Posts under Reflection Category
O!
Were ever that false hope to bloom some hundred year!
I should have known it for the creaking soot she was.
O!
And I am cracked, like clay too hot was fired!
In the hands of children, tossed to pieces on the ground.
O!
Honey stirs the stomach well, but conquers veins their course!
So fed my soul up-down and backwards with a sweeter psalm.
O!
None too several sons of gods like me made haste to be thy all!
Though what I’ve known hath shook the earth, and made my grave the deeper.
O!
I will not to a person pray somewhere beyond my here, you listen!
Save me the god that knows not footsteps, nor a smile.
O!
I curse the day that always be my way:
I cannot live outside the life that ebbs and dies.
O!
Not words their spirit satisfy!
Nor songs of psalms we sing.
O!
I hate a thousand hymns:
Though thousand splendid be.
O!
To solve in silence!
The want of all I see.
Peter casts the nets,
Helps the winded bow to break
Against the gust which
Winsome cracks against the
Stern; it rides between
Our brows.
I breathe against the galloping
air; the wind that was
Whipping from the mid-morn, but in the
Fifth watch of the night, swallows
Still. Andrew of the shoreline
Watches well, Sunday, and fishes
Barefoot.
I would have arrived home and
Winter din quelled, have supped upon a grain,
A handsome face across from me
And children blowing bellows in the
Fold of evening gold.
But Old Lord has in for me
A better fate, upon the tide.
He has me swelling nets with
Produce of the sea, which I know
Not, nor can I see,
Nor do I predict, nor can I know,
Nor days with rain forget.
I cannot by the bedside shirk
The day’s odd job beneath the
Tasking sun: the fish to find.
Lord, my God, love would better
be made of Life, and children worry less
With nets of my own design
Than this, the wharf, than this
Your catch.
But you will listen not today,
Nor tomorrow,
Nor evermore.
Until we have brought the oceanwide
To hungry at the edge
Of villages–
Where bellowing children sup on winter
Grain, aside our handsome wives.
Between the empty banter of filibustering Republicans in committee yesterday, I asked myself how I would react to the passage or failure of a civil unions bill in Colorado. I wasn’t asking as a gay man, but as a gay Christian man. Immediately, I rebuffed: Why should being Christian make any difference?
But it does, somehow. Maybe not in the substance of the bill, but in the process and aftermath. Our struggle as a community is to take what feels like a slap in the face and turn the other cheek. We are left with few choices: back up, regroup, and restructure our process so that come the new legislative session in November, we will be ready to push aggressively for the passage of another civil unions bill.
The citizen side of me balks when I hear how manipulated the process was last night. I want nothing more than to hurl expletives at those responsible for the death of nearly-nascent, long-overdue freedoms. And I wanted to be in the House last night, when the supporters of SB 2 shouted out in condemnation as the bill’s final chance for passage was extinguished.
But sometimes, I think I’m first a Christian. No, I’m always first a Christian—in this: that my faith girds my humanity. I’m privileged to be an American citizen and a resident of Colorado, but when disappointment rears, I almost always retreat to my core. I ask myself, “What would I do as one who believes in the tenets of the Christian faith?”
The answer is always simple, always the same: love one another. Oh, I know it sounds trite and storybookish, but it is absolutely true. Yes, I am deeply frustrated with the Republican leadership of this state; yes, I am disappointment with those who manipulated the political process; yes, I am outraged at the dismissal of so clear and necessary a canon of rights. But I am in favor of civil unions—and gay marriage—because it accords with that injunction to love the neighbor. Though attainment of that in the political sphere might be slower, and more painful, than I would like, I cannot turn away from love in my reactions. I must remember what it is to forgive and be forgiven, to reach out in understanding, and to advocate for those who are abused by the system. And I must do it all with love.
I hardly think the majority of Coloradans would blame the leaders of the LGBT community and their advocates in the Legislature if their reaction to SB 2′s failure were vitriolic. And yet, the way forward—as many already know—has to be grounded in understanding, respect, and equality. There is hope that November will bring us new opportunities as a community, and that we will succeed where once our efforts failed. And I hope that we can release our anger in productive, positive ways; that we can rekindle passion for the cause, and for each other. Let that fire—burning every brighter—be the hallmark of our walk to the Capitol this fall. When civil unions and, some day, gay marriage become law, I hope that we will not linger with resentments, but take the higher road, and leave behind the pettiness that once marred our state and government.
As a Christian, I strive for this. But as human beings, we all value the fundaments of love and respect—whether Christian, Buddhist, Jewish, Muslim, or of any other faith. I hope and pray that these are our emblems, the marks of a generation and a time that our sons and daughters will look to with beaming pride.
