April 1976 [HTML]

INTEGRITY

GAY EPISCOPAL FORUM

c Integrity 1976 ISSN: 0095-2184

Vol. 2 No. 6 April 1976

INTEGRITY: GAY EPISCOPAL FORUM is the official newsletter of Integrity, Inc., a nonprofit religious, charitable, educational, and literary organization. Editorial correspondence should be addressed to 701 Orange Street, No. 6, Fort Valley, GA 31030. Subscriptions, address changes, etc., should be addressed to INTEGRITY, P.O. Box 2516, Chicago, IL 60690. The national president should be addressed at P.O. Box 28424, Central Station, Washington, DC 20005. All materials represent the views of the contributors, not those of the organization. Editors reserve the right to revise all sexist language. Copyright 1976 by Integrity, Inc. 10 issues/$10, including membership. Add $1 for all subscriptions that require plain envelopes. Couple rates are $13 for one newsletter. Copies of earlier numbers, when available, are $2.50. Volume 1 is out of print.

Editor..................................... Louie Crew, Ph.D.

Contributing Editor............. The Rev. Michael G. Koonsman

Contributing Editor..................... Robert Ragland, M.D.

National President.............................. Jim Wickliff

National Vice President.............................. Dan Fee

National Executive Secretary....................... Bob Diehm

Guest Editor this poetry issue............. John Soldo, Ph.D.

Trustees: Ernest Clay, Louie Crew, Julie Peterson,

The Rev. Richard Younge

Consultants:The Rev. Malcolm Boyd, The Rev. Robert W. Cromey, The Rev. Norman Pittenger

--------------------------------------------

SPECIAL POETRY ISSUE edited by John J. Soldo

--------------------------------------------

A CLOSET COLLECT

Oh Lord, to whom all hearts are open, from whom no secrets are hid, bless those of us who are constrained to hide our Gay identity. By your spirit, lead us away from all abusive uses of this concealment. Challenge us with covert opportunities to serve Gay sister and brothers, so that together we all may hasten the day when your kingdom will come on earth, even as it is in heaven. AMEN l.c.

VESTRY ASKS INTEGRITY FOUNDER TO LEAVE HIS OWN PARISH

Fort Valley, GA. The Vestry of St. Luke's Church here have written to communicant Dr. Louie Crew telling him: "We would all be pleased if you would find some other place of worship that may be more in sympathy to your thinking and efforts towards Gay people."

Louie Crew and his lover Ernest Clay are the founders of INTEGRITY.

The Vestry's letter also attempted to disestablish Dr. Crew's communicant status in the parish on grounds that the letter of transfer which they had received in the fall of 1973 was not a "formal" letter, but only a hand-written note.

The Rt. Rev. Bennett Sims, Bishop of Atlanta, has cleared "the technicality" by directing that a formal letter of transfer be sent to St. Luke's from St. Peter's in Rome (GA), where Dr. Crew was confirmed in October 1961 by The Rt. Rev. R.R. Claiborne.

At no time has Dr. Crew ever asked St. Luke's to address itself in support towards Gay Christians, nor has he ever publicly introduced the subject at Church gatherings here. He did once volunteer to the chairperson of the Vestry that he would be willing to explain the national ministry of INTEGRITY, noting that doing so would not be to proselytize, but rather to help remove some of the mystery and suspicion reportedly circulating in the parish. Dr. Crew's letter was never answered.

Dr. Crew continues to make his Communion at St. Luke's quietly and peacefully, with the desire that he and all others be treated equally as Children of God.

BRIEFS

INTEGRITY members in the Diocese of Springfield are urged to contact Don Melvin (510 S. University Avenue, Rm. 18, Carbondale, IL 62901) in an effort to coordinate a Gay witness for the forthcoming diocesan synod.

INTEGRITY members everywhere are urged to make each Communion possible between now and General Convention with the intention that God will use this witness to turn the hearts of some otherwise hostile bishop or delegate. (From Fr. Bill)

One Gay clergyperson in INTEGRITY is interested in collecting letters for a volume of same from Gay clergy and counselors -- letters that would "make the case" for Christian Gays and counseling Gay people in the Church. Contact through the Editor in Ft. Valley.

TOWARDS GENERAL CONVENTION

Philadelphia. Approximately twenty persons met here for two days, 28-29 March, at the home of Fr. Ron Wesner, to plan for INTEGRITY's witness at General Convention.

Fr. Wesner is chairperson of INTEGRITY's committee for General Convention. He urges all interested persons to get in touch with him: 5014 Willows Ave., Phila., PA 19143.

The Committee particularly needs money. Several chapters are planning events to raise dollars for this occasion, and individuals are also urged to contribute.

The Committee is also looking for volunteers to person the booth, which we have already rented. The Committee stressed three particular standards for such persons: they should be happy being Gay, happy being Christian, and happy being articulate.

