IT'S NOT THE FAULT of the father. It's a weakness of mind and character instead—a failure in human terms. I remember the story of Isaac and Abraham from an illustrated children's book and album. The tortured father and confused son. How it's okay in the end because Abe followed orders and Isaac survived. What's crucial here is a revelation of divine virus. The monothesim of the species breaks us in pieces: mind, heart, body—(I think, therefore…—gads, Christ, drop it—enuf already!). Even behind religion, in the dark disorder of the psyche, those fragile relations bind. The paternal pair cripples our ability to proceed. And that Death God Patriarch doesn't afflict men only. Like the poor woman in Tyler, Texas. Bashed her kids' brains out on the front lawn. Crippled her daughter in her crib. Said God made her do it, no angel interceding. Remember the woman in Houston, some years back, methodically drowned her spawn in a tub? No angel led a goat there into the bathroom as the water splashed out over inert, blue features. But these are mothers, not fathers. Medea, not Abraham. It's a failure of imagination. Diagnosis doesn't relieve us of the violent outbreaks. The secular law calls it crime or insanity. But it's inside where the remote origins of evil incestuously merge with the good, day to day. It's this we try desperately, unconsciously, to absorb. Somehow, snow-white purity pays. Stretch the lamb's neck over black stone. Pull the blade.
SO THERE'S ABRAHAM, counting goats, blowing raspberries on his son's belly or flirting with slave girls when his bitterly demarcating Lord demandeth sacrifice. Now, I understand. You want to make some things sacred, anointing an otherness. But that demon god of the Old Test is too much. He wants Isaac, Old Abe's only child. Wants him hacked up on an altar on the highest mountain. Fine. Cut the brat's throat. Burn his testicles. Give the perverted old Pater what he wants. That's Abe's decision, anyway. He endures a heart-wrenching climb, lying to his son. "Fetch some wood," he says. "We're going to give offering to the Lord." And Isaac gathers little sticks, whatever his small arms can hold. The air is cool on top of the mountain and the boy feels the breeze on his skin, enjoying it and the smell of the mountaintop. He puts a stone into his mouth, sucking on its smooth black surface as he bends his knees a little peeing over an escarpment of limestone. Then his old man takes him, pressing him down on the altar. He draws the blade. "Okay, God," he says, "here you go." And quick as the cavalry, God's angel lands. "Lo, bro, lower thine axe. God changed his mind. It was just a test." And a kid or lamb stumbles onto the scene. Abe sees it. Cuts it. Burns it. The story intrigued me as a child. It's an early tale of how the son should never trust the father. God doesn't always change his mind. The Hebrew God and the antique Greek deities have this in common.
DO WHAT IT takes to get in. Push through these things, every day—the little red wagon resting on its side, weeds and clover growing up around it. Or the woodpile haphazardly stacked with elm and broken pecan branches. Trust phenomena to get you inside, or to point to what you don't already know. "There is no other beginning in Philosophy than wondering," reads an obscure source open now. "Let not him that seeketh … cease until he find, and when he finds he shall wonder; wondering he shall reign, and reigning he shall rest." (Lactantius) I don't know about "rest," these divers energies pouring through secular vessels. Stir us up. Put us to action in the world. "Whence there is an excellent saying among the philosophers," writes Plutarch, "that those who do not learn how to hear names rightly, use things wrongly." Watch K play with sticks on the porch. Wash dishes. Hold Waylon, burping him. Then a mighty, rattling fart bursts out of him. K's cartoons sound out from another room. Hear Hoa chopping onions in the kitchen. These routines anchor the day, matter's lumen opening. The black core's eternal negative is milled hour-to-hour, perfecting apprehensions of day and night—gross rhythms hardwired to kinetic systems. Grey clouds break and at last some sun shines on the yard. New walnut leaves stand out tenderly on black, naked limbs. Damp air, moist wood. Swallows make arcs over phone lines.
GREY LIGHT ON green leaves. Overcast sky, the house a wreck. Pick up shoes. Find a place for things. This morning I held Waylon while K stacked blocks. He watched my face with intent, uncoiling his body in my lap. Now I'm alone and want to write these few words, but there's so little to say. Quick flashes of the day vanish into nothing. Sound of the washing machine penetrates the room. Sound of the cup touching down on the table. The sudden stillness of being alone. This is the energy driving us. Pulled two ways, the inner and outer pressures. My life and others. In outrage and affection. Again, there's so little to say. Words come. A slight shift of tone deepens my wistful pursuit. Then come two interruptions. K runs down the hallway, naked and fast. Hear a hawk somewhere too, a distant high-pitched screech coming from down the creek.