So, let us make civil unions—on both sides of the aisle—a civil affair, and grant equality and respect where both are due. It’s time.
I remember the pom-pom-toting teens of my high school English class like fourth period was yesterday—or, better yet, like an NBC sitcom run one season too long. Something always seemed a little off about forcing fashion-obsessed 17-year-olds to focus on classic works of literature. Never, you see, did Mary Kay quite mesh with the racial angst of Cry, the Beloved Country.
And yet, there was one message that filtered down through the gossip and spitballs: apartheid is bad, mmk? I’m not even sure we knew why it was bad, but we knew it was bad. Evil.
It might seem hard to pit Alan Paton against the chaos of late-teen social life, but I swear there were days when Central High felt a lot like 1960s South Africa—when social turmoil reared its ugly head, and the worst of high school drama went head-to-head with the worst of apartheid. Take, for example, the ineluctable prom kerfuffles that ensued after third period, by the gym doors, before lunch:
“John didn’t ask you to the prom? THE HELL, GURL! What a skank! He’s got that apartheid beat, mmhmmm. Damn, what a nasty ass.”
“Yeah!” they would cheer, those pom-pom-toting tweens, not really knowing what apartheid meant. But it was evil. Ohhhh, it was evil. Like John. And off they pranced to Algebra in their never-washed mini-skirt uniforms.
***
You know how they say, those older folk, that you have an old soul? I have an old soul. Really old. Like Mozart-would-have-written-my-funeral-dirge old. And I’m fine with it, really. At the end of the day, I still have no idea whether Command & Conquer is a board game or a Kama Sutra series, but I can tell you how invigorating it would have been to play second fiddle to Thomas More at the start of Henry VIII’s reign. To some, that makes me a card-carrying dork, but I prefer to call myself—like the generations before me—a profoundly old soul.
The curse of old-soulness is never being quite in touch with your own generation. Even if I had grasped the significance of Paton’s heart-wrenching story, I couldn’t have passed the message along to my peers. Most days, conversations with the popular caste entailed a lot of blinking, ending invariably with me skulking away mumbling apologies, tossing aside whatever point it was I intended to make.
Is it any wonder I fell in love with Keats, courted Tennyson, wrote letters to Salinger, cuddled with Fitzgerald, and smiled every time Williams walked into the room? It seemed natural to me, and provided a sense of normalcy unavailable elsewhere. The trouble was, I had to work to get there. I was never a born reader, you see, but I loved the idea of reading—I loved the idea of being a Victorian parlour intellectual. Of sipping brandy and discussing the philosophies of that odious Chesterton.
In fact, I spent so much time wading through the murky channels of philosophical and prosaic writing, that when I finally had a breakthrough, I ran to tell my closest friends—friends who, incidentally, were busy discussing how Sarah cheated on my friend Kevin, who in turn got back at Sarah by taking Melanie to prom. Alas, Chesterton had no place in Central High’s gossip-laden hallways. And so, waddling back to the steps next to the gym, I would wrench open another chapter and imagine myself with a dickie and ivory cane on my third glass of brandy.
***
Who would have thought I’d be here today? Sure, I’ve spent my share of tears and sweat on writing—academic papers, poetry, prose, stories, weird bouts of fusion, cancered narratives that have made little to no sense but survive on the novelty of experimentation. And I’ve found some success. I mean, you’re reading this, aren’t you? I can’t help but think it was a blend of Keats and Kevin that got me here, of pom-pommed naivete and the elusively cerebral eyesores of literature. I am a product of both, and I have somehow molded the two worlds into one.
In recent years, I would say my writing has taken a bizarre turn that I never expected. Its character and voice are often buoyed by quirky humor—the kind that I might have heard in the hallways of Central High or on the steps next to the gym, after third period, before lunch. And yet, there is a touch of Chesterton in there. If you look closely, you can still see the yearnings of a little boy who always wanted to bat about philosophy in an 1800s drawing room. It is quirky, quizzical, and fun—some might even say queer. And through it all, I am most of proud of my ability to make fun of myself in the narratives I create. I suppose there are many stiff-necked socialites of the Restoration era who would turn up their nose at such fun—the very ones I looked up to. But that was then, and this is now. I’m a different man than they, however much I wanted to be their spitting image. And as I muddle through writing after writing, idea after idea, I find myself gently pilfering their verses for a tongue-in-cheek irony. Sure, I love the words I steal, but they have a different meaning now. And I would imagine those greats would be quite tickled to know their work was still employed—recycled, even. I can only hope that some day, the next generation’s great poets will want to take a piece out of me.
