Bulls, Dogs, and Villains – A Tenth Imaginary Conversation with a Real Troll

    There are slightly different lights on different days. All that we see within is not the same. One day it is sunlight on cornfields. The next is candlelight in the house when the power goes out. This shuckling soul dance, this pietist gyration, like the flickering flame of a candle. Silent persistent prayers.

    “You bleeding heart liberals are all the same…”

    He’s at my door again and I wonder if my wife is right. Why do I keep letting him do this? The front door is open to let in the pleasant afternoon breeze. I’m home from work. My laptop open. My notebook open – the place where I write all my little notes, dribs and drabs of doggerel, punning names to file away for later use, obscure words to look up, stray bits of dialogue in search of a story.

    I look up from the writing that isn’t happening and see him there – with his slightly hyperthyroid eyes, the left one drooping somewhat. And he’s just standing there grinning. And waving.

    I don’t bother to get up from the couch.

    “Listen, Gunner, you can insult me all you like. You’ve been doing that for some time now. So call me a bleeding-heart liberal, if that helps you feel better. But tell the truth and get it right – it’s more than my bleeding heart. It’s the bleeding heart of Christ, and my calloused hands, my burning eyes, my strong but tired back, and my iron will, combined with all the blood of the prophets. Mock me; that’s fine. But it won’t stop the fight. It won’t stop the work. It won’t stop the words.”

    “You say so, Carter. I don’t think you’ve got any of that. But how much weight do you think your words will hold? Does anyone actually read your stuff?”

    My writing program is open. A new, untitled document is open. The cursor is blinking expectantly. I sigh and close the laptop. I stand from the couch and take the three steps to the front door to speak with Gunner.

    “Here is the patience and the faith of the saints. He that leadeth into captivity shall go into captivity: he that killeth with the sword must be killed with the sword.” I say this quietly. Nearly a whisper but he hears me just fine.

    He recoils in mock terror outside the door and laughs. “Are you threatening me, Carter? I thought you were one of those pacifist types. Didn’t think you had any real fight in you.”

    I fling open the door. “Well, don’t just stand there like a dog at the door. Come on in if that’s what you’re going to do. A dog, or bull, or just a villain – come to hack off my hands and feet. Come on in so you can look at me and gloat.”

    He stands there stupefied. I am shocked as well.

    “I’m sorry, Gunner. I’m a bit out of sorts today. And who can ever really detect his own failings and hidden faults. Come on in if you want. I’ve got a couple of beers in the fridge if you wanna share one with me.”

    “Is it that IPA crap you like?"

    I shrug, “It’s what I’ve got.”

    He shakes his head no. “No thanks. I’ll just see you later.”

    And that’s it. He is gone.

Truth with Untruth: A Ninth Imaginary Conversation with a Real Troll

    Breaking the formula and the norm, I received an email from my troll, Gunner, today. Usually he comes by my place, pulling up in his noisy pickup truck, or he finds me out and about town as I ‘m buying groceries or running errands. But today he sent me an email instead of his usual routine.

    To: *******carter@hotmail.com
    From: Gunandrun***@gmail.com

    Re: Myths and Legends

    Jeff – I know I was just at your place the other day and I don’t try to bother you too often at home, but I had to reach out to you today. Something you said in our last discussion You told me that you understand the creation stories of the Bible to be more myth than history. I believe your exact words were “sacred story, not a scientific document.” And, honestly, I wouldn’t have expected anything other from you, liberal as you are. I’m not even sure why you say your a Christian, really.

    But if your going to say your a Christian you should do it right. If your going to say your a Christian you have to accept the Bible as our sure word of prophecy. Wholly. Completely. It’s truth from cover to cover. Not myth. Not fable. Not fairy tale. Not Legend. Not tall tale. But truth. Pure upright truth. There is no fiction in the Bible.

    Gunner

    I replied. Succinctly.

    To:Gunandrun***@gmail.com
    From: *******carter@hotmail.com

    Re: Re: Myths and Legends

    Gunner.

    Come on, man. The Bible frequently uses fiction to teach truth.

    j.c.

    The conversation continued over the next couple of hours via email.

    To: *******carter@hotmail.com
    From: Gunandrun***@gmail.com

    Re: Re: Re: Myths and Legends

    Never. Not once.

    Gunner.

    To:Gunandrun***@gmail.com
    From: *******carter@hotmail.com

    Re: Re: Re: Re: Myths and Legends

    Setting aside the creation stories (plural, btw) and the other obvious fictions like Jonah, the prophet Nathan used a fiction to teach King David the truth. And Jesus taught with parables. Mark explicitly says that he did not say anything to them without using a parable.

    j.c.

    To: *******carter@hotmail.com
    From: Gunandrun***@gmail.com

    Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Myths and Legend

    But parables are not just stories. They were true stories about real, historical people that Jesus knew. Its all true. It’s all real. If its not true historically how could it be true prophetically?

    There is no untruth in the Bible, Jeff. You can’t express truth with untruth. We don’t follow cunningly devised fables. God is not a man that he should lie. This is what concerns me most about you. You dismiss the Bible as a mere story book.

    Gunner.

    To:Gunandrun***@gmail.com
    From: *******carter@hotmail.com

    Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Myths and Legends

    You’re putting words in my mouth again, Gunner. I don’t dismiss it. I accept it for what it is. And I never used the word “mere.” It is profound and has shaped my life since I was young.

    You’ve simply misunderstood the genre of Parable as used in the Ancient Near East.

    j.c.

    To: *******carter@hotmail.com
    From: Gunandrun***@gmail.com

    Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Myths and Legend

    Jeff. Your either a liar or a fool. Or both. The Bible is DIVINELY inspired. 40 authors over 1,500 years with one true voice. It is TRUTH. Get it right and get saved.

    Gunner.

    I might have responded again, but I had to make dinner. Millions of Years of Death (the eighth conversation)

An Imaginary Conversation with a Real Troll (the first of the series) 
I Will Not Fight the Argument (the second)
Supermarket Wrestling (third conversation)
Do You Even Pray (the troll returns)
All Means All (A fifth conversation)
The Doctrine that Cannot Be Challenged (sixth conversation)
Toward Sodom - (a halfhearted seventh conversation)
Millions of Years of Death (the eighth conversation)

Millions of Years of Death – An Eighth Imaginary Conversation with a Real Troll

    “We’re in a rut, Gunner,” I said when I saw him approaching. It was my day off and I was enjoying a cup of coffee and a novel of historical fiction on the front porch. One of the stray cats that hangs around our place for food was there, allowing me to pet her occasionally. But she bolted under the porch when she heard the guttural roar of Gunner’s pickup truck. He parked it in my driveway, turned off the engine and stepped out, waving at me.

    He took off his red ball cap and said, “What?”

    “We’re in a rut. I know how it’s going to be. It’s always like this. You come to me with a question or a challenge. I respond and I answer. You insult me and then you leave. Now, I don’t mind playing this role, but you know that we don’t have to be enemies, right? There is no obligation to hostility.”

    “Oh, come on now, Jeff. You know you’re in control here,” he said.

    “Okay. Okay,” I said. “Fine. Come on up to the porch. Let me get you a cup of coffee. You like sugar in yours, right?”

    Cup of coffee in hand and seated on the porch with me, he began. “I would bet that you’re one of those who believe in the theory of evolution. But I want to challenge you with one thing.”

    “Go for it, Gunner,” I said.

    “The alleged evidence is the fossils in the layers of sedimentary rock, a long and tortured history of death and suffering. But it just doesn’t work. You can’t have millions of years of death before Adam’s sin.”

    “Well, the scientific descriptions of cosmological, geological, and biological evolution are not actually in conflict with theology…”

    “But the Bible…”

    “Or the Bible. Only with a particular and peculiar interpretation of the Bible.”

    “False. False! You are elevating man’s opinion – your opinion over God’s word. The God of millions of years…”

    “Billions,” I interjected but he either ignored me or didn’t hear me.

