Musee des Beaux Arts

About suffering they were never wrong,

The old Masters: how well they understood
Its human position: how it takes place
While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along;
How, when the aged are reverently, passionately waiting
For the miraculous birth, there always must be
Children who did not specially want it to happen, skating
On a pond at the edge of the wood:
They never forgot
That even the dreadful martyrdom must run its course
Anyhow in a corner, some untidy spot
Where the dogs go on with their doggy life and the torturer's horse
Scratches its innocent behind on a tree.

In Breughel's Icarus, for instance: how everything turns away
Quite leisurely from the disaster; the ploughman may
Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry,
But for him it was not an important failure; the sun shone
As it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green
Water, and the expensive delicate ship that must have seen
Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky,
Had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on.

-W.H. Auden 

Never a Bishop

The art of losing isn’t hard to master

I lost one love out of careless intent

I opted for silence, and the hour not spent

Dialoguing tensions,

The capricious moments undedicated to solutions,

To the many convolutions that could have been unfastened,

Fumed like the smoke of this indulgent cigarette

The art of losing isn’t hard to master

There are nights I lose the battle with myself

And I wake to find my body like a corpse

Sprawled naked on kitchen tiles

Bathroom rugs, living room floors

Tossed like shells upon sea shores

The art of losing isn’t hard to master

I’ve lost possessions out of reckless abandon

Renounced to treasures that my festering brain

Has let slip between cracks

Lean fingers could never retract

From slivers too slim  

I narrowed the trail to make it for one

Person at a time

But you kicked the shrubs and stones

Aside, and muddied the ground–

Newly glossed and glazed by the sunset’s

Tongue

You fail to understand

That yours no longer tastes as clean

Or loves as warm

To the Mirror

Behind the glass, you keep

A record of me

You possess the many faces

I have shown you – the softness of new skin

I cannot recover

The lust of unmarred eyes

Burning brown to unveil sights

I no longer wear

You have replaced them with holes

So hollow they offend

Who gave you the right to steal

My belongings?

The candid smiles were never yours

To keep, the unscathed beauty,

The natural grace, I offered

The world, not you

And now you mock me with this mask

Of melted wax

Lumpy like a raisin,

Frigid like a tomb

And I demand you

Give it back. 

 

The Sound of Anxiety

I 

I walked out and into

The thick darkness of penumbras

The night was black

And heavy as oil

My steps were muffled

By the inviolable echo

Of deafening silence

The tremulous whispers

Of the agitated wind

Cut off my throat

And lisped the words

Of fear

II

I woke up shaken

By my alarm’s blaring siren

As it broke the static silence

Of slumber

Like a knife

Ripping through a silken thread

Of dreams

I gasped as if I had surfaced

From a roaring ocean’s pit

And emerged victorious from the sea’s

Tornado of waves

III

Subtle shafts of morning light

Seeped through the cracks

Of my sealed glass windows

And I grew tense

By the screeching hum

Of the lit

Quiet space

The stuttering

Of my rusty heater’s crackle

Attempted to convey codes

Of anonymous significance

Through gentle taps

Like desperate supplications

Of burned

And withered  

Cries

IV

The train ride suffocated me

With a clutter of voices

Like an arrhythmic symphony

Of sputtered incoherence

My head, a grove

For restless termites

A cavity

For inarticulate multitudes

V

And your voice –

The lovely croon –   

Was suppressed and strangled

My attempts to heed

Your warnings

Distanced you from my reach

Your face –  deformed

Like jagged reflections

On distorted prisms

Parted its slanted lips

And gargled final words

Before drowning in the well

The Confession

Karl’s hands felt cold and clammy against his face, as he wiped the rolling beads of sweat from his temples. He shut his eyes, tucked his lips, and inhaled as deeply as his lungs allowed – so deep it hurt his chest and made him cough twice.  He opened his eyes – bright and fierce as blue sapphire – cleared his throat and, in one impulsive drift, took a step inside.

He sat stiff and inert – his body weighed down by disarrayed thoughts, incomprehensible feelings of torturous desire – while his heart fluttered wildly, like a caged butterfly’s filament wings. He attempted to release the words, but his mouth felt dry, so he gulped bitter spit and tried again. In his forty devout years, he had never struggled to serve as much as he struggled today. Not even his social anxiety or acute shyness had impeded him from clamoring the hymns of the lord Sunday after Sunday after Sunday. But today something had gone awry; his convictions had gone astray, and he felt defeated, ashamed, and smoldered before the eyes of his father. 

He was suddenly nauseated and faint by the cubicle’s musty odor. Shame’s sour and acidic aroma emanated from the booth’s four corners, clouding his senses. The intolerable secrets of every filthy sinner remained alive, had never been buried; their souls had never been absolved, and now they lingered and suffocated him, pressing against his long torso like a horde of wild harlots.

Karl’s nervous stupor made him sweat profusely like a swine before slaughter; his unyielding body now jerked uncontrollably. “Damnation of the evilest kind has befallen upon my soul. I shall boil in repentance for the rest of eternity,” he thought, agonized in sin. He had come with the singlehanded mission of parting the waters and freeing himself from the shackles of faith, but now his remorse was such, that he could not lift his head, and his long beard rested upon his knees soaking his mortified tears. 

All the while, his thoughts pierced him like blades, and although his body seethed in penitence, he could not stop his demons from conquering the mind. His blood ached as much as his genitals did; he was consumed with lust, with wrath, with gluttonous carnal cravings. “Oh, help me, my lord. I am devoid of true virtue. I ache with the longing of touching his flesh, the flesh of the noble servant awaiting my regrets.”

                     … “Shall we start,” asked the priest. Karl smiled and his sapphire eyes shone their fiercest blue.  “Bless me, father, for I have sinned. It’s been seven days since my last confession…”

A Grandmother's Touch

I think of your hands decades before mine

Entering the world curved and frail

Smooth and soft as cream

Fresh as luscious fruit

Unharmed and untouched

By time

I think of your hands nimble and fickle

Your nails polished and prim

Tapping on the jaws of a typewriter

The sound, like pellets of rain

A soothing afternoon symphony

Of childhood

I think of your hands during sleepless midnight hours

Bleary and dazed, hurrying to feel him

By your side

                               I think of them lonely

And desperate beneath the sheets

The crevices between your fingers smothering

Your fears in prayer  

I think of your hands as emblems

Of age – the wrinkles between your knuckles

Like the split dry branches of a tree,

Bare before the bitter glacial breeze

Of winter

But I cannot think of them

Still as stones

The protruding veins parched and empty

When they have finally yielded

 To the peril of years

I cannot think of your hands

Like scattered carcass

Cold as bones