Wednesday, June 16, 2010

liturgy of the word 11th sunday

did not see the lights flashing
then
stopped the officer approaches
states emphatically
this is being recorded can i see
your license and registration please

shrugging
just woke up
forgot license/wallet
on way to church
late lost
not sure where the church

name date of birth
back in a moment

no sign of name
and birthdate
who who
existence doubtful

can't explain
emphatic with honesty

staying where
staying in a military compound
staying with family
family names
sister brother
who who

back in a moment

the air is cool cloudy
all is quiet save for the loud lights
flashing in the mirror

where before minnesota
where parents
where where where
who who who

third time's a charm

verify truth
legitimate place legitimate face

so close to criminal
so close to jail
so close to trouble
so close to fingerprints
so close to fear
so close too close too close to
violence sex desperation shame
abuse mechanical careless intimacy
blood anonymous death
human treachery of all sorts
justice and degradation

against the law to be an
adult without identification
criminal

freed to be late for church
freed from what may have been
a very disheartening homily
freed to be late for everything
freed to accept christ in my hands
freed to ponder the love
of a woman
willing to wash the feet of a man
with tears and her hair
freed to know the arousal of such love
freed to consider returning the offer

freed to go fishing

freed to ponder police state fears
mixed with large doses of
relative boredom and banality

the prison of freedom that this country has become
freed to recognize brotherhood
with the most feared

freed to laugh at the idiocy of human effort

all matters and things sigh to the last yes

17 comments:

Kirby Olson said...

One of your sharper efforts, like your cleavage entry last night.

I didn't know why you felt dissed at my blog.

I just couldn't comment on the cleavage poem.

I couldn't focus in the face of it.

J said...

The Snitchocracy!

That's what Amerika's become
in many areas, even supposedly
lib-rawl Kalifornias--
thanks to BushCo, and Feinsteins
FISAs and Foxnews, mormon-baptist
J-Edgar'ds
and the Kirby O's
who love 'em and vote for them.

Tho' sounds fairly tame Fr. jh. You've never met the p*gs until you've had one with his glock
pressing at yr temple (Kern style, pardner)...or watched as a big butchy sheriff offs an unarmed stoner kid

:)

jh said...

kirby
at least 3 comments
dissed

i need a break from LS anyway
no hard feelins
i sense you'd like to
get different currents on the topics anyway
i'm inane

maybe some of those girls will blabber now

here's lookin at ya kid

jh

jh said...

j
yours are some hardened opinions
and i don't follow very well
but you'r free to let them fly here

in many ways i've been protected from
the uglier aspects of american liberty and freedom
i get a lot through reading and listening and watching
i don't have near the street sense that i once did
overtime the monastic thing of prayer
has solaced my mind

kirbyeez still a good bloke in my mind
he means well
he's honest
just a little surreal
that's all

tooshay

jh

stu said...

jh,

I too feel the loss of your departure over at LS. Voices of sanity are rare enough, all the more so in that venue, and yours was unique.

If I am one of the diss'ers, please accept my apology, for I intended nothing of the kind. In the meantime, I intend to continue following you here and at de gustibus. It took me a while to wrap my mind around your particular inanity, and now that I do, I don't intend to give it up.

stu said...

sanity
inanity

tangents followed
preaching hallowed

if we stumble when we encounter a different beat
maybe we should stop shuffling our feet
take a chance
and dance

J said...

in many ways i've been protected from
the uglier aspects of american liberty and freedom


that's cool. I'd never suggest a Johnny Cash outrates Johnny Donne. Howevah...many Americans don't really understand the cop/court/jail/prison infrastructure, since they've been fortunate to avoid it. Even a few days in county will show you something really nasty about the underbelley of Copland (and it's not as bumpkin-ish a topic as many hipsters and liberals want to suggest). Or paraphrasing the Grateful Dead, if I told you all that went down, it would burn off both of your ears... Not quite Edna St. Vincent f-ing Millay eh...but apt. Peruse porfavor my blog for "Raymond Jennings trial" (went down in LA county a few months back) for some of my thoughts on the Law.

Kirby Olson said...

Ok, fair enough, jh, but I don't think you were dissed.

I admired immensely the way you played your cleavage pun, it was one of your most effective pieces.

I was in awe of it, and felt jealousy, so didn't respond!

I just thought, wow!

at any rate, best to you, and I'm sure we'll pass by the maypole another day, waving the old crucifix as we go.

sally said...

wow
a lot can happen
when i am absent from
the blogosphere for a few days

great story jh
very well told

you'll have to include this
in the opera you are writing

sally

J said...

Glenn Beck-style capitalism (e.g. Kirby O's favorite econo-political model) is to the message of the Gospels as like Joe Smith's visions of the Angel Moroni are to the US Constitution.

