I'm honored that Longleaf Review has included my prose piece "MTV News: A Letter To Jonathan Melvoin" in their new Wayback issue. It's a true story, and it all happened in the 90s...if you don't understand, I guess you just had to be there. You can read it here.
If I ever mutter something magnificent
Something sarcastic and succinct enough to scar
and forever vanquish my vanity
It'll be born of mad mumblings in a bar
of precious snippets of a sinner’s sanity
It'll come far removed from fields in fall
Millions of miles removed from Mars
and the cliches in the comets and their tails
It'll come from something strange,
from lobotomy scars
and haunted county jails
It'll come, whatever beast it may be,
an omen of hell or heaven,
from Waco in '93
from Rwanda, from 9/11
It'll come, as all great things begin,
from something sick and rotten
Something I heard
on Ghost Tape Number 10
Something furious and forgotten
A faceless Jane Doe,
estimated height: five-feet-two,
discovered in summer '69
It'll come from Death Row
It'll come from Swine Flu
It'll come from me
but it won’t be mine.
from the book Balladmonger: More Bad Poems & Prose
In a sterile room colored white
with a dash of pink to calm the nerves
The Conductor of light explained again
what purpose he serves, my pupils
wide as dimes, sweat on the palms of
my hands. The Conductor advised me
to send my mind to other times or,
if need be, to other lands.
He turned a switch that made me ache
His narrowed eyes watching, hoping I didn't
mistake his advice to retreat to unknown skies
as a license for madness so impure,
the very thing his machine was built to cure.
General Nathaniel Lyon, stark raving mad
Hero of the Union and the Bonny Blue flag
was a comrade in my dusty room, born of
books rotted to rags. The wearied ugly men
they described rose from the tomb, contrary
to what was prescribed, smelling of mildewed
air, soothing my heart from despair with a
beautiful gloom.
I accompanied him to Missouri, 1861,
where we drilled the German volunteers
in cannon and gun, the fanatic General's
disdain for the mutineers driving his every
order, his instructions strict for every man,
his every lunatic harebrained plan.
A brambled red beard matched his uniform,
rumpled, dirty, overworn. Lyon was not
revered, as a dog reveres a storm
and delights in peace when it's done -
he was called insane, “an old son of a gun,
punished properly at last,” said the officers
when he was slain, a figure obscured by night and past.
Not one would mourn his life when he was dead -
“the army is my wife,” he always said.
General Lyon, soldier, native son and trooper
was just mad enough to retake the state
from the South, and I in my stupor for science's sake
would rouse the troops with the might in my mouth.
Lightning corrupted the sky like
Leviathan in the sea; we feared not,
hearts and caps in hands, the men under
my command in Battery C.
We responded to the lightning in kind
as the Missouri sky turned a hideous hue –
“We are fighting under a man out of his mind!
General Lyon, we who are about to die,
salute you!”
We drove them back, the traitors, the Rebs
with powder and fuse. Washington sent
wires, “attack!” and we fired every steel
and metal shape a cannon can use.
We thought of our sweethearts at home
So proud, waiting - my Zuzana, my belle -
as the lightning angrily shone,
illuminating wrinkles in the clouds
like a brain lit by fires of hell.
Governor Jackson trembled, but he was
relieved at the sight of McCulloch, Price and Pearce;
a rabble they resembled, as eager as we to fight,
their mad mutiny so wretched, the lightning
above so fierce.
boom
I could not help but gaze at the sky as the
bolts cracked boom the blue; things certain things
turned to haze as General Lyon fell, bleeding
brains and Union blue.
I tried to rally my Battery, but no words came;
it was as though the battle had faded,
as though the lightning struck my brain,
the Conductor somewhere satiated.
Bolts of Zeus, raining spite, struck boom crack my men,
took them away, turned them to puffs of smoke;
a spear of white struck General Lyon where he lay,
not a drop of blood left to stain the earth where
his final rally he spoke.
zuzana send help
boom The men were called to retreat - the order was not mine
My legs were like worms bang crack, my boots like concrete
as wore and were taken time faded. pow
the lightning struck again Zuzana
to die un repentant benumbs me
I saw my men flee, those not eviscerated
boom
Not a soldier left in Battery C
Strike again! I dared.
