Thursday, September 01, 2005

The Baltimore Catechism Pseudo-Sonnets

My project this month, for as long as I’m able to continue it, is to carry on writing pseudo-sonnets, but on a different theme. This time I’m going more metaphysical, or dialectical. And the subject is one out of my childhood past: the Baltimore Catechism. For those amongst you who were not brought up Roman Catholic, the BC is basically the Pope’s Little Red Book. In Sunday School I was forced to memorize and recite each section. In fact, because of my inability to do so, I was kept back one year. But now, a self-professed lapsed catholic and spiritual agnostic, I think it’s time to truthfully answer the questions in that infamous book, for my own good. It’s my belief that only with poetry can one attempt to confront ‘reality’, that ever-changing all-encompassing mostly-unknown entity with anything capable of overcoming our misguided belief that we know it all already.
BC 1: Who Made Us?

I remember Butchee, underneath
the bed with me, hiding from a universe
too large for two-year olds, too tame for dogs.
From out of nowhere comes this memory,
as if Darwinian selection pulled
my self-existence from a pointless hat—
voila! There’s no one that I see behind
those cuff-links; there’s just my own imagination
running away with this chronology
of powers, magical or terrible,
—the swirling of cinnamon whirlpool Niagara guitars—
inciting blood inspiring organ song
bird and response with echoes we call faith
in gods, big bangs, or Henry Ford the Eighth.

~Son Rivers 2005

5 comments:

cotu said...

Very Nice.

son rivers said...

Why thankee cotu

Anonymous said...

Damn you! You cyber sinning, back sliding...wishy-washy Catholic wanna-be...doggeral spouting..day dream humping techno heathan. For this I created the fermament from nothingness...busted my unimaginable and unfathomable keister for a week...just so you can sit around tapping on your made in China (by under paid heathan labor) plastic computer keyboad...casting your profane drivel out into the internet (which I "also" just created after getting back from vacation.) "YOU AREN'T SURE IF "YOU" BELIEVE IN ME!!! WHAT'S IT GONNA TAKE SHAKESPEARE...DO I HAVE TO MAKE YOUR BALLS ITCH AND HAIR FALL OUT?! (A little God humor there...last time I checked, you were already scrath'n and main lining Minoxidil)...I'm thinking seriously about popping a huge "REPENT" BIRTH MARK RIGHT ACROSS YOUR AMPLE, WRINKELED FOREHEAD...IN MIRROR WRITING, JUST SO THAT EVERY TIME YOU SHAVE OR PLUCK THE HAIR FROM YOUR MIDDLE AGED NOSE and ears...my hint for attaining even a scintilla of enlightenment... and salvation for your pathetic, twisted soul...WILL BE STARING RIGHT BACK AT YOU...WE'LL BE "TALKING" LATER,... AND YOU'D BEST BE PREPARED...BECAUSE..."LUCY! YOU GOT SOME 'SPLAIN'N TO DO!"..KNOW WHAT I'M TALKING ABOUT?!

son rivers said...

Dear "God"

You almost had me on my knees clutching at my rosary beads and dialing the telephone number for the 700 club and thanking Mr. Robertson for being so right yes sir I'm volunteering right now to knock off that South American (damn right Randy Newman they did steal our name) Chavez or whatever his grape-eating name is, and yes "God" I hate China too especially since they've one-upped us on our All-American sport of capitalism, and O yes "God" I love your firmament and your softaments too even though I know I shouldn't lust at anything you made so righteously and wonderful but you know I do, and O "God" I never knew it could be so easy to get the true and wondrous word from you and right here in my very own email and all I had to do was spill out some liberal do-gooder nonsense and you come straight out of the cybosphere and set me straight and narrow down the yellow brick road of far right-eousness and Lord I almost spoke in tongues right there and then, but then. O but then I say unto you I saw right through your devilish ways for the true lord would have known I never used no Minoxidil but have always been a true blue Rogaine guy. Praise Nascar! Get thee behind me Satan! Well that's all for now Beezelbub (I CAN call you Bub for short, right?) But make sure y'all write back now hear and I'll let you in on the name of one of my biggest influences from long ago who set me on this path of doggerel and drivel, and from God's good country of Barnstead NH at that if you can believe this sinner. In the meantime, live free or get a job.

~"Greg"

Anonymous said...

Well Son, you must be doing something right...

Minnie V