If Pure Love is the Great God
If the Great God is Pure Love
If all that truly Is is
an infinitely selfless joyful huzzah-overflowing
Accepting Delighting-In Caring Nurturing Giving
than how can life be the way it seems to be
?

The only explanation I can find
is that there must be so many twistings
and turnings
contortions
dare we say
perversions?,
of Pure Love.

Why would Pure Love allow Itself
to be manipulated like that?
Used to create so many moments of awfulness,
of cruelty crime suffering breaking boiling blistering cramping shoving-down-in-the-cold-dirt?

Is that price of existence?
For Pure Love is all there Is,
but Pure Love
has no form
no shape
no color
no odor
no texture
nor even thoughts and feelings beyond an all-knowing, in-all-timespaces eternally present kind delight —
a kind of giggle that is boundless joy in boundless creating, giving, animating, uplifting, knowing, cherishing.’
In short,
Pure Love
does not exist —
at least not in the way we need to exist in order to exist as creatures —
as little moving outposts of watching of feeling of perceiving of guessing of interacting of reaching and dancing.

But the old argument remains,
why so much evil?,
so much cruelty?
so much victory
for rotten resolve
and wicked delight?

Or doesn’t Pure Love
see it that way?
Maybe Pure Love
is so Great
and so Real,
whereas particular existences
are so tiny illusionary fleeting
that
we’re all really winning
when all is said and done?

I reach for you, my darling one
to love and cherish, ere life is done
But you must moan and groan and whisper
what I need to hear, hold dear, kiss-for.
And so I make a twisting and a turning
of the Love ever bright and burning
that holds you without you performing
any kind of show or otherwise deforming
the innocence of your friendly heart.

And then we wrestle our passions out
through to each other’s center lines
until children fall shouting out
And I am their’s and they are mine
And so again I twist the Love
that in equal joy in all abides
until it seems to want to shove
all but my little home aside.

But what oh what would you have me to do?
For I’ve seen us love only God and forget
our homes and families
fblowing up men and women on their way to work and children on their school busses
for the glory
of a vaguely arching strangely sprawling awfully contorting vengeance
called God Love Virtue — Peace, even.
And I’ve seen us call love and/or Love out as shams
and proceed to grind ourselves and others into dust
on the wheels of ambitions dreams schemes hugs grabs systems waterfalls
that we pretend
that we can Love

Author: BW
Editor: AW
Copyright: AM Watson

God, please help us.
Turn us inside out
that the Love running through our center lines
might explode through these empty hulls
that the resultant tatters might fit into the
shared explosion
of shreds and shards
in such a way
that we all flow together
with the kind resolve
that makes everything
better for everyone.

Wife Number Four
The sand fits between my toes
like a million other times in this pretty place set in sparkling blues
And I move step in step with the drums nothing new
Feel the heavy certainty of the beat driving me into my people into our gods
Yet this is new that the fire is so large hot close my nose and lungs hurt from the smoke and the skin on my face and chest feels close to bursting from the warmth.

I don’t know why they weep and wail behind me
They were so happy when I was made wife to the king
Did they think he’d live forever in this in-between land?
Or that suddenly kings would have no need of their wives?
But I know my luck.
They weren’t there when he took me with his big hands
and I felt the nearness of his strong chest and shoulders
and he was so gentle until the violence became absolutely necessary
and so descended upon us and took him into me.
They weren’t there when he entered and I knew we were joined forever
and I was blessed among women.
Oh you open up
oh you accept what you are
oh you let it win

Only poor wife number six, only her I pity
poor girl with her baby only half-full
poor girl not able to leave no prince behind
the priest is wise and must know
when he says her baby will be a great king
in the higher land
but the frustration of it!
I remember the need to burst forth with him,
with my answer
to the loneliness of love
For no matter how tenderly the king touched my hair my face my thighs my burning dream
no matter how much he reminded me
with his looks and his words and his fingers
that I was special to him
even more or at least as much
as his first wife who he’d known since childhood and who was always so strong and beautiful and never said a word against anyone and always took care of the children and the people loved her and mourned her more than they know your him which is a great sin but not really since she reaped what she sowed and no one could be expected to outshine her harvest of our hearts
No matter how much he made it clear that he loved me
still I must share him with the other wives and their children and all the people and gods

But it will be different in our new place
He’s watching me now
He’s seeing how I don’t mind to watch my body blister and come undone and melt down
How could I complain about the path to him,
the way to find him again?

God, what is going on?
God, I feel so sick and awful
God I feel so lonely
God, my God,
Why have you forsaken me?
It is done, for good or ill
It is done, please accept me

Highest Priest
Oh God-who-shines-on-the-waters
guide my body, my ornaments and rattle, my voice and my form
Oh sparkling-protector
Take this our king to your high land
above the curved clouds and ever-reaching skies
Take these his wives and these virgins
to serve him in his need and you in your glory
Take this my heart and my mind
that I who must remain here upon the wavy sands
might speak for you and guide your people and your kings
for the king is ruler over all, but you rule even the king;
and I am servant of all, but I tell even the king
what you command
Don’t let me falter or fail or lust
after that queen who you know her name and how many nights
next to my own wife who I love and bless her please
would dream though I fought it and though I prayed you help me escape the stomach-churning shadows
of her beautiful smile and the gentle laughter in her eyes
oh why oh God did the king not see her worth?
Why did he prefer that silly girl?
and now it seems such a shame
this is my fault and my weakness and I beg you stomp out this evil fire in my gut
but it feels like such a waste to let her to go you so soon
when I love her so much here in the in-between land
and it is a heavy burden to serve you and I just want a little succor a little place to rest upon
but my teacher warned me against these evil inner thunderstorms and how they would sometimes rage and that I must resist
God I am lonely and I am dying to watch her burn!