No. No, I didn't. I couldn't have dared.
boom crack pow
Not such an electric sky, not a fool such as I.
Never surrender. Fight for the bonny blue and for Zuzana.
But who's Zuzana? Nobody. Never surrender
boom rumble
Nobody
quiet
My toes curled in my boots but my
boots were in a corner
I remember putting them there because
that's where the nurse said.
One mustn't die with his boots off
though I am not dead
I am not dead
Tho' I may as well be
Like my friend the General
The dream is lost for Battery C
pow
Zeus has taken my cannons from me
from the book Amen, Bad Luck To You
The recording and production, however, was anything but festive. Now a trio after a creatively frustrated Tom Fogerty left the band a year before (described by his brother in two of the group’s most recognizable songs, “Have You Ever Seen the Rain” and “Wish I Could Hideaway”), tomorrows seemed less and less likely with each passing square on the ‘72 calendar. John Fogerty – according to Cook and Clifford’s side of the story – demanded the pair contribute songs, as well as vocals, rather than submitting to their desires to be more involved in the songwriting. The pair’s version of events seems to some a low-key excuse for any substandard quality in their efforts, implying Cook and Clifford had insufficient time and means to prepare better material.
The other side of the Mardi Gras tale, however, suggests an ungrateful pair pressuring their creative force during a fragile time for the band, trapping him – and themselves – into making an album far below the standards CCR had set in the years prior. Whichever side of the story one chooses to believe, the fact that Fogerty refused to sing on or produce his bandmates’ songs lends credence to either version, and shows how frustrated and fed up he was with the band’s situation. The album’s opener is Fogerty’s, the very country “Looking For a Reason.” The somewhat pedestrian song finds the singer an open book:
I’m lookin’ for a reason to stay / I’m all wound up and tied in knots today... Yesterday I tried once more to find / a way to share the trouble on my mind / It seems like you turn away every time / I used to like it here – I can’t remember why.
Stu Cook’s first song on the album, “Take It Like a Friend,” meanwhile, is anything but longing or sad, and takes an obvious shot at Fogerty, even if the song itself gives contradictory claims about how the bassist wound up finally singing (shouting) lead vocals on a Creedence song: Maybe you’d move over, give someone else a chance, try they luck / Instead you run up closer / Tryin’ to grab a page before they close the book. Later, however, Cook seems to describe a catch-22 situation, knowing he and Doug Clifford’s efforts would be quashed –
We moved out toward the light, showin’ empty hands.
Cook’s second solo tune is the crude but lyrically relatable “Sail Away.” Even if the words coming out of Cook’s mouth are butchered on their way out, they could certainly resonate with anyone who’s ever felt trapped in a one-way relationship. Cook laments bitterly, Spent a long time listenin’ to the captain of the sea / Shoutin’ orders to his crew – no one hears but me.
The bassist suddenly changes gears on his next song, the undeniably infectious “Door To Door,” a fun, harmless tune about Cook’s time as a door-to-door salesman. Someone decided the song was at least good enough for the B-side of Fogerty’s “Sweet Hitch-Hiker,” undoubtedly Mardi Gras’ best, most memorable, and most Creedence-like track. Or, back to conspiracy theories, “Door To Door” was purposely paired with “Sweet Hitch-Hiker” to further bring out the perceived contrast in quality as it inevitably paled in comparison in the ears of the majority. Not withstanding, “Door To Door” was played with regularity on the subsequent tour to support the album, a performance of which was included on Live In Europe the next year (an album whose release John Fogerty strongly protested, but lost the fight with Fantasy Records – an institution that would be a thorn in the rock genius’s side for well over the next decade, well after CCR was no more).
