A Small Man Orders His War

Proud carrier fleets roam the murmuring world
As Hannibal’s elephants trod Italy –
Grey monsters in search of an enemy
Not yet declared, but with hubris unfurled

In decadence, ruled by smooth ganymedes,      
Courtier-generals in their airy cars
Wage resumes’ high above their wars –
So strong in single-malt, so weak in deeds

In his softly-lit bunker the war-god smiles;
His bony hand upon a plastic screen
Commands strange engines, obscure and obscene,
To make a peace through smoking, ashy piles

But empires in the end must die, atone
Their sins, perhaps as trunkless legs of stone.

A poem is a pilgrim’s haversack
All neatly, tightly packed for walkabout:
Toothbrush and rhymes rolled together betimes
Spare socks and meter tucked in with great care

And pocket knife and similes as if
Skivvies and metaphors were something else
Alliteration lined in lovingly
Syntax and shaving kit accessible

Because

When organized in compact unity
Poems and haversacks engage a life that’s free

On reading a book review entitled “In Darwin’s Footprints”

The new and improved opposable thumb
Can handily (you will pardon the pun) grasp
A tool, a stick, a pen, a glass of ***
(But dareth not to clasp Cleopatra’s asp)

If we are descended from sophomores
Then why are there still sophomores in the wild
Or random selection from random spores
Mutating from flower to flower child

I don’t know

But it’s a useful thing, my dear old chum
This new and improved opposable thumb

The bunny boys are sad, decayed old swells
Now centerfolded in cemeteries and cells

The Man from U.N.C.L.E. and Time Travel

On a stack of giveaways, a paperback:
The Man from U.N.C.L.E. – The Mad Scientist Affair
Napoleon with each sable hair in place
And Ilya in his groovy turtleneck

Poised for action on a four-color cover
With clever gadgets against wicked T.H.R.U.S.H.
Spies, guns, jet planes, secret lairs, beautiful girls
Mr. Waverly, and “Open Channel D”

Solo and Kuryakin, so cool, yeah, man -
Teachers and parents – they just didn’t understand!

In Mixed Meter, A Meditation Upon Alarm Clocks:


The healing sleep of which Macbeth spoke enviously…

SHATTERED!

The metal ////cans kicked across the room
A giant light fixture hurting my face
Because I thought a top rack a safer space
Large men yelling things my mother would not approve:

“REVEILLE! REVEILLE! REVEILLE!
RISE AND SHINE, AND GREET THE NEW DAY!
LET GO YER ////S AND GRAB YER SOCKS!
GET OFF YER LAZY ///ES YA SORRY SQUIRRELS!”

A hundred and sixty bare feet hit the deck
In perfect Navy unison at 03-my-God-is-this-real-00

And somehow, all these many years later
The soft ding-**** of a tiny MePhone
Sounds even worse

A sunrise has no trigger warning, no:
The dawn is not that misty night which was;
A sinister click, and the radio speaks
Tidings of discomfort and joylessness

          Someone must be made to suffer for this1

There is no trigger warning from the clock
Announcing brutally the need to rise
As from the dead, and dress for this day’s work
Which lacks all hope of glamour and success

          Someone must be made to suffer for this

Life is not fitted with warnings, and so
One’s discomfort is the fault of others

           Someone must be made to suffer for this


1“Someone must be made to suffer for this” is a mimeme from Frederick William Rolfe’s Hadrian VII.

“…things long by catholic consent accounted beautiful”

-Quiller-Couch

An act forbidden now, we go to weep
On Skyros at the grave of that rare youth
Where buried with him are the unities
Of all: the good, the beautiful, the true

For men have flung away their thoughts, their songs
Their verse, their noble instruments of work
And scream abuse at all those forms of art
With which their sires hymned chaos into peace

A cause forbidden now, we work to keep
For all: the good, the beautiful, and the true

“Why, then, God’s soldier be he.”