The Committee would also welcome input from persons who have been active in previous General Conventions, and from persons who will be there this time and willing to help, even if only behind the scene.

Mr. Dick York (contact via INTEGRITY/Boston, Box 2582, Boston 02208) has agreed to serve as political coordinator for General Convention.

The Committee particularly encourages persons to work at the diocesan level to inform all delegates of our Gay Christian witness, to alert them to decisions affecting us which will be before them at Convention, and to share with Fr. Wesner and the Committee the pertinent details of such efforts, the better to keep us all informed of what has yet to be done.

TOWARDS OUR OWN CONVENTION

San Francisco. The INTEGRITY second annual convention will be held at the historic Trinity Church here on 6-8 August.

Organized in July 1849, Trinity Parish was the first Episcopal church on the west coast and is honored as the "mother church" of the California dioceses. Because of its long tradition of missionary concern and outreach, Trinity was one of the first sites considered for the Convention meetings by the host Chapter. According to The Rev. Hugh L. Weaver, Rector of Trinity, the Vestry seemed very happy to be able to assist INTEGRITY in this way when the matter was discussed with them informally.

Arrangements for Convention scheduling and speakers, and for housing and travel plans, are being completed and will be announced shortly. For more information, contact INTEGRITY/San Francisco, P.O. Box 6444, San Jose, CA 95150.

Also, short papers on topics of interest to the Convention are being solicited from the membership and other interested persons. Such papers, it is anticipated, could be printed and made available to the Convention delegates and possibly printed in the Convention journal.

-----------------------------------------------------------------

For those interested in statistics, the FORUM renewal rate on 1st April stood a 79.24%. TELL OTHERS ABOUT US !

-----------------------------------------------------------------

PROLOGUE BY JOHN SOLDO, GUEST EDITOR

It would be presumptuous for me to attempt to define the "Gay Christian experience." I suggest, rather, a close reading of the poems that follow for certain parameters of that experience. I have grouped the poems together in an order that the works themselves suggest. First are a series of love lyrics; some are tender, others are humorous, while many, to be expected, lament the loss of love. Here the Gay element is particularly poignant. Some poets make deft use of the vocabulary of religious ideas to be delightfully sacrilegious, while others use their poems as sincere cries for respectability and acceptance. In many of these poems, one senses a new theology is being fashioned, one that celebrate the love of man for man and woman for woman. A correlative to this new theology is an apocalyptic vision shared by some of our writers: a renewing of one element of the Christian vision of personhood brings on a vision of the end of things. The final poems are on the classic theme of Orpheus. The first, written by a straight female in love with a Gay male, was included for it is also part of the "Gay Christian experience."

FROM 108 VERGES UNTO NOW

#59

I lean in his face

and bury my love in his hunger:

he cannot receive me,

he will not believe.

I leap into his doubt

and drown myself

in the sweat of his thirst.

When I awaken, I cannot remember

the life I had dreamed,

for the life I remember

is this dream awake in my belly,

crying to be coughed up

on a white beach

near some stuttered name

of a town

and my name is his

in whose thirst I am

drowned.

--Will Inman

Tucson, AZ

MONTANA

Perhaps we should think of another word for the way we make love. Montana might do it;

Montana, a place I'd never been

wide and handsome.

Montana in the evening. Montana before dinner.

"Montana?" (in front of your mother)

Montana in the West, never setting. Montana, first you

then I, Montana. I Montana, you Montana. He she it Montanas.

They all Montana.

And Montana unfurls and reclines:

He is an arabesque in darkness.

He glows in a smoky luxury.

He is a man; he is between us.

I awake in the warmth.

I greet you,

Montaaana!

Perry Brass

NYC

LYRIC I

Seeding the azure

out

of the Sky,

and suddenly planting it

into your eyes,

I stop-

and look on you less commonly,

more epochal, archetypal;

as statues of the gods

spun to life

are occasionally mistaken

as men,

until

they reveal some purple magic-

then travel

through the air

like fire sparks.

--Perry Brass

NYC

I MEET MYSELF

I meet myself in dangerous places:

shaken; on a pier at night that juts into the water

the moon,

sectioned like a peach overhead, and behind me

a charge of assassins; a school of lovers.

I'm afraid I can't tell them apart anymore,

but would I recognize my own father

under such circumstances if my

memories of him after fifteen years simply

thawed him out of his dark hammock?

that my own experience will not be repeated,

but approximated by various persons

of this or some other generation,

who leave home early and flounder

on the same paths to self-recognition,

always seeking a miasmic face

that sleeps behind the eyelids,

always

opening the door to a new closet,

expecting a changed creature to walk out,

his face a dazzler.

--Perry Brass

NYC

LYRIC 4

I will keep you

in my pocket like the pulse

of my wrist.

