Poem From a Reptile Son

“three things to recall, son,
if you are ever
in a knife fight:

one, a knife fight
that lasts more than thirty seconds
is being fought by two amateurs.

two,
expect
to get cut.

three, you must become
a reptile when you fight.
you get your humanity back by winning,

but never all of it.
some part of you
will grow scales.

you’ll need a rock
in your dreams at night
to warm yourself on.

for the rest of your life
you’ll shed skins but never look
any different,

a little of you can break off
and if you leave it behind
people will think they’ve got you.”

this is what my lean father told me
without ever looking at me as he showed me his scars
and explained how he sharpened his knife.

they say that mammals love
and reptiles cast offspring aside
to fend for themselves.

they know nothing. I still have
the knife my father gave me. I’ve grown
scales in his honor.

I never face anyone
for more than thirty seconds.
no one’s got any of me that matters.

This will be among my resolutionary-type things for the year, by the way…

I’m going to tell you up front that I’ve done some thinking here, and I am not especially comfortable with what I’m about to reveal; but I think it needs saying, and the resulting actions will need reinforcement from you, among others.

1.
After some soul-searching: I am, admittedly, anti-Christian.

Not anti extremism, not anti fundamentalism, not anti-intolerance or theocracy; truly, I am anti Christian, as in the base dogma of the faiths that have derived from the Christian mythos bother me and disturb me, run counter to my own beliefs, and makes me feel threatened and angry.

I admit this now, knowing it is deeply uncool to admit a bias of this sort; I am sorry for those of you offended, upset, and disgusted with this. Please bear with me as I move forward.

2.
My deep seated dislike and anger at the social structures we live within is at least in part driven by this. There is, of course, more to it, far more; but I think this is a large underpinning of how I see the world.

3.
One of my resolutions for this year will be to work harder, much harder, to ensure that my actions do not draw so deeply from this bias; that I do no let my blinders about Christianity keep me from seeing and befriending and treating with respect and fairness those I meet; and that when I take a stand on an issue of morality and value, it will not simply be “not Christian, so OK.”

4.
At the same time, I’ll work harder to define morality and values in ways that allow others in while not compromising my own spiritual values in pursuit of harmony.

There’s more to be said, of course; specifics, history, examples. But not now.

Now, I just want it out there.

Help hold me to it.

Edit: I think, upon reading this, that I should reframe my issue as one of being “anti-Christianity”, not “anti-Christian.” An important difference, I think.

We spent it in Boston with the recently married Dan and Mike, who just got back from Laos and Southern Thailand. (Yup, in the area hit by the tsunami. They just beat it.)

You’re definitely getting old when the drinking is done by 8:30 and you’re all too tired to open champagne at midnight, so you have a contest to see who can “pop” a finger in their mouth like a cork loud enough to make us feel festive while playing Chinese checkers.

I lost at both, although I did put away a half-bottle of Six Grapes tawny port by myself.

Woo.

More later.

It feels to me like no one is answering the question I posed in my previous post. I posted it late, so I may not have been clear enough.

For the record, I understand the difference between religious extremism and religion, faith and spirituality. I understand that all traditions have been abused. I understand that political ends have been met under the guise of religion throughout human history.

My questions, put more directly, are these:

Is the American Left explicitly anti-Christian? Why?

Are you? How do YOU know if you are or you’re not? (I am ashamed to admit that I am.)

Does it matter to our efforts (for those of you who count yourself Lefty) that we do something about this?

Bring it on. I just painted a huge bullseye on myself for your shooting pleasure.

and I just made it far worse by listening to Dinosaur Jr, the Smiths, Ministry, and Lone Justice, in that order.

I have a sudden urge to put on a black leather cowboy suit, dye my hair blonde, and mope while having myself whipped to a screaming, incoherent frenzy accompanied by skronking, inconceivably overdriven guitar riffs.

Killing Joke is coming up. Add some Brit-crank aggro-punk, and you can tell where this is going…

no more work getting done this year.

FIVE FAVORITE SONGS BY X:

“Adult Books”
“I Must Not Think Bad Thoughts”
“Devil Doll”
“Surprise Surprise”
“The New World”

FIVE ARTICLES OF CLOTHING I RECENTLY DISCARDED:

Ripped T-Shirt from NPS ’96
Elvis Presley’s codpiece
A pear-scented dog collar
Worn out “Physician’s Assistant Martens” (bargain brand)
Tighty used to be Whiteys

FIVE THINGS MY CAT THREW UP RECENTLY:

Elvis Presley’s codpiece
Dominick Dunne
Solid gold cufflinks previously owned by Fabio
Tuna
Tuning fork

FIVE PHRASES I HAVE SHOUTED DURING THE PHYSICAL ACT OF LOVE:

Give me that lollipop and no one gets hurt!
Now, then, where the hell is that codpiece?
Dwarves! Dwarves everywhere!!!
Get that otter off me, you goddamn psycho!
The square of the hypotenuse of a right triangle is equal to the sum of the squares of the opposite sides!