These days come on full
charged, half hard half quiet.
Up. Pitter-patter. Bare feet
slap wood floor, growing
morning light through kitchen window.
He stands there pulling his penis.
DOWN WITH FEVER. Spent the day on my back. Woke this morning, sweating. Sound of the washing machine spinning. K builds with blocks. Waylon nests in his bouncy chair. Drifting between wakefulness and sleep, a deer's jeweled guts glistened. A man cut at the legs until they could be torn from the socket. He made a pile of them in the soft dirt where shadows played and a pool of blood trickled off. Very lovely to look at, I thought, seeing nothing sinister in the butchery. And in a derelict garden space, I watched a night heron hunt fish in a creek bed. Its russet neck and dark blue topside made its orange legs stand out bright and startling. Dipped its beak in brown water, coming up with a single minnow each time. Later, I look online at the news. That Mesopotamian mess. Burn the people of the Book. Fry their flesh. Helpless in the twilight sleep of fever dreams, I watched gore go down. Some membrane—geographical distance. It's a thin space if the mind's tweaked right. Legbra, listen. Tell ol' Nobadaddy to beat it. Ahab's whale ain't goin' nowhere. Okay, look. My fist's balled up with sheets. My body aches. Bury the Book in black rock—Al-Khuds, Roma, Mecca. Get a new In the beginning….
STEP INTO STEP—mysterious, impulsive movements out. K stares at the playground, deciding where to go first, then heads off for the bouncy bridge wielding a stick as a vorpal sword: ("One, two. One, two. Through and through…"). Now he plays in pebbles, picking up handfuls and releasing them slowly through his fingers. Other children run and scream deep in games. I'm calm as oak branches bend under the weight of grackles. A mockingbird attacks, reaching for black eyes and purple wings. I'm absorbed by the drama of the air, feeling into that fierce turf battle. Waylon sleeps in my arms. K puts things in his mouth. Think any moment the sky could go green in a sudden spring shower burst. A gang of children runs by stretching their limbs, free in their bodies for a while and released from a techno-theological nation of control freaks. Soon they'll be intellichipped, submissive as any professional. A tense, remote darkness deforms these bright day surfaces. Black stone. Black stone. Black stone. Plucked by birth from something I was and put into something I am not. Here my son sleeps. We're using each other to find something. Step into step. Stranded under a voice informing me that my son is naked. Shorts down to his ankles, he relieves himself in a clump of grass. Watch as he steps all the way out of his pants. I let him go. Write this down under green sky. Avian warfare continues above, the voices of families around me.
EMBRACE THE EARTH-BORN babe, head lifting to observe lights in the trees. Bluegrass music—bass, fiddle, guitar—moves through the courtyard. The place is packed and I'm pacing to sooth his crying midst this great amplification of sound. His eyes are open, full on me now before releasing a deep, gut-tight yowl. Go into a small room to change his diaper. Venus shines through a window, a tiny silver node in dark blue. Back out the crowd tightens round the stone steps-turned-stage as a young woman behind a big guitar sings Hank Williams. Tip of the Austin skyline appears beyond us, inertly placed under pecan tree limbs.
Little cricket of the rocks
go slowly by my feet.
Late again the day
drags out and night
comes with a crescent moon.
An ancient cell reverie
turns on a warm fuzzy
on the body's biggest organ (skin).
Exposed like young animals
booze line lengthens.
(Crick crick). Beer suds
(crick crick) wet on white stone.
HOA ENTERS THE KITCHEN heaving a sigh. The boys sleep. She pours a cup of lemon balm tea. I listen to liquid pour out into the mug and hear her spoon stirring in milk and honey. "I'm fat," she says. "You look great," I say. "You just had a baby and you're beautiful." She wears purple pants and goes across the room to read, flipping pages of a magazine next to a stuffed, mechanical bird. A blue balloon dog faces me. The pothos are wild and flourishing. There's puked up breast milk on my shirt.
Quiet room sunflower blossoms
wilt by a lamp's weak light
and a spider's blue shadow
sidewinds above horizons
of grey parallel ink lines (Italian).
A torn calendar bookmark shows
Amicus stood word of the day
Tertius/Tuesday, Martius/March 19.
A crease in the fold obscures
all but this in a quote:
"…populo romano cogitare."
(Cicero)
Spider reaches far frontiers
other side of the table.
