Archives for February 2006

Neuhaus on the NAB Farkleberry

Mark Shea delves further into the farkleberry bush

Debris in space and perennial philosophy
Seem to me but asterisked footnotes
Orbiting in the dark disease of knowledge.
Professors of the law and nomadic billiard balls
Go bumping down dim corridors, cracking codes
And caroming into elevators of truth.
Sea gulls outside circle far from the sea.
The man in the tower shines his beacon
Over repetitious rocks on the repetitious sea.
Shadows fall but the sun rages at edge of day,
Day after dark day, crouching in its cage,
Numb claws grasping at skin and blood.
The scientific method measures height and width
And height and width again, but the scientist
Grows weary at his post and postulates his way
To the dark side of the moon to sleep
Among masked hordes of bestial initiates
In a cosmic dream-dance of unrequited love.
A woman sits rocking, stitching and unstitching
The hem of the wedding gown of the ages,
The longer and shorter, the abacus of infinity,
The swinging sickle, the prolonged postponement.
The sky is a terrible pavement where brakes fail,
Where any moment you might begin to slide.
The treadmill turns and the scroll of wisdom
Unravels into the night on self-recoiling springs
Until the wreckage is scattered in your sleep
And you wake drowning in dreams of circular arguments
Swirling in the nightmare of morning of another day.
In perpetual gradation of light and dark you pause
And try to put your finger on the shifting sore
Where time takes a breath to gather its wrath.
Driftwood corpses pile up on the shore.
You crawl there, smelling the salt air,
Asking alms for the poor, asking the dead
For a nickel, for a dime, for the end of time.

In general your condition is very good.
Doctors ring you up and all is well.
They love you, but are you therefore unafraid?

Around the corner swings a blade
That gleams in the anesthetic smell.
In general your condition is rather bad.

Passing voices whisper you are mad.
You see them in the mirrors on the wall.
They love you, but are you therefore unafraid?

When you go out you leave your bed unmade.
One writes your maiden name upon a shell.
In general your condition is rather good.

You’ve made a lovely mask of painted wood
Too many friends and people want to feel.
They love you, but are you therefore unafraid?

The angels play a song and very sad
Upon the universe’s shattered bell.
In general your condition is very bad.
They love you, but are you therefore unafraid?

Burning my fire in the sun,
I lose control and kill
Not just myself but everyone.

I’m only joking, only having fun.
See how I light this twenty-dollar bill,
Burning my fire in the sun.

This morning day had blazingly begun.
I told the night nurse we were ill –
Not just myself but everyone.

She smiled and said, “I gotta run,”
Got in her car and swallowed a pill,
Burning her fire in the sun.

Her wheels turned and the hubcaps spun.
I watched her from my bed until
Not just herself but everyone

Disappeared from God’s creation,
Dissolving as the ashes spill,
Burning their fires in the sun,
Not just themselves but everyone.