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.