Midnight in Dostoevsky
Beginning with lines by Frank O'Hara,
for Frank, & Elaine Stritch,
Good Company All The Way From
'The Theatre of the Seven Rungs'
'I am the least difficult of men. All I want is boundless love.'
And a perfect day, drab Saturn's day, dark, stormy, muggy wet to skin, pretend one's at brunch though it is now 6 pm and one has just boiled the only egg in the house, fried one leathery strip of bacon (apple wood smoked and ice-box withered) ...I have managed to offend, I forget that I still have a few left around, Christian friends, the only two who've hung in there through my many theophrenic forays either cashing in my genitals at the 'admit one' desk or camping out at the 'Complaints' window finally getting my chance to ask the white haired deity, 'Any chance I can get my testicles back? ' THWACK! back to the back of the line.
In time I have learned to pick pockets there such as are theologies. Those standing anxiously eager to rush forward to the Admit One desk are too careless and unvigilant to notice I've reach easily in and stolen what spare change that may be of any real 'good' in their cracked and glued back together 'god-banks' pink a the piggy ones but not as cute. Mine own refuses tape, glue, plaster of paris but is always in need of gaffers...and I DO get the pun. Still, it pains me to have afflicted the Fundy Two with theological blues and warts, they who seek to thwart where they think I am bound but truth be told where I already am, with Dante, with Virgil, a host of others boiling their egg and sizzling their pork (not from the piggy or god bank, mind) trying to barter a few pocket stolen coins for a slice of bread.
Now as the lightning strikes about my place, to save face I play choral music, 'O sacred head, ' but like an itch demanding to be scratched till raw, I claw my way toward Palestrina in order to arrive at sulpheric, vodka-soaked bliss, dear dear hardcore Stritch on the turntable pleasing all indigents dwelling at least in the imaginary balcony, upon my frayed carpet, my frayed end, of the 'The Theatre of the Seven Rungs' grinding out, The Ladies Who Lunch, two versions, one from her prime and one from the 'return to the back of the line' place but having by now toward the end more than a hunch, Elaine alone, pockets full, old and grand, standing solo and proclaiming, Everybody rise! I stand and grandly bow. 'Old Cow! ' I shout above vodka drenched ice in a glass. Lightning strikes. The window lights up a skyline. I sit on my childhood Bible for good measure, Pascal's wager made with my arse. Parsing sins rosary I reach, hands shaking for Smirnoff reading O'Hara for comfort:
'St. Serapion, I wrap myself in the robes of your
whiteness which is like midnight in Dostoevsky. How am
I to become a legend, my dear? I've tried love, but
that holds you in the bosom of another and I'm always
springing forth from it like the lotus-the ecstasy of
always bursting forth! (but one must not be distracted
by it!) or like a hyacinth, 'to keep the filth of life
away, ' yes, even in the heart, where the filth is pumped
in and slanders and pollutes and determines. I will my
will, though I may become famous for a mysterious vacancy
in that department, that greenhouse.
Destroy yourself, if you don't know!
It is easy to be beautiful; it is difficult to appear so.'
poem by Warren Falcon
Added by Poetry Lover
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