One day

I will slit your lips with my fingers

letting escape a song,

and rub your hair to release

its vivid fragrance.

Then I will suck the wind

that blows through your lungs

and taste the air between us.

--Perry Brass

NYC

PIRATE

There is a pirate not leveled by the night

sleep does not allay him

nor detain him.

I wake up and feel him,

sometimes half-wittedly, turn;

and he rolls his body away:

he is the ghost of pain, of absence--

I would clutch him

and rip the sheets off heaven

If only he would blink; scream back at me once.

then he goes, bloodthirsty truant

out to sea, embarking on the tides

always sliding from the nearest touch

when I awake and see his face

for an instant, But he whips

off again on a breeze of entreaties

scattering his hair in my face

and he's off.

--Perry Brass

NYC

PACIFIC SHORE

(for Michele)

It was one minute past

the irritation of oysters

where deep in their hairless dreams

sand sculptures filled with hymns

to wet the sea.

Rain broke in braille

against her dandelion and twig-weed shore.

Her moons were strung like beads

to stir the fury of the tides.

Our footprints crumbled.

Rubbed by naked water

their secrets spilled

until closed shut.

God went up in a shout;

willow and thigh arched

like ornaments to catch the sun.

We were small and worn to the sand.

Something ln the long-boned sea

knew we were children of water

twisting to new form.

--Fredrick Zydek

Omaha, NE

BE NOT FORGETFUL TO ENTERTAIN STRANGERS:

FOR THEREBY SOME HAVE ENTERTAINED ANGELS UNAWARES.

Going to the AP

I saw him on the corner,

wet, soggy shoes,

torn, thin jeans,

a flimsy jacket,

his back hunched

to wind-blown snow.

Coming back I had two heavy sacks

and a six pack,

I offered him breakfast

if he'd tote a bag.

He showered after eating,

washed his shorts,

shampooed his hair

and dried it, combed it,

brushed it till it fell

on his shoulders,

a burnished blonde cascade.

In the afternoon, naked,

we listened to music,

sipped wine, tasted

and touched each other.

He might be weak,

I thought from cold and hunger,

but he was charged

with eery potency

like white hot embers,

no frenzied fire, only heat.

Twice he knew me, gently

but wholly, relentlessly

kissed me and caressed me

into the energy of his passion

that demanded soul

as well as sex.

After supper

I asked him to sleep with me

and hold me in his arms

against the night,

but he was a wanderer,

he said, and had to go.

I gave him my duffle coat,

the lining gone,

but thick and hooded,

and watched him from the window.

He crossed Grove Street,

walked through a patch of light

into darkness, and did not turn,

did not look back.

--Rolf Tor Jarlson

NYC

WISHES TO TOUCH

Your shadow rests

damp upon my skin;

it seeps into me

like moon seeps

into its nest of day,

or tones the warm wind

sweetening at my thigh.

We seep into each other,

like wine to the host

whose sweet nectar

sweetens, like a moving fog

the hollow song

at the night's road end.

--Fredrick Zydek

Omaha, NE

MOON PALE

Pale boy moon pale

Lone moon pale

Hair in a moon sleeping tangle

He blurs into our gallery

From the stone weight of London

Mid evening he pulls out of his British sweater

A scarf of grey-white chiffon

Tucks it away

Before going back into strange streets

Disappears one night into moon nothing

We wonder if we only thought him here.

--Emily Glen

NYC

RELIGION

sex is the sacrament of sense

as communion is the sacrament of soul

(and both are spirit to the core)

--James M. Saslo

NYC

TANGLEWOOD

i find a sadness the same

now

as 5 years ago

& again i play the records you bought me

treading them like paths worn thru a forest

Rachmaninoff's Etudes Chopin's Preludes

Brahms' B-Flat Piano Concerto

& breathe the skin

that held me

only to be pushed

away yet again

& again to approach that music

persistent as cycles of blood & breathing

needing silence to be heard

needing you to listen

needing you

we traveled to hear the birds

together

as in a wish

we walked & walked

to hear a bird sing with Brahms' cello

& journeyed

away

--Ellen Marie Bissert

NYC

UNDERGROUND

only archeologists

can probe your feelings

can mine your veins

with their spades of fingers.

I will not

sift out your fragments

will not

weight my thoughts

with your stubbled face.

I will not follow

where cement rises in monument

will not be led by you

migrant in the agate orchard

eyes bruised as old fruit.

--Jerry Chadwick

Lake Forest, IL

OF TYPES AND THE RIGHT

Heinrich, my peasant-faced lawyer,

Another Bruegl born again

In the woodcut of your nose and chin,

Let me tell you why you I prefer.

I have seen what Madison Avenue

Projects in its slick photographs:

Exotic men who are giraffes,

Egos of style in all they do.

I have met some of the Leather Set

With boots and studs and jello jeans,

Who tend to love the hard and mean

But voice high-pitched like a poodle pet.

