Skip to main content

This verse is an admis­sion of the prob­lems of mate­ri­al­i­ty, of the inhibit­ing and appre­hen­si­ble, and, yet, con­fess­ing to escha­to­log­i­cal sure­ty in uncertainty.

It is also part of a grow­ing col­lec­tion of raw, straight-from-the-shoul­der poems ten­ta­tive­ly enti­tled “His Life Dithyra­m­bic,” a project con­ceived as I revis­it my life up to this point, its pains, trau­mas, plea­sures, and good fortunes.

The attend­ing illus­tra­tion is a self-por­trait done specif­i­cal­ly for this piece. It retains the fleshi­ness and col­or palette of the illus­tra­tion select­ed from my exist­ing work for the first in this series, Pro­crustes.

Embod­ied, they say, as if bound in an unholy cage.
Ensouled, they say, as if to lift and rar­i­fy their clay.
Whether cast from heav­en into some­thing dark­ly damned,
Or charg­ing dirt with sparks sub­lime, both duel­ing dreams allay

The pain of that per­cep­tu­al pow­er that swal­lows whole
Its bifur­cat­ed being, splits itself from shroud of skin.
Con­found­ed by the dis­lo­ca­tion of the me from me:
Meat per­ceives itself in meat, deems meati­ness its sin.

What tremu­lous ancient ter­ror, to grow aware and know
That all this gore of ner­vous vis­cera and clever grease
Is all that is; with­out oblig­ing atoms knit just so,
No imma­te­r­i­al soul to from this mat­ter find release.

No elec­tro­chem­i­cal bin’ry, not just ‘on’ and ‘off’,
But ‘on’ sup­pressed; its inhi­bi­tionar­i­ness its thrall.
Far more impor­tant than what is and what, indeed, is not:
Is self-benight­ing fraud that hides itself beneath a pall,

Incin­er­ates all sense and sens­ing of its active parts.
This vast and knot­ted, bloody organ clut­ter­ing up our skull
Spends its gross­est force in obvi­a­tion and oblivion,
So small an effort spent on aught, except­ing to annul.

Imag­ine hear­ing in the cav­erns of the mind, the brook
Bab­bling in artery and vein; throb­bing heart, heav­ing lung;
The gur­gling flu­ids and the squelch­ing gasses cours­ing down.
Yet no such madding clam­or, instead a men­tal bung

And muf­fled silence through. Think, if every scent was ever new,
How over­whelmed by nose? Or glint of light, how fraught our sight?
Cease­less din of engines, hum of pests would deafen?
Every fiber, grain, or mote each tac­tile nerve excite?

To silence is our nature’s first and stub­bornest defense,
Against too mad and mat­tered, ply and piti­less a being.
And so from that primeval moment when we split the rind
And sunk our teeth into abstract­ed me from meat, thus freeing

Ani­mat­ing organ from unthought, inno­cent reflex;
Now moral, now deep-sight­ed, but ever self-concealing.
Is there some life here­after, as we can appre­hend it?
Anni­hi­la­tion? Dis­solv­ing glob­ules recongealing?

I con­fess — no fin­gers cross­ing — that the dead are resurrected;
In a world to come is life, and a life that’s everlasting.
Is it me, my meat, my self-made self, this con­fect­ed soul?
Well, I have my doubts imag­ined con­scious­ness is lasting.

Still, I have vision broad enough to pray and to condole,
Whatever’s meant by life at last will undi­vide, make whole.