Behind the drumkit, Doug Clifford didn’t seem to have much of a grudge to bear, at least not on record; his songs are laid-back, country-colored standards, a wise move, as the style fits his softsung voice. “Need Someone To Hold” and “Tearin’ Up the Country” are both enjoyable, even if they’re nothing spectacular. These songs are generally more well received than his bass playing counterpart’s offerings, probably because, again, Clifford’s voice is less abrasive and forced. The drummer sings with an inoffensive twang, making Cook’s I-Just-Stubbed-My-Toe shouts all the more jarring when played side by side with Clifford’s songs in the tracklisting. The two briefly team up – possibly against Fogerty specifically – on “What Are You Gonna Do,” the best non-Fogerty song on the album, a knee-bouncing, well-constructed song whose chorus borders on earworm (that’s not a bad thing, despite that “worm” thing; an “earworm” is a piece of music that’s extremely catchy). Though the lyrics’ lecture to an unwise character could describe any half of any failed relationship, of any kind, the temptation to assign them to John Fogerty is overwhelming in the context of the rest of Mardi Gras. If he is indeed the target, it’s Clifford’s only gripe on the record, and again he wisely handles the vocals, toning down any bitterness the song may or may not contain.
Not surprisingly, none of Cook or Clifford’s songs would see a place on either of CCR’s bestselling Chronicle compilations, the first being universally hailed as a definitive representation of the band’s work. Chronicle Volume 1, released in 1976, saw Mardi Gras represented only by “Sweet Hitch-Hiker” and Fogerty’s deeply personal but relatable “Someday Never Comes.” Volume 2, released a decade later saw a stranger song selection, with a preference for the band’s several great covers of doo-wop, folk, and blues standards like “The Midnight Special,” “The Night Time is the Right Time,” and “Cotton Fields.” Mardi Gras, however, is represented the second time around by the mediocre “Looking For a Reason” and the album’s least interesting recording, a meh cover of “Hello Mary Lou.” The fact that this song was chosen for inclusion rather than “Tearin’ Up the Country” (the B-side to “Someday Never Comes”) or even the admittedly novelty “Door To Door,” more than hints at how Cook and Clifford’s work was received.
Released in April 1972, Mardi Gras must have been either enormously satisfying to John Fogerty to see his bandmates’ work turned to cannon fodder by Rolling Stone’s minions, or devastatingly reaffirming that the death of Creedence was near. “Fogerty’s Revenge” was probably a much preferred nickname to the distinction given it by Rolling Stone – “the worst album ever recorded by a major band” up to that point in rock history.
In October, however, the inevitable could no longer be postponed, and the announcement was made – Creedence was done. The band, in the four-piece lineup in which they’d played since 1957 under various names, played together again in 1980 at Tom Fogerty’s wedding, and even posed for a picture together. It would be the very last time the Fogerty brothers shared a stage. Tom died in 1990, estranged from his brother by record industry politics. When CCR was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 1993, his widow was in attendance, carrying with her Tom’s ashes in an urn. Her gesture was for naught – after their acceptance speeches, John refused to play even one Creedence classic with his former bandmates, opting instead to share the moment with Bruce Springsteen on “Who’ll Stop the Rain?” Cook and Clifford got up and left.
Again, breakup albums should not be pretty. Albums recorded by bands in danger of falling apart should be scattered, uneven, and should sound as if the band could crumble at any moment. Mardi Gras is the quintessential breakup album. Like an awkward week after the charges are dropped in a domestic dispute, the tension is there, the anger only thinly veiled, the hole kicked in the bathroom door gaping and providing insight into what really goes on in the life of a major rock band. It’s not always fun, and more often than not, egos and power struggles prevail over the band of brothers each garage act sets out to be.
-From my book Rocktology Exam: Classic Rock's Hidden Gems (but you don't have to buy it if you don't want to)
There’s something humbling about going to the Sonic Drive-In on foot. The Hyundai-jockeys all around you stare like you’re some kind of novelty. Which, in a way you are – you’re at a drive-in fast food place, driving nothing but a pair of Rockports.
