The Story and Its Gestalt

Evidently, we need not be angels to appreciate
the blue depth of sky or how gravity operates,
that some burden is always pulling us down, down.
Still our allegedly tarnished souls sleuth around
for clues to an immunity against dreaded damnation,
still listen for the rattling of gates, any indication
that the irksome abstinence and insistent praying
were not in vain, that the effort expended obeying
holy laws was not squandered. And just think if all
of it was wasted under a myth’s tyranny—small
children fighting natural urges to fidget in hard pews,
the horny choir members convinced not to “abuse”
their imperfect temples, gospel bubbling up in them
like magma as the preacher moans another Amen.

Hello Halo

Now this I’ve never understood:
this reward we’re constantly told
to strive for, this thing that’s like
a bright frisbee, a flattened sun,
like a glazed donut hovering above
our unworthy heads to sweeten
the memories of our distasteful lives.
And the rule books are inexcusably
vague, so who exactly gets to be
reborn as the golden bird? Who
becomes the salt statue or the flesh
briquet burning in the doomed lake?
It seems implausibly sadistic that we
would be given these promiscuous
eyes, these hinged mouths, and yet
expected to keep them closed as
we move through the garden.
Seriously, how long were we expected
to tolerate innocence with that forked
tongue licking our naïve ears so sweetly,
with such emptiness growling in us and
so much ripe fruit dangling within reach?

Notes on the Predator-Prey Relationship

Until the danger is a scant
few yards away, the grazing
antelope ignore the lion
lumbering toward them
with purpose in its jaws.
And it is this fatal allowance
that the lion, deceptively
slow arrow, relies on:
that it will be granted
a grace period wherein
it can drag its heavy
hunger nearer. Though
alarmed, the antelope herd
just watches as the distance
between growling need
and fulfillment decreases,
as fate stalks the veldt
like a blossoming sirocco.

When my mother first felt
the dark fruit of her cancer
growing in her abdomen,
she continued on with
her daily routine—
frying pork chops in her
purple house dress, reading
her cherished mystery
novels, playing dominoes
with her dear grandsons—
thinking, like a doomed antelope,
that a setting sun is just that,
not a tragic herald,
not a dim omen,
concluding, with sincere
but misplaced modesty,
Not every bell heard
is necessarily tolling for you.