 |
| artwork via Wikimedia commons |
Fluctuating Water Levels Reveal the Startling Trauma of an Unexpected
Deified Species
The crocodile should be
deified,
but surely certain peoples along the Nile have
beaten me to it. Despite this,
I go on, I repeat the process because some of
us need reminding,
some of us need to hear day stifled
into night, and some of us must watch death
repetitively as though we could cast a spell,
bring on the mojo that averts disaster.
The gods of disaster.
We need to be persuaded,
shaken into rhetoric. The dirt needs
brushed and swept and carted away to break the
passionate embrace of geology
and biology; hundreds of millions of years
between the lovers
that are mineral and bone—desire so powerful
they fuse. But, it’s this,
a disquieting evidence at our feet that tells
us these reptiles survived
the others, those toothed and mythical beings,
dinosaurs, thunder lizards.
Then, unearthing a skull is like proving the
face of Thor. A femur
gives body to Vishnu, who has appeared nine
times on earth. Which is nothing
compared to the centuries that Crocodile and
its family have remained,
putting the fear of demise into all of us, as
though into a specially-reserved gland in the brain.
A gland that accretes and expands
with only those memories of the gods
of conscious death, the gods of
being-eaten-alive.
Worshippers would come as zebra to the temple,
the rain-swollen house
of the river, and faith would come as instinct
or migration as they entered one
by one, carefully, into the muddy, sacrificial
water. And, yes,
a few will not make it across, coming to rest,
instead, in pieces
in the stomachs of these carnal entities.
And
it would be considered an honor
to be held by the long white machetes of
teeth, to be surrounded
by every hungry mouth of the pantheon—then the
water rushing into the head,
like small fountains into the lungs, and the
wrench and twist until
bone and muscle are audible, almost spoken,
prayers of the deconstructing
flesh.
The mating of crocodiles is, as yet, unseen.
The male climbs onto the ridged back of the
female, and then they both disappear,
able to remain submerged up to three hours,
into the darker pools…and this
leads to conjecture.
Joined, as they must be, perhaps
they lock together in a spinning motion that
could represent eternity. Hidden
gods of perpetual cycles. Or, they lie
motionless while occasionally snapping their
jaws,
some kind of reptilian sweet nothings spoken
at crucial moments
because it simply must be difficult and
dangerous to conceive, or even comprehend,
such a misshapen ethereal smile.
Maybe they merge as one large body for a time,
starting with the scalloped
edges of their tails, moving on to the
callused pods of the feet, and finally, tooth
by sacramental tooth, they are fixed to a
genderless form
from which they must tear themselves
apart. Beyond this,
it is all a matter of temperature, the embryos
suddenly male or female
by the edict of a few degrees. But it doesn’t matter, either way
they begin in terror, collected in the
mother’s mouth,
so close—to the tongue, the palate, the
throat—that survival itself is a miracle.
And each is transported to the water,
leaping
through the stars
which are teeth, out of the universe which is
a gullet. The gods of the mouth
swallowed by heaven. Yes,
there is more.
Sometimes
drought reduces the House of Crocodile, and
everyone sees
the mistakes of fear, which are numerous and
cause the dying to imagine
other ways and other places in which to be
born. Under the temple
there is only more earth. And it is fear that makes a god.
To drink of the water
you must be brave, watch every ripple as it
folds itself into the riverbank. It
spreads
without understanding or belief. This is the fallacy
because as the water recedes, everyone steps
closer, braver thinking
only to partake and depart.
And then, the rains will touch us like cloth
dragged slowly over the skin to tell us we
will not always leave
this place.
Guiding Principle of Faith
If ever a god of
cleanliness existed
it must have been
responsible for
the soap beetle, which flicks itself
up onto the floating leaves
from the murk of a pond to bathe
in pressured air. It is
an oddity, this beetle, angling its legs
to a spot behind
the eyes until
a stream of bubbles foams down
each side—odd because
an ancient observer might have called this
magic or elemental or some such
cursory observation, instead
of what this is—a
triggering of glands
that releases hydrogen peroxide. Still,
this is strange, something utterly
inhuman, something that seems more
mechanical than natural, something that could
only have been constructed by
supernatural
means. Perhaps
the water strider, buoyant as a god,
is another mechanized body, unlovely
and frightening, not because of what
it can do, but what others cannot.
Perhaps the same god leaned
over a work bench
into
the wee hours of creation experimenting
with shapes and sizes, each one
sinking until the comprehension
of weight distribution entered those
patient fingers. Then, each leg
fitted like the
points of a compass, the insect
lifted a bead of water, north
south, east, and west, to praise
its maker—which it could not identify.
So let me step in for a moment to say
just this.
Apparently, the created
is lesser than
the creator. And yet,
a fundamental law of physics states
that matter is neither created nor destroyed.
In which case, I hold us all responsible
for, possibly, a man, a tinker
of sorts who learned to be immaculate
working in a bio
lab, or
that is, a crude semblance of a lab
where leftover genetic material was tossed
for scraps.
Nobody expected anything
to
come of this mish mash of DNA, RNA,
protoplasm and nucleotides.
Not even this man
who pinpointed
what he liked to call “the clean gene.”
Which he inserted into every creature
as though it was a toy, and this gene
some sort of bio-microchip
pre-set at birth to assure the obsessive
washing of cats,
the habit of birds
to frighten ants for showers of formic
acid, and the picking and prodding of certain
shrimp that clean not themselves, but others.