FIVE OF MY FAVORITE FOODS:
Salmon in a citrus fennel marinade
Peanut butter and cream cheese on wheat bread
Great Italian bread dipped in oil and spices
Tomatoes and fresh mozzarella in oil and vinegar, preferably in Santa Fe
Cheetos

FIVE GREAT LEADERS OF OUR GENERATION:

Um, I’ll come back to this. Maybe later. Much later.

FIVE GREATEST MEMES OF ALL TIME:
The one about the colors!
The one about who you will be best suited for in love!
The one about the celebrity you are most like!
The one about the band you should be in!
The one about sheepiness!

Add your own!!!!!

my mother used to say
sing before seven,
cry before eleven. meaning

don’t let yourself be too happy.
don’t think about it. don’t even try.
give up the morning and settle for dusk,

and don’t imagine what it would be like
if the lights never came on again, because
there was never any power anyway.

don’t conjure
hope
you can’t handle.

don’t ask for mercy.
don’t turn your bed into a music hall
and expect a dance troupe to come through.

the arms of god are nearly endless,
some poet said. point being, of course, that
they do end. i should know, because god’s got me good —

that bricklayer’s
paw up in
my puppet hole.

but i keep my mouth shut, and i feel nothing.
i don’t even hum when i get up. i was well prepared.
mom was smart. i thank her every morning.

The world’s big insurance companies have indicated that they won’t be adversely affected by the tsunami, because so little of the property involved was insured and the population was generally too poor to have insurance.

Here’s a link to the story.

Whew.

“how about that tsunami?” “the one in indonesia?” “yeah, that one”

All day there’s been a stream of visitors
to the world map on my cubicle wall,
co-workers come to look for the place where it all happened.

Should I be surprised that on at least five occasions
I’ve had to point at the Indian Ocean
and then do a quick finger tour around the rim?

Or should I be heartened that at least
they came by to look? Or that they knew
the map was here? It’s evidence, after all, that

the wave reached beyond Aceh. The wave
hit everything. It’s just that not everything
got wet enough to make a body feel,

and we have money, like paper towels, to
keep the damp out. I wish I knew if I should cry
or just keep going back to the wall to point it out again:

here is Phuket, here Aceh, here Sri Lanka, here Tamil Nadu,
here Pondicherry, here Chennai. Here is Myanmar
which has been silent. Here we are in the United States,

and here is everyone else.

Be it resolved that use of the phrases “primordial chaos” and “rain streaked window,” or any use of the word “soul” that does not involve references to Ray Charles, Marvin Gaye, Etta James, or Aretha Franklin, will be punishable by subjecting the poet to a term of no less than fifteen and no more than thirty consecutive recitations of the collected works of Matty Furmanek in pig Latin.

By Donald Rumsfeld.

Resolved:

That any poet who writes a poem based in a wistful and/or romanticized view of suicide as:
— an inevitable step;
— a proper response to a failed love affair or parents who are too strict;
— the true province of art and poetry;
— an idealized state of grace and release from care;

be it, again, hereby resolved that I will smack said poet upside the head with a copy of the Nirvana box set.

And if I write one myself, I give you full license to do the same. Twice.

happy xmas, y’all…

if you aren’t celebrating, then happy day to you too.

T

I’m giving up on the road to Heaven because
it feels like the sky god who they say lives there
is just someone we’ve been stuck with
because the arguments for other ways don’t get heard.

I say: why settle for that distant promise
of an eventual view from those heights
when there’s all this power right here,
ripe and cool with promise?

Maybe I am meant to be
the ocean god’s project. I will learn humility there
in the storms. If I want for Heaven
I could let a wave carry me there.

Maybe there’s an earth god who’ll brew me beer and teach me
more ways to screw than there are beads on a rosary.
I’ll live a life here, dirty and rutty and rich;
and if I want for Heaven, I’ll grub it up myself and grow my own Eden.

If there is a fire worthy of worship,
it’ll come down to me from storm clouds.
If I hear a prophecy on the wind, it’ll be clearer
after blowing through the trees.

As for the Heaven-God — how he fulminates —
ah, well, I think
that is just what comes of sitting
so high above things.

Unless — and this is possible —
the stories we hear about the sky god
were just something dreamed up
by someone with an axe to grind.

In fact, I’d bet on it —
there may be a sky god, but I know my gods,
and what they keep describing
isn’t one.

Looks like I’m gonna make it to iWPS after all…classes start the weekend before.

So if you’re coming in for it…we’ll hang.

is currently listening to Guns N Roses’ “Greatest Hits.”

Specifically, “Sweet Child O’ Mine.”

I contradict myself; I contain multitudes. (Which I suspect offically makes this the first LJ ever to mention the work of Walt Whitman and W. Axl Rose in the same post.)

Where do we go…where do we go…