
in his Russian egg of flannel coats
roaring
roaring
10,000 life forms underneath his nails
a white-silver 18-wheeler pulled off
at the west street edge of the plaza
the driver's head thrown back & back
& back in the red blink of the hazards
high
5 port authority police
share predawn laughs
on
wet hands & knees
an old fiend crawls
high
the flattened galaxy of the fountain's floor
for coppered zinc and nickeled copper coin
over
time
No - Muse's Advisory, Sept. 11 – unknown:
One thing I'll clarify.
I don't subscribe to Time
or Life or Christianity Today.
Your cries make less noise
in my ear than schoolchildren's
soap bubbles failing.
I don't smell anything:
I didn't smell your Auschwitz
or your Abel's offering.
Twin Dronings in the Hearing Room - Muse's Advisory, Sept. 12 –
Urania:
"We looked at every possible thing we could think of that could happen
to the two towers, including an airplane hitting them," said lead structural
engineer John Skilling. “A B-25 bomber had once hit the Empire State Building.
Our analysis showed the buildings could withstand the impact of Boeing 707's.
There would be a horrendous fire but the building structures would survive."
“A trust exists between builders and occupants, and with firefighters,”
said forensic architect Roger Morse. “That trust was broken." The builder in
charge of structural fire-proofing, Louie 'the Bone' DiBono of the Gambino
family, was in St. Mary Cemetery in Queens on 9/11. He'd been found riddled
with bullets in the front seat of a Caddie in the WTC basement parking level.
On the Air - Muse's Advisory, Sept. 13 – Day 3 broadcast:
...Windows on the World waitress, whose white apron flew up, blinding her
as she fell, told Sky News correspondent Eric Blair that Jackie O. had been
at brunch with God's mother Mary, sipping demitasses reeking of Sambuca,
when legendary aviatrix Amelia Earhart emerged from the oncoming jet's
port cockpit window wearing nothing but...
...a red-eyed truck driver from Tennessee claims a large, bearded, vagrant
man climbed atop the sculpture known as 'The Sphere' and raised his arms
toward the sky, as two slinky and well-accoutred young women ran up,
brandishing what looked like eerie rays of greenish light...
...visibly shaken spokesman said that the substitution of Martin Scorsese’s
1976 Oscar-nominated 'Taxi Driver' for Ang Lee's 2000 Oscar-nominated
'Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon' as inflight movie for the Boston-to-L.A.
flight had been requested by passenger David Angell, creator of the sitcom
'Frasier,' but had not yet been OK'd by the flight crew...
...47-year-old Jackson 5 fan and street-corner evangelist John Cantell of Noel,
Missouri, had appeared suddenly, attempting to intervene on behalf of an elder,
possibly Arab man scuffling with guards in the North Tower entry foyer
following a routine request for identification, to which he replied, quote,
'Yeshua and Kazantakis would never demean themselves and produce id's!'
...Buckingham Palace Correspondent says the Queen is pulling in all the laundry
and dispatching her firstborn His Royal Highness Prince Charles Philip Arthur
George Prince of Wales Knight of the Garter Knight of the Thistle Knight Grand
Cross of the Order of Bath Knight of the Order of Australia Companion of the
Queen's Service Order Privy Counsellor Earl of Chester Duke of Cornwall Duke
of Rothesay Earl of Carrick Baron of Renfrew Lord of the Isles and Prince and
Great Steward of Scotland, in the company of Lady Camilla Parker Bowles,
great-granddaughter of Alice of Pleasure House in East Sutton in Kent, chief
mistress of King Edward VII from 1898-1910, to fly to New York City as soon as
airports there opened, to convey the Royal Family's deep condolences after...
...PM Tony Blair deplored 'absolutely shocking events taking place in America'...
Muse's Advisory - Sept. 14 – Euterpe to Tom:
Just stop. Don't take another step.
Who is answerable, except yourself,
for this unfolding lapse in judgment?
Stop in mid-air. In mid-sentence.
That prince chained to an iron ring–
in agony of fleas, lice and incontinence–
knows all too well what happens when
you bite off more than you can chew.
Sure, I got to meet my mythic dad.
You had your bit of fun with God,
the Blessed Mother and their Son.
But now you're sketching out a soaring,
grand, love-conquers-all finale?
How Titanically boring.
