| |
AT RIVERSIDE CHURCH, SUNDAY, JANUARY
20, 2002
after Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
We are music we
are word children of God
caught heart kaleidoscope hand
in worship
an open globe space
inescapable human race a
network for one love face
of a cloud clearing you I
mutuality eyes sky
tied waiting for wind
in spire turned minds
a kingdom for all time a
single clock tick synchronous
garment on eternity's skin a circle
of dream spun
destiny.*
* excerpt from Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s
"Letter from Birmingham Jail," April 16, 1963
God sits
at
his work station
holding a jar
marked JERKS.
The caption reads: And now
to make this a little more
interesting… I can laugh
at this, the joke I will tell
when I talk about the slick
pickpocket job on my wallet
while walking through the subway turn
stile or tunnel, about the
kid from the projects
near the neighborhood
center, who called me bitch
bitch and mister the day I went
to teach poetry, how I don't give
two shits about her gender confusion because today
I hate New York, I hate
the pothead dancer up
stairs who cranks bad punk
and rearranges her furniture
nightly, I hate
the people who stop
and stand at the subway train door
when the whole damn car
is empty, I hate
the vagrants
asking for change, their hungry
gloves, their empty eyes, I hate
this empty
thick
air.
o
God
sits
at his work station
dispensing lessons.
Me he positions under
ground, a smart mouse
in a concrete maze empty
of found surrender, the sound
of my bag's zipper, the heartless
hand in, its stealthy
cutting out.
We are not alone in our stolen ache;
a poet friend was mugged just outside
his home, his human kind words lost
on two kids asking for the time:
Please just give me back my notebooks.
Do we not even own our poems, these mammoth
crumbs we feed some hunger with?
o
God
sits
at his work station
putting ideas into people's
heads. I dare to guess
the moves of the grand master:
Will I meet my life mate
in the DMV's license-replacement line?
Will he be the one who finds
the cleaned bone of my wallet, of me?
Tell me, please, I am ready
to greet the bottoms of these winged
feet, I am waiting for the weary
hurt that will lead to my one true love, lead
to some loamy soul or lone mountain wood, tell me,
where is the ground for this mad tearing out?
After Watching Oliver Stone's Film JFK
What is past is prologue.
They couldn't have known they'd end up
dead against the dirty edge of a city sidewalk,
some with blinked-out lights atangle in their
branches,
needle-bare or browned, these forsaken corpses
of Christmas past. Just a couple weeks ago, how bright
and upright they were - Douglas and Balsam fir, white
pine, Colorado blue spruce - holding fort on every
street
corner like idle soldiers green for some action. Every
year
it's the same thing
with pumpkins in September, waxy orange orbs harvested
for Halloween stoops, maybe a homemade pie, but most
end up
sunk in their own broken faces, fruitrot for flies, or
smashed for laughs
by a puckish bunch of kids just in time
for pilgrims & turkeys smiling from front doors,
windows
& all the trimmings crowded out by Salvation Army
Santas
& shopping-day countdowns.
O,
Christmas tree, say you didn't know, didn't know your
time
would come fast, cast aside for candy & cupids & every
twist
of heart, and every heart in turn discarded
for pots of gold & shamrocks hiding
little green men swearing luck.
Marj Hahne has recently relocated from Philadelphia to
NYC to pursue her poetic muse. She is a frequent
enthusiastically received performer and has toured the
United States presenting her work in her own elegant,
off-book reading style. Marj will be teaching at the
IWWG summer conference this year, and has a reading
tour of Texas presently in the works. Her two
chapbooks, "Remembrance (for September 11, 2001)" and
"Finding What Hides" are gems, both in quality of
writing and quality of their handmade production.
Write to Marj
if you're interested in buying a copy of one -- or
both. |