Wednesday, June 5, 2013

Puritanism and Shadow



Puritanism

Larry King Live, monkey head hunched
between red suspenders, asks a panel
of female inmates:

“Do you miss intimacy?   Intimate relations
behind bars?”

Naturally depraved, I contaminate the truth
of the whole with my impoverished partial,
point of view & terms  of desire.

I swim in original sin, not registering the waves
of violence from every stroke I make all soaking
wet & can’t tell the difference between amniotic
fluid and solid ground.

                   IT’s beyond me.

This is happy description, not condemnation.  The 
damage done comes from ignorance & denial. That
I know this for sure is an immaculate conception.
 not macular.

These quaint terms offend the conscientious & are
ludicrous to the savvy if  not ridiculous.

“There are  objections to them, no doubt, for
 academical use,” says Ralph Waldo: “but when
the professor’s gown is off, man will come back
to them.”


The Shadow

I am socio-pathetic. It don’t affect me that
there are starving swollen bellied children
in Africa, flies on their eyes, youngsters
shot in Connecticut & blown away in
Oklahoma, dead possum  in the
 middle of the road: these
don’t wake me in the
middle of the night
in a cold sweat,
bed sheets
in a wad.

Because I didn’t do any of it.
Not I. Me neither.

Inner city crime, drug use,  illegal immigration,
inadequate health care, teen age pregnancy,
guns galore, tattoos and their removal don’t
bother me none. I don’t participate.  None of
my  mind-my-own business, not that it isn’t
interesting.  It’s all interesting. How come?
One wonders. Reasons why? On the one hand?
say, but
yet on the other hand?

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