Intelligent Design
Posted by Sruthi Sadhujan (Alumnus) | Filed under '07 Spring: Alchemy, Poetry, Print, Show Poems
One night, God had a dream.
In his dream he created a man.
Soon after, he created the sun,
And Man, just days old, with a sigh that could not be distinguished from a scream,
almost died from the beauty (that shattered his eyes,)
And one day man saw himself reflected in a pool of water,
And in his eyes, he saw astronomy,
he saw whole universes and cosmos tumbling and wheeling over each other
Every fleck of his iris became Cassiopeia and Orion,
and the stark glare of mars was chained into submission.
And as the stars thawed in his eyes and overhead,
Man cried, he inundated his ego,
Thinking that maybe he was the universe in compact.
And so he took the first bite of his apple of doom,
From the apple of his eyes, he ate fully
and from the grail of his tears, he drank deeply, replenished,
He wiped the corners of his mouth, and made himself into a deity.
Man flirted with gravitational pull and grew seraphic wings out of wax,
Waxed his vanity and left it in the trophy case,
As he flew off and attempted to play tag with the sun.
Man sat on Olympus with cheeks swollen from his Herculean ego,
when oxygen deficiency started to take over him,
And he thought to himself,
like Michelangelo had touched the divine on the ceiling of the Sistine chapel,
Maybe he too could dream beings into existence.
And so each night he slept, and each night he dreamt.
He began with a pulsing red heart,
Swimming in bright blood, pulsating like the mouth of a landed fish
Two lungs, blooming with vitality from the chest,
A mysterious liver, a hermetic pancreas,
And a constellation of arteries and veins, a universe contained in the space of a body,
All feeding the sanguine, fetal heart that was gaping like a pathetic newborn for breast milk.
Each organ spoon-fed the other, inseparable like Siamese,
Suffered claustrophobic love and separation anxiety from each other,
and a being, panting from the labor pains of simply being dreamt into existence, was born.
Drained from his efforts, man felt hollow on the side
Feeling like when had first waited for Eve in what seemed an eternity,
When God had hollowed part of him on the inside,
in taking out a rib to make him a companion.
That same feeling of emptiness took hold of him now,
As the universe around him turned in on itself,
His newly created being was blown into a million pieces of dust,
While his own fingertips were carried away on the wind,
until he could no longer touch Eve,
Who suddenly flew up in a smoke, and descended as one rib at his feet.
He stood on the barren land, sifting sand through his fingers,
Remember his origins with sudden pain
And though he sobbed at losing his companion
And though he sobbed at finally understanding the smallness of his own being,
Not even the stars had pity on him and put themselves out one by one,
Because dawn was breaking,
And God was waking from his long night of dreaming a man into existence,
And man was stretched into inexistence by the very eyelids of God,
He was hollowed by God’s waking, by more than just a rib,
But by organs and blood and entire constellations
Because for a moment, he had forgotten how to separate precipitate from solution,
arrogance from devotion.
He had forgotten how to separate divinity from humanity,
And for a moment, he had thought his footprints could to shake the ground,
uproot the Nile,
turn the world upside down,
and throttle the earth from its from its axis.
But it was all a dream, and God woke up, he had better things to do than let foolish beings run away with celestial fantasies.
Dancefloor
Posted by Sruthi Sadhujan (Alumnus) | Filed under '08 Spring: Vintage, Poetry, Print, Show Poems
A group of fools gathered around in a nightclub,
A dimly-lit, red-toned dance floor blur of moving figures,
And silent thinkers nestled in corners far away from the light.
The smoke that curled from their table-ridden cigarettes floated upwards,
And mingled like cosmopolitan debonairs near their foreheads.
They looked old…
With all that grey in their hair.
But when the music started playing,
They shook out their shoulders
And the atmosphere shuddered for a moment.
Then the bass moaned slowly towards them.
And they all leaned in a little closer.
With no introductions, the melody slipped under their fingernails
And took flight through their bones,
And suddenly everybody was throbbing against the beat,
a pulse in a giant wrist where the stage was the heart,
and the aisles were the veins,
and everyone trembled with their cigarettes
glowing like traveling constellations in the galaxies.
Unfolding like tents in the desert, the music unraveled to them,
And behind them they left all their cares,
With them, they took their heartbeats and drumbeats and impassioned feet.
