My Ineffable, La Petite Mort

Last harvest moon I prayed for rain

And my prayer was answered

With the precipitation of a samba

On the old haunts of the east

It came in like the devil

Had fled the western oppression of His soul

A dance that knew no bounds

Before the dark stares

Of God fearing reasons

And I the advocate

Draw from a deep well inside

That no matter how glorious the heavens poured

No matter how proximately my prayers were answered

My banishment would mark their faith

Brand the intellect

For all the reasonable persons

Whom believe in perfection

And never fill my soul

So that I could always stand opposed

With only the shadows of rain to guard me

To leave me to cleanse the debauchery

In the washes of the afterthought

The channels of the desert

That hold the precipitous flow of the mountains

With unwavering consistency

Arid lands never shed a tear

And sometimes we need to dwell here

To purify our lust for the heart

To revel in the falling of the heavens

The squander of the beauty

Writing my body into the night

Dancing with the ghosts of Loves past

And the shadows on the wall

Hollow shells of what was once a moment

Now an incorporated personhood

Reasonably consistent in its allowance of emotion

Asexual complacency

The calm hunger of the lion on the savannah

Just waiting for the right time to run

To flee the carnal oppression of his wisdom in a feast

And to speak as if the possibility of losing thy mind

Were some well of intoxication

A reason distracted by a deep Love

Drawing from the madness

The rationalization of the status quo

As that which is the canvas

To paint new life upon

Wash out the dirt and the rubbish

The psychological infrastructure

Whose categories oppress the new light of things

Cast upon the composition of history

As things come to past tend to nothing

Hold their light and carry their shadows

An itinerant chiaroscuro

The elegant desert hand drops the glass

In an august flight of angels

For the devil tied to the bottom of the well

Must mimic in His dance

And I the advocate do dance alone

With all the spirits of the angels with me

And all the Love I’ve ever been

Exudes the apathy of desperation

To be one and the same with dreams

Unfolding in the motions

What might we throw in our Love

To catch with our reasons

To carry us beyond the lakes that feed the well

Out to seas that never cared

That never left us in contempt

But left us filling our desert with an ocean

And eroded the well of our souls in saline

Gave a light kiss from the rim of a glass

Which fell to the floor in such a way

That only the stem had cracked

And internally

To leave the piece unscathed

A newly embodied perfection

Save for the scar of western history

A God faintly calling from the heavens

Whilst from the bowl

Pours the seven deadly sins

Into the gullets of the devils

The spirits whose salvation

Seeks a better end

Than to live forever in the cradle

Of abstracted personhood

Than to hold a child’s lullaby

At the essence of the heart

That rather Loves so full

Would dance to foot with God well grounded

And carry Her off to bed

Where then she might enjoy the pleasure

Of dying just a little death

Insofar as the rhythms of the universe

Would ever give a damn


Jason Greendyk, www.jasongreendyk.com