-Shakespeare

“I’m Old Man Briggs,” he laughed, shaking my hand
That famous merry twinkle in his eye;
He made the table at the ******* Barrel
A festival of right good fellowship

But even as the plates were passed around
And with them too the happy banter of men
He sometimes seemed to drift away in thought
Into the past, into the mists, into -

His boyhood bayous, and the fields of youth
The desperation of Depression years
And still a boy, on the shingle at Normandy
Fighting across the smoky fields of France

Then home again to build the peace for us
With muscle and sweat, and with love and thought
Citizen-soldier, happy raconteur -
“I’m Old Man Briggs,” he laughed, shaking our hands

His place is empty now, just a little while
For we will see him again, at Supper

For Terry McFall, a Man of Bees and a Bees-y Man!

A beekeeper knows
That beauty is in the eye
of the bee-holder

Against the patriarchal construct they
Rally in a corner booth at Big Linda’s
MePhones, sody-dranks, a full-up ash tray
Tabled as if these were the agendas

And uniformed in uniforms they sit
In conclave all unanimous to judge
Their boss to be: a sorry piece of (stuff)
A drab, a dork, a doof, a dolt, a drudge

A slime, a slob, a slug, a ****, a schlo -
Oh, wait! We’re late! The time! We’d better go!

He wore a baseball cap, and tried to hide
Beneath its bill, hide from whatever was
Eating away his thirty-something soul
Adrift among the stagnant slush of life

He never bought the book, he never much
Looked up from the class notes he never took
His ballpoint pen asleep in an idle fist
No drafts, no drawings, no songs, no verse, no worse

Someone lied to him about following his dreams –
His dreams between theses and themes, it seems

For William Tod Mixson

The world is unusually quiet this dawn
With fading stars withdrawing in good grace
And drowsy, dreaming sunflowers, dewy-drooped,
Their golden crowns all motionless and still,
Stand patiently in their ordered garden rows,
Almost as if they wait for lazy bees
To wake and work, and so begin the day.
A solitary swallow sweeps the sky;
An early finch proclaims his leafy seat
While Old Kashtanka limps around the yard
Snuffling the boundaries on her morning patrol.

Then wide-yawning Mikhail, happily barefoot,
A lump of bread for nibbling in one hand,
A birch switch swishing menace in the other
Appears, and whistles up his father’s cows:
“Hey!  Alina, and Antonina! Up!
Up, up, Diana and Dominika!
You, too, Varvara and Valentina!
Pashka is here, and dawn, and spring, and life!”
And they are not reluctant then to rise
From sweet and grassy beds, with udders full,
Cow-gossip-lowing to the dairy barn.

Anastasia lights the ikon lamp
And crosses herself as her mother taught.
She’ll brew the tea, the strong black wake-up tea,
And think about that naughty, handsome Yuri
Who winked at her during the Liturgy
On the holiest midnight of the year.
O pray that watchful Father did not see!
Breakfast will be merry, an echo-feast
Of last night’s eggs, pysanky, sausage, kulich.
And Mother will pack Babushka’s basket,
Because only a mother can do that right

When Father Vasily arrived last night
In a limping Lada haloed in smoke,
The men put out their cigarettes and helped
With every precious vestment, cope, and chain,
For old Saint Basil’s has not its own priest,
Not since the Czar, and Seraphim-Diveyevo
From time to time, for weddings, holy days,
Funerals, supplies the needs of the parish,
Often with Father Vasily (whose mother
Begins most conversations with “My son,
The priest.…”, much to the amusement of all).

Voices fell, temperatures fell, darkness fell
And stars hovered low over the silent fields,
Dark larches, parking lots, and tractor sheds.
Inside the lightless church the priest began
The ancient prayers of desolate emptiness
To which the faithful whispered in reply,
Unworthy mourners at the Garden tomb,
Spiraling deeper and deeper in grief
Until that Word, by Saint Mary Magdalene
Revealed, with candles, hymns, and midnight bells
Spoke light and life to poor but hopeful souls.

