Transmogrification (presbyterian version)

Dear Jeanne,

I don’t listen well.
I listen, sure, but always
in terms of my agenda
& noise filters.

What I want to hear
I hear. What I need to
hear—not so much.

I’m listening to ME,
whoever’s talking or
writing.

It’s the same, walking
through a field or mall:
the more attentive, the
more ignore-ant.

Just like you say:
I select, edit, sample,
weigh, assess, evaluate;
always preparing what
to say or write in response:
processing noise to
make my own
news.

A crime of fashion.

Inside the embrace of my
beliefs & biases, prejudice
& convictions: I have an
open mind.

I scold me for my deaf ear.
Listen up, Sam.

Transforming the narcissistic
solipsistic bubble of my self-
sustaining homeland securing
directional navigational
algorithmic habits
don’t happen by
my wistful
thinking,
damnit.

I’m damaged & damaging. Every
step I take, move I make rips-off
the whole & holy by my criminal
discrimination—boot-scooting
around the burning bush, so to
speak, lacking pagan propriety
or propitious-ness. .

(It’s the denial & cover-up that thickens
the bozone layer, don’t you agree?
Emergent phenomena: our
psychic toxic waste.) .

See me
hear me
touch me
feed me.
trumps
I’M LISTENING (“obeying”)
considerable & who can throw
the first stone?.

Transformation,.
Transmogrification
I need rescue. Pathological
Deliverance. Some trans-
formational learning along
with vocational & techno-
logical sustain abilities or
what’s a liberal art for?
..
This urge, wrestle, resurrection of dry sticks,
Cut stems struggling to put down feet,
What saint strained so much,
Rose on such lopped limbs to a new life?
I can hear, underground, that sucking and sobbing,
In my veins, in my bones I feel it --
The small waters seeping upward,
The tight grains parting at last.
When sprouts break out,
Slippery as fish,
I quail, lean to beginnings, sheath-wet
Theodore Roethke

xxxooo, Presbyter