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Tuesday, August 10, 2010

My First Day As Messiah

Yes, Virginia, Jesus drank some of the wine he provided for those weddings. And you haven't lived until you try his tuna salad. In the mean time, a poem about the self I seem to be these days.



MY FIRST DAY AS MESSIAH

1
My feet can't seem to touch the ground.
Even in Gucci loafers
I feel barefoot and bidden to love. However,
I could use a pedicure.

2
The store-bought cucumber shines like a mint Double eagle.
I'm living in a Vemeer painting.
As my mother once said, and only once,
"Today even I feel beautiful."

3
I am given a choice of forebodings
and guaranteed a clairvoyant's absolute certainty
with either of them. I can predict
the worst down day in Wall Street history
or that my girl friend's urgent surgery
will be completely successful.

4
Once I have chosen
I notice there is no news
of a wedding massacre in Pakistan
or any roadside bombings in Afghanistan.
I keep waiting for a mood-mangling headline,
then my girlfriend says,
"I feel no pain today.
Let's fill the void with pleasure."

5
The whole world feels like pleasure.
There is no before and after.
There's no beginning or end.
We are waving to one another
in perpetual deja vu.
I know everybody from some place
and they know me. I feel like a photograph
kept on everybody's person--
you know the one:
that bemused guru's picture pasted on the fare meter
of every Hindu taxi in Mumbai,
or folded 100 times into a Muslim's billfold
to present a simulacrum of the formless.
In any case, the bent savior's semblance now serves
to simulate an insect's honeycombed view
of the incarnation.

6
God is speaking. Something in bird language
only cats can discern. Something the wind scratches
on the dried summer parchment of a thousand leaves.
All this talk about grails gets on his nerves
I imagine my wise old aunt Sophie saying.
A grail is a water glass
her husband says sounding like Jean Cocteau.
I take it from there by thinking
If you live long enough
you can leave your dentures in it overnight
then chew on your dreams the next morning.
When you put them back in your mouth
they leave no sign they spent the night shining in water
and lighting the world. Hell,
it's what any self-respecting object would do
given half a chance
to live up to its name.

7
Time to disembark heaven.
Time to quit hell.
Time to be moored to earth
which is the main land in between.
Driving on the isthmus bridge
with bright bay waters on both sides
as blinding as a sherif's badge,
I am summoned by blaze and brilliance
to ubiquitous second chances
in the first, filial world.
Squint gives way to scan.
I am deputized in the name of
sight, sound and smell.
Some dashboard voice tells me
to pay back blue to the heavens
where God is said to be hiding
(if you think him silly enough
to stand separate from the scenes he imagines).
Some radio announcer
commands me to pay back green to the earth
where I will be buried
(when the soul has drained this cup).

8
Somewhere in the same world I am enjoying
a bulldozer is prowling an orchard grove
looking for walls that are no match for brute force.
After the demolition its engine purrs
uprooted trees an offering of sorts
mice to be ridden for the men of these parts.
It just wouldn't be an opportune day on earth
without an eviction of a family
whose scripture must be proven wrong
so that others reciting from a competing compendium
of myth, madcap and hearsay
may be entitled to thank god for the hillside view.
The haves and the have-nots long
for a seventh-day world
where their children can meander safely
no way on earth that leads to loss.
But for now midnight comes two hours early
called curfew as long as any olives picked
are the spoils of war.

9
Each cardiogram, each x-ray
is a small craft warning
in no need of heeding.
Not today anyway.
Today is your lucky day.
Same as yesterday.
Only now you know
what every Father's son is supposed to know
each consecutive day since inception
of life in a land promised to men
that has no taint of forfeit from other men.
The dish shards you sweep up this morning
come from the plate you threw last night
at the invisible wall
between the I and thou
whose most familiar pairing is husband and wife.
The names you screamed this morning
are twinned to the ones you whispered last night
to a comely, obliging goddess.
All this loving and hating
keep you busy
in an endless mercy of
on-the-job training.

--David Federman, Ardmore, August 7-10, 2010


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