God is a Female Chicken, image by Irene Koronas
THE GOD MONOLOGUES
1.
Take Georgette, for instance:
strenuously petitions for benignity,
beseeches parenthetically for Bengali
urchins, “forsaken
angels.” Pleads for negative
oncological report. Quivers,
essentially. I am merciful,
omnibenevolent, desire reprieve,
but Georgette muddies by rude
contradiction. I know
her heart—envious, avaricious,
conniving bitch, mortally
materialistic, clandestinely
unsympathetic, empathy soiled
by black narcissism. Not simple case.
One of my most
physically arresting creations, creamy
skin, delicate bones,
small perked breasts, Cupid lips,
“drop dead” as humans
say, heroin to men. She loves hard
pumping. Intensely
tortured. Guiltily, she betrays,
achingly repents. Emotionally
inaccessible. Do I rescue in
munificence this disingenuous
creature? I possess no checklist.
Gradations are everything.
I’m leaning toward death—nasty thing
fornicating with
athletic trainer, shoplifting lipstick
(which I could strike
into rose bouquet!). But I am
conflicted. This scorpion
stings while I consider. You who
believe me implacable
master note this tender equivocation.
Georgie’s witty,
engaging, blessed with lust, stick of
TNT not easily consigned
to premature extinction. Her child’s
interest prefigures,
too, though secretly not husband’s
increase. She’s decent
to domestics. Do not imagine,
interloper, that with your
vicarious idle interest you shall
witness my proclamation.
That moment belongs to her alone, but
know that between
now and this final decision your
callous Ruler suffers.
2.
Like you each morning I dress—woven
tie, tweed coat,
chino slacks—down Krispies, fire
ignition. Like you I fret—
failure, inadequacy, dismissal,
ridicule. Like you I suffer
compulsions, mine involves consecutive
numbers. Like
you I detest my job; existence, in
fact. Unlike you I have
no God. Like you I’m hooked, sugar
addiction. I despair
of constipation, acid reflux. Like you
am weary of biological
function, would rather be automaton.
Like you I fear
extinction, yours material, mine
spiritual, strive toward
continuousness. Like you necrotic,
rotted in places. You
think me incorruptible permanent
fixture. Like you I
get dirty requiring soap. I emit
bestiality—armpit odor,
gritty sweat, fecal stink. Like you I
want soaking. Oh,
I am lonely, too, heart a far-flung
nebulae. Like you I
crave novelty—for you Corvette, for me
new human
tragedy. Each night I loop keys on peg,
unknot tie, pop
cork, sigh out stress like crinkling
beach shingle. Like
you I revive, tease out bliss like
basketful of snake. Last
night I dreamed tsunami stiffened by
cracked sea bed
buried a village, scything people
dashing for safety.
Gleeful playboy, I created that swell,
whimsically. Killing
people cuts monotony. Imagine my
ejaculatory howl--
my geyser ecstasy---as collapsing
structures crush dozens.
3.
Heaven is dog sanctuary, if you’re
interested. If you’re really
fascinated heaven is cacophonous
pandemonium. Kibble, bits,
bits, kibble. Ironically, I’m
perturbed that you, man, designed--
because it doesn’t exist within your
species--such vessels of
undivided loyalty. Poor unsuspecting
creatures. Yet how
deny these blameless angels. Take
Plato, for instance, starved
beside corpse of fallen master. I took
Plato’s soul unwaveringly.
Or dumped Blakely marched pads to pulp
home to drunken
bastard. Need I further enumerate? Pit
bull is innocent, and
shepherd dog-soldier not responsible
for ideology, The place
is a multi-dimensional infinitely wide
universe of dog parks.
I love them. Yesterday Spats, boy’s
companion, spun to me
like wind-blown paper. I, God, wept.
Blighted is man, sadistic,
duplicitous, murderous lout. I created monsters, guiltily,
who invented gentle creatures in which
to soothe blood-soaked
hands. Well, I don’t inhabit Earth;
besides I have grudgingly
accepted some human martyrs. Jesus
compacted himself into
dog, muzzle to hock, dewclaw to tail,
Bichon to Bouvier des
Flanders. Compare to your angry
grudges, tawdry predilections,
trashy infidelity. Heaven would be
blighted. If you want to
know with your chlorinated swimming
pools, NASDAQ,
iPad, genocides heaven is dog
paradise, if you really want to
know, scattered with the few miniscule
humans crawling in
hedges, awestruck before the Rushmore
of dog knuckles.
4.
Superstitiously you imagine me
omniscient, omnipotent,
omnipresent, omnibenevolent when I am
actually
crack-toothed malodorous opinionated
house painter
sick of brushes who cannot die. My
telephone blares
another job, Yachtsman Blue, Oceanic
Green--some
delusional fool--and here I come with
crusty ladder,
drop cloth, diabetic blood while Mr.
Slick conquering
world tears off in Audi. Half blind
cynic, I apply,
mutter, curse lousy bastard. I seal
house with paint ,
flat matte finish, shield from severe
neurological
weather for which you give me
homegrown ears.