It caused their eyes to tear, dismantled their fears and with the remains,
They reconstructed dreams…
Until they were miniscule and they were giant,
The music was the breadth of the universe, and it was a string of it,
It was the implosion of a white dwarf, and the collapse of genetic walls,
They were all at once human, and they were the gods.
This is what the music did to them,
Until everybody was everybody,
‘Cause everybody was on the dance floor.
The dance floor was everyone,
And the dance floor was the earth,
Sanity slowly filed out their ears in pencil straight lines
and the night air was brazenly calling them,
Until they were ready to lay themselves to sacrifice.
They wanted to peel their chests open,
Remove their hearts, and transplant this beat as their life source.
They dropped to their knees, kissed the dance floor.
Yearning like rows of shivering worshippers reaching for the high.
They touched their foreheads to the ground…and waited.
And this was how it happened:
Finally, this is how each and every soul was lifted out of its confines
and taken abreast on the wind,
This is how, like serpents shedding their worn lives,
every dancer danced straight out of his skins,
And this is how they ran clear into the arms of the next world that was patiently waiting for them,
In the final and shivering pause, someone murmured and it was done
They had bridged purgatory, the land and skies were finally one,
heaven and earth were threaded onto one string.
They took a last leap,
as feather by feather, the music carried them, the music built them wings.
For Those Who Shouted Barabas
Posted by Alysia Harris | Filed under '08 Fall: Notes from Underground, Poetry, Print, Show Poems
Manure. The smell of raw hide.
Everywhere Moans of sleepy beasts woken from the Palestinian dark.
The dark. It hugged everything like I learned a mother would.
The stale air mingled with newborn Elohim
and God among us. Of hay fragranced with blood and sweat and whatever else comes from inside a woman.
Pungent- the night, cinnamoned with lit frankincense.
All at once king. All at once being,
helplessly mortal.
I smelled my mother on me 9 months of amniotic fluid and wet butterfly wings.
Of prayers scented with morning sickness. My bendy plastic limbs.
Freshly oiled serpentine skin on me. It stung like vinegar.
And the taste of it would become one all too familiar.
The salt from the sea burned eyes that just learned how to blink.
This is Galilee. A smell as welcoming as breaking bread.
An aroma that bore your soul
Up and over its shoulders and taught you how to sail as your breathed.
Then doused by the stench of urine in back alley slums. Stinking slop and horse dung.
Of unleavened bread.
Of Bethlehem.
And all at once I loved and pitied man.
I smelled of wood- of puberty, of freshly squeezed Lebanese cedar with the pulp
still clinging to my fingers.
Knew the brashness of splinters way before they ever broke me.
Tied myself to timber to carry it home and laughed for the irony
I smelled the forest on me.
Of hammer-split silence and cypress that sings as it burns.
My carpenter’s belt next to the blacksmith’s metal wives rusting in the rain.
The iron the wood- they tasted pain. Knew it clench fist and up-turned palm.
All at once pauper and martyred God.
I smelled of lepers. Molten skin and untouchable. Adam’s heels,
Achilles tendons snapping in rhythm to Hosanna in the highest.
Of hospitals and the impatience of the dying.
Looked on in horror.
Spit on in public. So humility stinks of saliva,
of three loaves of black bread and the brine under fish scales.
I smelled of miracles. But the men hold their nose.
They will never know the smell of resurrected youths
who got the chance to break in their knees again.
Of a white shroud unwound.
40 days and nights with a giggling hyena for a stomach.
My beard smelling like the wool of shepherdless sheep.
Jasmine scented praise and burnt offering.
Smelled of earth with my hands forever drawing lines in the dirt.
Let he who is without sin cast the first stone.
Of severed ears and coward’s bones.
Of authority of anonymity.
Who is this man, that he casts out devils and makes the blind see?
Of saints-disciples- brothers- of men. Of 3 years of birthday celebrations in the round. Heads resting on shoulders then beside them on the ground,
of 11 bloody martyred crowns. Shaking. Garden praying.
Of lips with silver ducat teeth.
I smelled of an afternoon tart with citrus organs
begging once more to rinse in the Jordan.
Of ebony Palestinian nights -that cruel cruel mother.
Of the siren throats of Jerusalem’s daughters.
The familiar scent of my Father—
I had to climb to the top of a crucifix
Just to get close enough to breathe him in.