It can make you feel rather small. But that feeling, the shrinking feeling when you know everyone is gawking at you, doesn’t matter much when you’re there to buy your last meal.
Nothing much mattered then. It didn’t matter that I didn’t drive. Too many medications made my brain feel like soup. The anomaly of being a pedestrian at the drive-in was lost on me as I pressed the button and ordered my greasy last meal before I sent myself to the gallows. Eating Paleo, or some other such healthy meal, when I planned to leave the world just an hour or so after would have struck me as pointless. I hadn't even closed and locked the door when I left my house that ugly summer day. Why bother? What did it matter? I wouldn’t be back.
It was quite a shock when the fog was so suddenly cleared. When you sleepwalk through every day, it’s jarring when something jolts you awake. A bright beacon of orange made its way through the haze, and there she was – Allison (so we'll call her for privacy's sake), the pale, skinny ginger girl with whom I’d have graduated a class above or below me, just a few years ago.
I was so alerted from my zombie-like trance that I even had the awareness to wonder what Allison of all people was doing back in our tiny town, working as a carhop at Sonic no less. Basic small town stereotyping, and the traditions in which those stereotypes are based, tells you someone who had been as popular and accomplished in high school as Allison didn't come back to town to work at Sonic. I was sure Allison had left town to go to college, as did everybody who had such a chance. In those days, we weren't as disillusioned with the debt-ridden idea of college as we are now. Something important must have brought her back. Maybe she blew her parents’ money. Maybe she couldn’t handle it. Maybe someone in the family got sick. Maybe it wasn't something as mundane as a summer job or just a realization that college wasn't for her. In any case, the Sonic Drive-In certainly wasn't where one who knew the protocol and promise of small-town youth would have pictured Allison.
There's nothing shameful about working as a fast food carhop. It's hard work. Like any job, a carhop puts up with any number of problems and frustrations. The Iraq War, for instance. If you're old enough to remember, in 2003 the United States and a coalition of other nations went to war with Saddam Hussein's Iraq; France, however, refused to join the effort, much to the ire of some Americans, who expressed their disdain for the French by calling french fries "Freedom Fries." I am not making this up. People were rolling up to Sonic and, with a straight face, ordering "Freedom fries." And of course, the carhops and cooks who repeated the orders were expected to use the absurdly jingoistic term, or risk a lecture on patriotism by the customers.
But that's another story, I guess. Anyway, whatever brought Allison to work at the Sonic Drive-In that ugly summer of 2007, hardship or nothing special at all, it must have slipped her mind. There wasn’t a trace of embarrassment in her big green eyes – only shock. The same was written on my face. I could feel it (I could feel something!). It was probably the first time my expression had changed in weeks.
Allison was shocked to see me, and I her, but somehow I knew it wasn’t the surprise of seeing an old schoolmate after so long. It wasn't my disheveled appearance, sweaty and clad in a wrinkled plaid shirt. Somehow, I knew that she knew. And somehow, she knew that I knew what had made her eyes grow so wide.
It was some kind of telepathy. No one can tell me any different. We didn’t say a word to each other for the longest, quietest moment. As far as I remembered, our paths had never crossed much in school. It wasn’t a reunion of pals. This silence was different. She knew. I can’t be convinced otherwise.
Allison began to stammer something. It wasn’t about my order, my final order on Earth – she wasn’t looking at the brown bag on the red tray she held. Her big green eyes were still on my muddy brown ones.
“I'm sorry you’re hurting,” I felt her say.
I felt her say it. Or, I felt her think it. It was telepathy, some kind of holy intervention in the form of a para-psychological phenomenon.
“I can’t do it anymore,” I replied. That must have been how my mind answered. Or my heart. I don’t know how much the heart is involved in telepathy.
When Allison finally spoke, with her mouth and vocal cords, it was nothing profound or moving. She repeated my order and delicately handed me my last meal.
She knew. She knew what morbid milestone she held in her hand.
I said, with actual words, “thank you.”