    “…is not the God of the Bible. If you’re unwilling to believe Genesis, if you’re unwilling to believe the first, the foundational book of the Bible, how can you claim to believe the rest of it? Either you’re being disingenuous or you’re deceived. Either way, you’re insulting God’s character. Calling God a liar. Like all of your so-called educators and scientists, you are slow to acknowledge the legitimate, slow to honor what is true. Paul says that ‘the wages of sin is death.’ So you can’t have hundreds of millions of years of death before the introduction of sin.”

    “Okay, Gunner,” I said. “Let’s accept that premise.”

    “So you agree?”

    “Well hang on. Hang on. Let’s not get ahead of ourselves. Let’s accept first the proposition that without sin there is no death. And your argument is that there could be no death before Adam’s sin. Yes? Do I have that right?”

    “Spot on!” Gunner agreed.

    “Okay. But Adam’s sin wasn’t the first. Sin was already introduced.”

    “What are you talking about?” Gunner furrowed his forehead.

    “You also accept the idea that Satan is a real individual, an evil entity and not just a myth or a personification of the idea of evil. You believe that Satan was an angel in heaven who rebelled against God and was cast out of heaven. Yes?”

    “Yes,” he said hesitatingly.

    “And when did Satan’s fall occur? After Adam’s?”

    I could see it happening behind his eyes. The sputtering fire and smoke of incredulity, the proof-text checklist rolled up like a scroll. And then the confidence returned. “But the six, twenty-four hour days of creation still don’t allow you millions of years for life to evolve.”

    “Billions,” I said again. He didn’t respond so I pressed forward a little. “I understand the creation stories of the Bible to be more myth than history. As a sacred story not a scientific document. But that doesn’t mean I don’t believe. The world is God’s and I believe this. Sin brings death. I believe this.”

    “If you don’t believe Genesis, you don’t believe the Bible.” He declared and set down his coffee mug. “Your faith is weak. Your faith is blind. Your faith is destroyed by Big Bang insanity. You want the creation without the Creator.” He stood as if to leave, but turned again and said, “Tell me, Carter, is your tongue scarred from all the double talk?”

    I didn’t have an answer, so I sipped my coffee. He looked at his watch and said, “Well, I’ve gotta’ go. See ya’ next time?”

    “Sure, Gunner. You always seem to know where to find me.” he descended the steps of the porch, got back into his noisy truck and drove away. I picked up my novel and returned to the story. A few moments later the cat reappeared from under the porch.

An Imaginary Conversation with a Real Troll (the first of the series) 
I Will Not Fight the Argument (the second)
Supermarket Wrestling (third conversation)
Do You Even Pray (the troll returns)
All Means All (A fifth conversation)
The Doctrine that Cannot Be Challenged (sixth conversation)
Toward Sodom - (a halfhearted seventh conversation)

Mischief Night – Friday, 1987

    It was another Friday in that long ago and misremembered 1987, October 30^th. Mischief Night, or Devil’s Night as some of the more alarmist voices were already starting to call it. All Hallow’s Eve Eve… The threshold of the threshold.

    “We should go out to the cemetery and watch for Satanists,” Dave suggested. “They’re bound to be out, right? Getting ready for the great ritual, the high holy Samhain.”

    We were all together again – in the attic space above Dave’s family apartment that we’d claimed as our own. The television was on, some eurotrash horror film called The Sweet Terrors of the Succubus, but we’d grown bored of it and lost track of the plot, such as it was, and we were casting about for something to do. Dave’s mom had suggested that we could help her make rice crispy treats for Halloween trick-or-treaters, but we’d declined.

    She also brought up a small box of Halloween decorations – mostly paper cutouts of skeletons and ghosts and witches. “Mom,” Dave whined. “That’s kids’ stuff. It’s corny.” She smiled and left the box anyway and Micah was sorting through it. He hung a few of the spiders and skeletons from the ceiling.

    “If we wanna go to the cemetery,” I said, “we’re going to need to call Allison.”

    “No, dude,” Dave said. I’m not exactly sure why Dave didn’t care for Allison. He called her “Yoko.” I told him that was uncool, and he shrugged. Anyway, Micah was already dialing the phone. Dave saw it. “Dude, no.” Micah handed the phone to me.

    “Hey,” Allison said. “Whatever it is, I’m down.”

    “Trip to the cemetery,” I told her.

    “On Mischief Night? Groovy.” I could hear her grin through the phone. Twenty minutes later she was in the alley behind Dave’s apartment, and we were sneaking down the back stairs.

    “How’d you get the car?” I asked as Allison drove us across town towards the Resurrection Cemetery. “You don’t have your license yet, do you?” Dave and I were in the back seat. Micah was up front with her.

    “No. Beth and the parentals are out of town. They’re taking her to visit one of the colleges she’s interested in. They don’t know I’ve got the car.”

    I nudged Dave with an elbow to the ribs. “Well, thanks for driving us to the graveyard. It’s cool you’re coming.”

    “Actually,” Allison said without taking her eyes from the road, “It’s a cemetery. Though we use the words somewhat interchangeably. Cemeteries are larger and not connected to a church. Graveyards are smaller and associated with a church.”

    “Cool,” Micah said.

    “Same’s true of coffin and casket,” Allison continued. “We use them to mean the same, but they’re different. Caskets are rectangular with four sides. Coffins are tapered with six sides.”

    “Cool,” Micah said again. I don’t think I’d ever heard him so verbose.

    Allison turned off the headlights and parked the car a ways up the road. “Quiet now,” she warned. “We don’t want to attract attention.”

    But she needn’t have bothered. The place was dead. Bad pun, I know. I know. People had been there but now it was only us and the remains of someone else’s party. We shone our flashlights around the scene and saw the remains of their revelries. There was trash everywhere. Empty beer cans and vodka bottles, empty cigarette packs and cigarette butts. Dave found a used condom and Micah found a stray shoe and a very large black bra. There were a few broken candles scattered around one tombstone and lots of pieces of paper blowing around in the grass.

    Dave stepped on one to stop it from blowing away. He picked it up and read from it. “It’s from the Bible,” he said. “This page is Isaiah. ‘My heart falters, fear makes me tremble; the twilight I longed for has become a horror to me...”

    That caught my ear. “That’s… I recognize that one. Why do I know that one?” I looked at Allison for help. “It’s so familiar. Why do I know that passage?”

    “Beats me,” she said. “But maybe we should clean this up. I mean, we just can’t leave it like this. It’s so…”

    “Disrespectful,” I suggested.

    “Ugly,” Dave said at the same time.

    “Yeah,” she said to both. “I think Beth’s got a trash bag in the back of the car.”

    So we spent the next half hour walking between the graves, using our flashlights to find the trash and detritus left behind by the unknown revelers and mischief makers. We worked methodically in silence to gather up all the Bible pages and beer cans and other assorted debris. Dave used a small branch to pick up the used condom and to drop it in with the rest of the trash. We nearly filled the bag.

    When we finished, we gathered around Micah who was pointing his flashlight at a headstone with a pile of small stones on top. We watched in wonder as Micah added one more stone to the pile.

    He pointed his flashlight at the grave marker again and said, “My uncle.”

    LEVI ABELMAN – 1932 – 1984
    BELOVED HUSBAND – DEVOTED FATHER

    Allison turned and hugged him. And we all sat there in silence on the ground.

    “It’s like that song by This Corpse Alive – Dark Gethsemane,” I said as we sat together there at Micah’s uncle’s headstone.

    Early hasten to the tomb
    where they lay
    this lifeless clay
    all is solitude and gloom.

    We huddled together in silence for several minutes. Not speaking. Not moving. Just listening and thinking. After what seemed like a long while I asked a question. “Do you ever wonder if this is all there is? I mean, these bodies. This flesh… This life. There’s more, right?”

    Dave nodded. “But what is it?” I asked again. Now he looked slightly panicked. Micah shook his head and shrugged.

    We went out that night looking for performative blasphemy, all the satanic rituals of death in the Resurrection Cemetery, but we found something like the meaning of life. Or at least the right questions. And that’s still the question. All these years later. Is this all there is? All our assumptions about life and death and life after death and life after life. Spirit disembodied, removed from the material and the physical. A presence without weight and a weight without presence. Is there more? Are we more?

    “I don’t know what comes after life,” Allison said. “But whatever it is, it’s not worth much without love.” She placed another small stone on Micah’s uncle’s headstone.

