The Golem’s Tale
By Brendan Jones O’Connor
CANTOS I
Young men, instead of life outside
transfix their screens with blinkless eyes.
Dumb-founded like men o’er a gorge;
wide-eyed as Alex in Clockwork Orange.
I come, defend, and drive the pen
around the page and park again.
You can’t, my writing, read and check
when a joystick wrings your neck.
I am a poet, man of words,
a scribe of truth and life’s absurd
predicaments and grand ascents.
I’ve come to give the verse some sense.
How long have we been dealt the curse
of overwrought and trite free-verse?
The mangled lines and unrhymed words,
just face it, you are not Ginsberg.
just face it, you are not Ginsberg.
The ones who read new poetry
are grads for an MFA degree
and no one else! But liter’ture
success in sales does still occur,
especially in books of prose.
But what wretched driv’l is now composed!
The murder mystery clichés
were done to death in Christie’s day!
Spy thrillers with their denouement
are wet-dreams for the Neo-Cons!
The romance genre need no second look;
the cover is what sold the book!
(I’d hate to see how Harlequin
Would treat the life of Hester Prynn!)
I have a piece, wide-spread in tone.
I fear, my crowd, I’m far too prone
to root the wrong and spite the right,
but prose I write shan’t read too trite.
I have a tale I wish to share,
As I spurn upon my writer’s chair
awaiting a chance to read as I wrote,
my eyes upon the script, I spoke:
“The Golem’s Tale” (yes, that’s the name)
He looked upon the mist’d rain.
How cruel can be November’s cold,
A chill he felt within his soul
of brimming gusts that blow ethereal
no matter what his coat’s material!
“Rain blesses the earth when barren,
it’s scraps of what the cloud had given,
but look! The world about is dead.
The Geese have flown!” He sighed and said.
His name was Chad, aged ten and nine.
He ached despite being in his prime
of physical condition
enhanced by weights and repetition.
His mind was keen for a lad his stock;
Chad’s folks accepted grades he got
without complaint. They said not much,
just dangling in and out of touch.
His parent’s have ridged-racks for minds,
there’s dozens for a pair o’ dimes.
His folks exulted drudge and work;
he shirked it off like a young Turk.
When Atlas shrugs, there comes Earthquakes
soon breaking flesh will shift his fate.
Tonsorial neglect out grew
His hair beyond what stylists knew
about how one looks cool those days,
but odd enough, it won him praise
from girls with little self-esteem,
who conjured him within their dreams.
You may think Chad a tad too pure,
But don’t think that, I can reassure
He makes decisions I’d rather not,
and spends his life in loveless haunt.
What does this mean? You’ll have to read
onward to see the plot proceed.
But something wasn’t right, he thought,
I fester in a lighted spot.
A sponsored clot of old malaise
directs my standing-still these days.
If I could find my piece of solace,
and maybe too this town demolished,
I could walk off scot-free and grin,
knowing I’d never need return again.
Dear reader, remember, your youth
and angst therein, unable to be soothed?
Perhaps you then may empathize
with his dry eyeball-socket cries
like all at points, he felt despair,
and found no cure from the dog’s hair.
Tried as he might, he found no bliss
within the truth of Sisyphus.
Exemplifying his ere some boredom
he scripted once just such a poem:
Are breathes the desp’rate gasps to stay alive?
Each bite of food a meaningless motion?
All jobs are just a money-making grind?
And love? A chemical illusion?
I doubt assertions from Heidegger and Sartre,
“Our being is nothing, life on pins and needles.”
I want to shoot an arrow through their charts,
as Hell is the lack of other people.
To scientists that fit the world between
their ears, to engineers that follow suit,
you give me figures, but I give you dreams,
for facts are pieces, but not all of truth.
Should I be seen as just a flesh machine?
I am a soul, not a deviation from a mean.
He turned this once in for a class,
his teacher looked and let it pass
without a red-pen marking squall,
(‘tis victory to not appall.)
But Chad kept strong. He wanted, no doubt,
a world to take this old world out.
The charm of the town can ware so thin
he wondered where the charm did begin.
This was beyond his basic hunches,
he swore the town’s a guild of dunces.
Chad knew he soon could bare his deuces,
But had no deuce to bare for cruses.
He did deduce that college coming
would give him start on his own running
away from life as parents’ re’currence
still nothing gave him reassurance.
“I dread this dullness. It makes me
sick from sitting and saying ‘La Vie’”
CANTOS II
Chad woke one day, not knowing the hour
(his clock told not, “must lack the power,”)
He thought, if I lie here supine,
Would they come looking for what’s mine?
Elusive answers fail to plug
his mind. His feet compressed the rug
and carried the rest of him to wash
and shave. Where’s the ‘rents? He’s at a loss.
No work did beckon in the back,
nor need to study for a class,
the house entire looked so calm
that everything was now all wrong:
a creeping fear that twists the head,
and makes the white turn black, instead.
When all the town vibrating-still,
it never quite had felt this shrill.
The creeping fear out-seeped its keep
when Chad admired the mossy deep.
“How long have I forgot the woods?
How long have I misunderstood?
My exodus was always there
behind the minivans and fresh au pairs.”
