I Contain Multitudes – I Am Legion

     Here it is – Like Whitman, I contain multitudes. I am Legion.

    “That’s not funny, Carter. I’ve always said you were Satanic.

    Yeah, yeah, yeah. Give me my influences. Give me my heroes. Le t me name them:

    Archibald MacLeish – librarian poet
    Madeline L’Engle – universalist author, Christian author
    Burroughs – both Edgar Rice and William
    William Booth – the only General I would follow

    Howard Zinn – historian
    Marc Chagall – dreamer, poet, painter, fool

    “You’re a fool, Carter. Everything you say only confirms it the more…”

    Gustavo Gutiérrez – Dominican liberationist
        and
    Roger Corman – the king of cult

    “You go too far.”

    Give me scream queens. Give me Elvira,
    Give me Neil Young and Nick Cave.
    Give me Camus and Kierkegaard
    Give me the blessed Saint Francis and Sister Death

    “Stop. Stop. You’re only embarrassing yourself with this… contortion. This confession.”

    Kropotkin. Cash. Dylan.
    Brian Wilson. John Coltrane and John Yoder (though, I acknowledge the danger)
    Umberto Eco, and Echo and the Bunnymen

    “I don’t even know these names. No one cares.”

    Poe, and King, and Dick
    Sartre, Beauvoir, Silverstein
    Give me Black Francis screaming into the void

    “You need to stop. This is unhealthy.”

    Give me Martin Luther King Junior

    “He was an adulterer”

    I know, but give me Tillich.

    “Pornographer.”

    I know, but give me…

    “No. I will give you nothing.”

    Give me Jesus.

    “Jesus! The Blasphemy you breathe…”

A Sad Eyed Vision of la Belle Dame sans Merci

I was awakened in the night by the sound of gunfire in the distance; the rebels were at it again, attacking some munitions factory or state owned pig farm, or who knows what.  I opened the window above my bed and heard the screams of the wounded and the shouts of soldiers.  In the air was a billowing smoke lit by the Illuminati searchlights, sweeping back and forth in long lugubrious arcs.

That is when she appeared to me – a vision within the smoke, the dangerous Virgin with her mercury tinted lips, la Belle Dame sans Merci, the Madonna of Viggiano – and she said to me, “Now is the hour of your demise, sad knight-at-arms. Now is the time.  Make prayers to such saints as you believe will help you.”

I shivered in my night clothes and stammered, “G-g-good saint Tillich, you were especially fav...”

I stopped suddenly for her eyes flashed in fury. “Make no prayers to Tillich, that addict of sadomasochistic pornography, for the ground of his being has been shaken beneath him!”

I crossed myself and began again, “Holy Saint Yoder, gentle and powerful in your help…”

And once more her voice like discordant chimes interrupted my faltering prayer, “Call not upon that abuser of women, lest you wish join the hidden dead angels.”

“O heavenly patron, Martin Luther King jr., in whose name…”

“Stop!” she shouted from the cloud of billowing smoke. “Say no more. The adulterous King is but a peasant here. It seems you have none left to call upon.  Now clasp your holy medallion and prepare to accept thy fate.”

At that moment there came another great shout from the streets below; the rebels had pressed their advantage and were surging through the streets.  Another furious round of gunfire erupted and the Illuminati search lights were extinguished. 

And with that she disappeared from the sky, and no birds were singing.