We stood there for another long moment. If anyone had seen us – and come to think of it, I don't remember there being a single car parked at the drive-in at that moment, as if they'd all just faded into the ether as soon as I placed my order – they’d have thought we were both dumbstruck by some unseen, unspoken revelation. As if one of us had just told the other something shocking. And, I suppose, that was indeed the case.
I know that was the case.
I couldn’t take all that beauty anymore. If I was going to do what I’d promised myself to do, I had to leave right then. All that wordless beauty, as sappy as it sounds, was breaking through to me. I couldn’t have that.
I backed away, as if the burger and fries that had just changed hands had been a hostage exchange.
Fifteen or so minutes later, I found myself in a swing in the park, eating my greasy burger and fries. I don’t remember the walk getting there. Despite still being in a daze, I had my wits about me just enough to realize I was the only person in the park. There were no dog walkers, no Frisbee players, no parents and squeaking children. Maybe everyone else had looked out of their windows and seen how ugly, how heavy a summer day could be, and had the sense to stay home.
Stuffing my fries in my mouth, made all the more salty by my tears, I felt the gentle sting of Allison’s telepathy from Sonic again. “Don’t do it. Please, don’t do it.”
I spat the tear-soaked food from my mouth and had a good sob – an actual heaving sob, not just streams of tears. When I caught my breath, I replied to Allison’s mental communique, too exhausted to argue with such mind-power. I used real words.
“Alright,” I managed to croak. “Okay. Okay, I won’t do it.”
I took a drink from my Coke and winced from the acid like it was a long swig of whiskey.
All that maudlin beauty was enough torture to convince me to do, or not to do, anything.
“Just lay off with all this sap before it makes me sick,” I thought.
I hoped Allison didn’t pick up that last bit of my groaning, grouchy inner monologue. It seemed like such a nasty thing to say to someone who’s just saved your life with the power of telepathy.
You had no idea Pink Floyd released an album called Obscured By Clouds, did you? No idea. All you know is “Wish You Were Here” and “Comfortably Numb.” You don’t know nothin about nothin!
“Foreboding” isn’t a rare adjective to Floyd’s music, but the grittiness of this guitar and prehistoric synth-dominated title track opened an album that found the band hurriedly, though craftily, writing and recording the soundtrack to a French adventure drama, La Vallee (that is, The Valley, for the laypersons). Two of the songs contained were straight ahead rock, the rowdy instrumental “When You’re In” and the searing, crunchy “The Gold It’s In the...” (I don’t know what the gold is in, that’s just the title of the song). The band had approached such heavy territory before on an earlier film soundtrack album, More (the film of which was coincidentally directed by Barbet Schroeder, who was also at the helm for La Vallee); two songs from that album, “The Nile Song” and “Ibiza Bar” had approached outright heavy metal.
Soundtrack work was nothing new to Pink Floyd, but most of More, and their contributions to the film Zabriskie Point, were very Floydian – psychedelic pieces carefully textured and shaped by painstaking improvisations and ideas conceived on stage. Obscured By Clouds, however, found the band on a time crunch, locked away in a studio in France, in a rush to get back on the road, then back to Abbey Road to finish what would be their next album, Dark Side of the Moon.
The fact that this album had the misfortune to be released not even a full year before Dark Side undoubtedly contributes to its lack of a reputation. It would become their first album to crack the US Top 50, reaching #46, but Dark Side of the Moon’s decade-plus long stay on the album charts will always overwhelm such a feat. And, unlike their previous albums, none of the ten songs here were shaped over time by live performances before being hammered out in the studio – the songs here were “proper” rock songs, conceived and recorded on the clock. The result was an atypical Pink Floyd album, but a striking and highly enjoyable one nonetheless.