I have had the good fortune to know

Wealthy scions, endowed with stocks,

And saw them naked, without socks or rocks,

Then send them back to Ohio.

I've had the sense, carefully, to avoid

Nellies and queens, who twitch as they sew

Satin pantsuits for their thighs' tango,

Sliding over their hemorrhoids.

I am an eagle, not a hawk,

Therefore chicken, oh tender flesh,

Youth cream in their teens, ever precious,

Is a milk taboo like Jews and pork.

And though I refrain from wrinkle bars

Where men in their forties both lust

And reminisce, I, taken, trust

The clouds of flesh and eyes that are stars

Upon your face, common as the night,

Because I feel a joy within

That stables me like a fish's fin.

So come, net me with Bruegl delight.

--John J. Soldo

NYC

SAINT SEBASTIAN,

OR REFLECTIONS ON CATCHING SIGHT OF MYSELF

IN THE MIRROR AFTER INTERCOURSE

Washing my hands after the (F)act,

I am become a priest

consummating a sacr/art/ifice/ament.

my nakedness swells t(O!) the warmth of a w/hol(l)y man(tle)...

Why the hell am I consigned

to work/play priest and prophet

/f/ernal

for my own/t/ernal religion

when all I've ever desired

is to kneel

a passionate parishioner

and lovesuck the cock/breast of the (w)hole earth...?

s(O!), brother,

(morituri te salutamus!)

dick me, dick me, and dick me again--

you get your goddam orgasm

and I get my (w)rite

(want it or k/no/w)

to play God...

III

I am at the center

of a great golden sphere

piercing me (k)night and Dei

with light-arrows of sensation(al!);

willy-nilly,

the God of the Heart of the Pincushion:

the Androgyne of pass/act/ive inverted.

Bombard me as they will,

prick me with Cupid-shafts

of love(ly) (c/amino-)reality,

it is I, the locus(t),

buzzing and humming

as I bask in the warmth of those rays,

who must focus

all that impinges on the mind

of my mysterious Shinx(ter)...

For there are only reel priests, no real ones

of whom to beg this boon.

I am the sum of all that pierces me.

Yet I am both a part of all that,

and apart from all that:

a Klein bottle t(r)ying (its stomach in k/nots)

to transubstantiate myself

into the Other....

It is too, two easy

only to throw passes,

and tutu easy only to receive them;

but the Cosmic Pain in the Ass

is having both to play the field

and the newscaster

to the audience of my/self

all at On(c)e...

--James M. Saslow

NYC

FROM PORTRAITS

III

Wagner roars on the stereo.

Another German reclaims his past

As he creates his own synthesis

Of scene: a grandiose bed

That broke the night before from leaps

That cause it to sound like a bass drum;

Of myth: that brown, golden Nords

Mate best with oil, black gold,

A river bed feeling in the sack;

Of this gesture: baritone hands,

Fleshy, yet long, make touch tenor,

A sweep, uplift, from the toes to the crotch;

of poetry: simple lyrics --

"My hands are me" -- that make Wagner's

Nile long operas back water brakes;

And, yes, music: boyhood's laughter

Thru which the Muses speak this song:

"The music of love is the god's drama."

--John J. Soldo

NYC

LUXE, CALME

Set the prayerwheel where the fresh stream can turn it.

Let your tongue rest from God, let your hands rest.

Love is a burden hour by hour by hour.

Come sink your cool head on my careless breast.

Our eyes have rolled from earth to heaven and closed.

Our throats have swallowed flesh and spat up words.

Our cocks have knelt and spilled life on the ground.

Our minds have dimmed their songs like covered birds.

God waits in clockwork, clicking at mere this

That is no love--but let what else be later.

Tomorrow you may save yourself for death.

Let us float now like tired swimmers in water.

--Raeburn Miller

New Orleans

PERSEPHONE

Taut skin, soft muscle underneath--

your ass is a sacred pomegranate,

impenetrable, rosy, tempting,

yielding its sap and juicy bittersweets

only to the tongue that cleaves the Gordian Knot

of your Gates of Hell...

I descend into your inner darkness,

my Orphic prick the lyre that charms the dog.

--James Saslow

NYC

ARSON

perhaps a cigarette

fused those flames,

tainted the house

with its touch of furnace.

perhaps it was an accident

a mishap

that the bodies sprawl

more rigid than they ever could be,

that the neighbors sigh

"children

thank god there were no children!"

then snicker

"how could there be

we never saw them with women."

--Jerry Chadwlck

Lake Forest, IL

ECCO HOMO

Behold the queen bleeding beneath his thorns

coronated with a lancinating crown

richly robed in royal lavender

and reverenced with a smug ironic smirk.

Him the crowds spit on and the cops beat,

him they crucify upon a phallic cross.