Don't do it. Let furled canvas lie,
let time and mold and wind-salt worry it
to shreds, text messages and tweets.
30 centuries of puffing hot air into sails,
and aren't we still row ing the galley?
Instead, turn hands and lips to me,
Euterpe. Plain Jane with a flute,
who sees a future on dry land.
My urgent, fond and desperate advice:
this dimmed poem's wick is burning low,
and when it finally splits–
one wisp of cursed black smoke,
one specklike eye in clear hot wax–
fly fast and take me with you!
No luscious dish,
no leather dominatrix bent to kinky sex,
I'm just a chubby, whistling waitress,
moonlighting on Sunday as a ticket-taker
on the slow train into Minneapolis,
and animated by the simple wish
to sing a human child to sleep at night.
Please.
Take me with you when you go.
Ill-Conceived - Muse's Advisory, Sept. 15 - Yeshua to Hephaistos:
When the day comes
that we take these hardhats off,
surrender the tiny bits of bone of Zeus
to the tiny bits of bone of Miriam
and bid them both a happy ever-after—
requiescatis in pace,
as the pater prays—
when we've sifted every inch of rubble,
cheese-clothed out the last remaining mote
of the prick whose sown oats gave us life,
what then?
It's me and you I'm worried about, my friend.
Nobody's ever going to let me live or die
in peace, and you're inhumed in such obscurity,
it's death in life, as if you never lived at all—
not heir but minor actor in your sire's bio-pic.
We might as well go have a drink.
I'll try to love you all I can,
but how exuberantly can you feast
on hearty lentil soup from me
who wears the mantle of your birthright,
though unwillingly?
The whole thing is distasteful, I agree.
Why did he have us
if our patrimony's only
gravel-speckled, lygus-stunted pulse
steeped thirteen days
in rancid misery?
He left us better-heeled
if he had sheathed his wooden phallus
swollen with its hidden load of offspring—
cooped that god-sized cock
inside a £1 Trojan magnum.
Was it your countryman who said,
Mὴ βλάπτειν?
First do no harm?
The Urns - Muse's Advisory, Sept. 16
Frederic Weatherly:
Oh, Danny boy, the pipes, the pipes are calling
From glen to glen, and down the mountain side.
The summer's gone, and all the roses falling,
It's you, it's you must go and I must bide.
But come ye back when summer's in the meadow,
Or when the valley's hushed and white with snow,
It's I'll be here in sunshine or in shadow,
Oh, Danny boy, oh Danny boy, I love you so!
But when ye come, and all the flowers are dying,
If I am dead, as dead I well may be,
Ye'll come and find the place where I am lying,
And kneel and say an Ave there for me.
And I shall hear, though soft you tread above me,
And all my grave will warmer, sweeter be,
For you will bend and tell me that you love me,
And I shall sleep in peace until you come to me!
CNN U.S.:
The giant yellow arms of heavy machines ceased their steady rumble to honor
the dead, pausing from their relentless task of removing rubble from the ruins
of the destroyed Towers. Then, to the strains of bagpipes, workers returned
to their posts, and the Leviathans resumed their somber, tedious undertaking.
Miriam to Zeus:
You tickled me!
You're not supposed to be in here!
And there you are, again!
My goodness, bits of you and bits of me
are all mixed up together in this urn!
And now, in your urn, too!
I feel one of my knuckles butting you.
Oh, this is rich!
How will you wriggle out of this?
Epistle to the Tobeloans - Muse's Advisory, Sept. 17 – St. Paul the
White Cockatoo:
Creation, incarnation, conservation, annihilation—
the craft of gods is complex, hard.
No one was ever born omnipotent,
nor ever neared that notional capacity
who was not dedicated, disciplined.
These ranks of opal urns
arrayed like China's terra-cotta warriors
on the mantel-shelf you chicks delight to call
the Milky Way—each has a story to it—
archimage, scops-owl, handmaiden,
conscript, ghost-fish, Penzanceman.
That one? A monk too fond of food.
Yet there is always profit.
The catastrophe at Gamalama taught me hope;
my submission to the crush of Zeus's hand
confirmed my self-restraint,
and saw to it I don't forget affection's fallacy.
My brood-mates wolfed the fruit
and boxed my beak;
the nesting hen and cock both shrugged.
But as Yeshua said, “The last are first.”