What do I say to that? More power to them.
In response to a video clip I saw on Facebook/YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ao0k9qDsOvs
***
Frankly, I’m getting a little tired of defending Christianity.
It’s not really a full-blown defense, but more of a subtle education. I walk the line, as Johnny would say, between two communities with bared teeth on either side: Christians and LGBT individuals. However you peg that tightrope walking, it comes across as apologetics—I’m forever explaining to the gays what Christianity, in her best dress, is about. And what have I learned? That American society of the 21st century has little patience for apologetics.
As many of you already know, I have a love-hate relationship with Dan Savage. His voice is strong and necessary—a guidepost for LGBT individuals trying to make their way in a not-yet fully inclusive society. At the same time, he is known to be a bit crass and employ shock-and-awe for the entertainment of his readers and listeners. He would kill me for saying it, but it strikes me that he’s not all that different from Dr. Laura in that approach.
And he hates—unabashedly hates—the conservative religious vendetta against LGBT individuals and all those who keep it going. Who can argue against that? I would be right there alongside him, voicing my distrust and disrespect for the many who still hurl religious condemnations. Many (perhaps most) of those who crusade against the LGBT community are self-professed Christians—to my mind, confused fundamentalists who lost the authentic message of Christian love long since.
But let’s be mature about all this, and take a step back. The hoards of “Christians” who flail in seething hatred for the gays are clearly not in their right minds, nor have they done much reflection on Scripture. They cull verse after verse from the Bible in support of their abusive condemnations, all of them ripped from context and history. There’s no genuine reflection on Scripture here, just a javelin-throwing of words that don’t really stand on their own.
Now, I thought my insistence on approaching the Bible with an eye toward history and context had been overdone. Lord knows I write incessantly on it, and I imagine my readers are done with the point: it has been made. Let’s move on.
But I’m not sure it’s been made well enough. Browsing through Facebook on a recent afternoon, I happened upon a shared video—something a friend had posted and re-posted. It was a three-minute clip of Dan Savage speaking to high school students about journalism, and it somehow roped in a discussion of the Bible.
The problem is, Dan doesn’t discuss. He rails. He rants. Ironically, he pontificates. And his message was simple: stop turning to the Bible for support of the condemnation of gays. Which I was on board with, until he explained his reasoning.
I don’t have the text in front of me, so I’ll paraphrase. He said, in essence, that we (presumably Christian society) chose at some point to ignore the inane directives of Old Testament books like Leviticus because, well, they’re simply inane. The examples are legion: murdering of non-virgins on their wedding night, no touching of pig skin, consulting mediums, etc. We laugh at all of these nowadays and don’t think twice about tossing them out.
So why do some of us choose to cling so strongly to verses condemning homosexuality? Why not just ignore those too? That was his point. We’ve ignored shit in the Bible before that didn’t make any sense to us. Let’s do it again.
First of all, that strikes me as the most immature approach to the subject that anyone could possibly have. Second, it is an utterly disrespectful treatment of the Bible as a holy text. Third, it’s the easy way out.
So I offer my rebuttal: Just because it appears we ignore Levitical code, doesn’t mean that it’s the right thing to do. It is, without a doubt, the easy thing to do. But if we’re going that route, why not just ditch the Bible completely? Dan could just as easily have said that the whole book was bunk, and dismissed everything from Genesis to Revelation.
The truth is, there are many, many Christians out there who have worked to engage the Bible thoughtfully and carefully. Sure, the Levitical code seems dated. But if Dan had done a little digging, he would have learned that Jesus himself did away with the old law and instituted a new covenant, which has one absolute rule: love one another. I hardly see Dan arguing with that.
And what about Paul?—that pesky New Testament convert who spoke like he knew God. He knew what the Lord was about, what Christian faith should entail. He prescribed action, meted out judgments from afar, and told inchoate Christian communities what they should and shouldn’t do. Untold centuries and translations later, we get this: gay is bad, mmk?
If that’s what you read, then you have two options. One, consider it in tandem with Christ’s command to love one another. Look deeply at the man Paul, his environment, his history, his language. Peel away the layers that modern Bibles invariably carry to find something a bit more true to the original message. Or two, ignore that shit like some out-of-date Levitical BS.
Dan is right about some things—there is fundamentalist, literalist Christian crap muddying the true message of the faith. It claims it is the message, and that gets on people’s nerves. But let’s be civil about this. Among other things, Paul talks about his own maturation in the New Testament, writing to the Corinthians: “When I was a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put the ways of childhood behind me.” For what it’s worth, it’s a good lesson for us: think deeply and carefully about what you believe and what you profess. If someone—i.e. a rabid Christian fundamentalist—throws stones, don’t throw back. If you follow in a line of followers, go against the grain and be a reconciling leader.