    That’s when the police rolled up and turned on the flashing blue and red lights.

    “Shit! We’re busted,” Allison hissed.

    “Should we run?” Dave asked.

    “No,” I said as I stood. “He’s probably already got the license plate from the car. Even if we ran, he’d still track us down.”

    “Okay, you punks. Just hold it there. Don’t move,” called out the police officer as he turned his powerful flashlight on us. “Every year it’s this same damn thing. You kids come out here on Devil’s Night to topple some gravestones or spray paint pentagrams all over everything.”

    “Sir,” I said raising my hands over my head. “We’re not satanists. We came out to see satanists, but we didn’t find any...”

    “But they were here,” Dave interrupted. “They left their trash all over everything.”

    “We just cleaned it all up,” Allison finished the explanation. And Micah pointed to the trash bag at our feet.

    “Open that up and let me see,” the officer instructed. Micah knelt down and opened the bag wide enough to see inside. The condom was still right there on top of all the beer cans.

    The officer spoke into his radio, “This is Richardson out at the Resurrection Cemetery. You got anything on that license plate?”

    “Negative. No tickets or outstanding warrants.”

    “All right kids. Here’s what we’re going to do. You’re going to haul ass out of here before I have to arrest you for trespassing. You’re going to go home. Straight home. And I’m going to file a report saying that I didn’t find any evidence of satanic mischief out here tonight. Which not only saves me a lot of other paperwork but has the added blessing of being true. Now haul ass.”

    We took off running for Allison’s car. But he shouted again, “Hold on, hold on! Take this trash with you.” Micah ran back and grabbed the bag, and we all beat feet for the car.

Rituali de Sangue - Friday, 1987
Twilight at Saint Gerald's - Another Friday, 1987
Exorcism Live - Another Friday, 1987

Exorcism Live, Another Friday, 1987

    I was lying on my bed, listening to music Allison had given me when Dave and Micah showed up. The music had captured me; it was totally unlike the metal I usually listened to. One entire side of the cassette was a song by Brian Eno – thirty minutes of drifting synths. Just drifting. I lay on my bed and stared at the ceiling drifting. Almost floating even.

    I thought about her – Allison. Since the event at the hospital she hadn’t been allowed to drive Beth’s car anymore. She was grounded, but not really in trouble. Her parents – all of our parents – were so relieved that we were safe that they implemented only token punishments for our poor choices. But still, she wasn’t allowed to drive anymore. Not till she actually got her license anyway. We hung out at school more often since the hospital. Walked the halls between classes together. That’s when she’d given me the mix tape.

    “You should expand your experiences,” she said.

    So I was listening to this music of nothing, this melody of air and moonlight through the headphones. I didn’t know how to hear it but there was something profound there.

    And that’s when the guys came in. We were at my place instead of the unfinished attic above Dave’s family’s apartment, but we were at my place almost as often as Dave’s. They kicked open the door and Dave yanked the headphone cable from the stereo. The sustained lilting of the airy melody flowed into the room.

    “What’s this shit?” Dave asked.

    “It’s a mix-tape Allison gave me.” I tossed him the cassette case with her handwritten titles.

    “Brian Eno?” he read. “Never heard of him. Sugar Cubes? Mississippi John Hurt? Carter USM?” he looked up from the list. “Are these songs or bands or what?” He continued reading. “Herman’s Hermits? Herman’s Shitting Hermits? Don’t your parents listen to that crap?”

    Micah pushed the stop and eject button on the cassette player, removed the tape and handed it back to me. He shook his head, “No.”

    Dave pulled out one of my This Corpse Alive albums. We were really into them. I still listen to them. The percussive pounding began immediately:

    Creeping in unnoticed
    The ungodly! The ungodly!
    Creeping from the remotest
    The ungodly! The ungodly!

    “No. Not that one” I objected. I was still feeling the ambient drift of the Eno song and I couldn’t handle the throbbing metal just yet. “Play the next track.” Dave moved the needle and suddenly the distorted guitars and drums were replaced with somber, if somewhat dissonant strings layered with gravel voiced mournful vocals.

    The righteous dies and no one cares
    In these evil days. These evil days.

    That song moves me. Even still. I can’t hear it without trembling a little. But back then, back in 1987 when we were fifteen, we were smart kids doing dumb things. Or dumb kids listening to good music and watching bad movies. That wasn’t the plan for this Friday night though. No. We’d planned that dumbest of teenage pranks – the prank phone call.

    In preparation I’d gone back to the University library and found a copy of Anton LaVey’s Satanic Bible. The librarian at the desk wouldn’t let me check it out though. “Stolen too often,” she told me. So I had to make xerox copies of the pages I wanted. The librarian eyeballed me the entire time to make sure I returned the infamous text before I left.

    Don’t get me wrong though. We weren’t satanists or anything. We just thought all that occult stuff was interesting. We read some of Aleister Crowley’s ceremonial magik, we looked up ancient summoning spells. We tried some of those, but never had any luck with them. And I read some of Anton LaVey’s books. Some called him “The Black Pope,” others called him the “evilest man in the world,” but to me he just sounded like Ayn Rand with pentagrams and black candles. Boring really.

    But armed with these devilish provocations we were going to call Bob Larson’s Talk Back radio program. Larson was one of those televangelists – though he was on the radio, not television in those days. His show was a crack up. Talking to teens about Satanism and ritual Satanic abuse and all that hype. He was a showman, always asking for people to donate money to his ministry and pitching his books and tapes. He was loud. He was abrasive and abusive, often shouting down his guests, telling them to shut up so he could rail against them. His voice was high pitched and pinched, and even more so as he became riled up. We turned off the record player and turned on the radio and tuned in the program just in time to hear the beginning of his show.

    “Good evening, America. Welcome to Talk Back with Bob Larson. I’ll be here for the next hour talking about what’s on my mind and hearing from you about what’s on your mind. Tonight we’re talking about teenage satanists. If you’re a teenager and you’re involved in Satanism or the occult dial me at 1-800-821-TALK. Call me. Maybe you’re into witchcraft. Maybe you’ve been involved in some sort of ritual sacrifice. Maybe you’re a member of a black metal, death metal band. Or maybe you want out. Maybe you want to be set free. Call me.”

    Dave was already dialing and talking to the call screener. Trying to get us in to the show as Bob continued on the radio.

    “Satan promises power. Power over parents. Power over school authorities. And even power over God. Is it a passing phase? Or are these teens committing to the rituals and a lifestyle that will take over and consume them? Do they have the devil in them? Is it Lucifer or Belial, or Leviathan in them? Why are teenagers turning to Satan? Call me. Talk to me. We’ve got a young man from Bloomington, Indiana on the phone.”

    “We’re on! We’re on!” Dave said thrusting the phone at me.

    “So you’re a teenage satanist?” I heard Larson say in the phone earpiece and on the radio and I was momentarily confused. “How long have you been duped by the devil?” Dave thrust the xerox LaVey quotes at me. Micah turned down the volume on the radio a little.

    “Do you kiss the ring of Satan? Hello? Are you there, caller?”

    I suddenly found my voice – not my regular voice, but the mewling, growling voice I used to crack up Dave and Micah as we read Crowley and LaVey. “Gather around me, Oh! Ye death-defiant, and the earth itself shall be thine, to have and to hold!”

    “My, what a lovely singing voice you must have,” Larson quipped. “So you’re a teenage satanist. You’ve obviously read The Satanic Bible…”

    I interrupted his spiel, “Too long the dead hand has been permitted to sterilize living thought. Life is the great indulgence – death, the great abstinence. Therefore, make the most of life, here and now!”

    “Caller, what’s your name? And how old are you?”

    We’d prepared for this. “Call me Liber Samekh,” I said, not dropping the voice. “And my minions, Cernunnos and Draugor are here with me.”

    “Are those your witch names? Your ritual names?”

    “Yes,” I answered and kicked at Micah who was wheezing with laughter on the floor, holding his yarmulke on his head with one hand. 

    “And do you and your minions listen to heavy metal, black or death metal music?”