After which replete and at their ease

they bow before their squat and grisly idols

crying "Jesus! Receive our offering of hate,

the first fruits given, our sons immolated on the altars,

delight we pray thee in this, our obscene oblation!"

But Jesus cannot hear them, for his limbs and eyes and ears

are strewn among the publicans, Samaritans and queers.

--Gene Qvist

Saratoga, CA

SO GREAT A CROWD OF WITNESSES

I have watched God take Her love

And squeeze it through a surgeon's

Precise line of vision to save

The heartbeat of a nonGay person

Who would probably vomit to know

That she'd been saved by a Lesbian.

I have heard God distill His grandeur

Through a Brother's Gay fingers

Opening organ pipes in dark

Ecclesiastical corners to make

Even a tired adulterer to

Tremble at the glory of the Queendom.

I have watched God twinkle in the

Eye of a teacher seducing bored minds

Away from Shaft or Mary Tyler Moore

Into NATIVE SON or a Renoir nude

Only to have God laughed at when

The student ossifies to say, "Teacher

Was just a harmless bit queer!"

And I have seen God grow bald to don

A wig and sequined flimsy gown and cruise

The streets even of small towns, laughing

Joyfully to be God, to understand creation,

To wait out the slow drainage of stupidity.

--Louie Crew

Fort Valley, GA

THE MALEDICTIONS

Unhappily we kneel ln Y's and johns,

for theirs is the Church Hall.

Unhappily we are arrested and thrown into

prison, for theirs is the law as well

as the court.

Unhappily are we called, queer, lezzy, punk,

faggot, nellie, queen....; for theirs is

the media.

Unhappily are we diagnosed as neurotic,

narcissistic, Oedipal, and "arrested";

for theirs is the therapy bill.

Unhappily are we accused of child molestation,

corrupting the young, and destroying the

family, for they are our mothers, our

fathers, our sisters and our brothers.

Unhappily are we tempted with rewards

for every time that we might betray

our sisters and brothers, for we are

spirit of their spirit, flesh for their flesh.

Unhappily are we comfortable and rich

and educated and integrated with nonGay

people, for we have had to hide the truth.

Unhappily we are praised for our sensitivity,

and for our artistry, and for our humor,

and for our intelligence, and for our

sweetness; we hurt and grow loudly angry,

for so humored they our Gay ancestors

before their genocide.

We are indeed the salt of the earth,

in a world sickening with saltlessness.

We are the light of the world, revealing

the secret places of the heart,

offering the first obvious witness of

what it is to be whole.

--Louie Crew

Fort Valley, GA

SON OF MAN

He was not a priest: he was a shaman.

He entered the bodies-and-souls

of men and of women

with words and with self.

He touched them, and

more virginal than ever they gave birth

to themselves.

Now he stands with me outside the mausoleum:

it will have nothing to do with him,

taking priests' dust and nosepickings for his

joyful vibrations.

How can we destroy that monstrosity? I ask him.

It destroys itself, he answers.

But don't you feel responsible? I challenge him.

No, he says: I generate life, I do not preserve it.

Did you really make love with John and Lazarus? I ask.

I loved -- and love -- many men, he says. And women, too.

I loved, and I love, in all the ways love can be shared.

But the Bible says -- I begin.

The Bible remembers, he interrupts me. But learn how

to remember the future: it works at the core of now.

Eternity grows at the marrow.

What does that mean? I demand.

He looks at me, from inside, shielded

with scornful love. Listen to your heartbeat,

he says. All your life, it is the sound

of your inmost being making love with me.

--Will Inman

Tucson, AZ

FROM 108 VERGES UNTO NOW

Always in boys' faces

I keep searching

for His Image

while He

inchoate but relentless

born

out of my own interior virgin

matrix.

Fredo and black Paul and Tony

and how many others still

put sculpting hands to my hunger

and give face to that One

who suffers passion

again and again

in the spiked crucifix of my

thighs.

--Will Inman

Tucson, AZ

WHAT DO THEY MEAN?

What do they mean by beginning again? The garden

dreaming slowly of how the gardener becomes himself?

When will the mouth bleed like a sign left out in the

rain saying something about salvation? Or can some

stroke from a distance still be salvaged? And the

clouds? The visited brow? The seven devils fought

like children, hand and foot, and will, even if you

hurry into town. The rain is starting again. We

had better hurry now. Coming on the clouds. The wind

fills your cheeks and stings your eyes. Save us, blind.

Does it matter what the lions taught Jerome? Or

Anthony the fishes? Is there in some wordlist of

salvation one clear word for the women of Jerusalem,

as many and as sad as the splinters of broken glass?

One word better than the many weakness speaks to

failure? Whose heart speaks at all the word for oil,

for medevack, for dust? The sound of his last kiss.

Save us, dumb.

What is it I take in your hands? My life? Yours?

Boiled flesh from the firepan? Or the battle?

