I wanted To be A priest

I

So I spent hours

Looking through the rug

Beneath me

Crawling underneath tables

Convinced I had dropped

Some crumb of wisdom

Cooked in the barracks

Of West Sacramento.

&, once found,

I could replace my breath

with a derivation of spirit,

Something that would imbue me

with madness.

Whatever shit John the Baptist was on

I wanted that.

I could get with Noah

& his trip, listening to a voice

That cut right through the din

Deep in the wilderness

Of The Monte Carlo

Where there was more than one
Divine Intervention:

Subtle cues & hints in Geometry

The Algebra of Dirty Pool

Angelic faces clouded

In Bloody Mary Mix

& my god-forsaken shoes

Lace deep in toilet water

& piss.

II

I had a back staircase then

& a caravan of visitors.

Not anybody you would know.

Saints & Holy Men,

St. Veronica types who,

When I looked into their face

I could see

The goddamn Visage of Christ

Or my unborn daughter

Or my living one

Or my not-yet-wife.

Once, a blind man showed up,

He talked about his brother

Who lost a leg in The Gulf War

Removed

By an anti-personnel mine.

I didn’t know the guy’s name

Or where he went

When the sun rose

It’s just that he was gone

Like everybody else.

Maybe his brother picked him up?

The guy without the leg

Who drove a special car

Using a stick or a lever?

Maybe the blind guy

Knew the way home

Through the dark streets

Because to him they were

Just streets?

III

I woke in the kitchen

With bloody feet

& a resolve to do something different.

Amid the detritus of dirty plates

In the sink & an ocean of bottles & glasses

I found a snake.

Earlier that week

I found a black widow

Living beneath

The arm of my couch.

I remember the stillness of discovering it.

I had been speaking to invisible visitors

My body drifting about the house

In some etheric phase of existence

& outside three men in orange vests & helmets

Had dug a deep hole right through the sidewalk.

Their conversation had risen to a volume

I could hear because they had to speak

Above the sound of the jackhammer

They used to tunnel into the earth.

The widow hung

Between the arm & the body

Of the couch & upon seeing it

A cold river ran through me

& I had a moment of clarity.

I was speaking to no one.

The men outside

Were not my friends

They would stop working

In the afternoon & leave a crater

surrounded by pylons & flags

That I would later drive

Right through on my bike

Carrying a bag of whiskey & pornography

& leftovers from Pancake Circus

& hurtle head first

Over the handlebars into the abyss.

IV

So, when I saw the snake I was ready for it.

The stark realization that I was sharing my apt

With deadly visitors had already dawned on me.

I picked up the snake & looked right into its face.

It’s not easy to change direction in the desert

Or pick up a snake & handle it

It’s just some fucked-up test for a made-up god.

I found out it wasn’t even a snake

I was handling

But the blind man’s cane

Which I had filched

Because the streets were still dark to me.

I need it, I thought,

As much as him maybe more

Yet the cane helped me not

& clearly the man did not need it

For he had left without it.

V

Maybe it’s because I never met one.

I remember the one that smoked

Unfiltered cigarettes

In a story by John Updike.

I think he played folk guitar or was it slide?

& Weldon Kees always seemed closest to me…

The way he fretted at the window

Of The Algonquin

Just come from Mrs M’s bed

Luminol & Toynbee

Examining the loping & luminous arches

Filled with pins of light

Jutting out above the bay.

Nothing like the jocks

Preaching to us restless teens.

Their endless pursuit

To keep us off one another &

I remember my alarm

In finding out

That they hadn’t read anything…!

Not Naked Lunch

Not Steppnewolf

Which I scanned religiously

& kept in the backseat

With The King James

& a box of condoms.

It was the eighties after all

The time of the plague

Lesions & sores

Skeletal frames of absolute confusion

& a shame we wore like a blanket

To cover the uncontrollable urge

To be naked.

VI

Despite disbelief

& the unmistakeable absence

Of God I persist.

There are dreams of buildings

So real they must be

From either a previous life

Which my daughter is convinced exists

Or from an episodic phase

I have yet to visit

In this life or the next or the next.

What difference does it make

Which story I believe?

What I want is someone to say

I like the way

He never seemed sure of anything

& almost drank himself to death

& spoke to the walls

& the lives encased therein

& planted by moonlight

Feral seeds & anxious plants

Until he sank.