The jaunty, jangly, catchy “Free Four” enjoyed a bit of airplay when released as a single, though it’s doubtful that fans appreciated Roger Waters’ grim cynicism in the lyrics exploring death and futility. It also contains possibly his first reference to being “the dead man’s son,” a keystone in his music’s inspiration as time went on and his father’s death in World War II made more of an impact. The song was probably the first in Floyd’s entire catalog to so prominently feature that trademark grimness that made Waters’ lyrics so great; “Take Up Thy Stethoscope and Walk,” from the band’s groundbreaking debut The Piper At the Gates of Dawn, had been his first sole credit with the group. Unless I’m misinterpreting the nonsense in the poppy psychedelia, those lyrics held a shade of that cynical English wit, though they lay under the surface of Piper’s electronic, whimsical wonderland. But the other band members, and many fans, agree that “Take Up Thy Stethoscope and Walk” is the lone throwaway from their legendary debut.
Their next album, A Saucerful of Secrets, saw Waters’ songwriting breakout, with such staples as “Set the Controls For the Heart of the Sun” and “Let There Be More Light.” But it’s the psychotic “Corporal Clegg” that hinted – or, rather flatout boasted – of the subjects and themes that would dominate Roger Waters’ later songwriting, both with Pink Floyd and in his solo career. The song told the tale of an amputee war veteran and his alcoholic wife. Grim things indeed, but grim things only the English can turn into an overbearing pop tune complete with kazoo coda.
For the next five years, though, Waters’ lyrics mostly stayed within the frame of the psychedelic noodling that made Floyd such an underground sensation throughout the world (except, so far, the States). But “Free Four” was a sudden release of a dour world view, the bassist sculpting a rotting skull with a gap-toothed grin.
As that album was a master portrait of the pressures of society than can lead one to absolute madness, this album slowly tracks the pressures that come with drastic change. The mid-tempo “Burning Bridges” is self-explanatory, as is David Gilmour’s “Childhood’s End” (incidentally the last Pink Floyd lyrics not written by Waters until 1987, years after he’d left the group on acrimonious terms). Purportedly with the Vietnam War in mind, Gilmour’s lyrics are much simpler than Waters’, but anything more detailed and sardonic would have been ill-fitting for such a frank lecture about the death of innocence.
While the basic narrative of the album is what makes it so strong, there are times its instrumental passages are, at the risk of hyperbole, spellbinding. “Mudmen” is my second favorite Floyd song of all time, in case you were wondering what’s my second favorite Floyd song of all time. In La Vallee, the song plays as a group of mud-covered tribal warriors or shamans, or whatever they are, in hideous, gargantuan masks dance and stalk towards a transfixed character. The song is a beautiful slowburner, grinding from melancholy to ecstasy, and was the first Pink Floyd song penned by Gilmour and keyboardist Rick Wright; it was a great dose of the musical partnership they’d form twenty years later on The Division Bell and after Floyd was done "for good" in the 2000s.
Speaking of Wright, his vocal on “Stay,” one of the band’s few “ballads,” is almost spine-tingling. The keyboardist was often critical of his voice, but its lonesomeness fits the loss and finality of the song’s lyrics. Closing the album is “Absolutely Curtains,” a gorgeous yet frightening instrumental that seems to perpetually build and build until its stunning crescendo leads into an excerpt from the film – a choir of tribesmen singing words in an exotic language that, if interpreted, would dash the mystery that lends itself so perfectly to the song.
Obscured By Clouds isn’t usually included in the lineage of Floyd works that were essential to the development of Dark Side of the Moon as is, say, the track “A Saucerful of Secrets” in 1969; the twelve-minute instrumental had been a thematic, conceptual, multi-part story, which led to “The Man & The Journey Suite” that became a focus of the band’s legendary live repertoire during the same era, further shaping their penchant for storytelling via instrumental texture. In 1971, Meddle had been vital to Dark Side of the Moon’s birth, if not in terms of structure, in terms of the quantum leaps in studio knowledge and innovation.
But Obscured is exactly that – fogged over in the history of Pink Floyd as it relates to the elements that ultimately led to Dark Side and beyond.