Something blonde and antique like a dream? Was the

body bronze? Is mine? And when I say my hands are

empty, why should you believe me, whose hands are

full of salt and water and something more like what

than this? Are we really lost? Have we ever lied

so well before? Save us, fingertips scorched.

Where have you come from and where are you going?

If the mirror clouds over, however slightly, then

I deserve to be broken into pieces. And if one day

he returns what shall I tell him? Say that I waited

for him till I died of it. Say the golden bowl

is hung up at the well of the living one. Call it defacation.

If the other is routine and not a sign, call it ransom.

How little we believe.

In rest and in returning, four days after every day,

with broken wrists and bloodied hands, like a child

born out of someone else's death, how we are saved,

how we are saved.

--Michael Patrick O'Connor

Ann Arbor, MI

DEFROCKED

Beloved three-fold Love, attend my prayer:

While I remove this solemn, lying vesture

Which even now would style me a pastor

To those who have condemned what I desire

Who hate the innocence of love, and fear

Me as a sudden monster, a molester

Perhaps of little children. Meanwhile chaster

Than any grotesque fancy I keep pure

My focused passion. Not my self alone

Nor David, may You bless by my entreaty

But also, Lord, I raise this orison

For those dear brothers blind to any beauty

In love between a man and other men:

And for this love I thank You, Lord Almighty.

--Gene Qvist

Saratoga, CA

THREE SONNETS

Albert Einstein, you are the rock

From which I water the Trinity.

You gave mankind the fuse for the Bomb,

But now, like Aaron turning serpents

Into magic rods, I call for Christ

To stand by me, Spirit's delight,

Aa I take rock walls of the ages and rend

The veils of ebony with the calm

Ease, you, my Lord of simplicity,

Have graced me thru your guest who knocks

At my heart's door, touching my core

Of flesh with air, to sing the where

And how of Father, Ghost, Christ the Jew

to the two.

As E = mc

One of the best things Moses was to do

During his travelling magic show

Was to mythologize and metaphor

Yahweh as if he lived next door.

This man, who claimed to see face to face

The fire (voiced Adonai), gave our race

The words thru which we could implore

(Just like children always wanting more)

The mysterious in ways we all know:

Moses's "Father" was a trope that grew.

Here is another: Energy fathers

As Light creates trees which the wind shakes

And differences in light cause the wind

Just as matter lives, or is dead as sin.

Christ was matter and is spirit.

He tied to live thru words because

His words mate mysteries simple pearls,

Singularities strung by a breath divine,

Inspiring us to find, in our share,

That his actions were his words crystal clear.

Polishing his words, he then divined

The jewel in Jesus: a beryl

From Joshua, it faceted more --

"The Lord is salvation." Fear it

He did for a while, in desert style;

Like all heroes, unsure with woes,

He waited and prayed. Then by conversing

Diamond energies he went conserving.

--John J. Soldo

NYC

APOCALYPSE

Fly pencil fly

Often I'm told with crystal ease

Write a poem on this on that,

Poem to my girl my dog my cat,

Even to a cobra,

This I did I felt:

You thorn along asking for a poem

on apocalypse.

No I say No No apocalypse,

Flying pencil flying spirit pencil,

Apocalypse spike-ball word

Hardened blood ball stuck with nails

and thorns.

Apocalypse What do I know of

apocalypse?

Has to do with the Second Coming,

Why a Second Coming when in

thousands of years

we're not up to the First,

Apocalypse apocalypse,

Thorn ball nail ball ripping

up the earth,

Four horsemen of the apocalypse,

Skeletons riding the page of

a book

Scary as the angel of death

When in my Aunt's house I

climbed the stairs

to a cold-room bed

Apocalypse apocalypse,

Thunder hooves in the lightning,

The thorn-point rain,

Four horsemen of the apocalypse,

Death famine pestilence,

I forget the fourth,

Skeletons riding as corpses rise up

out of graves

In the hell stench,

Chaff everywhere chaff catching

fire,

Lakes and rivers molten metal,

Pillars of salt fire crosses,

Agony cries across the

thunderings,

No angel in apocalypse,

Nobody to mount a cross for us now,

No Virgin Mary blue cool through the burning;

Apocalypse apocalypse

Calypse calypse

Lypse lypse

--Emily Glen

NYC

APOCALYPSE NYC

October 11

Saturday eleventh

Of October, New York City

Washed in and out in rain.

Fifth Avenue, the cleanest

Street of the shiny city:

Tower- and cathedral-hemmed

In Saturday special wetness.

New York City, I will never leave you

Wet and steamed from walking I stand

In the Finnair doorway to scrawl my thoughts.

When the chimes of a near-off cathedral rang

Was it five or ten minutes ago--

I listened awed then of the city I hated,

I was awed then in the rain, and I swore:

New York City, I will never leave you

Never leave you,

However I reproach you in my thoughts.