At least they have a shot at it, I think.
So when Hephaistos begged my help—
exactly, yes, God's actual First Son,
the one who stitched my left half to my right,
who set my bill back in its jaw—
so when he begged my help
to re-inspire Zeus's effigy,
to lure him from the comfort of the ashes
of his trophy wife by common law,
I told him, quickly, “Count me in.”
He said:
“They're half in this urn, half in that.
You hear those doting lover's coos?
It's has to stop. I want to sentence him
to go on with his shitty life indefinitely,
as he did me. I drafted plans—
my aspiration, once,
was to be Muse of Architects,
did you know that?—
to build a holodome, an office building sim:
an elevator lobby and an upstairs hall,
framed artwork on the walls all perfectly innocuous,
a consultation room, Venetian curtains drawn,
a smoke-and-mirror world like in The Matrix
or Mission Impossible. What I need you to do—
nobody fiddles Zeus's heart-strings
with more virtuosity than you—
is to entice him back out here
with that pathetic poor-hurt-parrot call.”
Experience brings precision,
and precision, accomplishment.
I want you one day to be proud too
of whatever you effect by force of will.
My nine poor orphans,
do you think you understand?
Your mother, no, she never really got it right,
she cherrypicked her lovers' memories
and thought the truth
would never come to light.
She nurtured you on fantasies,
encouraged you to dabble, as if ducks, in sediment,
to shut your lids
and nose around in—browse on—
mysteries that offer tasty braird and sprouts
to deep-sea acolytes who bow and scrape
to keep dreams out of sight,
yet ever in the mind—
but she is still your mother,
and each one of you is bright.
Children! Contemplate the reliquaries
lined up on this altar ledge.
Can any part of you believe
their contents are inert, incapable, extinct,
and sit there idly twiddling their thumbs
awaiting—What?
Is that the nature of things?
Or does the bigger picture ask more toughness
intellectually?
A more engaged approach?
The grander scheme—
survival in a state that's worth surviving in—
asks much of us.
When Phaestos threw his switch,
I placed my bill between the sighing urns,
Lee-Strasberged back to scalding in the flood of molten rock,
and desolately whimpered, “Fuck!”
Revivicist - Muse's Advisory, Sept. 18 – Miriam to Zeus, in Urn:
Do you hear
a distant rumble,
a machinelike
fuck fuck fuck?
Who does that
remind you of?
He's out there
somewhere,
isn't he?
Come here.
Hah!
How much herer
could you be?
I mean
come closer spiritually.
Inside this
mummy case
of sooty dust,
the noise outside
isn't as thunderous
as it would like
to think.
Now, over in
the other urn,
I wonder if
the same thing's
happening or if
our other halves
re-recombined
to different DNA.
Is that us?—
Hear it?—
Whispers?—
dry red phosphorus
to powdered glass?
There's no
imperative to care.
We're bits
and pieces
99.9% burnt off,
and 99.9%
of what is left,
irrevocably lost,
then the remainder
cut like cards,
half dealt
and half a cairn
for junkyard
cats and curs
to paw,
and we
don't even know
which half of
which 1/10
of 1% we are:
but it's enough
we're here.
fuck fuck fuck
Fuck!
Is that a puff
of ash where
your left
phantom ear
pricked up?
You sack of shit!
A single atom
of your entity
is all it takes,
I swear!
Each microsec
the earth averts
its face
and stars roar
as the universe's
membrane beats
a terrified retreat
inevitably there
spring to life
another fifty ways
to leave
your lover.
The Bride Euterpe - Muse's Advisory, Sept. 19
1. Downstairs In the Lobby
Euterpe:
“God says...”
The typewriter bell rings
and the carriage returns.
Cantell, evangelist,
is losing feeling in his hands.
Ambrosia crusted on
his penis burns.
“Jehovah was a lecherous fat Turk,”
the Cretan Kazantzakis wrote.
“He fingered the Muses
but that was as far as he got.”
Tom, let me tell you what to write.
As soon as you put down your pen,
the handsome jackals congregate
like wraiths, and far birds start
to trace slow halos on the sky.
You have to plant
a big warm piece of meat
to cover your escape.
This isn't anyplace
for dabbling and diddling,
for monkey-dancing,
dilettante and debutante.
Of nine of us, I took the keenest
interest in your character.