The rub is, it shouldn’t be. The album tells a story, its music shapes the events and moods, and an overall, solid narrative focusing on change and departure runs consistently throughout – just the way the narratives of madness and societal pressure shape Dark Side of the Moon. Granted, Obscured By Clouds had a movie to follow. But even in that sense, Pink Floyd looked beyond slapping some mood music onto forty minutes of tape and chose rather to make a proper album using La Vallee’s story.
Though obviously decimated in sales and memory by its successor, such was the success of this record throughout the faithful European market in 1972 that it eclipsed the film for which it was recorded, which performed lukewarmly. A dispute between the band and the film studio arose, for whatever reasons those disputes always arise, and in response, the studio re-titled the movie to The Valley Obscured By Clouds, to hopefully capitalize on the positive reception the album enjoyed over the film, particularly in France.
Much like the treasure and spiritual whatnots sought by the characters in the film, Obscured By Clouds is in many ways the post-Piper, pre-Dark Side album that holds the most reward for those who seek it out. It’s not only a solid and well-written album, especially considering the rushed atmosphere of the sessions, but it captures Pink Floyd in a very non-Floydian snapshot.
It’s the perfect definition of a hidden gem.
-from my book Rocktology Exam: Classic Rock's Hidden Gems (but you don't have to buy it)
I'm a religious person. My chosen religion is Christianity. I sometimes get flak from fellow Christians for using the terms religion/religious; those words seem to imply a sense of strict dogma, not to mention the word itself being originally tied to the word bondage. But I don't mind that. I want to be "a bondservant of Christ," forever tethered to Him, unable to escape.
Now that my attempt at piety is out of the way, here's some cynicism.
I've long been amazed - and confounded - by how similar the "secular" world is to the "religious lifestyle" (or, what many people think of a religious lifestyle). The rigorous regulations and rituals that are used to caricaturize we religious folk are abundant in a society that claims no official civil faith.
My mother, father, grandparents, teachers, and every pastor I've ever had - combined - have never imposed on me such a stringent and lengthy list of things I'm not allowed to say for fear of condemnation (a more modern term for condemnation being "cancellation"). The list of these forbidden words and terms is always changing and expanding, making it hard for one to keep up with what's linguistically kosher and what is not.
I don't have that problem in my dirty little spiritual life. I believe the Scripture, that collection of ancient documents and epistles we came to call the Bible, to be the Divinely authored, Divinely edited word of God, and therefore in no need of addition. And, I certainly consider it blasphemous to propose subtractions, e.g. The Jefferson Bible. In this Book, I'm taught that if I were to say something terrible - something truly terrible, something that breaks down and berates others - my sin is forgiven through the sacrifice of Jesus Christ. I'll not be condemned to hell, or cancelled from His love (apologies for such a sappy analogy, but if it fits it fits). And, my brothers and sisters in this faith, should they abide in it, will be true to edify and encourage me to do better, not to distance themselves from me like I'm ripe with moral Coronavirus (unless of course I unrepentantly persist in such sins).
Oprah have mercy on you if you need gluten free buns to feed your three kids on a hectic afternoon and Chick Fil A is the closest and most convenient option. Your ideological salvation and purity is at stake. Perhaps there's some loophole in the sociopolitical manuals that will allow this, as long as a sacrifice is made to a gold calf, blue donkey, or red elephant. Or one of those weird Green Party carved images.
Speaking of devils, in conversations with non-religious friends, I've noticed something interesting: the ratio of times I've warned them about the wiles of Satan to the number of times I've been warned about the snares of Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk is probably 10:1. In fact, I can't remember the last time I told an unbelieving friend how ensnared they are by the devil. That's either a reflection on my part of how tactful I am when it comes to discussing matters of religion, or a reflection of how bad I am at preaching such truths.
I thank God that He's never cast me aside if I stray from His commandments, and that His commandments are lovingly crafted for my growth, not to exalt myself as more woke or more patriotic than my neighbor. I'm grateful that He is faithful to love me and teach me to do better should I do wrong. That His grace and understanding permit me to shop at Amazon. That He's set my feet upon a rock and not on eggshells. That He keeps me from being drafted to fight in the Culture Wars, as He's already brought eternal victory through the Cross.