    “We do. We follow This Corpse Alive. They’re the greatest.” I was getting off track a little. Dave shoved another page in front of me, jabbing his finger at a highlighted quote. I read it, putting all the menace I could into my cracking, teenage voice. “Behold the crucifix; what does it symbolize? Pallid incompetence hanging on a tree.”

    Larson was incensed. “Liber Samekh, Listen to me. Liber Samekh, I won’t allow blasphemy on my show. This is my show. Listen to me! Listen you’re getting into something that you can’t control. You don’t know…”

    I interrupted him again, louder and more forcibly. “Say unto thine own heart, ‘I am mine own redeemer.’”

    “Begone, Satan” Larson started shouting. “I bind and cast you out of this boy. I bind and cast you out of this child. I bind and cast you out in the name of Jesus…”

    He probably went on like that for some time, but we were laughing too hard to hear him. It was dumb and childish, of course. Puerile. But it was fun and funny. We were reading Crowley and LaVey and all that other rot, but we never bought into the “Satanic Panic” of those years. Bob Larson was a carnival barker. Anton LaVey was little more than an egoist. But one thing still stands out from those years – that song by This Corpse Alive still haunts me.

    The righteous dies and no one cares
    these evil days. These evil days.

Rituali de Sangue - Friday, 1987
Twilight at Saint Gerald's - Another Friday, 1987

Toward Sodom – Another Halfhearted Conversation with a Real Troll

    He comes around to harangue and harass, he insults me and belittles my faith and then he disappears. For a while. I go on about my life. I work. I write. I watch bad movies with my wife. And then he returns for another round or two of abuse.

    “I don’t know why you put up with him,” my darling says to me. “He’s a troll.”

    “Ahhh,” I nod and smile, “but he’s my troll.”

    She stares at me for a second or two and then says, “That makes no sense and you know it.” She laughs. I laugh.

    But he’s here again today. He catches mes as I’m working in the yard, raking leaves and pulling weeds. and he’s another argument for me. One I wouldn’t have expected.

    “Lot was selfish,” he says to me without preamble.

    Like I said, compared to some of his previous maneuvers this assault seemed indifferent. Insubstantial Inconsequential. Unnecessary, even. Like he wasn’t even trying anymore.

    “You mean when his uncle Abram offered him his choice of land for his flocks and herds?” I ask to make sure I understand what he’s asking. “Genesis chapter fifteen or thereabouts?”

    “Thirteen,” he nods. “Yeah. Lot was the selfish one. He was greedy and should have allowed his uncle, the patriarch, have the good land. He was greedy and he resisted his uncle’s authority.”

    “How does Lot’s acceptance of Abram’s offer make him a rebel? And Abram had taken the good land, wouldn’t that have made Abram the selfish one?” I ask, but I am already too late, Gunner is moving on.

    “Lot settled in the cities of the plain and pitched his tent toward Sodom.” He claps his hands. “Toward Sodom!”

    “We have no indication that Lot or any member of his family participated in the sins of Sodom – which were not homosexuality but rape, and inhospitality, selfishness and a lack of concern for the poor. The fact that God sent angels to rescue Lot and his family should indicate that he was not…”

    “Aha!” Gunner claps me on the shoulder with his meaty hand. “He pitched his tent toward Sodom, Jeff. You can’t get around that. Towards Sodom!” he shakes his head back and forth as he retreats back to his pickup truck.

    “Bye, Gunner,” I say waving.

    “What was that about,” my darling says from the door of the house.

    “I have no idea,” I say and go back to pulling weeds.

An Imaginary Conversation with a Real Troll (the first of the series) 
I Will Not Fight the Argument (the second)
Supermarket Wrestling (third conversation)
Do You Even Pray (the troll returns)
All Means All (A fifth conversation)
The Doctrine that Cannot Be Challenged (sixth conversation)

A Sixth Imaginary Conversation with a Real Troll – The Doctrine that Cannot Be Challenged

    “Hey Carter!” came a shout and I knew who it was without turning my head, which was good as I was experiencing a wash of vertigo at the moment. I’d come home from work and took a moment to relax, sitting on the porch with the feral cats who hang out near our house. We feed them and they allow us to pet them. Sometimes. Anyway, I’d spent a few minutes petting and talking to the one we’ve named Sorrow, but he took off. He’s skittish. I would have gone inside myself but, as I said, the vertigo.

    “Hey Carter!” came the shout again.

    “Gunner, it’s been a while. Where’ve you been?” I didn’t really want to speak to him. He’s a bit of a troll, always trying to rile me. Always read to condemn me. But I try to be patient. I try to put up with him even if I wasn’t feeling right side up.

    “Where’s your American flag?” he asked as he stepped up to the porch. “You’ve got a Palestinian flag, a skull and cross bones pirate flag, and a queer pride flag in your window, but no American flag and I’m just wondering why you hate America so much.

    Yeah. That’s usually how it goes with Gunner. “Patriotism is the doctrine that cannot be challenged, eh Gunner?” I said with my head still between my knees. “As it happens,” I answered him, “my American flag is safely folded and put away in a closet somewhere. I have plans to get it out for flag day.”

    “To put it up?” he grinned. “Excellent. I knew you'd come around eventually." “No,” I said. “Not to display it. To wash it. I’m going to sit on the courthouse lawn with a bucket of soapy water and spend the day washing the flag. I’ve made up a sign to take with me. Stained with Oil. Stained with mud. Stained with War, Stained with Blood. We are not the good guys.”

    His grinned disappeared. “You know, Carter, there are three heavens, but none of them are yours.

    Another wave of vertigo washed over me and I closed my eyes to keep from spinning. It’s the end of the world – alive or dead, doesn’t matter. We’ve got to move fast while national security concerns are still beating. There are opportunists waiting and grasping for exploitational exposure. Which is just another method of murder. Clean and simple kill counts. The lower depths of darkness rule here. It is not enough for the burning fire. Not enough for the burnt offerings. The god of this land is not placated without death. Blow it up. Burn it down. It’s a rigor mortis policy long past its prime. It’s all in the CIA monitoring and redacted FBI files.

    “All the nations,” I said after the vertigo receded. ALL the nations – this means you, this means us – are as nothing before God, Gunner. Nothing. And no American exceptionalism, no rugged individualism, no protestant work ethic will make a damn bit of difference. That flag is nothingness and emptiness.”

    “You’re such a hypocrite, Carter. If you really thought that you wouldn’t have that terrorist Palestinian flag in your window.”

    I nodded slightly – too much motion might have triggered another wave. “You could be right, Gunner. I’m a messy bundle of contrarian contradiction. What can I say?”

    Gunner huffed and waved me off before storming back to his noisy pickup truck and driving away. I watched him roar away.

    Sorrow poked his head out from beneath the porch and meowed at me. “Yeah, buddy. Hang on. I’ll bring out some food for you,” I said as I stood and went inside.

Consider the Pilgrim

    Do not be thrown to confusion, with a drunken feeling in your mind. Contaminated. Do not be alarmed. Do not be deceived, but in the air with holy hands immortal, and your face to godward be ready for the storms, and gales, and wind. The Day of the Lord (green to gold and gold to black) comes with flaming fire.

    Consider the pilgrim, the bacterial smell of sweat upon him still who the Lord still loves. He suffers tribulation, as you know. Called to glory of the road. Keeping the traditions of the way. To sail upon the ocean and stand upon the sand. Ceaseless steps and ceaseless hope.

    Consider the gardener - sweet mock orange, hyacinth, allium, phlox, and hollyhock. Buzzing, ringing in the soil, listening to the sun – slender sunbeams and yellow flowers in the lawn. The message spreads quickly. Received with blooms of honor.

    Consider the baker and the brewer, both with the scent of yeast. Life and rising bread. Cast your bread upon the water and draw back sweet dark ale to encourage and strengthen you in every good word. Every good deed.

    Be thou saving everything, Lord, be merciful to your people. The Lord of peace himself.

    This is my own writing.

Twilight at Saint Gerald’s – Another Friday, 1987

    Judas the Hammer brings ruin to many!
    Judas the Hammer will capture the city!