The universe reduced to cleansing. Like a frog
that contorts its limbs to spread a
moisturizing
fluid from the
back of its eyes and the base
of its spine over the entire surface
of skin, sealing in the liquids
of its life, discarding old cells—
which is as peculiar as any number
of snakes.
Say, for instance, the king
coral snake, a
typical representative
that yawns to snap the dull skin
from the head, which appears to break, and the
scales
slowly release, an inverted ghost
of the living thing abandoned, useless,
a hollow misrepresentation. Though,
it is not as easy
as it sounds. Most of us
lose our exterior one minute
particle at a time, never aware
how quickly we come undone, yet
the snake unravels all at once,
scratching and scraping itself along
any edge, stone
or wood
or metallic gleam, to tear its way
out of the past and into the future.
If I may be so grandiose. Yes.
This is a positive thing, this
washing—the hair, the face, the hands,
the body. It is transformation, without
seeming
so dramatic. And this is also
insidious, replacing each cell with another,
except the brain, which is its own
godless creature. And, if ever a god
of cleanliness
existed, he has been replaced,
reduced to something we continually leave
and take for granted as it grows beneath us—
or we are the skin and are already lost.
Correspondence to Alan Turing: Who’s the Fairest?
There is no test for humanity, by which
I mean compassion.
By which I mean the results are inconclusive.
Yeah, people
call me names and push me around, but you
suffered chemical
castration, love without libido, Eros without
erotica. When
you walked down the street under those spires
and façades,
could you feel accusations pile up around you
with old newsprint
and the leavings of all those unexamined lives?
You know,
I have apple trees in my back yard, most of
the fruit pecked
and purloined by jays and juncos. Everyone
thought you died
like Snow White, of a witch’s poison, a half-
eaten apple
by your lifeless hand.
But you never got that
reviving kiss. Maybe
you have the answer to my query now: Why
do smart people
fall in love with someone they know they
cannot trust?
If only you could have conjured the mathematics
of weather
to create a storm so strong it could have swept
you and your lover
to safety. Was
he worth your punishment?
Mine is,
but I’ve never been put to that test. What if
all intelligence
is artificial?
What if birds have a sense of self,
if plants can
comprehend the cosmos?
The difference
between us
and gorillas is the smallest percentage of DNA,
that twisted ladder,
spiral staircase.
There’s an old library downtown
with a three-floor
spiral, glass floors it takes a couple of minutes
to get used to,
to make yourself believe you won’t fall through.
It’s been closed
for twenty years, and I imagine the books
left behind are dry-
rotted, those glass landings cracked, the walls
discolored with mold.
Would you know if I were man or machine
if I could only
answer you from the confines of that abandoned
building? You might
tell me the general design of living things
is symmetry.
And I would respond, except inside, where
everything is
shifted to accommodate the heart.
All
mine to you,
Einstein Epistolary: Last Words
Dear Albert,
Were the McGuire Sisters singing Sincerely
when you died, the radio turned low in the next room?
April seems a terrible month to leave this world,
but you did it anyway, just as trees began to gossip
with spring wind.
I know you weren’t home,
but I find it more romantic than the antiseptic halls
of medicine.
I’ve heard your brain was stolen,
as though comprehension could be extracted
from the flesh.
It’s a labyrinth, all those folds
and crescents of intellect. Was it your minotaur?
Or was it your daughter, Lieserl, born out of wedlock?
No one seems to know what happened to her,
adoption, scarlet fever, conspiracy, shame?
Perhaps
your marriage failed, withered with a lack of wisdom,
because of impure thoughts, because of unsound
decisions, because of ivy grown over your own
stone walls. I
imagine you, limestone,
blocks cut so perfectly they settle into each other
without mortar or earth tamped into every stone
seam, where mosses root and spread,
a long-lasting thing, like Hadrian’s Wall, ancient,
a memory of something that no longer exists.
People still find ways to prove your theories,
all those scraps you left behind.
I still think
you lost some of your joy when your second son
said he hated you.
But schizophrenia is like that,
the mind succumbing to electroconvulsive therapy.
Did you ever wonder at the insight of electricity,
the random results of lightning?
I know
your last words were German, but your nurse
didn’t understand anything other than English.
I used to play that imagination game where you were
my dinner guest, candles on the table, and me
asking your thoughts on traveling faster than
the speed of light.
And I would always be disappointed
with the answer.
You kept telling me that human
beings are not creatures of light. We are soil
and water, hearts and minds. And I imagine I am
that nurse, singing along to that tune drifting
down the hall, when you speak those final words,
which only I understand, so profound,
this theoretical moment, this academic secret.
Gratefully,
My Autistic Nephew Reminds Me of
Myself
He says, Hello,
Uncle David, or Goodbye,
Uncle
David, as he leans his whole body
into the entirety
of mine. But he always asks
my name first, not
important enough
to remember, but
significant enough to get
right. He is sure there is only one way
to do
everything. If I don’t follow the
pattern,
the rules, he
reminds me. Sometimes,
he screams until I
give in. How he survives
this world, I
cannot say. Rivers change
course. They flood.
Storms take us
by surprise,
midday and midnight,
our world
rearranged. When I sing
the wrong word,
the wrong note,
the wrong key, he
tells me to stop.
Sometimes, he
won’t let me sing at all.
It’s not my normal
voice. There are days
I don’t like
him. Let me say that
again. There are days I don’t like him.
But I only see him
a few times a year.
And when he hugs
me, he means it.
As though we were
an ocean, stilled,
without the tug of
an everchanging moon.