The world is unusually quiet this dawn;
The sun is new-lamb warm upon creation,      
For Pascha gently rests upon the earth,
This holy Russia, whose martyrs and saints
Enlighten the nations through their witness of faith,
Mercy, blessings, penance, and prayer eternal
Now rising with a resurrection hymn,
And even needful chores are liturgies:
“Christos Voskrese  – Christ is risen indeed!”
And Old Kashtanka limps around the yard
Snuffling the boundaries on her morning patrol

A vigil, no, simply quiet reflection
Minutes before midnight, with all asleep
Little Liesl-Dog perhaps dreams of squirrels,
For she has chased and barked them all the day;
The kittens are disposed with their mother
After an hour of kitty-baby-talk,
Adored by all, except by Calvin-Cat,
That venerable, cranky old orange hair-ball,
Who resents youthful intrusion upon          
His proper role as object of worship.

The household settles in for the spring night,
Anticipating Easter, early Mass,
And then the appropriately pagan
Merriments of chocolates and colored eggs
And children with baskets squealing for more
As children should, in the springtime of life.

A Night of Fallen Nothingness

The Altar stripped, the candles dark, the Cross
Concealed behind a purple shroud, the sun
Mere slantings through an afternoon of grief
While all the world is emptied of all hope.
The dead remain, the failing light withdraws
As do the broken faithful, silently,
Into a night of fallen nothingness

For Our Special Prosecutors,
Who Guard and Guide Us

Oh, borscht!  Those pesky Russkies under my bed
Were marching around all night, changing my votes
Beaming mysterious rays through my sleepy head
And snooping through my lesson plans and notes

They programmed my radio with Marx and Lenin
Plastered a poster of Putin to my wall
Sailed Admiral Kuznetzov across my linen
Layered a Petrograd accent over my Texas drawl

The special prosecutor says no further discussions –
Everything’s the fault of those perfidious Russians!

“Bare ruin’d choirs, where late the sweet birds sang”
-Shakespeare

The air is thurified – the incense given
Our Lord upon His birth is fumed at last;
The censer’s chains, clanking like manacles
Offend against the silence at the end of Mass

Supper is concluded; the servants strip
The Table bare of all the Seder service:
Cups, linens, and dishes, leaving in the dark
An Altar bare, prepared for sacrifice

In Gethsemane the flowered air is sweet
But iron-heeled caligae offend the night

Pale Prince Myshkin keeps vigil in a room
In which two aspects of civilization repose:
That which is dying, and that which is dead
That which is cold, and that which is very cold

The wounded healer waits, because he was asked
And harrows there the darkness with his light
He waits with the dead in a rented room
And on a hill, beside a waterfall

A keeper of souls for an appointed time
And his own is kept by Somebody Else

O wing’ed messenger of happiness,
Aloft among the pollinating flowers,
At last you have returned from Mexico
And warm months there among soft latitudes
Where little birds can make a holiday
Far, far away from withering Arctic winds.

O tiny traveler, what souvenirs
Did you declare to customs at the Rio Grande?
South winds to tell the flowers to wake up
And Rosaries of morning fogs to bless
The yawning grasses with a morning drink,
And fresh new sunlight for the industrious bees.

O buzzing and impatient little friend!
Just wait a minute, your breakfast is coming -
The old glass feeder washed and packed away
In harvest-rich October’s golden light
Must be recovered and refreshed for you,

And

How good it is to have you home again.

For Fr. Raphael

In middle life the sunflower bends its head,
No longer to the sun as in its youth,
But to the earth in all humility,
Ripening for us all its dreams and works,
And aging happily to eternal dawn.

(John Keats wrote much of the first line; I took care of the rest)

Where are the squirrels of spring? Ay, where are they?
Flattened by a log truck, just yesterday
When old enough to leave the family nest
They ran into the road, there flattened, pressed

Though cautioned by their wise sciuridaean sire
They panicked before an approaching tire
They had little time for a valedictory squeal
Before they died, so young, beneath the wheel –

So even if the old folks seem such a bother
You really ought to listen to your father

Deep-rooted in the earth, old Zossima
Turns daily to the sun, our star in the east,
And of his kindness blesses all of us
Who pilgrimage to holy Russia where
He tells us, sure, what we already know:
Fall to the earth; from there look up and see
That like a sunflower, one can turn to Heaven

My Caesar and my Empire have I served,
A diplomatic functionary, true
To distant duties, and never unnerved
By greedy Greek or perfidious Jew

Outside the arca archa have I thought,
Festooned my desk and office with awards;
My Caesar’s honour only have I sought
While sparing for myself but few rewards

I built with focused care my resume’
And filed each memorandum, note, and scrip;
I justly ruled (no matter what they say),
And seldom sent men to the cross or whip

But, oh! That thing about an open vault –
I never got it.  And why was that my fault?