    The growling vocals and throbbing, distorted guitars of This Corpse Alive shook the room. They were our favorite band back in 1987 and we listened to their albums whenever we got together, despite our parents objections to that ‘devil-music’ as they called it. We were at Dave’s place – in the upstairs unused half attic of the apartment – our usual spot. It was me, Dave, and Micah. And Allison

    “I appreciate that you’re here to do this, but aren’t you supposed to be at rehearsal, or something,” I asked, twisting my head to see her. I liked her cinnamon hair. And that her older sister, Beth – a senior while we were freshmen – would sometimes get us some pot. She was there to pierce my ear with a safety pin. My mom was going to be so cheesed.

    “Sit still,” she insisted and squeezed my ear with the ice cube to numb it. “Yeah,” she said. “Stupid Guys and Dolls.” She snorted. “They cast me as one of the Hot Box dancers. But it’s not like I can dance all that well. It’s just ‘cause I have boobs.” Micah, Dave, and I blushed and turned away from her and she laughed at us. I sneaked a look at her chest as she squeezed my ear again. Harder.

    “Hold still,” Allison said. “This is gonna’ hurt.”

    “I thought the ice…” I started to say and then she stabbed the pin through my lobe. I screamed, but it was done.“You’re such a puss,” she said and handed me a towel. “Wipe up the blood.”

    Micah brought me a small hand-held mirror and nodded in approval. “Cool,” he said.

    “Are you guys still into that Satan shit?” Allison asked as I preened in the mirror with my new punk rock jewelry.

    Micah shook his head back and forth, nearly dislodging his yarmulke. Dave laughed and said, “We’re not Satanists, you know. We just thought it’d be cool. Not that it worked or anything.”

    “Do you have anything else planned?” Allison asked as she sat down on the couch next to Micah.

    “We were just going to watch a movie. I think The Brides of Betrayal is on tonight,” I said.

     “So. Just another boring Friday night for the Three Investigators?” Allison said with a slightly sardonic grin. Now I almost regretted telling her about my childhood obsession with those books. Almost. She grinned at me and continued. “But what if I said I know how we can get into the old Saint Gerald of Aurillac hospital.”

    The three of us stared at her as the This Corpse Alive album continued playing on the stereo.

    My heart is bewildered, a dread overwhelms
    The twilight I longed for has become my terror.

    The Saint Gerald of Aurillac hospital had been empty – abandoned since before any of us were born. None of us really knew why. There were stories, of course, each more outlandish than the last: human breeding experiments, Nazi doctors, you know the sort… Weekly World News kind of stuff. It was probably something entirely boring like taxes or insurance but the stories circulated. The city kept it pretty well boarded up so that it didn’t become a hobo camp and there was very little graffiti on the walls. A tall chain link fence cordoned off most of it.

    “Hellfire!” Dave shouted. “Let’s go!”

    “But how are we going to get there?” I asked. “It’s on the other side of town.”

    “I’ve got Beth’s car,” Allison said.

    “But no license, right?”

    “Are you coming or not?” She asked and followed Dave down the stairs. I looked at Micah. He just shrugged and followed along. We piled into Beth’s maroon and rust Ford Escort and Allison drove us across town to the Saint Gerald. Micah offered a cassette for the tape deck, but Allison refused it. “No more of that death metal crap tonight, boys. You’re going to hear some real music.” She played some synthesizer Euro pop. Micah just sulked in the back seat staring out the window.

    The Saint Gerald was boarded up and secure – except for one basement entrance that Allison knew about. The iron stairs down to the door were dangerously sloped and bounced uncertainly as we made our unsteady descent. I felt a wash of vertigo as I stepped down, but it passed. At the bottom she pulled away a band of yellow and black barricade tape and pulled on the door. It opened. Reluctantly, but it opened.

    We were ready to enter but Allison held out her arm. “Should we pray first, or something? For protection?”

    “Yeah,” I agreed. “That’s probably a good idea. Dave, what have you got in the way of protection prayers?”

    He looked sheepish and said, “I don’t know. I guess we could recite the Lord’s Prayer or Psalm Twenty-Three, maybe.”

    Micah held his hands in the air with his fingers spread like Mister Spock and began to pray: “Hashkivenu Adonai, Eloheinu l’shalom v’ha’amideinu shomreinu l’chaim. Ufros aleinu sukkat shlomecha v’takneinu b’eitzah tovah milfanecha v’hoshee’einu l’ma’an sh’mecha. V’hagen b’adeinu v’haseir mei’aleinu oyev, dever, v’cherev, v’ra’av, v’yagon, v’harcheik mimenu avon vafesha. U’v’tzeil kenafecha tastireinu ki el shomreinu umatzileinu atah ki el chanun v’rachum atah. Ushmor tzeiteinu u’vo’einu l’chaim u’l’shalom mei’atah v’ad olam. Baruch atah Adonai, shomer amo Yisrael.”

    “Amen,” we all agreed, though we didn’t know what he’d prayed.

    “Dude, was that from Star Trek?” Dave asked and Allison smacked him on the back of the head.

    “Hold up. Hold up,” Dave said rubbing his skull. “I’ve got something else. I’ve got these.” He pulled out a small wooden box from his jacket. He opened the lid and revealed three communion wafers. “I smuggled these out from Mass when we were getting ready for the summoning ritual.” He looked at Allison. “I didn’t know you’d be with us or I would have gotten more…”

    “Isn’t that blasphemy or something?” she asked.

    “No. We’re doing something dangerous here. We might encounter some evil spirit inside there. We need the holy presence to go with us.”

    “Still seems iffy to me,” I said. But we each took one. For protection.

    “I’ve got something too,” Allison said handing us a piece of chalk. She looked at me and said, “Just like The Three Investigators, right?” She smiled and I melted.

    “So we don’t get lost,” Allison explained and drew an arrow on the wall. She stepped through the door into the darkness and we followed after her.

    Inside it was stuffy and dark but not like a cave. When my family went to the State park caves near here for vacation, they smelled fresh and clean. Living even. Saint Gerald of Aurillac hospital, abandoned for so long, smelled dead. I don’t know how better to say it. Our flashlights did little to illumine the facility. There was little to see. If we expected to find medical equipment and blood stained walls we were disappointed. It was just an empty building. Empty hallways. Empty rooms.

    But there was something, some nervous hesitation, some unexpressed unfamiliar dread. “Aren’t these places full of radon?

    “Radon?” Dave said. “What’s that?”

    “Radioactive gas that seeps up from the ground,” I explained.

    “Radioactive gas? You’re full of crap. You know that right?” Dave said.

    Maybe it wasn’t Radon, but there was something. I felt. We all felt it. And my newly pierced ear was throbbing. I think I saw interdimensional flashing lights. Fairy lights and there was …

    It’s here that I mostly have to end the story.

    I don’t really remember what else happened. We woke up in the hospital – the actual functioning hospital, with doctors and nurses and everything. Our parents were there, sobbing and squeezing us until we were nearly crushed to death. Alternately laughing and crying and shouting at the doctors. It turns out that someone (we never learned who) made an anonymous phone call to 911 reporting a gas leak in the area of The Saint Gerald of Aurillac hospital. Police and Fire Department responded and found the four of us unconscious in the heating system of Saint Gerald’s. They followed our chalk marks, apparently. They flooded the room with fresh clean air and we were revived and taken by ambulance to the hospital.

    I still don’t know how we got into the heating system.

    And, what is more, Saint Gerald’s had been vacant for years, everything shut down. No power, no utilities. No gas. Who made the call? Why was there the smell of gas there? These things we never learned.

Rituali di Sangue - Friday, 1987

Emmaus

    Come risen Christ to the confused
    from light to shadow and return

    Come uncanny Christ seen unseen
    unrecognized and with us all the while

    Break bread and he is gone.
    Break mystery and he is here
    within our burning and broken hearts

    Come hidden disappearing Christ
    live and live again

This Man Only a Moment

    He is on the news again, this man. This man, who never shuts up. This man, this man – is not a man. He is a living lie. Even when he tells the truth it is in furtherance of a lie. Big hair, big mouth in front of the cameras and microphones. But the internal indicators are not functioning. No light. No tick, tick, tick haptic. Whatever you think, or feel, or vote – this is his time. This man, this moment.