Perhaps Dan doesn’t care what damage he causes the Christian right—or Christianity in general. Christianity has done—and continues to do—indescribable damage to the LGBT community. But that three-minute speech to impressionable high school teens will make it that much more difficult for those trying to reconcile, or share the true message of Christian faith. Part of me feels like that alone sets us back generations.
And part of me knows, despite a rabid insistence on a new look at inclusive Christianity, that repeating the message of Christ’s love is constantly and continuously necessary.
Let me explain, said the fish.
There are two of us, one red and
Incidentally, one blue.
There’s a great deal going around
About a red-and-white top hat,
And how we fish are something of
Astronomers and car fanatics.
But it’s all bunk. And frankly, your
Unseemly habit of pointing out
Our weight problem is not only rude,
It’s downright cruel. Far more unbecoming
Than a fish in a yellow hat, let me
Tell you. Oh, and I have a bone to pick
With the genius who set out to make us
Bipeds. Or quadrapeds. Or sexpeds or
Whatever peds we supposedly are. Frankly,
We smarter breeds are quite content to
Wade in dark waters—where sunlight
DOESN’T reach—and carry on our
Subtle, but important business of coral
Reconstruction. And what in the love of
All that is aquatic should I suppose a
“Wump” to be? Convenient he or it or
She or whatever has a hump. Neat that it
Rhymes, don’t you think? We fish are
Far more stoic that wumps and humps
And hats and bats and whatever else ends
Up in the sea. According to your logic,
We’d all be leg-toting, fin-flapping freaks,
Prancing in the sun with top hats and
Unsightly weight problems. And frankly,
I wouldn’t blame us. I’d probably take to
Attacking the lot of you who insist on
Painting us with neon colors and frumpy
Back fins. Oh, don’t think you’re exempt!
It’s every one of you conspiring! But the
Infants are the worst. Those burping,
Bumbling idiots don’t even know how to
Use their legs—and they’re meant to
Have them! Incompetent human spawn.
Well, I’ve said enough. And he yawned.
I think you have as well, the red one gurgled.
And off they went to coral-gaze or some
Such fishy nonsense. But there we have it:
What real fish think of our insanity.
Or at least, one fish, two fish,
Red fish, blue fish.
Now Mammie sit by that old iron pot, and she sets ‘er on the boil. Now and then the child’un gone and play awhile, till the air get thick and gritty like some ol’ mash done Mammie made. They play an’ play an’ screamin’ fits through ev’ning and the light gone away. That be Tuesday, thru and thru.
I know this Mammie once, you see, when she was bubbly and pretty, her shiny breasts all their to greet’ya. I swears it again e’rytime I see ‘er, but that ain’t been some while. Still, I smel her dusty apron, that pot a’boilin’, and heaps-a-bacon grits sizzlin’ on a fire. I miss them grits, like I miss my Mammie.
See, she wa’ dead when I done came by. Flat on the floor, eyes shot up like she saw some ghost. No tellin’ who dun it, or if it weren’t just life that did ‘er in. Too many grits, or wild child’un. They took the body on a Tuesday. Lord God in heaven know where she lay.
I still wish I saw those chil’un. But they done gone away just the same as Mammie, seems. How do a family go away so quick? I miss them chil’un, like I miss them grits. Like I miss my Mammie, suppose. Kinda all the same.
Every time I thinka Mammie, I’m sitting by a pota tea. I threw out my old tea pot, see, and got myself an iron’un—heavy, like the woman her-self. No breaking it. Just one day, it stop workin’ and then you stop drinkin’ tea. Like you done never had grits like Mammie’s grits, like child’un can’t be loved so much as them that as she gave life.
I’d like to ‘member her. She don’t had no fun’rel, you see, not hardly any words or thanks unto th’Lord, and she was a God-luvin’ woman. I’m a white old Dixie, might as well be black, her best friend, and I ain’t done nothing. Black is as white forgets, they told ‘em when they broke her house with axes. Better for it, that filthy cur, and down went it like Mammie to the earth. Most beautiful house I ever did see, if only cuz it was Mammie’s house. Least it done gone down where Mammie went.
Lord God, I’m the saddest white bitch rockin’ on the St. Charles. I miss ya, Mammie. God forgi’me, but I don’t know how you done lived this life. I’d be done with it, soon as the pot boils, but then you get to thinkin’… who gunna drink that tea?