The Russian soldier, Moskina1 in hand,
Though filthy, tired, unknown, unpaid, unfed,
Fights for his God, his Czar, and his Fatherland:
No medals, no *****, no sleep, no bread

His clumsy lowest-bidder boots,2 they rot
Into the foulness where the world’s sins pitch
Into the slime of old Iscariot3
Good men to die in some Gehenna-ditch

Saint George, Saint Michael, and Saint Seraphim
Preserve him in the end from Judas’ crime4
Life’s-end tears, life’s-end prayers, a blood-choked scream
And so he climbs the trench wall one last time,

Three cartridges5 clenched in his frozen fist,
He disappears at last into the mist6


1. Mosin-Nagant rifle
2. Betrayal by contractors
3. Betrayal by politicians and Bolsheviks
4. The Russian soldier does not fail in his his duty
5. Ammunition shortage  / God, Czar, and Fatherland
6. The Russian soldier is known to God

“And palmeres for to seken straunge strondes”
-Chaucer

Everyone is a palmer this holy day
Seeking the strange, elusive shores of truth
Each pilgrim bearing in his eager hands
A palm frond and a photocopied hymn

The pilgrimage begins in the parking lot
And marshaled by the blue HANDICAPPED signs
Ascends to the doors, the narthex, and in,
Up to the Altar, there where all worlds meet

Come to Jerusalem; you’re on the way -
Everyone is a palmer this holy day

I read lots of Russian lit (in translation, of course) while in Viet-Nam

I understood poor, young Raskolnikov
And read all I found by Anton Chekhov
Remembered nothing about Bulgakhov
Heard naughty whispers about Nabokov
Thrilled to the Cossacks in old Sholokov
And then I learned about Kalashnikov –
This, I decided, is where I get off!



Moc Hoa (pronounced something like “mock wah”) is a now-prosperous town on the Song Vam Co Tay near the border with Cambodia.  In 1970 it was rather down at the heels and was a center of military activity, including mercenaries presumably controlled by the C.I.A*.

Load a squad of welders into a truck
Without any of their equipment or gear
And drop them in a wilderness at dawn
With an impossible mission to complete

Return at dusk; you will find all of them
Grilling steaks over a ‘cue they just built
While chillin’ under their funny cloth caps -
And the as-built is even better than the specs

No one knows how; this is a metallic mystery
And, really, we just don’t need to know, okay?

“…you will go forth from these walls,
but will live like a monk in the world.”

-Father Zossima to Alyosha in The Brothers Karamazov
      
Every vocation is a novitiate
And every labor a monastic prayer:
Matins and Lauds are sung over coffee,
Then Terce for the plough, the lathe, and the wheel

Sext is gratitude for the midday meal
And None is the hour for downing tools
Soft Vespers is the song of happy homes
‘Til Compline sends all good folk to their  beds -

Final vows are taken at death; for now,
Every vocation is a novitiate

“…and thence to a thing that peers in at bedroom and bathroom windows, and thence to a toad, and finally a snake – such is the progress of Satan.”

- C.S. Lewis, A Preface to Paradise Lost

When your last psychographic micro-target
Has through our digital operations
Been processed by multiple data teams
As enhanced predictability models

Standard data analytics suggest
That scraping data from your thoughts, your words
The way you touch the screen may sting a little
But we know what is best for you hashtag

Cross-referenced, analyzed, and synthesized
And vacuum-sealed into a Golden Age

What Were You Thinking, CBS!?