    He sits upon the surface of evil – marking divisions and offenses. Using leverage as the key to the deal. It goes like this: with easy way capitulations or hard way negotiations in the back room. The artifice and the fraud become accepted reality. Packaged for grift and for graft.

    This man, this man – mighty before but urgent now with a loss and lack of integrity. Disintegration on the screen in front of us. A living lie falling apart. And we are herded into semiautonomous waiting in small rooms in a smaller and smaller world. Dangerous dimensions. All that sorrow, all that ache. We are thundered asunder. Waiting to be pulled under.

    He never shuts up. A thousand thoughtless words -for a day, a week, a year – like a sword, cutting and slashing anyone at hand. Striking and lashing out at friends and allies as often as his enemies. Active for decades, but soon he’ll be done. Sincere lips endure forever but the lying tongue – this man – with his lying lips lasts only a moment.

Proverbs 12: 18-19

Let God Arise (Psalm 68 Roughly)

(1-6) What Are We Going To Do?

    What are we going to do? That’s what everyone wants to know. Your talking head propagandists, your nationalist social scientists don’t know. These scholars and lobbyists claim to see the invisible hand but cannot see the kingdom of God in history. What are we going to do? We cannot claim the banks and loans and deals and assets on your books. What are we going to? That’s what the managers of decline are asking. That’s what everyone wants to know.

    Have ye not read?

    Do not consider riches as private property but as common good. Your economic philosophy is in practice, godless. Insatiable greed. Domineering avarice. They demand the spirit of men and destroy the breath of women. They deny. They defend. They depose. But they cannot explain the irruption of the spiritual in the physical realm. Fools of one flesh.

    Like the smoke of a fire, drifting gone.
    Like melting wax in a fire.

    Let God arise -Father and defender of orphans and widows. Sheltering the homeless lonely in a holy place. And prisoners too. Freemarket rebels can find their own place in the wilderness. Let them have the bootstrap deserts they have made.

    What are we going to do? Ride through the deserts – let them see.
    What are we going to do? Build a road through the desert for the Rider on the Clouds.

    Sing and play music. Dance and be glad. But – and I love this part – What does the Rider on the Clouds need with a road?

(8) A Sweaty Sky

    Too much, too much. We are overwhelmed. Even nature by fear is beset in the presence and glory of the one who strides across the desert. The wind stops its bluster and blow. The great expanse of heaven gets nervous. The sky breaks out in sweat and rains shower down upon the earth.

(12-14) A Long Sequence of Non-Sequiturs

    Chieftains and kings of armies, having failed in highly confidential negotiations and transactions, having failed to deregulate, or discourage the enemy, are in flight, in flight. Their ambitions in flight. Their strategies are not working. Gathered militias and blockading forces have failed to secure the straights despite the outlandish destruction of material property and the slaughter of civilians. They are loose-tongued commanders with no charge.

    The nuclear maneuvers of fighter jets and submarines turned back and routed. Rerouted.

    Meanwhile the women – fair and beautiful – at home divide the spoil and booty of war -sorting through the pots and saddlebags for free blessings as they sit in the sheep pens. Sheep pens!

    They are singing the good news.
    They are singing and at ease.

    Then there’s something about metallic doves with wings of silver and pinions of green-gold. Victory doves. This is not an assault. Peace doves. This is not an attack.

    Now the snow is falling on Mount Zalmon – which might be something clever about white snow on the Dark One. No more bluster. No more bloviating boast or bluff. Disordered, self-glorifying kings are scattered as the purity of snow falls on the mountain.

(20-23,30) The Contradiction of Blood

    This God of ours, this God we know
    This is the God who saves.

    Take comfort in the Violence
    and the Vindication
    though it seems like contradiction.

    He smashes the heads and long-haired skulls of his enemies, the hairy crowns of psychopathic gunmen. Bullies and bulldogs. Abductors. Exploiters. Captors. Slavers. Smash them dead! Liars. Thieves and Liars. Murderers from the lowest and highest estates. Smash them dead! Dictators. Authoritarian tyrants and Fascist fools. Smash them dead!

    He drags them back from the hills, drags them back from the sea to do it all over again so you may bathe your feet in blood.

    But! A word of caution. A word of restraint. Take warning here: Our enemies may not be his and he will fling far and scatter wide all who take orgasmic delight, all who take profit and material gain, from the horrors of war. You have been warned.

(24-26) A Musical Interlude

    The noble procession proceeds:
    Singers ahead (sing good news and at ease)
    musicians behind
    and in between are
    are row upon row
    of beautiful girls
    beating their drums.

(28-35) Let God Arise

    Take command – it befits your power. This is the way. One way. Take command; it is yours. Reclaim what is yours, most powerful, most respected, inspiring awe and admiration of the entire world. Stop the wars that we have unleashed. Bring unity to the world we have divided. Bring prosperity to the world we have plundered.

    Rebuke the crocodiles in the reeds who lie in wait to devour. Rebuke the bulls who rage and trample over us and our children. Rebuke the silver idolaters trading in secrets and exploiting the mammon-market.

    Sing this song, Play and perform it for the Rider of the Heavens. High heavens. Ancient, primeval skies. Singers ahead (sing good news and at ease), a crescendo of instruments and the climactic pounding of drums. The crash of symphonic cannons and solemn bells and chimes and gongs.

    Then let the reverberations of silence ring long into eternity.

    The Kingdoms of the earth with outstretched hands. Europe. Russia. China with outstretched hands. Latin, South, and North America with outstretched hands. India, Australia, Palestine, Cuba, Indonesia with outstretched hands. Syria, Venezuela, Kenya with outstretched hands. All the tribes and nations of Africa with outstretched hands. All islands with outstretched hands.

    Speak with a voice of power.
    Splendor in the clouds of power.
    Awesome strength and power.
    Blessed be God.
    Amen.

See Also: 
Let God Arise (a sermon)
and
Sweaty Sky (a limerick)

Speak Peace and Breathe

    In the old domains, vast dark plains
    and strong dominions,
    speak peace and breathe.

    The doors of death and hell
    may be locked and barred,
    speak peace and breathe.

    Doubt is touched and
    uncertainty probed like wounded flesh,
    speak peace and breathe.

    Love pulls us back to the place
    where everything ends
    and all things begin again.

    Speak peace and breathe.

(John 20)

Rituali di Sangue – Friday, 1987

    It was long ago in a time of misremembered darkness and we were reading poorly translated thirteenth century Italian blood rituals by candlelight while heavy metal bikini girls writhed in the late night movie on the TV. It was 1987 and I was fifteen.

    “Baptized as we were into these bodies of flesh and death...” We intoned the words – some of which we’d had to pencil ourselves to fill in lacunae in the translation with our best adolescent guess. None of us actually spoke any Italian, but I’d had a semester of French and Micah knew a little Spanish. We thought we could fake it. A flash of hellfire lightning outside the window briefly illuminated the room and we all jumped. I shrieked. Yeah, like a girl, and then laughed.

    “Don’t break the circle, dude!” Dave shouted as Micah flinched. We’d drawn the protective circle on the floor using Morton’s salt filched from Micah’s mom’s kitchen. I burst into another fit of laughter.

    “It’s not working, is it?” I asked. We’d been holding hands around the circle, but now my hands were damp and sweaty. I wiped them on my jean jacket.

    “Don’t break the circle,” Dave insisted again.

    “Come on, man. We’ve been trying to read this book for an hour. It ain’t happening.” I’d found the book, Rituali di Sangue Per l’apparizione Demoniaca, in the special collections section of the college library – a university library card was one of the perks of taking AP classes in high school – so it was my fault we were spending that Friday night with obscure occult performances. I’d convinced the guys to try one of the rituals, but it obviously wasn’t working. Dave, who needed little persuading, wanted to continue.

    “Keep reading.”

    “Micah?” I asked. “What do you think?”

    Micah, who said very little stood up from the floor where we were sitting and turned on the lights and blew out the candles. I laughed again.

    “Fine!” Dave huffed. He went over to the stereo cabinet and pulled out a vinyl album by This Corpse Alive – some black metal band from Australia, I think. He settled the needle at the first track and turned up the volume. Thick guitars and drums filled the room.