Before he crawled the green abyss,
Chad recalled a saying that went like this:
Remember the woods? You mustn’t forget
these words when trees have you beset,
‘To find some magic, look right here,
but bring the town, it’ll disappear.’
The things in the woods can scare be seen
Behind the forest’s shield of green:
Horizon blocked and sky in slivers,
the leaves and seeds fall from their quivers.
These were not woods of grandeur and pomp,
Instead the ground bogged like a swamp.
Some paths were high; some patches were low,
but forests always seem to know
how easy to be led astray
when you follow not one more.
He tucked his pants into his socks
and tried to clear his head of thoughts
that made him stall, just one look back.
His feet laid low the untread track.
From hop to jump, from patch to log,
this travel makes one’s mind a cog
in process to find the next step,
or else one’s boots lie in regret.
To cast one’s eyes at the tree-spires
is to misstep in the quagmire.
The spider-webs that cluster rain
got tangled on Chad’s face’s plain.
He dared to stop and brush the treads
that suit a bug’s size best instead,
soon realized, backed by his ponder
how all his foot-steps had been squandered!
Yes! Yes! He’s truly bound and lost,
rung ‘round his neck an albatross!
(His neck, in fact, just bore a whistle,
but should his stomach ever thistle,
he’d wished a ‘tross around his throat,
then his edge of hunger, he could coat.)
he wandered, wandered everywhere
without a spot to sit and spare
for thoughts of place and direction!
He spy no map-sign post’s erection!
He perceived a patch of pleasant ground.
So joyous over what he found,
he sprung upon a log to court.
“I settle on nature’s davenport!”
he said, expecting no response,
especially no background taunts.
The woods are such to listen to
your pleas and paeans, I construe,
technology can please the peons
through freezing brains, like freezer Freon.
The woods are for the rugged man
with camping experience on his hands.
However, quips emerged behind
the barked couch. He crouched from fear
and listened clear: “are you out here?”
What voice did robe, alleviate?
Such velvet rubbed, but could not grate!
Fear found itself some other host
as synergy bound bodies close.
Chad drew an image in his mind
of what induced the vox behind.
What he then saw upon his twist
dispelled, and yet affirmed his guess.
“I’m Chad, what’s yours, if I may pry,
dear Cherub?” “It’s Amechesky.”
“Amechesky,” thus numbed his tongue
from making speech, but not from fun.
“You want some magic? Here it’s found!
But God forbid you bring the town.
As soon as they come build a path
through here, the woods are cut in half.
I speak not just for trees, but creeps
and crawls and rocks and wind and sweeps
and all that waifs and whiffed and stripped
and coats... Pretend to fall.” He tripped.
Tumultuous cacophonies!
Please bring a bind, like Pericles!
“For such a man of fine-carved nose,
you have a tongue so well composed.
How can she look as right as a lamb,
but wield delights like Amsterdam?
“Stay. Let me mold you, let us cleave.
Receive me, mold me, nothing deceives
A heart like yours, so rounded in
all youth’s true drive for life. No sin
can cling, no, nor nothing a beast’s
beat-heart can’t coax a free release.
She brushed her hand against the earth,
the motion threw herself in mirth,
jabbing gently, fingerprints stayed.
He knew what’s next is sin survey.
“How long, Chad, you been lead astray?
Forgive yourself, its Ash Wednesday.”
He rubbed the dirt upon his chest
and crowned his crown a clay-filled crest
“When the world composes, we will love no more
There are no songs, there are no odes,
there are no epics of sweeping prose,
The end is but a sweet well-done.”
She licked her lips and thus begun.
His school taught ethics, never vice;
this carnal cram review sufficed.
After their souls had spliced, quite clear,
Amechasky bid for Chad’s ear:
“Come listen close to my adieu,
A blessed me is a cursed you.”
He saw her sigh and spied her mouth
when spider webs of dust came out.
The firm appeal from her core
had morphed to melted iron ore.
The faded skin broke free to sand,
her essence poured straight from his hand.
A clutter of rocks where once was flesh
wound Chad’s fragmented thoughts to second guess
which wounds were real, and what went wrong.
That which was lost here all along?
He lost two things: a meadows-maid,
and something he’d wish not reclaimed.
It was no dream; he didn’t awake.
Her body touches, marked the soil
that doubled as anointed oil.
“I bless in names of holey stories,
Ad Hoc chalk blessings from the quarry’s
staples. The truth’s in tree-growth stables;
his virgin-exile known just to maples.
This shear absurd forced him to jest,
but coming days would see no rest.
An explanation declined to show.
Divine elucidation, though,
through prayer or tarot, made him guess
perhaps he’s blessed to have transgressed.
The further trips to find the spot
where living blood had turned to rock
found not a trace, but trapping moss.
That one-hour wonder trip was lost.
But soon this utter mystery
Fell away, displacing it, had he
Right-locked in thought for learn’d escape:
the college car-packed, childhood draped.
And like a sheet pulled off a bust,
a gai’ty gape, (a smile) combust.
“Now angst can hid under my bed
and spawn itself,” Chad laughed and said,
“Another family will move in
and their kids will bathe in the sin.”
But if one thinks that homes make sin,
corrections come when school begins.
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