the poetrysheet
whimsy, subversion, monotremes
Number 511, February 3,
2005
A. Wilbur Stevens
(1921-1996)
“An idea, a relationship, can go extinct, just like an animal or a
plant.”
—Bill McKibben, The End of Nature
From: Patrick Dobson <poetrysheet@earthlink.net>
Date: Sat, 29 Jan 2005 10:15:43 -0600
To: "daviddechant@juno.com"
<daviddechant@juno.com>
Subject: infestation
Funny, ain't it, how a person under the
spell can confuse just being a human with being one of "them"? I
received this E-mail from a student yesterday:
---
Patrick -- I love having you in our class
- I have a question - were you worshiping in your office (dancing)? Dr.
mentioned something about you dancing this morning.
You radiate Jesus.
Just Curious.
---
Yes, I had been dancing. I was in my
office before class with headphones hooked into the computer--they Might Be
Giants after some stress about what the kid is going to do this summer (seems
everyone is convinced we have a vault of money to spend on camp).
There was groove, which some might call
serious, semi-eye-closed groove. The professor walked into my office looking
for me just before class. "You caught me," I said. He was giggling.
"I admit it. I was dancing," I said.
Funny. Ha. Ha. A good laugh. Some humor.
But I wonder if this kind of assumption, that grooving, being a good human, has
something to do with Jesus, is more robbery than compliment. I’ve been robbed
of the ability to be an actor and told that Jesus is the source of my
“radiation.” That God, a god no one is really sure exists, animates me. (Sure,
there’s a lot of faith, and there’s much to be said for that. But faith is a
different animal altogether.)
And I’m not so sure I want people who
don’t trust their god to let things evolve, or who need simple, human
explanations for such divine things as plate tectonics, the Red Shift, and
evolutionary embryology tell me who animates me.
It’s not that I’m better, or believe I
know. Rather, I believe I don’t know, and maybe it’s my business to figure
these things out.
What’s worse, I suppose, is that
“worship” bothers me as word and a concept. It implies supplication,
subordination, inferiority. To be in a position to worship, one must be
separate from that being worshiped. I can no more be separate from sunshine or
thunderstorm or earth below me than I can be separate from the air that gives
me life. In other words, I am of this physical, mental, and spiritual world and
it is of me. Or, in even simpler terms: I am as much god as it is me.
Even these words, the ones I'm writing
now to relate the joy of losing myself in angry, playful music. These words are
of me. But as a river is of the earth it flows over, the words change me in a
elliptical relationship between thought, me, act of writing and revising--each
of the other and working with the other to change and form the other.
Words can be separate for some people,
and when they are separate, they are can be dangerous. The elliptical
relationship is gone. A formative one takes its place. Words form the malleable
mind. The mind use words as mere tools to manipulate and project.
Words have led this student who loves my
Jesus radiation to believe that my sitting-in-my-chair-with-my-eyes-closed
groove was worship to the same god she believes in. Did she come to this
conclusion herself? What does it mean to radiate Jesus? A decent mood? Being
helpful and kind? A lifetime of experience that has built a cheerful way of
dealing with a world that may very well be indifferent to the individual?
Regardless, I think I radiate all the
time, regardless of her messiah. Most people think so, although some of those
Catholics at daughter’s school are afraid to talk to me because I'm such a
weirdo. When I dance around naked for Virginia, doing an erotic dance (a
neurotic dance), she sometimes seems to think so.
Yours in revelations,
Rev. Patrick
P.S. Virginia seems to think the student has a crush on me. If so, maybe she'd like to see the golden staff.
-----
From: "daviddechant@juno.com"
<daviddechant@juno.com>
Date: Sun, 30 Jan 2005 06:37:23 GMT
To: poetrysheet@earthlink.net
Subject: Re: infestation
You radiate Jesus.
Jesus is a guy at my work that cleans up
vomit if ever there is any.
I hate Jesus. Oh, not that Jesus.
A different one.
Yeah, that gal is hot for teacher. Perhaps you can lay your pearly rosary
around her supple breast.
Genuflect her a couple of times.
Rev. Dave
This time of year
By Thomas Zvi Wilson
The maples will soon unfurl
while the oaks let loose last
summer's leaves in wind.
Our black walnuts will show
off late as always.
Squirrels somersault,
run marathons, cling to trees.
Choirs of birds serenade.
Our porch of redwood, though,
it will no longer bud, nor will we.
We rock and creak arpeggiated,
hearing all of it.
First published in The Mid-America Poetry Review, Summer-Autumn 2003
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