I know who's in the jars upstairs
on your fake mantelpiece.
I've followed you—how many steps?
I split my dower into eighths
to bribe my sisters and make sure
I'd be the one to meet you here.
The elevator's coming...
7...
6...
5...
4...
3...
Wait until the final second,
then we'll dash inside
and I'll de-synchronize the worm gears
and the door cascade
so that the car can't take on
any other passengers—
and there I'll be,
alone with you—
and finally free
to kiss the perfect crescent
at the tip of your big toe.
Don't answer yet.
Your final line, however it comes out,
will seal my fate—
but no, no pressure—
do you understand?
I cast my lot with you as permanently,
trustingly, as parting lovers
commend strands of one another's hair
to heart-shaped lockets.
Some one's got to notify your family
once you're gone.
Yes, you'll still mope around,
and wash the dishes,
mutter darkly as you switch off
carelessly left blazing lights,
take garbage out,
still kiss the kids goodnight,
and grope the missus—
the part of you I'll take
may not be missed at all—
the high, surprised note in your voice
when the elevator door glides shut
and you discover who I really am.
I always had the most extraordinary eyes.
That's what was asked of me
and what I gave.
And what have you
that fits my bill?
You know exactly what I'm going to name:
I feel you subtly, subconsciously
withdrawing it, secreting it away.
Tom.
Tom, Tom, Tom, Tom, Tom.
Who do you think
you're putting something over on?
Give me that Chinese take-out bag.
Now,
take your pants down.
Yes. Right here.
Now, touch your toes.
Yes, both palms pressed flat
to the well-buffed marble floor.
Your grotesque characters are dead.
They make their way, today, as ash.
Not you. You still feel hope—
still subject to my regiment.
Ding!
Stand up, quickly!
Come, step in!
2. Upstairs in the Office
Miriam:
I see we interrupted your Chinese.
What is that, shrimp in black bean sauce
and vegetable lo mein? I'm starved!
No, thanks.
Alright, but
just one tiny bite.
Zeus:
So, Doctor T., I still can't die—
but thanks to brother Phaestos
I'm 3/4 blind in both my eyes!
My gentle daughters nine,
who I despise, if truth were told,
take turns hand-holding me
at myriad appointments made
with quacks and charlatans like you
who grope to re-root happy thoughts
into the muck inside my mind.
Oh, yes, I've taken pills!
Talk therapy? Till blue.
Re-visioning the story of my life?
We've tried that too.
That's why, although your meter
has a lively spring to it,
I haven't so much as
a eunuch's wife's cunt's
shred of faith in you.
My wife?
Oh, here we go again!
I think professional virgin is the technical term.
She says she'll love me till the end,
but hasn't even let me see her bush
since Burning Angel aired that spread
on “Waking Up With Strange Trim”
New Year's Day, 2010.
I love her too, don't get me wrong.
We've had our ups and downs,
only not for a very long time.
No, Doc, I'm joking!
Lighten up! Pull off that frown!
My lovely little girl Euterpe's
one your most ardent fans!
Why can't we talk about
your facts of life?
Why does it have to be
my way-too-thoroughly-raked-over
failings with this child or that wife?
The truth? Nobody wants to hear it—
that's one thing that hasn't changed.
My girls have made flirtation with you
shrink-wrapped, self-styled geniuses
the highlight of their woeful, isolated lives.
Don't say I hold them back,
manipulate them into being
lifelong handmaids to my own depression.
It's only grudgingly—for them—I'm here.
I want Pandora and her swarm of ills
to come and punch my ticket!
I want to locate the bucket
and kick it.
Why can't I moon and wallow, if I like?
Why can't I redefine myself as Omni-Impotent?
You and Euterpe, trot along to Ang Lee's porno flick.
Feel free to take my wife—
leave me alone here in the cold and dark
to play cat's cradle with what used to be my prick.
Miriam:
I hear this sad-ass bullshit every day!
I'm terrified I'll hear it till eternity!
I know it's quite a lot to ask, Tom,
this late in the game,
but is there some way to rewrite a bit
and have me to tell the tall, dark stranger
in the road outside my father's house:
“No thanks, I'm not that kind of dame”?
With everything I've learned,
I have a feeling I could live the kind of life
you fucking read about!
Tom,
one more bite?