    Step by step he staggers to the skull!
    Step by step he staggers to the skull!

    “Help me clean up this salt,” Dave said. “or my mom’s not gonna’ let us hang out up here anymore.” The room was an unused half attic above the apartment where Dave’s family lived. The first floor was their family’s business – his parents were both CPAs.

    I turned the music up a little louder and the three of us started to clean up the candles and salt. “Don’t put away the wine,” Dave said. We’d sneaked a bottle of wine out of his dad’s basement.

    Follow him down, down to the tomb
    drink of his blood, his flesh consume!

    With the ceremonial accouterments swept up, extinguished, and put away we sat down on the couch together. Dave poured us each a bit of wine into plastic cups decorated with Smurfs and Carebears. “What’s on the TV?” Dave asked as he sat and sipped from his cup. Micah pointed the remote at the screen and turned up the volume. Some hapless blonde was running barefoot and braless through the woods, screaming.

    “Same ol’ shit,” Micah muttered. But it didn’t matter. We often spent Friday nights watching the late night horror shows. And we loved it. All those gruesome films with gallons and gallons of bright red blood and screaming beauty queens with bright red lips. We especially loved the badly dubbed European ones.

    Another flash of lightning and an immediate bang of thunder rocked the upstairs room and the electricity went out. “Holy hell,” Dave gasped. “That was close. Sounded like it was right on top of us.”

    We sipped our wine as we waited in the dark for the power to come back on.

    “Should we get the candles back out?” I asked after a minute. Micah, never so loquacious, nodded and got the candles and the lighter back out from the cabinet where he’d put them. Soon the room was aglow again with the soft flickering light of the candles.

    “How long do you think…” I started to say but Micah hushed me with a finger to his lips. We could hear something approaching even over the howling, screaming wind and rain outside. The room suddenly felt heavy and close. Smaller than ever before. Something groaned in the darkness.

    Suddenly the door flung open. We all screamed and grabbed each other.

    “What the hell’s going on up here?” Dave’s mom said “Good grief, boys. It’s just a storm. And where did you get that wine?!

A Remembrance

    Long ago and far away it happened this way. Arrows pierced me. Liver deep. My indigestion, your indignation. No part of me unscathed, unscarred. Bleeding, bloody on the rocks. Pierced and pecked. Eaten. Devoured

    But there is no long ago, is there? Rewind and playback the video, scratched with static. This is now with my sins stacked higher than my head and pressed by weights. Play it again. More weight. This is now. More.

    Stinking, sinking, festering wounds. I cannot feel the sun, the warmth and the light. I cannot remember how love felt. Where there was perfume, there is rot. Where there was warm touch there is cold withdrawal.

    I am twisted double in gloom and in fire. No secret sighs. The light is gone out. The dance is done.

    Cautious friends with folded hands shun my disease, unease at a distance. There are procedures to be followed. Decorum to maintain. Betrayed by hands I thought knew. The door closes quietly. The car is gone. The house is empty. Who am I speaking to?

    While enemies with traps and snares speak violence. They throw their heads back in laughter. “You have committed blasphemy!” they shout and at once there is an ambush of archers from the surrounding forest. I am arrow-pieced and murdered in my step.

    But I am deaf and cannot hear their threats. I am dumb and dry of throat and cannot plead. There is no water here.

    I have hope, but it is elsewhere. I have hope. I force a smile through the burden. There is something there. I lean back and close my eyes. I know. I can feel the beating of my heart behind my eyes. I have hope. They will not gloat, not for long, even if I slip.

Psalm 38

I Remember (A Love Story)

    I remember the cafe where we met – with used coffee mugs drifting across the crowded tables, a Moroccan wool rug spread out on the old timber floor and walls crammed with books, occulted, occluded, random, and sheaves and sheaves of paperwork, photographs spilling out of cardboard boxes. I wore a red velvet jacket. You wore red lipstick.

    I remember you said, “People like us have to keep a divided existence. Always. Like a map turned over. We are living out.”

    “I don’t understand.”

    “We were never what we were. That was never us.” You said, as if it were sensible. True.

    Meanwhile the days died outside. Nighttime illuminated by flashlights in the distance. The fragility of dawn’s magic flickering, flicking off. Darkness. People came out burred – like those French paintings. Crashing worlds blurring and the lights no longer felt quite so safe.

    The words landed. Believed. Disbelieved. But spoken finality.

    “You don’t really believe all that, do you?” I asked.

    “It doesn’t matter.”

    Then there was some business out on the street – unpleasant noise and displeasure. You jumped and turned away from the door then away to one side. Heart beating. Then, in a rush, move about, and kiss goodbye. You were gone.

Light Rises in Darkness

    How can anyone prove/disprove the cold increasing threats without dismantling the government? Nuclear code phrase arms race. The volatility of secret tests and difficult decisions. The moral restraint of even moderate elements is disregarded. We need a new anthropology – one guided by smokeless gunpowder and heavy water. We need more guns for the flowering American manhood. A new crusader ethos. Do not tamper or destroy. Do not screw with us.

    The descendants, the generation of the upright will be blessed. Light rises in darkness when justice rules our lives.

    Couriers of peace are still agonizing – as they should be. Let them suffer. Let them bleed in this new, never-ending war. Let peace, we say, flow like blood from their veins. We will take action ourselves. God knows the weaponry available to us to drain away the spirit.

    But the righteous shall never be moved. They will be remembered forever. Light rises, justice rules.

    Kill someone! Someone who matters. Someone who presents a real threat. A credible threat. Today. Right now. Our allies? Greedy children with grasping, grabbing hands. Hollow out their abdomens and refill them with incendiary devices. Fire drills and evacuations. Some of them will believe eventually. What other choice is left to them? Can this wait till tomorrow? The audience laughs and applauds. Shall they blaspheme forever? Who’s to stop them?

    The righteous, their hearts are steady. They will not be afraid. Light rises… Light rises!

    We are prone to wander. Prone to fever. A wash of vertigo. Driving by memory and guesswork. Warnings ignored. Abrupt summons and secret enrichments. Alarming midnight rhetoric. Death and destruction far surpassing previous success. Explicit surveillance videocassettes. Can love be purchased outside the blast zone? Any survivors? Do we care? The profit or loss depends upon the audience. All is justified in the economic reports. We can leave your body in a valley of dry bones…

    Gnash their teeth and melt away! Can these bones be remembered? The desires of the wicked come to nothing. But light… Light rises! Light rises in darkness when justice rules.

A Meditation A Few Days After Easter

    My song is love unknown, my savior’s love for me…

    The sun is up, the day is bright, crossing lawns of green and blue and purple, and I am whistling hymns into the wind. Thrust forward by the gust. Launched into my daily lurching.

    Oh who am I…?

    This marathon, this long hike, with shoulders back and head upraised. Eyes up into the sky. The wind will not relent. Twenty, thirty, forty-five mile per hour gusts. Tree limbs down and unsecured porch chairs sent flying. Holy Saturday’s sussuras in the pines have become jubilant sibilants and jangling wind chimes. Clanging gongs and cracking branches.

    Resounding all the day Hosannas to their king…

    There are women shouting, swearing from their door and dogs snarling on the steps. There are white nationalists flags ripping away from their swaying staffs. What makes this rage and spite? “You know what you’re saying, boy? You know what you’re saying?”

    Crucify is all their breath...

    And what has changed? The weather (if not the wind)… The world is still at war. The fires still flame. Love to the loveless shown. And am I so fickle, so changeable?

    But oh my friend, my friend in deed... 

    Who at my need his life would spend?



- My Song Is Love Unknown - Samuel Crossman 1629-1683

Neither Way. No Hand

    “Oh, of science we have many and varied kinds, observational science is but one. We have Revelation and Inspiration too, as well as Illumination and Interpretation. We are not unlettered and unlearned here. We have no need for your million pictures faked with photoshop and generative AI. Your sophisticated sophistry.”

    I am beat up and run down before I ever got going. No life. No zip. All ache.

    “There is a spirit that guides them, of course, that’s what makes the conspiracies make sense. They share the same breath.”