The secular world can follow its own bulls and codes and gods. I'm simply not pure enough, progressive enough, patriotic enough to do so. I wasn't born so holy. It's not in my DNA, I suppose. I'm weak - I need a God of grace and love.
Written in 2013 for a woman with whom I was in love. Though I long ago fell (or grew) out of love with her, when I rediscovered this piece of strained melodramatics I realized there are bits of this and that, that I rather like. Except, I hope never to feel "unworthy" to talk to someone - anyone - ever again.
“A Lily Among Thorns”
In a dream,
as all poems begin it seems,
I saw chains on every brilliant thought,
every one-liner and wonderful remark
I saw men and women who had made me laugh,
made me stop to think
like Augustus Caesar in the dark –
Their memory all bound to some ugly thing,
some kind of hackneyed pain
The kind that surrounds a joke
told by someone lost but not forgotten,
the kind found in sappy poems full of hope
I saw Heath Ledger being carried to eternity
I saw Lenin and Lennon scoffing
I saw John Belushi fading away
down in West L.A.
I tried to awake, I wanted to go home
but somebody grabbed my arm –
Belushi himself in a bumble-bee robe
I spoke to Belushi’s ghost,
“Belushi, you’ve shown me only malice,
greed, apathy!
Depressing haunts swirling around what
should cheer me most
Belushi I beg you, show me some tenderness,
some depth of feeling,
preferably in green or blue eyes
with no venom in its smile
and no vengeance in its wit,
a beautiful mind with no bitterness or guile”
He raised his brow and pointed to you,
like Gettysburg eclipsing Waterloo,
like a sudden burst of laughter from those
who mourn,
like a lily among the thorns
You’re a duchess with hands covered in paint
You’re a bringer of good tidings
from days of yore,
a contrast to my raving complaint
You’re the one in the bookstore,
un-abridging the abridged Gaston Leroux
And I’m leafing through Louis L'Amour,
unworthy to say Wordsworth to you
from the book Amen, Bad Luck To You
The day after I was Saved
after the congratulations and
we're proud of yous and you're so braves
and my mother's relief and elation
and delicate voices to playfully chide me
I felt the sensation
of something writing inside me
It wasn't the finger of God
writing His laws on my heart
It wasn't some warm and happy feeling
tracing across my being
or a psalm full of fresh air and art
I'm not sure what piece of me
it was writing on,
this thing not a threat, not a treaty
Something not quite as bloody and meaty as a rib
But some just as tangible part
just as touchable
Not quite the soul
Not quite the heart
or some other piece just as glib
It was something dark, for sure,
something separate from God
Not competing for room
or to regain its domain
or proclaim my failure and doom
or map out my guts to forever trod
Whatever it was, all the same
it was only there to write
Amen, bad luck to you.
and leave me as quickly as it came,
at no exceptional time of night
It left its fingerprints
in its scratchy, scribbled cursive
Though I'm sure it has no power itself
It has no unholy possession or hold
No aim so subversive,
nothing nearly so bold
or bursting with spite and pride
But the message is there
somewhere inside
Amen, bad luck to you.
I can't be persuaded otherwise
that the message wasn't deliberately timed
It came just after Jesus advented
just after the drying of weeping eyes
just after everyone at that potpourri scented
Baptist church told me warm and lovely things
Just after I was Saved
I wasn't gripped by a demon
or met with beginnings of birth pangs
I didn't froth at the mouth and fall in the fire
or so much as double over in pain
When it etched its words inside
my miscellany and mire
Amen, bad luck to you.
That was all, and it was gone
unheard from since that day
Like whoever scrawled Sodoma Gomora
on the walls of Pompeii
to tell them they were going to hell
Or whoever painted Viva Cuba
and the last lovey dovey note
of a revolutionary song
on the walls of a prison cell
They were there, inside, they wrote,
and were gone –
Amen, bad luck to you.
from the book Amen, Bad Luck To You