Light tonight is yellow.
A FRIEND CAME for dinner. We drank wine, ate chicken with potatoes and carrots. I held Waylon as Hoa worked in the kitchen. K played with a paper giraffe he had made earlier. Waylon cried then fell asleep on my shoulder as I paced the front walk between artemesia and salvia. Roses fell with heavy pink blooms. The chicken was delicious, stuffed with lemon and white onion. K ate cookies and strips of white flesh. Waylon slept in the other room. Hoa made tea. "It's not that I'm anti-intellectual," I said. "But I want words to retain an original weight." I don't recall exactly what we discussed. But I remember that point, and he agreed. Language is a rooted thing, and our minds must be dirty to be in it, to tend those twisty, crusted branches. I enjoyed the company, opening a second bottle of wine. Our friend spoke of forgotten tongues—Transylvanian Saxon, for instance. It was used in a region of Romania where the remote ancestry of his blood extends. He spoke of medieval rhythms there, of seasonal work and the smell of hay. I tried to read between the lines, to see if there was something in his words to mistrust. But I liked the soft English rhythms after all, and I liked him. His stone was evident in the words he chose. That weight dragged out between us.
THE CAT EATS in the kitchen under a small table. Hoa taps softly on a Mac keyboard. Outside the full moon promises much luck but produces little by way of net gain. I drank beer and whisky with friends tonight. Then K and I dried clothes at the laundry-o-mat. Many people crowded the place. The air was heavy with humidity and detergent. Keaton played with a penny. He flipped it and laughed, it falling many times to the floor. I practiced invisibility. No words for anyone. Instead I withdrew into a stony cavern of silence except for what attention I could spare my son. Car lights zoomed in the windows, leaving bright traces on silver droplets beading the glass. I have a secret list of heroes. I don't live in a heroic age. It's an era of crippled minds and ass-kissers. Only a dick can misunderstand me. My heroes are fascists and degenerates, wicked debauched creatures who inhabit the darkest bordello of my mind. Go out in April wind, cool air in jasmine and the chimes ringing in a bank of star jasmine. Go inside and there find the black stone too. Beat black bruises on pulsing blossoms, a spoon-full of piss poured in a pint of blond beer. Visit a vomitorium for a week's respite. Barf larvae into leaf-etched goblets then hang and gibbet up a candied corpse. Flies buzz in its cheeks, gasses explode. You know you want a bite. Take one with me. Let's just do it for once. Get it over with. Gorge and puke it all out and feel great about it.
"ARE YOU ALRIGHT," I said, acknowledging her weariness. Waylon was sleeping, lips moist with her milk. She seemed rightfully beat. "He's an eating machine," she said. "He never gets enough." I touched her arm. "Drink more water," I said, getting up to fetch some. Rain outside covered the street, glistening in orange lamps. I looked again through the window. It was black where tree branches started to form silhouetted by the neighbor's porch light. I stood in the dark, just breathing. I noticed Virginia creeper against the lower window. Cats came to the porch. A car engine fired somewhere down the street and a pink film topped off the street lamp's orange glow. I thought maybe I'd go to sleep. Instead I'm writing this, alone in the kitchen dark. Glass of water. A glass of filtered water. A glass of cold, filtered water. Reach through things to get to the word nature of things. From that blackness—that unknown core—return these sounds and rhythms—new relation. The night's here, a dead stone weight against the weightlessness of words.
K WATCHES TV with complete attention. We sit on a bed in a small room. He spins on hands and knees when lightning strikes out blue in the black window behind him. Terrific claps of thunder make him leap out on the bed startled, calling my name. He doesn't know the moon behind those clouds is nearly full, and that with spring bursting blossoms there arrives an accompanying violence of atmosphere. Now we both hear that pitter-patter, the loud, insistent rhythm of drip from the roof. The television light casts patterns over the room as also the sudden quick blue flashes penetrate the sheer white curtains. I sit with him writing this, his eyes integrated with image and his warm arms and chest against me. These words form close to him, an influence of his young muscles and quick, jerky rhythms. I was going to write some pompous sounding horseshit. Scratch it out instead. Night rhythms in the pen, inky blots soak into the page. Not of purpose or intent. Anole stirs against a screen, its cautious sleek body poised to move. We live in image, as we are to each other—incomplete. Disappear and come back rapidly. These intermittent flashes.
Sit with him by the window.
Warm sheets kicked on the bed.
See my face reflected now.
In the wind's eye.