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| Open Poetry #38 |
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davidmerriman Member
since 2003-04-30
Posts 123Dallas, TX |
A newer draft of a first draft I posted here. Enjoy. Thanks. ---- I was reading about the brain and how the world was made of patterns. The book said the brain is auto-associative, meaning it can recall complete patterns when given only partial or distorted inputs, like a sentence only half-spoken or half-mumbled from a mouth full of chicken and cold stuffing. Sometimes it takes but a look, the way a lover turns her head so that the other lover hears a speech already, feels the words in one quick gulp, shuddering. This is done through memory. Chained memories—-suspects held in custody in light of physical evidence—--comprise our thoughts, as the world presents us evidence but never a satisfying conclusion. I read these words, not understanding how they came to print, but fascinated, like a child hearing a story he can only partially imagine, the image probably wrong but profoundly important. When I was a child, my father, You Are My Sunshine, the movement of blankets lowered into me, that memory only a memory of a memory, Sweet Baby James but he would sing Sweet Baby David instead. Now I hear that song, and it’s not the sensation of listening to anything else. It’s not sound. Only the meaning is remembered, perhaps ever. Stephen Dedalus realized this in a Pyrrhic victory, and I notice, too, that Pyrrhus, but not Pyrrhic, is incorrect on my spell check. Pyrrhus, it seems, has vanished with the bodies of those slain. (They were his men, their glory evaporating into less than air, less than a pause between words, not even a thought, where there once, I assume, was reality’s slaughter. Nothing could be more serious: gullets torn, entrails, bone, and blood beaten to the ground, the peaks of fear and glory made manifest with the dumping of the body’s making.) Now men die from shrapnel, helicopter accidents, Katyusha rockets, strategic targeting, somebody executing some order miles away. These words arrive with the results I read in the newspaper, articles somebody is proud of. They are the only image I have of a country I’ve never been to, of a suffering I’m supposed to have an opinion on. I read and read. Many in the Islamic world feel threatened by the coalition of the United States and Israel, inseparable they are to them from the religions---Christianity and Judaism---the nations represent. So I am chained to a memory, a sentence, even a single word, Christian, as they have chained me to another word: citizen. The application is complete. I never complain. You could leave at any time. I never complain. My father lifting my sheets, placing them over me. I am starting to see myself. I am placing my life together. I love you. We’re going to get married, I know it. She looks at me, those eyes, dew on the petals of a flower. I never complain. Besides, of my country, I see little commitment. Who would take up their cross, keep not an extra tunic, or go without gold or a dark wish for someone who had crossed him? Who, if struck, would wipe the blood simply and hope the striker did not smart his hand? Who would abandon his family, sacrifice his son, his very meaning in life, without a single thought? Who, who, who, and what is this impossibly heavy ball we are somehow chained to? The names are much lighter. Jesus, Jesus Christ, Our Lord. I believe in God, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Our Father which art in heaven, Hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread. Give to us, father, I commit my spirit, my soul unto you, Sundays, famous Bible passages, a message of hope and family values, sermons, prayer, motivational speeches, more and more words. More than just Pyrrhic, more than perhaps anybody has ever died into. The phrases feasting on the death of Jesus are like the possessions that clutter our floors. What, though, of that feeling? That feeling, even just hearing the name . . . When I was a little boy, I believed in a God that could be insulted. To my horror, I knew that the Lord could read my thoughts, and so any curse to God would be sent in my ever-writing letter. I would try and try to think otherwise, but terrified, I hate you God. I hate you! I hate you! I hate you! I hate you! In nature, the mind rests. I can watch the water somehow; maybe because it’s so old; it’s seen so much. It changes, dies into a different form, indifferent. If the world is made of patterns, perhaps we should worship what is oldest. I wonder sometimes if God is nothing but the great memory of before being born. I wonder if we can only imagine this memory, but the imagination is so large it sometimes swallow us, like a dream dreamt too deeply, or a book that surprises us with a poke to our soul. I wonder if this memory, this pre-birth existence, is a truth needing to be imagined; that truths impossible to remember are merely difficult, like fussy children needing to be put to bed. Sometimes they require a story, a trickle of events to lead them slowly, slowly to sleep. And the great story-tellers, they lead us too. They are precious to us, and we immortalize them, for they most of all fear death. I think of Christ as I conjured the men of Pyrrhus, hazy but with powerful emotion. He is on the cross, not yet the final hour, but weakening. Long before he cried to God--- Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani?--- the festering of his heart began, the pain slackening his tightness, the easing of a will once clung to the earth and eternal tapestry of man’s existence, now flapping miserably. In solitude he is letting go slowly into lightness. Jesus never cursed the Father; he merely questioned Him. Thousands of small questions, holes in the pattern, dwelling one last time on the imperfection of all existence before dwelling again on its perfection and dying into it; somehow, we hope, in a memory all of us can reach. |
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