The artist in the cafe
This is a beautiful moment, God.
This warm cup of coffee on the sunny patio
watching the surf break upon the boulders that reach into the sparkling sea
watching the kicks and giggles of foam-lipped shatter-splatter kisses.
What would you have me do?
How would you have me sing?
All this evil, God.
All this evil in me and around me.
All this evil in our hearts and between our fingers,
in our stories and our systems,
in our smiles and our frowns.
All this evil, God, I fear it is winning
I fear that we cave in
I fear that we falter
and that mere huzzah-porpoise-kickering-arch-leaping Beauty
— my only weapon if you’d grant me the open carefree strength required —
is no match for the gentle grinding corrosion of hope and fear.

Help me God
Lift up my voice that it might serve you and forget all my hopes and fears,
which must come and go with my skin and teeth
Please God, please help me to write a worthwhile poetry, full of thought heart images and deep and wide as life and its people.
Impossible?
OK, then grant me at least enough joyful wisdom and steadily percolating and bubbling over feeling thought and word that I might serve Love in me and in everyone.
An artist is just a person making and sharing art
Dissolve my vanity and make my life and art outshine my ego-tripping half-ass stories about my life and art

The God-who-shines-on-the-waters
I can’t do this anymore
That awful moment while they are still human enough to feel the sting
of loss,
of waste
so much waste

Author: BW
Editor: AW
Copyright: AMW

I wish I could make things right between us
Make you happy
Make you glad you’d met me
Everything else — who loves who and who belongs with who:
that’s not so much the point
it turns out

In the early days of hip-hop, before the first phonographs recorded and then testified to their greatness, rappers could only communicate across the country with telegrams, which were priced by the character.

From the East Coast:
I am greatest STOP
Filthy rich and flaunting it STOP
Heroic stud and sharing it STOP
Also best rapper STOP

From the West Coast:
No, I am greatest STOP
Richer and more ostenta STOP
More sex prowess STOP
Greatest rapper STOP

Caught in the Middle:
You sound same STOP
Production trumps lyrics STOP
An old tragedy STOP

From the East Coast:
We do not STOP

From the West Coast:
Nuh uh STOP

Author: BW/AW
Copyright: AMW

The trouble starts when we try to do things in the real world.
We therefore resolve to stay within the safe folds of fictional realities.
Is there a real world?
The real world is a wondrous magical realm where real people interact and their separate minds push back on one another and together compromise their ways into shared realities.
We wish we could be a part of it.
It seems so wonderfully unlonely.
But it is also a dangerous place, where you can harm real people and their shared systems and understandings.
One must tread lightly there!
And one must accept that one cannot daydream it into the shape that one daydreams one desires.
We accept that, but somehow we forget and forget again and everything goes wrong.
So we apologize, bend low in a formal bow, and then run like mad off until we’re behind the curtains and safely off stage.
OK, made it.
Now we’ll just pretend, since we never learned how and when to stop pretending and listen and react to another’s voice.
We want to!
But since we fail to, everyone’s better off if we work exclusively in fiction.

Signed,
Bartleby Willard, WHA (World-Historic Author)
Amble Whistletown, ME (Matchless Editor)

What can we say?

He got it wrong
again.
He’s sorry
again.

Once every ten years or so
This happens
And he’s mega wrong
and makes trouble.
But this is the worst.
He should’ve known better.
And she, well, it’s just worse this time —
I don’t want to talk about it.

I can’t fix it.
I would say I’m sorry if it would do any good.
But nothing I can do does any good.
So I tell God I’m sorry
I tell the air I’m sorry
I ask myself to please stop whatever is
in me that causes me to cause this kind of trouble

There’s so much in life that is beautiful
and so much that is worthwhile
So it is a shame
when a body
let’s itself
waste love
on selfish daydreams
that aren’t even nice
not even nice
he had thought
somehow

but letting myself leave reality
is my choice,
and whatever sins follow
are mine

please be well, be happy, forgive me

now I go

I am sorry
right through
to the bone
into the pit of me
I’m sorry
I didn’t tell you how I felt
in a way that could be nice,
that could make you smile,
that could let you know;
not just that —
in a way that could let me know;
because by speaking of it in that broken and self-circling way,
I also lost my chance to really know
what I felt so deeply, what held me for so long,
what I wanted so much to say, to do, to share

I’m sorry

I wish I could know you and make things right between us
I would I could show you all I’ve thought and seen of
this life where we live all together apart.
What I have to give a woman of hand and heart
would most thrive in your service.
Down we’d dive beneath the surface
until our tales all fray and we must admit
that this love always stays and we with it.
I think
I think it would be like that —
a reach that caught and held.
A something nice, a place whereat
feeling thought and touch meld.

