The Agony of Self-Perception

Jumping Jack Trash
for B.C. on the occasion of his public breakdown

1
We're twos, not ones, of a kind.
And we both know
you can't run from God.
This mind has no turning radius.
Distance to or from any point
is an illusion that clearly violates
house rules. No one but God
can subtract. No one but God
can count to One. I-Thou, Him-Us
is not reduction of this torment
to manageable proportions.

2
Cry like a baby for God
but it's still just an audition tape
you're playing for the crime bosses
of non-duality. By the way,
I've been sent to inform you
you got the job. You open
for the Pope in June.

3
What did he tell us over and over?
Cling to any word, notion, title, concept
and you can't make good your escape,
can't even make a single semblance of good
come of it, come out of it,
come from the hiding place
that never concealed one goddamned thing.

4
Listening to your bellows this morning
I realized that even the word 'sinner'
is a swaddling, suffocating title that drowns
the man it owns or circumscribes
more quickly than words like 'priest' or 'guru.'

5
The only DNA your dust matches
is that of Jesus Christ. Shit, the coroner said,
today even Nevada is grail country.

6
Cling to the word 'God'
like it was worth 100 points in a game of Scrabble.
Hold on to Him
like we could lose Him at any moment.
When I see birds everywhere
I know there is no end in sight
of me or the God I am told
I could become once this town
is no longer big enough
for the two of us.

7
The ego is no more valuable
than Christ's foreskin
and ten thousand times
harder to lose.
Bet on Foreskin
in the first at Pimlico
this sabbath Sunday.

8
Like you, I was waterboarded
in a baptismal pool of sorrow
immersed in Arctic tap waters and
forced to admit to sins I was never guilty of
by men who knew the shame
of almost drowning would, over time,
be mistaken for cleansing.
Like you, I chose religion over revelation.
Like you, I prefer faith in Him
to the fact of Him. Like you,
only death seems able to stop us
from staying put in obdurate flesh.

9
Has anybody ever gone to Lourdes
and begged the Mother of God
to be cured of the congenital affliction
of duality? Has anybody asked
the crying statue of Scranton
to be restored
to that primal wholeness
hearts have no words for
other than the distant but devouring
scrape of butterfly wing
against temple bell?

--David Federman, December 30, 2007