Only yesterday I was typing

In an office, like others the same

On Lexington-- Lexington!

From 69th to 42nd

Lexington a mid-town glossy,

A nation of secretaries

Types its soul away

On carbon ribbons

And throws it away.

I hate this city, I said, but I know

I will live here all my life.

And every year I get a little older.

Every year I get a little older.

I no longer smile and laugh as I used to do.

For I am a thread in the web of the city.

I am a dust in the streets of my choosing,

A fish in the murky river I cannot see through.

But a new life must begin for me!

I sit in a little cafe on 56th

And drink my coffee, the radio singing,

No one notices what I am scribbling.

No one notices what I am thinking.

I pay my 27 cents and go.

And I walk in the street and watch its multi-face,

All those who are old and in disgrace,

And those who are young in their state of insipid grace.

The weak and grey are cast aside, one needs strength.

I want to delve to the souls of the city

And rip the blood and the victory from them.

NIGHTTIME

This is the Big Apple.

There's no denying it.

An apple with a worm inside it.

And everywhere you go these days

On Amsterdam and Broadway,

You cannot escape the inevitable conclusion.

And every bar you visit

Has a different style or gimmick,

But it's all the same.

WORKDAY MORNING

I dreamed of a highway

In the mountains of Salt Lake City--

The railroad station was paved with jewels.

I dreamed of an eagle

Perched on the morning--

He held a diamond gleaming in his beak.

He was determined to make an end of all flesh

For the earth was filled with violence.

I woke. My kneecaps arthritic in pain,

My eyes growing blind, and the rain

Pouring sweat and weariness as I trudged myself to work.

And in this daily darkness of the early morning

When all warmless drab thoughts come pouring

Along with the heat or cold of the new day--

At this time when I'd rather be sleeping,

I think sometime: I must be dreaming.

And I look at the spiral notebook of my past,

And turn away.

My doctrine saves me from apocalypse.

The Christians are gathered above the dawn

As the wait the risen host.

The streets and alleys are filling with roaches

That with scurrying shells enter timidly the light.

Below, the underground people await their savior,

In the low dark tunnel of their restless pilgrimage.

Some of us were born in these frantic caverns.

Day and night we watch the shadows from their lanterns,

And rustle in the wind of the monster's pain.

Oh, do not drag us upward to the light:

We'll miss our train.

Waiting, waiting on the platform,

On the bridge of the double abyss.

Waiting, waiting, when will the Local come?

Our light. From far the sacred rumble

And a flicker faint on the winding track.

The shimmering rails!

The gleaming rails, glinting with his coming!

He rushes forth, our reality with iron claws and jutting teeth

Nostrils smoke-frothing, sparks flashing

From his rust-clogged toenails. A dragon

Of monstrous length, reptilian graffiti.

I do not believe in the end of the world.

I hang in the dragon's mouth and lightly dream

Of certain things, and read the latest news

On the lap of a privileged sitter, proudly seated.

Across his shoulder, my strap-hung neighbor.

Strangers we are, and we met as strangers.

Yet so soon we came together, breast pressed to breast,

So close we can almost smell each other's breath.

You would never know we hadn't met.

No, I will not go among the people, torn and reprous.

No, I will not, like Saint Francis, seek salvation

in their filth.

For I do not believe in the soul nor its salvation.

I will not save my soul

When all Inferno's filled with clamor.

THE RIVERDALE EXPRESS

Twenty minutes more or less--

Waiting for the Riverdale Express,

Swift as a bridegroom

Slipping through the night,

You know not the hour nor the minute

When it rides.

Only be patient.

Soon you will rest

Warm and safe on the Riverdale Express.

OCTOBER 18

Why does New York City rain?

The city is crying.

Whose fault is this default?

You true-born native Americans out There--

You Slovenes of Cleveland

You Polacks of Akron

You Irish, Italians, Serbs, Jews

You Arabs of Detroit

You Cubans of Miami

You Mexicans, Negroes, Puerto Ricans,

All you peoples of Buffalo, Chicago,

Santa Rosa, San Jose, Dallas, San Antone--

You peoples of Boise, Birmingham, Pittsburgh,

You peoples of Washington, Wilmington,

Phoenix, Sacramento Ogden and Cheyenne--

Middle America white and fifty,

I'd rather be living out there in your city

Where the streets are so clean...

If you're walking by,

Talking or shouting to yourself or passersby,

They look aghast at you and put you away.

But here in NYC if you're not running

Wild in the Park, screaming and throwing

Vile slogans for all the late joggers to see--

If you're not a slim black man

On a street corner lounging

Insulting all the women swinging past--

Or making nasty noises with your mouth--

If you're not a twelve-year-old boy

Of kinky hair and uncertain blood-line, spraying

The trains with all your flowery paints--

If you're not a whore on Times Square and Broadway

In yellow hot pants and black platform shoes--

If you're not a cranky old lady

Cancerous, clinging to your worthless life

In a transient hotel--

If you're not...forget it, NY's not for you....