Besides experience, what else have I to show?
I'm hitting goddam menopause—
at least I think I am, how do you tell for sure,
it's been six, seven months?—
and Zeus tells anyone who cares to hear
I've been an albatross
around his neck the last 200 years.
I might have clung, moped, nagged a bit,
but my life's been no bed of roses, has it?
Yeshua pulled up stakes 2000 years ago,
and hasn't shown one ounce of interest
in my happiness. And Yusuf—please excuse me,
but no Cock Ace in the first place—
left me high and dry, and now re-woos me
as an alcoholic televangelist!
Mankind has profited, you say?
Tom, time put that Purple Kush away!
Before this dullard's sperm attacked my egg
the world was cruel and human nature stank
but it was still a golden age for men and arts
because the voice of gods was vital, frank:
you sluiced out of your mother's womb
on shit and piss and blood, then paid
your taxes for the right to eat the holy
farts of sacred cows, until at last you died.
Tom:
Dad, Mom—is it too soon to call you that?—
Pak Zeus and Mami Miriam, as St. Paul said?—
Zeus:
Don't even breathe that lousy opportunist's name!
Tom:
—you're having one or two bad days
or weeks or months or years,
but if you'd add up all the pros and cons
and take the slightly longer view—
Zeus:
Excuse me, Doc,
but who the fuck are you
to tell us
how to count
or what to view?
Tom:
If you would shut your yap just once
and listen to a different take
on what gods can or cannot be and do,
you might be pleasantly surprised
to find out there's still hope for you—
Go, finish it.
I ate my fill.
Miriam:
Thanks, Tom.
Zeus:
Why not? Why look like half a cow?
Tom:
—to find out that the son you disinherited
is man and god enough
to make you proud you're you—
Zeus:
Oh, cut that crap! And cut the rhyme!
You're blowing smoke!
That dud is lucky if he ends up
shoveling manure or bottling Coke.
Euterpe:
Stop interrupting, Dad!
You've had
over 1000 lines to speak.
Please let Tom wrap this fucking epic up—
Zeus:
—and what?
Euterpe:
Is that what's eating you?
You like it in this poem?
Miriam:
You put your finger on the thorn
stuck in the mighty lion's paw!
This gig brought Zeus to life—
of course he's scared of going back
to being little more than Google hits.
Though I've been amply vitalized, throughout,
by myriad admirers and supplicants,
I'm horrified myself to think
I'll have to close my lips and legs
and sweetly grin again while sobbing women
kneel and light 6-hour votive candles—
stand on sideboards watching
pedophile priests get plastered—
be consigned to bobbling my head
on Lublin van and Fiat Punto dashes.
Euterpe:
That isn't going to happen. Is it, Tom?
Tom:
I haven't really thought it through, but—
Euterpe:
You would never do that
to my dad and stepmom.
Tom:
—all else being equal—
Zeus:
No! No fucking way
you're gonna stick us in a sequel!
Miriam:
The two of you, leave him alone!
Poor kid has clearly got his hands full
ending this poem!
Euterpe:
Stepmom common-law,
boss Zeus around as much as he'll permit—
who doesn't like their guy compliant?—
so you can bottle the admonishments
about the way I handle my man—
er, I mean my poet client.
Zeus:
Aha! At last! You're getting laid! I knew it!
And now all us other dickless popeyes
in this cockamamie yarn
are going to have no more consequence
than potted palms
compared to e. e. casanova here:
I can already read the postings on the wall
of an unfaithful daughter's Facebook page!
But good. I'm glad. It's easier for me to say
goodbye with you in someone else's hands.
Miriam:
Zeus! No!
Tom, help us! Tell him not to leave!
Sweet god,
before you irretrievably resign your role
as low-brow foil to nine highly cultured maids,
as simple, blue-balled john
lured halfway to domestication
by the doe-eyed faux-immaculate
who cast you in her dead-end
third-tier-market roadshow
second-fiddling as her adored son's
absent, passé—yes, cartoonish—dad,
before you cite artistic differences
and amateurish operatic plotting—
before you break my heart and go—
How is your stomach
feeling, Tom?
Was that lo mein okay?
I'm getting supernatural cramps,
myself.
Oh Jesus, not again.
I'm spotting...
-The End-
Sources Cited
[I'm still putting this together. - Tom]