There is basketball
But no Young Sheldon tonight
Life has no meaning

Iconophiles are the true revolutionaries
Lowering their voices but raising their hearts
Falling into a written picture-prayer
Upon a bit of board or card – Creation

Made small and held within the hand, the eye
And knowing deeper in, all that was made
And Him Who was begotten before all
Permitting us to see before we see

Hymning formlessness into light and truth-
Iconophiles are the true revolutionaries

If wars were subject to a copyright -
Then candidates would have to pay a fee
Each time they appeal to the glorious past
When standing for the election, the proceeds
To fall like ****** weregeld on the dead
Who can never cash the checks anyway

If wars were subject to a copyright -
Then Hollywood movies should pay their dues
Whenever a bold, scripted commando,
Body-waxed muscles glistening with makeup,
Advances up Hamburger-Helper Hill
With a patriotic song on his lipstick

If wars were subject to a copyright –
The generals’ memoirs, the admirals’, too,
Would pay to lighten the blighted young lives
Of soul-fragmented lads whose pain and blood
Won the air-conditioned another star
And unctuous applause at the officers’ club

If wars were subject to a copyright -
The President would have to pay his bill
Each time he banged the lectern for a war,
That glorious dux bellorum dux-ing
From the rear, while a squadron of pigs fly
Above, powered by pixie-dust and smoke

Let us now face the sun, and not ourselves
And so forswear the mirrored loop of Us
That zeitgeist chasing its ossified Now
Into a spiral of dark nothingness

A club that looks endlessly at itself
Sharing dismal, universal handshakes1
Can never see the Incarnation dawn
As joyful, laughing Light upon the world

His star is in the east, and too His sun -
Let us worship the Lord, and not ourselves

1Yes, pinched from John Milton

X-treem card?
(Beep!) World Poker Tour card?
Credit card?
Debit card?
(BEEP!) Insert card now.
No, not that way, stupid!
Turn it around!
Would you like a receipt?
Why not?
What is your weight?
What is your (beep!) fate?
Would you like a free car wash?
Don’t talk to me like that –
I’m going to make you push some more buttons.
Push the “enter” button
which is cleverly (beep!) hidden
in a thicket of other buttons.
Oh, dear, you couldn’t find
The “enter” button in time!
Start over (Beep!) hahahahahahaha.
Gas went up ten cents a qallon since you got here.
There’s a motorcycle gang waiting behind you.
Impatiently.
Hurry!
You want air? (Beep!) Drive around back
And have your credit card ready.
Do you want water for your radiator?  Yes?
Arctic Mountain Springs?
Montana (Beep!) Mountain Springs?
Sierra Mountain Springs?
All-Natural Mountain Springs?
City water??????
Would you like to come inside
and buy (Beep!) cigarettes from a hefty country girl
with a mouth full of chewing tobacco?
No?
Lift handle and select…
COMPUTER ERROR
Please start over.

Eligible for an upgrade...or an upchuck, or something...


Good comrades once were forced to stand in  lines
To register submission to The Cause
And beg for life while starving in the cold
Applauding all the while their misery

Good comrades still fall in obediently
To register submission to the ‘phone
And fight for selfie-space – oooh, look at me!
Applauding bars of connectivity

The irony of queueing before false shrines-
Good comrades once were forced to stand in lines

For both the Jews require signs, and the Greeks seek after wisdom#

-Douay-Rheims

Having barely graduated from school
Being fitted with wisdom just won’t happen
But a sign would be nice, a miracle
Just a small one, to make sense of all this

I wouldn’t know a Q source from shoe polish
But don’t patronize me with bumper stickers,
Reimagine Truth as paradigm shifts,
Or shout out with a Sola Scriptura

I am already my own stumbling block
And my own foolishness (complete with notes)

The duck and cover drill was never frightening
Not like arithmetic, or the teacher’s stare
For if the rockets fell, no more homework
Or switch-inducing notes to Mom and Dad

“Lawrence is a smart boy but needs to work harder.”
We crouched beside our desks and giggled
About old Khruschev bombing East Texas
Any American could whip three Commies

We had James Stewart and President Eisenhower

And so

The duck and cover drill was never frightening

Upon reading John Mark Reynolds’ essay#
#“The Shattered Image of the Thirteenth Century”#

We’re born as exiles in a castle’s ruins
And learn to play among long-fallen stones
We hold up shards of glass against the sun
Delighting in the colors falling through