So when perched atop Calvary. I smelled everything.
Salt and vinegar. Temples. Timber. Hammers. Pine.
The Cat o’Nine and Judas’s broken swinging spine.
Wrongs. Palms. Lilies. Psalms. My mother. My Father. My altar. Manure…
The scent of flesh and blood was lifted from the ground, reeking of a man handled divinity.
I was crucified, buried, and rose on the 3rd day.
You smell me?
Epilogue to Youth
Posted by Garrett Carey | Filed under '08 Fall: Notes from Underground, Poetry, Print, Show Poems
When I kissed you
the whole world came loose.
The avenues unwound themselves
before us, and clouds
slipped free of the heavens,
bursting like snowy molotovs around you
in the street.
The beauties of the world
were at war
at your feet. You confessed
that your love transcended
sex: gender roles were nothing but
curls in your hair, to be fondled
and flicked and played with.
Your finger, delicate as breaking daylight,
could crush capitol buildings with
a little pressure at the end,
you said you brought a friend…
and then
there was nothing left to say.
Warm like sweat, the awe-struck stupor
of youth soaked into my clothes
made them too heavy
to wear. The indignant innocence
emboldened me when you
told me I could touch you there, when she
told me you could hold her
with no one near. There’s no one here
but three pairs of closed eyes
and lips at secrect trysts with inner thighs.
I was brave enough to persist
but afraid enough to omit
that I liked the taste of her
on your tongue
when we kissed.
I was young. I bit into your melon lips,
and she watched the juice trickle down my chin
whispering rough draft sonatas
about waterfalls and Vermilion,
she was young- we were too young to withstand
the full force of heaven, waiting prostrate
like the sound of angels singing would not cave our
chests and blow our skulls open like flower buds
in bloom, you could pluck us from your garden
soon. We were young, and you
were always in control, always
a few steps ahead
but you were always moving
too fast, always leaving
no chance for anything natural to catch
you, but light flashes
and car crashes
don’t have to.
Early mornings and open roads knew you
better than anyone, you
took to familiar streets with her
in your passenger seat.
You knew better
than to slow down on the blind curve,
and so did the other SUV.
You didn’t even have the time to swerve.
You were young. You were too
young to withstand the force
of leaving, as metal
kissed metal, and fucked inertia
as your face kissed the tarmac on its way back to
the earth, your face burst like melon
and she watched the juice
trickle through her fingers,
holding a tangled hairy pulp
where your smile used to sit
you were young, and she was older than the dirt
pulling her last bloody romance
out of a shattered mannequin
that looked nothing like you.
They found her hysterical on the hot pavement
and ignorant as men are, they tried to calm her down
and ignorant as men are, they saw your crimson mess on her shirt
and checked her first, you seemed too far beyond reach-
it was not worth their time
your crumpled frame must have stopped
sputtering before the sirens turned off.
She was baptized in coagulating silence,
complete but for the harsh whisper
of eternity slowly easing away
from her, and death
sounding dumbly
like hollow metal, bent
into a shape almost suitable
for music, when rung
the vibrations shed the earth
around you. You were young,
and they were old enough to know
it was for you the bell tolled
and they
fucking heard it-
but your life was not worth
their time.
Your life
was not worth
their time…
You did not survive long enough
to see your mother’s expression shatter
like crystal
in the face of the morning news, she
would have died to hug you -
and she did.
Your mother never took another living breath,
but duty could not let her rest.
Forced to fulfill her post-mortem obligation
to bury her first-born child, she was young
and hardly human, but to keep up with the ruse
you shared your funeral, you in a beech box
locked up like a hope chest
and her propped up in the pews.
I wish I could let her rest, I wish
I could bring you back then we
could have one more Saturday night
dancing like mockingbirds
so I could spend Sunday morning
hearing your call
instead of bearing your pall.
The slow march to absolution tastes wrong
as rancid milk, your baby brother in a black suit
reaching his hand just high enough
to touch the casket, he always
looked up to
you.
He was young,
too young
to be stripped of infinity
too young
to lose his virginity against the rough metal
of realization that his sister
was not coming home today.
Who is to explain the truth
to him?
We all had our shot at youth,
we all had
our chance to bruise our lips
upon the fickle mouth of reality
and some of us took it,
but what
can we say
to him?
