I SUMMON DANTE

I SUMMON DANTE

 

I summon Dante Milton Goethe

Mephistopheles and Marlowe

to help me dig a new ditch in hell

to bury these one-balled squalid

child-molesters against abortion

chained to the gates of creation

the gates of heaven

the gates of hell

the gates of a woman

like underfed flesh-eating pitbulls

grown wafer-thin on the blood of a wise man

who said suffer the little children to come unto him

and didn’t mean practise your perversions upon them

while teaching them they were born into original sin.

How in the name of such beauty gentleness and compassion

as that which flowed like poetry in action

from the fountain heart of Christ

and was as clear and easy as water to understand

have these black morticians of the flesh and spirit

who hate women

who hate the mother of men

who hate Eve for the mitocondrion

that traces them like a genome

all the way back to her

not pre-Vatican bone-age Adam

come like dark disapproving guests

to the house of light

to change the water and wine

into an oilslick that blights whatever blooms

of its own accord

at these weddings in the orchards of life

for the past two millenia?

I’m thinking of a specific Catholic bishop

who just recently excommunicated

a courageous nursing nun

on a hospital board of directors

who approved of an abortion

though it contravened her beliefs

to save a mother’s life

or else they were both lost.

This asshole thinks

that two deaths are better than one

and denied her heaven

and the rites of the church she’s served

for thirty years

as an eternal punishment

for genuine compassion

while the child molesters

who got caught trying to teach choir boys

how to pray perversely on their knees before them

are transferred to another parish by the pope

to save the good name of the church

by sacrificing children to a vow of silence

as abysmal as the maw of Baal

that must sound in God’s ears

if she’s still listening

like the hissing of this black snake

in an eagle’s nest

or a manger in Bethlehem

just before it’s struck

like the last false note

of a two-tined tuning fork by the lightning

of an outraged mother defending her young.

Think about it.

Think about the pomposity

hypocrisy and arrogance of this man

the meaness and pettiness of this man

who’s never fathered a child

who’s never made love to a woman

who’s never put bread on the table

not a fish not a loaf

though he thrives like yeast

on the crumbs of the last supper

and drinks blood from the vine

of someone else’s lifeline

like a vampiric cannibal

and then rolls the stone away

from the tomb of death

all the way over to the other side of the room

to block the womb of a woman

so he can forget he was born of a mother.

Now imagine God going Ya ya that’s what I meant.

Damn up the wellsprings of life

like an imperial Roman aqueduct

with Constantinian credal cement

and call it the rock of religion.

Think of this little microbe of a man

clinging to the planet earth

like a bacterium on a moss-covered stone

among two billion stars

in this galaxy alone

among two billion more galaxies

in an infinite multiverse

actualizing every permutation and combination

of being and non-being and beyond

in the hyperspace

of a sublime imagination

that creates without design

out of fractals of white light

in the undetectable ebb and flow of dark matter

things without form like the human mind.

And this little man’s got a rule

and a rod and a school

and a church

and a creed

and a way of life

that isn’t a search for anything

as he opens his mouth

like a polyp in the Great Cosmic Barrier reef

that tears the hull out of the moon as it passes over

and presuming to speak for God

as his collar flares

like the hood of a spitting cobra

squirting venom into the eyes of life

as if the dark mother

that gives birth to everything

were an open wound

and not the thriving sea that surrounds him

aborts her embryonic afterlife with a coathanger

in the sleazy back-alleys of his hydrophobic belief.

And what do you think?

When Jesus said to Peter

putting his hand upon his shoulder

upon this rock I will build my church

making a pun of Peter’s name light-heartedly

he meant go forth

and establish in my name

the biggest closet in the world

for child-molesters against abortion?

And should the occasion arise

like Solomon trying to decide

how to divide the baby

like the wish-bone of a harp

condemn both the mother and the child to death

to uphold the sacro-sanctity of life.

Can you picture that?

Can you picture Jesus unlocking his jaws

like this serpent

to swallow the cosmic glain whole

and disgorging the shell from his mouth

like a parachute that candled on its way to earth

after the fall

claim it’s the incarnate word

of the new master of life and death

that will hatch like a bird in the afterlife

if only you learn to hold your breath back

like the wind from the open sky long enough

to take the maggot out of your eye

and make a feathered angel fit for heaven

out of a housefly raised on carrion?

And what’s with this St. Paul guy

who said it’s better to marry than burn in hell?

How’s that for a wedding bell?

What kind of hateful reverse

of all things natural is it

that turns the eyelids of the rose inside out

and curses its own birth

like family and blood

in a loveletter to death

without a return address

by casting a spell over sex

like a two thousand year old eclipse of the moon

accusing his own shadow

of being the other face of her dark side

and then marrying his evil daughter off

like the guilty bride of a church betrothed to Jesus?

If you’re looking through a glass darkly now

here where everything is crystal clear

and spatially pure

maybe you’re not burning bright enough

maybe you were never lamp and fire

star and furnace enough

to keep from smearing the mirror

with your own dark soot

like a man who squints at the stars like a blackhole

and then goes back to reading a book

like one long last paginated look

into the secret valleys of hell

that flock like wolves in sheeps clothing

to the blind shepherds on the world mountain

groping their way into heaven

like the Oedipal children of a flawed father

who denies ever sleeping with their mother

like a perjured myth of origin

denying the laws of evolution

in the creationist confessional

of a mutated gene

fingering the beads of a rosary

like the names of God on a chromosome

as punishment for the happy sin of its own DNA.

O mea culpa! O mea felix culpa!

That I was born of a woman

who held my life in her hands

like the fruit of the earth in autumn

and the blossoms of spring in the rain

and that the breath within the breath of life

she imparted to me

like the living spirit of light

that falls freely on all of us alike

like radiant sentience in all directions

doesn’t keep a lightning rod

or weathervane on her roof

or a bishop or guard-dog

at the gate of her womb

snarling like a three-headed Cerberus

in the backseat of a hearse

that took a wrong turn for the worst

on its way to the cemetery

where the dead who think

they legislate for the living

like a Texas schoolboard

rewriting gravestones

give up their holy ghosts

like the relics of Pre-Cambrian fossils

between the pages of the Burgess Shales

as the five billion year old holy book

of life on the planet

contradicts them

like the writing on the wall.

A germinal species

whose apheliotropic view of life

like a black note in a white hymn

on American Idol

went terminal under the knife.

 

PATRICK WHITE

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

for a germinal species

whose apochraphyl hymn to life

went terminal.