Pendentives now bear up only the skies
Above twelve empty niches in a row
A prophet-wind sighs through an upper room
And fallen leaves decay on shelves collapsed

A gone-wild garden roams along the walls
And through an ancient arch an apple falls

Following a Path Worn by Pilgrims

#Doctor Zhivago, p. 75

No one is first along a pilgrim road
Other footsteps began our journey for us -
To Bethlehem, Emmaus, Damascus –
Wherever the heart is centered in hope

Someone has stepped on this cactus before
And sat on that rock to pull out the spines
And muttered about the indignity
Of a holy man pestered with stickers

But humility is part of the search

Because

No one is last along a pilgrim road

When powered up in operation mode
A structure rotates like a merry-go-mad
At the cylinder’s cone, and further back
Uprights rectilineal pulse in place

A slender tube poised for flight, it seems,
All sinister and sleek, ready for launch -
But purposed for what?
                                               Electrification
Of dental hygiene for The People’s teeth

Our Man in Havana has sent us the pix:
The Atomic Toothbrush is our dental fix!

On this dark day, this evil day, this day
In a railway carriage on a branch line
Three hundred years of civilization
And millions of lives, three generations
Were signed away with a few penned words
In a railway carriage on a branch line
On this dark day, this evil day, this day

Voices visions #resistance
PayPal and all major credit cards selfie
Occupation under Trump diversity
In Trump’s Amerika alt.woke.taghash

Get your rosaries off my recycled batteries  
Transgressive lines in a paradigm ****(f)t
We need to start the conversation, so shut up
While I’m centering thoughts and prayers on me

But the baby’s nappies need changing again
And who is going to carry the garbage out?

Because the Dragon Never Forgets

St. George, who fights our daily dragons for us
With golden prayers, and silver sword aloft-
Shall we neglect him on his festal day
Dismissing him as a Perseus myth?

Oh, no – for any man is more a myth
Than any saint, whose glory is in God
And not in his calendar reputation
Or in the vaporous memories of men

Even unremembered, he is our shield -
St. George, who fights our daily dragons with us

1st Waitress

                    “Like, the flag’s waving in the wind, okay?
                    But there ain’t no wind on the moon.  I’ve been
                    Graduated two years, and they can’t fool me.”

2nd Waitress

                    “It was, like, on a pole and stuff, you know?”

1st Waitress

                    “They would say that, wouldn’t they, right? Okay?”

Contra Julius and Gregory

A year does not fail, because there are no years
There are only seasons dancing through being
The choreography of Creation
Written with meteors dreamed out of stars

And so the first day of January
Is the thirty-second of December
And neither is either or even itself
But only a mark that says left foot forward

Continuing a step from beyond forever –
The year does not fail, because there are no years

(What Would Woody Guthrie Say?)

My stuff is my stuff, your stuff is my stuff
From your post-hole diggers to that nice pry bar
From your leaf blower to your garden rake
Your stuff – it now belongs to me

While I was climbing
Your backyard fence
I saw your bolt-cutters
Don’t take offense

But you are rich
(You’ve got a job)
I’m sharing your wealth
(I don’t really rob)

My stuff is my stuff, your stuff is my stuff
From the real long power cord to that full tool box
From your brand new shovel to your socket set
Your stuff – it now belongs to me

To Propagandists of All Flavors in All Nations

Sometimes my work is joyful, sometimes sad
Sometimes my work is good, more often bad -
But never does it belong to you, comrade.

Kensington Avenue

With Leonard gone, who can wear a fedora?

A pilgrimage away from Kensington
Lovers and mountains and islands and words
Questions flung far into the universe
Returned as Alleluias angelic

Or as Comments Constant in lonely rooms
Where Marianne in memories spoke to him
Sometimes upon a wire from otherness
Finishing words about the avenue

Now home from mountains and islands and song -
Perhaps one answer was here all along

There once was a scoundrel, Rasputin
Whose diet was entirely free of gluten
          Since it was all whiskey and gin
          And big helpings of sin -
But he died from poison and shootin’

Dentistry is being
Waterboarded by Morlocks
Who keep saying “Relax”