But I wrecked any hope there for us
so I lonesome grope through the crush
of words and glances that brush past me.
I’m sorry.

Mortal: Hey.

God: Hey.

Mortal: So.

God: Yeah?

Mortal: I feel like I’m in the wrong. Like I’m doing things wrong.

God: How so?

Mortal: I don’t know. I have problems with real and not real.

God: Oh?

Mortal: Honestly, I blame my metaphysics. I say that we cannot have literal knowledge of “Real”, but we can poetically relate to “Real”. And from there I seem to reason that my relationship to “real” should be some kind of a free-write.

God: Can you explain the reasoning that takes you from a poetic — not literally precise, clear, or accurate; but still adequately precise, clear, and accurate — relationship to Reality to turning life into a free-write?

Mortal: Yes. Well, maybe. Basically, “Real” is more important than “real”; so the foundation of my life should be “Real”, rather than “real”; so the foundation of my life should be a constantly self-critiquing and -correcting poem relating my thinking/feeling/acting to Reality; and so off of that Reality-centered poem, my day-to-day — my “real” — should flow.

God: But what happens in practice?

Mortal: In practice, I walk around talking to myself, and/or pretending talk to you or to people who aren’t there. In practice, I slide around in fiction and don’t seem to make much progress in either Real or real. In practice, I am lonely; probably because my relationships lack enough reality for us to know each other enough to share Reality. So am I doing everything backwards?

God: I don’t know. What do you think?

Mortal: No! Well, I don’t think it is that simple, anyway. What should I do? I mean: You’re God — you should have some good advice for me.

God: Yeah.

Mortal: Well?

God: I think you should relax and try to remember that drive you took through the mountain passes of Arizona twenty-ish years ago.

Mortal: Oh yeah. Where was that? Jerome? Who was I with? What were we doing? Was that when my sister and I were visiting our grandparents? I can’t remember. Just the sun and the pines and driving. Roads winding up and down through the pines and slant-roofs and then a tiny downtown? Why were we there? Did we visit someone? An artist? Or did we just stroll through some artist’s shops? Why were we there? Who were we? What does it remind me of? Winding up and down through the bright sun and dusty pines and (abandoned?) homes and shacks: what does it remind me of? I mean, besides a hundred other such drives in Arizona and Idaho.

Is there anything I could do? Tell me what you want of me and I’ll do it.

I want you to go to hell.

Yeah, you got that across from before, and I’ve done it. Is there anything else you’d like me to do? Anything you want me to pick up from hell? Never-ending fire for your heating system, or to sell to a power plant? The eternal bellyaching of damned souls to encourage children to say their prayers at night? Complete separation from God — for those evenings when you really don’t want anyone looking over your shoulder?

I want you to get lost.

I been done that! I’m lost without ever knowing you, without ever saying anything any good to you. Are you sure you don’t want me to do something different? Something new? Or do you just want me to stay lost? I can do it, if it is what’s best for me to do. I just thought maybe we could start again, from the beginning. Like those last several years were just a warm up, but now it’s for real.

Huh.

Yeah.

231.
I don’t know what’s happened to us.
I don’t know what’s become of our story.
If you would tell me what I can do,
I would do that for you whatever you asked.
But here, let us descend into some fiction,
wrought in loneliness,
built of used matchsticks and drips of old candle wax.

Our hero remains Mannkind “Mench” Erlkoenigkin, future Mountain King, and the only human in the Magic Lands. Our tale continues its bellicose way through the tilted plains outside the SWK’s capital city.

How steep is our battlefield? And how does the terrain affect the fighting?

How has Blaise Pirouette reacted to having his army, war, and kingdom commandeered by the evil sorcerer Bellingworth Momrath? Or does Blaise even realize that that’s what’s happened? And is Blaise free to move? Is he even free to feel and think?

And what about Mannkind’s special mission to take out the magic-batteries made of ensnared and strength-drained dragons? And what is happening in this battle? And what is Queen Melanie Nieblungslied up to all the while? And did Rem Hector really die after almost undoing Samuel Mwynglawdder? And what about Mannkind’s loved ones? The beautiful Susan, chosen of his heart; and the beautiful but passed over Esmeralda; and his sister the bossy little Ellen and his father the gentle Giovanni?

And the gods? And the Great God? And religion? And the dragons on their island? And our story’s other hero, the accidental seducer of Purest Love, laid now dead in the Magic Realm and comatose in his wife’s trembling arms?

This story I fear has sprawled beyond your narrator’s shallow reach. To speak nothing of the role that Pure Love is to play in all this.

Please, we beg of you, angels in the skies and gods scattered o’er land and sea.
Please, we beseech thee, Great God and Greater Love:
Can’t someone somehow bend down low,
us enfold, upon us low things now bestow
a touch of divine love
just enough from above
to expand our hearts our minds
and with them this tale, these lines?