Everyone wants to be white and fifty,

Clean as a needle in Garden City.

Everyone wants to be young and pretty,

Like people used to be.

But some of us were chosen to live in squalor

Only the best of us chosen to wallow

In the pus of the city's sores.

The Second Christ will not appear

In Springdale, Amity, or Pleasantville,

Or even Babylon, upstate.

He will walk through our streets and gather

the lepers.

He will wash the feet of the ill and the weary,

And bless their swollen veins.

He will glance all a-pierce in the whisky-lit

doorways,

To shivering tramps on Central Park West he'll give

His ragged cloak.

He will walk through the hallways and gather the

mutants,

Gather their crutches and hobble up Broadway,

Hobble from 42nd to 61st.

"For all who in a world of untold beauties

Are consigned to unremitting darkness--

Here is light."

The burden will be easy the yoke light.

In their terror they will bend to it.

For all of New York City

Corrupt in its sin and apathy

Is cleansed: its warfare accomplished,

Its iniquity is pardoned.

So from our bones the City of God gleaming

Above the waters, in the rain of the evening,

All ivory shining from the reef of our marrowless

bones.

And from the multitudes of nations

We shall build a single nation--

And we shall all be changed

In the twinkling of a generation.

WlLLIAMSBURG BRIDGE: THE GLORY ROAD

I always stand at the front of the train.

I stand at the helm of my starship,

Fleeing in the ever night

As the stars and galaxies swirl by.

I see their red lights and yellow lights swirl by.

I am the great helmsman of metal flight.

I am the captain of the starship,

I am standing at her rudder,

I guide her journey into the universe,

Steering her day and night.

...When, from out this bottomless darkness

My ship's engines glide onto platforms rolling by.

These are the many planets we visit

On our voyage. The inhabitants are ugly,

Aliens from these grimy worlds.

They approach us with hostile glances,

Shoving each other in their quickness,

Hasting to get inside.

They approach us--covered with scars and sores.

Our soldiers, armed in blue, cry

"Watch the closing doors!"

And we are free of them, we are leaving them

Helpless, banging on heaven's doors.

I have seen every kind of planet,

But this planet was like no other--

It was filled with afternoon light.

Beneath us a river wide as a rolling comet,

A bridge between the galaxies and ever-plunging night.

Claustrophobic sickness seized me--

I wandered from car to car restlessly,

Leaping across the trembling platform,

Seeing below me the rumbling abyss,

Every leap to a new dimension,

Hurling myself through the swaying airlocks.

This time my ship was filled with aliens,

Some stared out the window

At that universe called Brooklyn.

Some stared out the window

At its parallel, Manhattan,

Two universes facing each other across the sea.

Our ship was filled with gaping aliens,

Staring all hostilely at me--

Mouths chewing, tongues popping,

Lips leering, eyes grinning--

I ran from their grimace.

But everywhere they found me.

The starship was too small.

..................

Too long I have been a captain,

Too long in this burden of command,

Responsible for the safety of my crew

Responsible for the aliens too.

Too long I have borne this load.

But still the old train rattled and clattered

And carried us all to the goal of our wishings

On Williamsburg Bridge,

The Glory Road.

APOTHEOSIS: THE STREET OF DIAMONDS

From minerals we came. To minerals we go.

47th Street. The Street of Diamonds.

Small diamond clusters on brooches, rings,

Big brash diamonds on golden bands,

Oval diamonds, heart-shaped diamonds,

Diamonds phony and diamonds true.

"Give her diamonds," is the saying.

Diamonds mean sex and prosperity.

I always wanted a diamond ring

As a symbol of my soul's virility.

I was eight or nine. My sister and I

Thrown out of ballet class for our unseriousness,

Having rolled on the grassy lawns

And stained our pink tights grassy green,

And climbed the trees on the green-hemmed campus

And eaten ice cream cones at the hamburger grill--

Waiting for our second bus in downtown

Salt Lake City,

Waiting at the busstop just outside Zale's jewelry,

Looking at the diamonds,

Picking which we wanted,

"Will I ever be rich enough to own a diamond ring?"

Now even Tiffany's can't thrill me like the

Street of Diamonds:

Merely a diamond, clear as my innocence,

Merely a diamond, pureness and brilliance,

Set in a golden band.

I believe in my soul each diamond bears a curse

If it is touched by unclean fingers,

If it is worn by the rich,

If it is stored in vaults:

For its beauty is greater than its worth.

Just so our coal-black planet in its fiery

evolution,

Whipped to silver flame in the bellows of

revolution,

Shall spin into the largest, finest

Diamond in the universe!

--M. Matetic

NYC

FOR OR