How sick the Father sits at desk amid a candle flame. It is eleven sometime soon, and the clock tower bellows from its iron lungs.
There in the palace, the miter hive retires, atop the bullish oak. There, the beeswax candles drip on woven rugs. Darkness swells around him, filling apse and leaning on the smoky hearth. How silly, that papal swan, wrapped in white gold, bedazzled, and eyes as dull as dust. He thinks on moral claims as light as air: the wind-drawn wisps of theology at play. While murders are convened, under foot and under doors.
Sighs usher from his fleshy lungs, and then, a tactile calm. The candle falters by his breath.
Bitter and consigned to throne and chambers all alone, I wonder what he thinks and what he thinks he should. For it is no majesty to be successor to the Christ. And perhaps neither is it possible for a frail farmer who fell in love with eating much, and is a faithful alcoholic.
I’ll thank you to remember his high office, though: the clerical clout, the utmost pomp, the names and titles given. There is more than meets the miter about that miserable man. What, after all, do we know of that charge? What have we ever known of love’s austere and lonely office?
It’s times like this when I wish the light had a name, the bookshelf had a face, the overgrown lazy chair said a thing or two.
It’s times like this I wish I weren’t so alone.
Loreena serenades in the background. The whip of the ceiling fan curdles the air, heaving on my face like so many damp sprinters. I’m leaning against the window sill, eyeing one of eight stuffed animals, propped against the door. His penguin feet are curved inward and I wonder about his pronation. Must see a podiatrist.
There are some today who said I hush the noisome silence with a frantic busy-ness akin to bureaucratic paperwork: it seems there is progress made, but really, just stacks of empty work. I would make a good politician’s wife, I think, handing out smiles and shaking sweaty hands. I wouldn’t like it, but it’s business, and something to do.
In between Enya and Loreena (I imagine them clasping hands on a castle-set stage), I sip crap wine. Some nights, it’s more the idea of coming home and relaxing with a glass than the quality of the wine itself I enjoy. And that, I believe, is the American way.
Someone asked me today what I thought, and the question ruptured my rhythm. Because I never know how to answer simple questions: I make them complicated. What does it matter what I think anyway? Does it matter to a lemon tree what a lemon thinks? It just grows, and, when too ripe, falls. Peter, Paul, and Mary will tell you: that is the bittersweet way of things.
But all of that has me wondering why I’m lying here, writing down the Kerouac’d thoughts that ride the road of my mind, when it matters not at all what I think. Not even the penguin cares, staring at me with wide-eyed cotton balls and webbed feet. The shaggy brown dog on my lap is not much better. Spineless fop.
I write, I guess, to be alive. Isn’t that why we get up in the morning, race to a job we hate, finish with a jaded glint in our eyes, and plop on a couch somewhere begging for whatever-and-tequila, no rocks? Yes, I think it is. We job, as I like to say, because jobbing is what we do. To feel blood in our veins, to be a part of things. To make money we hate that stretches the pockets of those we bear no respect, to sometimes sweat the small things like birthday presents and Christmas which demand from us ever more money than ever we have.
I guess, to be honest, I left work today with a glint in my eye. I biked to church, where I sang a hymn and told God personally I would do things—everything—just a little bit better this week. I said it with a kneel and a cross made of water. He knows better than all that, though. It’s just that … I don’t. Nobody does.
This, my friends, is a day in the life. Sad and disjointed, eh? How did Jack every make it straight down the road with so many side streets beckoning? For that matter, why the hell do we care Frost didn’t go straight? I’ve never gone straight, and look at me. Nobody buys my poetry.
To bed with me. And with you, probably. Stop reading drivel and find a laureate to coax some inspiration out of you. There’s something to be had in each of us, but there are times when our own searching never does us a bit of good.
Good night, then. I’m off to enjoy my inner sexual struggles and catch the last wail or three from Loreena’s sad ballad. I’m half sure she’s singing about me.
Epigram: For the man Jesus of my Christ, who endured much more than I could ever imagine
It is natural, I suppose
To stand amid things taller than:
The trees, the ripe old hills, a thousand dusty mountain manes.
And it is wise, I think
To wait on them as mind’s ambitions cease;
Curling up with fire and some wine, gazing on as stars collide.
Is it true, I wonder
That we are born too great
And minds lurch higher than our sunsets wrapped in fire?
—Some say men are gods, after all,
With all the moon has done—
It is sad, I know
In all that bigger, better, best
That none but dust in shining everything, I am.
And dying, as I will
With all that came before
No matter make more than on a limping, hanging tree.
