On Why I Must Decline To Receive The Prayers You Say You Are Constantly Sending
Because first of all, I have a feeling that they didn’t cost you anything, and so I have to wonder: What is their actual market value? For you, is the prayer like a radar-guided projectile mounted on the hinged-together wings of several good intentions, propelled by the flawed translation of a Rumi poem? Anyway, my mailbox is already pretty much occupied for the season. At the beginning of May a big mother wren started moving in, one mouthful of straw and twig at a time. For three days she flew in and out, in and out and in, building a nest the size of a small soup bowl. Then she sat on her eggs for two weeks, cooing and fluffing to keep them warm. Then she was busy feeding her young. I think the heat passing through that mother’s body into her brood has already surpassed the endoplasmic vibrational voltage you’ve mentioned as a feature of the prayers you are sending me. I understand that you are doing your best to hoist yourself up toward a spiritual life, even if it is through the doorway of a kind of pretending. But if you really care, as you claim, please will you kindly sit down and work your shit out? Stop stealing reality from the world and replacing it with make-believe! The newspaper says that poorly aimed prayers are causing flat tires on I-25. The sandalwood incense blowing across the valley is already causing cab drivers a lot of allergies. So sit still and just look at the colors of the changing sky. And could you stop burning so many candles, please? My god, think how many hours and hours and hours — think of how hard those bees worked to make all that wax!
In The Beautiful Rain
Hearing that old phrase “a good death,” which I still don’t exactly understand, I’ve decided I’ve already had so many, I don’t need another. Though before I go I wish to offer some revisions to the existing vocabulary. Let us decline the pretense of the hyper-factual: the myocardial infarction; the arterial embolism; the postoperative complication. Let us forgo the euphemistic: the “passed away” and “shuffled off this mortal coil,” as worn out and passive as an old dildo. Now, if poetry can help, it is time to say, “She fell from her trapeze at 2 AM in the midst of a triple backflip in front of her favorite witnesses.” Let us say, “In broad daylight, Ms. Abigail Miller conducted her daring escape before life, that Crook, had completely picked her pocket.” It is not too late for some hero to appear and volunteer in the name of setting an example: Let us say, “He flew with abandon, and a joyous expression on his face, like a gust of wind or a man in a necktie from the last dinner party he would ever have to attend.” To say, “He was the egg that elected to break for the greater cause of the omelet; the good piece of wood that leapt into the fire.” “Though grudging at first, he fell like the rain, with his eyes wide open, willing to change.”