Whooop! Really, jh, if ...Deus actually exists, He's probably not quite as ..omnipotent as some think, OR He would have nipped the bizarre cult of LDS in the bud. Then He might have prevented..Hitler and Stalin as well..but chose not to..porque??? He's got an Appetite for Destruction, baybe

jh said...

it may be that i am going blind and losing my senses
maybe i press delete instead of send then fall asleep and wake up with cheerios on my shirt
maybe i need more coffee
some days i feel as if i have been drugged
waking up smelling charles bukowski's armpit

i keep nothing but love for everyone at LS in my heart

i remain a devoted adherent to the mind(s) of Lutheran Surrealism - nothing on the blogosphere matches the tedium and boredom with which important ideas are given penultimate status -- in a deep sea of banality that is no mean trick

cognitive juggling
cognitive circus
cognitive freak show
cognitive two headed bearded lady
cognitive lion and fire ring show
cognitive filibuster
cognitive trapeze
cognitive monkey cowboys
cognitive sequins
cognitive clowns

the only paradigm left

time to write an opera

THE BLUE GUITAR

yo

jh

J said...

CognitiveLionandFireRingShow.com

I wuv that site.


jh, one note on....Evil, s'il vous plait. I've generally been an agnostic of sorts, philosophically shrieking, though reading Walker Percy (and a few other, similar writers...say Flan. O'Connor, Faulkner...even Joyce), even I...questioned my agnostic premises. Pourquoi?? Percy wrote somewhere that secularists and atheists have not only killed...G*d; they have killed ...Lucifer . Both ...goodness and Evil are meaningless in an empty-godless, materialist universe. And I am quite convinced Evil--malevolent, sinister, sadistic forces-- ..are real. Glenn Beck for instance.

The wealthy and powerful don't seem Evil on the surface, like porno producers, or serial murderers, or 3rd world dictators might (like a pol pot) but, really a Beck and Foxnews, Mitt Romney types are only a few babysteps away from the Third Reich. That may seem overly literal, but at times I find even religious people (and catholics) seem to deny the very existence of Evil. Glenn Beck with his cutie-pie, mormon baby face , trying to hawk Aynnie Rand like get rich schemes--that's far more sinister than like somalian pirates jacking cruise ships. (scuzi rant....finito por a dia)

Kirby Olson said...

Well, you left with a high point, that neat poem seguing cleavage amazed me.

Ok, off to coach Little league Baseball.

Thank you for leaving gracefully, and welcome back to the nuthouse any time.

sally said...

did anyone watch the movie
where the wild things are?

the odd little community portrayed there
sort of reminded me of
the nuthouse that is LS
and of many other human communities

things seem to naturally gravitate
toward the nuthouse

the movie portrays the ups and downs
of community
moments of bonding and working
toward a shared goal
interspersed with hurt feelings
resentment, boredom and
the sense that something is missing

jh said...

j
catholics do not belabor the issue of evil
every year at easter we renew our baptismal vows which beckon us to resist evil and the language is the ancient rhetoric of battling demons
catholics seem to cherish an ongoing consciousness of the forces of evil and good in constant battle
and it is often depicted in graphic imagery (without digressing in to catholic art history)
perhaps do a quick study of spanish and mexican crucifixes if the perception is that catholics don't understand or grant evil some existence
i say "some"
because ultimately i agree with thomas that all the evil in the world is a matter of a lack of intelligence the intelligence that knows love is the answer

the paradigm of doing battle with demons is a monastic feather in the cap ... psychology would do well to research the discoverys of those ancient warriors

it's funny though about evil
seems some folks are destined to ride out ugly dark ways in this world
sometimes it's just dark comedy like celin and celan and burroughs
sometimes it's dark demented living
sometimes it masquerades as sanctity

catholics do not dwell on evil
like they once did before the sacrament of confession
but we are reminded of the forces of pain and division in the world in our own lives
quite regularly

walker percy is a neglectorino
his humor is wicked
his prose is often muddy and jagged but worth the effort

his view of the world:

we're all bad catholics

he also saw the stupidity in much that passes for scientific blockbusters
a rather constant illusion

tra la la

jh

J said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
J said...

Grazias for the commentary on "El Ojo Malo" .

Yes, traditional catholics had a keen interest in "the paradigm of doing battle with demons." And I don't think that paradigm was completely worthless--even if read metaphorically.

One notes an occasional hint of that paradigm (ie..battling the demonic, for lack of a better term) in Percy or Flannery O'Connor's writing. Since science and philosophy (not to say pop Kultur) has mostly dispensed with that paradigm , literature often seems the only place where humans might approach the subject. O'Connor in particular reveals a world (none too pretty, tho' absurdly comical at times) pervaded by malevolence and the "banality of evil"-- (and O'C's most vicious, sinister characters are usually good ol boy protestants, are they not. Not always, but for the most part...Klanocracy).