    They cannot read out of doors, neither will they hear inside. Screw the inscrutable and doubt the redoubtable. Dig into hell or climb into heaven. Neither way. No hand. Where are the violent upheavals of earth to swallow them up? Where are the she bears from the mountain? No. No. I’m sorry. I don’t mean that. Not really. 

    “We need new underground bases. Deep Underground Military Bases, right in the heart of the nation. We have seen the lighted triangles on the lunar surface. Dark lights coming to the Earth in the near future. These spirits have habitations beyond the Earth.”

    I saw the news as well: two found dead near Lake Silverado, their bodies within their submerged vehicle. Lovely and Loving but no longer Living.

Ha ha! And Oh Lord!

    “There were an estimated eight to nine million at the No Kings rally …”

    “Ha ha! You’re so dumb. We don’t have kings. We took care of that in 1776. We’re democracy, dumbass.”

    “Right. You understand, of course, that what we’re doing is trying to protect that democracy from authoritarians who would subvert our rule of law…”

    “Ha ha! You’re so dumb We’re not a democracy. We’re a constitutional republic.”

    “Yes, but a republic is a form of democra…”

    “Try reading Alexis de Tocqueville, moron!”

    Test the professions to reveal the confessions – or the lack thereof – in our global warming, resource plundering disaster. It’s a moment of crisis for anyone with half an eye or even a detuned ear. But seeing they might see and hearing they might hear. And no one wants that sense. Bandaged and broken. Limping along with sick vandalism.

    “O Lord! There’s never been such a violent, lawless, decadent generation,” says the pearl clutching Evangelical who’s never looked at history. “I’ve seen things I never dreamed possible. World wide corruption. Debauchery in the western world…”

    “Our God is a God of war. A God of battle. And our Christ is the Christ of Conquest. Lord, do you want us to call down fire from heaven to burn them up?”

    “It’s the same maniacal purpose. The same evil system collapsing. You’ve seen the suicide attempts and people indicted. The law is finally being enforced. At home and abroad. On a global scale. Now why not make it personal?”

    You cannot reason with them. Logic and reason are destroyed. The science fiction writers and prophets were right: the authorities have become as psychotic as the people they hunted. The authorities are filled with hate.

    “Do you want us to call down fire from heaven to burn them up or not, goddamn it:?!”

The Mystery and the Longing

    Why are you weeping?
    The mystery and longing of this morning
    revealed and unrecognized, misunderstood
    “if you have taken him...”

    Ordinary extraordinary from the grave
    reach out but do not grasp
    further on further into mystery
    truly risen into unsettled perfection
    flesh and wonder spirit rise

    Why are you weeping?
    The mystery and longing of this day
    now named and recognized, realized
    “I have seen the Lord.”

(John 20:11-18)

An Easter Morning Meditation

    How can I celebrate the resurrection when Iran is under bombs?
    When Venezuela is being plundered?
    When Gaza is little but rubble?
    When Ukraine is burning?
    When citizens are shot in the street?
    When immigrant children are ripped from the arms of their mothers?
    
    I don’t know. I don’t know.
    But he is risen.
    Indeed.

A Meditation on Holy Saturday

    Yesterday’s jagged thunder and lightning fled but the wind remained, and it was cruel. I tried to find my way to the tomb and to silence from unnecessary words.
    Stumbling down broken steps
    through susurrant pines
    and buildings with blackout security precautions
    and private property cameras.
    I heard screaming ambulance sirens
    on hidden highways.
    I smelled marijuana.
    I walked by braying dogs at cemetery gates and death and Hades followed.
    I tried to find my way to the tomb and to silence.

A Good Friday Meditation

    Good Friday and the world has slipped from time. I spent the day walking in the wind and in the rain. Walking late and overtime in the cold.

    They took charge of Jesus, and carrying his own cross, he went out to the place of the skull. Look into the dust of it. The scent and tang of earth upon the air. Dust to dust.

    “Happy Easter!” someone shouted from their porch as I passed. Golgotha.

    Why do they…? Why do I…? But prove all things by the strength of love. This love. Digged deep and love laid low.

    “He is risen!” I replied but it was too early. And there was no one there where they crucified him.

(John19:17-18)

Yeehaw for the GOP (a song)

Here's a low-fi recording of a goofy little song I wrote as I was out and about the past couple of days. I hope you'll like it. 

You’ll go to war with everyone, you’re ready to invade
bombing schools and burning mosques is how this game is played.
Burn the oil, blot out the sun make it darker everyday
it’s the end of time, the final reel and Jesus is on his way.

Take advice from fools and cross against the lights
you’re just a graveyard bully who’s pickin’ another fight.
You deliberately misunderstand the doctrine that you claim
Everything you touch turns into another round of shame

Yeehaw for the GOP
for God and country.
Yeehaw for the GOP
Ain’t that somethin’
Fox News lovin’
modern Know Nothin’s
God’s Own Party, yessiree.

You don’t want the immigrant, the woman, or the gays
You only want the schools where the teachers bow to pray
Dismiss the prophets, malign the mystics these books you’ll never read
ignorance is the way to your nationalistic creed.

Lincoln’s party has devolved from what it used to be
I remember how you sang, “Let us die to set men free.” 
Building prisons, camps, and jails, and all of them for profit,
Deregulation is your way to bigger bank deposits.

Yeehaw for the GOP
for God and country.
Yeehaw for the GOP
Ain’t that somethin’
Fox News lovin’
modern Know Nothin’s
God’s Own Party, yessiree.

Jesus ain’t no Democrat, I know this to be true
but how could anyone see the Lord above when they look at you?
Mister Rodgers was a Republican, a man I could respect.
If more of you were more like him, I’d hug and kiss your necks.

Yeehaw for the GOP
for God and country.
Yeehaw for the GOP
Ain’t that somethin’
Fox News lovin’
modern Know Nothin’s
God’s Own Party, yessiree.

Desperate Signals

    Please. Hear me.

    We are captives of a brutal peace. Another spectacle made of blood, suffering another forceful assault. Anther succession of mortal explosions and the corporeal fire that burns even the air. A proud legacy of street-level violence. Machine gun mounted motorbikes and government guns on pickup trucks flying vulgar presidential banners fire into the gathered crowds. Public protester executions. Beheadings and gauntlets. Gassing socialists with illegal chemicals. Hacked thousands flee as refugees.

    There is an inequitable Armageddon at the door – the imbalance of munitions and humiliations over hunger and rotting sickness. We’ve scuttled past the strong war warnings to push the clock forward – the symbol of our destruction.

    We are traded for betrayal. And the same fate for many undefined sins against the state and houses of dynamite. Times of trouble such as never was such a wasteland. Repeated. Desperate rejections of this regime. We are begging in waves. The blood of ten thousand. The day after and again repeated. The fallout of chaotic response.

    The artillery ambitions and strategies of the resource savages – those who buy and sell the world beneath and cap the sky above have brokered evil in this place. Millions of tons of debris, the rubble of ruined lives and unexploded ordnance. We know the wickedness of their weapons. We know the vanity of their lives. We are nothing but physical potential forces to be added up, accounted. The ledger of our lives allows only a little fight. The military turned in and the open energy of our vitality transferred out.

    All military economies are thus. No neighborly peace, no negotiated truce behind locked doors. Savage battle is how things are done here in the crucible of war. Exploitation and salted earth. No cease fire for bitter arguments. Cold blood despots make sick peace jokes. The catastrophe of intimidation power. Normal procedures are followed for murder – in secret, unacknowledged or publicly documented. Either way there should be no flesh saved.

    We are besieged. This is the plain and forecasted truth with dangers exposed. The infrastructure of invasion turned inward. All choke points secured. Cut off by simultaneous offenders. It is an open secret. The poisonous promotions of violence and horror. It’s a game to them. “Shooter, shoot her!” comes a faceless command from the demons of common criminality and civil battery.

    From the ramparts of history, we’ve been raised – to live and die within the walls of a conquered city, but we are silenced in this day. Four years already and three years more. And then? Our desperate signals sent out, stand up nation to nation. Land or sea. Still there is no response and the days are unshortened.

    Please. You know the answer.