A Question

Here’s a question: Say George Frederic Handel
got an idea in the middle of the night; did he jump
out of bed, scuttle fingers over ivories, scribble notes
on staves, while sitting in his underwear?
His underwear wasn’t like ours. Jockeys were
centuries away, even boxers were short of imagination.

Handel would have worn, on those hot inspired nights,
braies which looked like something in between
diapers and capris pants. Think of that:
George Frederic Handel, at his piano, 3 AM, dressed
in a glorified diaper, finishing the Hallelujah Chorus,
singing to Jesus whom, he claimed, showed up for the

end of his song. That’s why everyone stands when
the Hallelujah Chorus is performed. They stand there,
like Jesus, but no one thinks of Handel in his underwear.
Maybe that’s what we ought to do next time the Messiah is
performed: strip down to our skivvies and prance, half naked,
like Allen Ginsberg wanted us to do. The poet is

always naked before the world, Ginsberg once told a heckler,
and then disrobed, removed even his underwear. Back
to Handel: it’s miraculous what no air conditioning or
antiperspirants and spurting serotonin could accomplish
on a sweaty August night in London in 1741. A neurotransmitter
blitz in George’s brain could have conjured anything from

an angry snake-headed virgin to a bulbous balloon in the form
of John Wesley. We shouldn’t take this Jesus thing too seriously.
Still, the music, that gorgeous oratorio, that chorus that has
this atheist pressed in praise, that heaves heathens towards
heaven, could make anyone see paradise, could lift us all
out of the doldrums, help us stand naked before the world.

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The Psychotic Kitchen

With thanks to Piotr Skarga for blessing us with
The Lives of the Saints

I made chicken soup today. I took
the writhing, wailing, whining, flesh—
aggrieved, chicken carcass and boiled it
for an hour in my big pot while I thought
about the Christian martyrs who were
boiled alive. Some of them were

boiled alive, right? I know that
one saint was flayed alive, another
was roasted. The nuns told us
that he said to his torturers, “I’m done
on this side, turn me over.“
Which reminds me—the first purchase

my wife and I made was a dual controlled
electric blanket. We first slept together
in July, 1971, in Denver, Colorado.
It was 90 degrees outside; she had the AC
on and turned her electric blanket up to Nuke.
I had dreams of going to hell—unsettling

for this former Catholic boy after
some terrific sweaty sex. So, even
before we married, we bought a dual
controlled electric blanket. We’ve
been married for 47 years. I guess
it worked. It just shows what

capitalism is capable of—something
for which I’m plenty grateful.
While I’m at it I’d like to thank Sartre
for upbraiding Heidegger for his outlandish
contention that “death is my ownmost possibility.”
I can see Sartre guffaw through all that Gauloises smoke,

lean over to Simone, and whisper, “My death
isn’t my possibility at all. I’ll be dead.
I won’t have any possibilities, but you will,
mon chéri. You’ll have to deal with
my nauseating corpse, en sois, and arrange
my huge-ass funeral” (which she did).

I’d also like to thank Saul Bellow for
having his deranged scrivener, Herzog,
ask Heidegger just where Dasein landed
when he fell into the quotidian. It’s good
to get concrete, even if it hurts.
Finally, a big shout-out to Nietzsche

who taught me that an existentialist
is a tightrope walker.
But what about the chicken carcass?
The little chicken carcass’
screams were horribly loud—
well they would have been loud

if the chicken had been a Christian saint.
Oh and the smell. What does boiled saint
smell like? What did the guy they roasted
smell like? Pretty bad, I bet. They didn’t
have teriyaki sauce in those days.
If you roasted a saint today, he’d

be marinated in teriyaki sauce
and he’d smell pretty tasty during
the whole process. Teriyaki sauce—
now that’s progress! You’d still have
to put up with the screaming, the nuns,
and, of course, The Lives of the Saints.

The Truth About Luaus

It was about 5 feet 9 inches tall—my height.
I found the huge box outside our apartment
in Denver, a monument to my mother’s
inability to keep even her own secrets.

She’d let on that she was giving us a
grandfather clock as a wedding present.
We, of course, pictured a stately mahogany
piece with complicated works, a pendulum,

and a haunting chime that evoked a sense
of mortality and lines from John Donne.
Imagine my surprise when I opened the box
and found a monstrosity made of compressed

tiki wood. It was a grandfather clock all right,
but one you’d find in the Luau Room at
a Holiday Inn or Howard Johnson’s. The
“works” consisted of two bent metal “hands”

powered by a 9-volt battery behind the
clock face. Little cubbyholes lined with
fake orange fur—like you’d see on a
Kewpie Doll at a carnival—pocked the front

of the clock. It looked like a totem designed
to keep the pancake gods happy. Mother,
who owned a restaurant supply company,
clearly bought it out of a catalogue, at cost.

When she called to ask how we liked
the clock, I gently said it didn’t go with much
of our furniture. “You shitass,” she replied,
“You’d complain about the color of the ink

on the checks!” After our wedding we held
a garage sale. A biker fell in love with
the clock and bought it for $50. I helped
him strap it on his back. “Thanks dude,”

he said, and took off on his Harley.


Socratic Irony

My young wife and I
walk through the Agora
where Socrates strolled
to flee his wife and
create Western Civilization,
where Thales gazed at the stars,
predicted an eclipse of the sun
in 585 BC, and Parmenides claimed
that motion was impossible
even as he rounded the dusty
corners of this venerable town.

I pick up a rock and wonder
whether Plato or Aristotle
loosed it from its origins.
I tell my wife that our promenade
through this ancient city is sacred—
a momentous experience for me.
To which the love of my unexamined
life replies, “I have to pee,” finds
a bush that I swear only moments
before had been on fire,
and lifts her dress.

And so, it came to pass that,
while strolling along
the worn streets of wisdom,
I understood,
with unmediated clarity,
the concept of Socratic irony.

The Wish

What good is a wish that can’t be told, that was wished
to anger those who won’t hear it?
—Jim Harrison, Letters to Yesenen

I throw a coin into Trevi Fountain,
make a wish that’s immediately denied.
I hear Daphne, a gynecologist from Kansas,
insist that her kids could construct
a better fountain “out of Legos.”

Next day she gazes at St. Peter’s, dismisses this paragon of artistic achievement
as “too busy.”

I thank Dionysus that I have drunk my life quota
and am too old to visit tavernas in the Roman night
with Daphne, her emasculated though pleasant
husband, Bart, our teenage son, Ariel, and Phillip,
a contractor from Denver who is thirty years old
going on eighteen.

After a few beers Phillip, a season ticket holder for the Denver Broncos, grants my wish.

He listens in alcoholic wonder as Daphne
cackles, “all athletes make too much money.
Teachers and doctors,” says Daphne,
“should make the big bucks. They
save lives and form the future!”

Phillip, whom the nuns told he’d go blind if he masturbated and who reverently inquired
whether he could do it until he needed glasses,

Phillip grins at this blathering physician
and says, “I hate to break the news, lady,
but sixty thousand people will never
crowd into a stadium and pay money
to watch you do a pap smear.”