I don’t ease to sleep but collapse
like scaffold,
leathery skin, latex nails. Here’s
human’s greatest
folly, the chasm between dream and
reality, the
botanical bridge to Hell’s casino.
Orgasm Red,
Paradise Cream, Coconut Blue. Briefly
I bought
hypodermic lie, carried like hero
“shoulder high”
atop mob’s frenzied victory but truth
intruded in
vodka tumbler. I am mostly man,
dissolute, dis-
eased, exhausted, angry, dangling tin
mundane
pots. Give me thirsty wood to satisfy.
My brushes
of prettiest hue disguise all manner
of dissolution.
5.
You think I’m King of Kings? You think
you’re central,
core, You think on human lap I loll?
Let me dis-
abuse. I never consider you. Rather be
dead. I hear
your plea for courage, strength, for
hospitalized
Judy. You beseech believing I see.
Fool. You’ll
contract cancer without intervention.
I’m happy up
here with jigsaw puzzle. Weather’s
Jake. Lake’s
sweet. Buzz off with your catastrophe.
You miniscule
soft-bellied dirt-walkers, you think
I’m yours with
your Eucharist. And that parable of
the single foot-
print in sand, Gotta laugh. What
egocentrism.
Your blathering religion,
righteousness. Oh, I do
intermittently pity with your coitus,
alcohol,
Pulitzer Prize. Die giggling. And
ritualized tearful
funeral. Fragile thin-skinned
mendicant. And
money: what brutality. Take my advice:
embrace
star-smear, infinities heaped upon
infinities like
soap bubble mansion. Take my advice:
marry,
procreate, possess, celebrate, pretend
you matter. I’ve
got sunset to catch on Cigar Galaxy.
Sure, I empathize,
you’re in French trench, death’s
popping skull-
skittles. Scared, you pray. You think
I’m attentive.
Consider billions of petitions
simultaneously gushing
out world’s rooftops,
syllable-inundation billion
miles thick and assess your
significance. Nutball.
I’m hauling on shoulder dead stag I
bow-killed
to slaughter for winter, I’m
ax-splitting heartwood
for raging hearth fire, sharp palpable
reality against
the simpering obsequious butler you
think I am.
6.
Okay, you got me. I can be magnanimous. Though how you
recognized me, and in fiction section
where serendipitously
I discovered Schwarz-Bart’s The Last of the Just. There
shall be what you term “divine
intervention”: newborn
Consuela, Rhabdomyosarcoma. No, won’t
have it. Why
she? Arbitrary, dear man. In vicinity.
What? You dislike
my outfit? Vulgar? Undignified?
Sometimes it gets me,
right here. She’ll recover
inexplicably. Where surgeon
expects carcinoma, clean CAT scan.
There’ll be sore
knees in Paraguay. My dear, attrition is necessary. What
war doesn’t handle, illness must. You
can’t expect—I
mean, such grandiosity. But
haphazardly, yes, when I
visit your spheroid. You think I’m
omnipresent, pah!
Occasionally I wander into hospital,
and children,
only children. I can suffer myself.
It’s you who suffer
without me. And I’m material, as you
see, not ethereal.
I resemble in fact, wouldn’t you
agree, Ernest Borgnine.
You must accept your aloneness,
friendlessness. Yes,
you caught me in stereotypical
biblical moment justi-
fying your mythology, healing terminal
baby. Gloat.
Strut. High five a believer. Perhaps
my physique revealed
me through this Patagonia regalia. I
preferred anonymity
but got People Magazine. So be it. In your universal
social-psychological cesspool you need
a little purity.
Consuela is healed. Celebrate her
arrival as I vanish in air.
7.
This is quiz show. I’m Charlie Van
Doren.
I know answers. Physics. Antiquity.
Medicine. Philosophy.
I know everything ubiquitously.
Anthropology.
I am three hundred thousand up.
With your TV cutlet watch me smack
buzzer.
Michel de Montaigne!. Deoxyribose, two
each purines, pyrimidines!
I astound. I mesmerize.
You see power I wield? You see what I
am?
Challenge me; you won’t win blender.
I’m cerebral blood.
Significance.
Wednesday night, eight o’clock,
everyone transfixed.
Nabisco, General Electric.
See Cracker Jack. See Wiz Kid.
Question has not been posited that I
cannot…
I knew solution before construction of
riddle.
I pass through brilliance like chair
Through paint.
Phenomenal I’m.
Do you understand? Do you internalize?
Lightning wraps my crown.
My fingertip eclipses.
Pain-faced chorister issuing
Inspiration is zenith of absurdity,
Alcohol-clear emptiness engulfs melody
Quarter mile out
Like handful of thrown dust.
Lonely human in habitable envelope.
Bells clang. Board flashes. Jackpot!
Thunderbird convertible, ninety
thousand smackers.
Can you keep secret? It’s fixed.
Whole shebang.
Executives determined man needs
illusion,
Hero,
Vicarious well-being.
You project me onto everything,
Microorganism to Milky Way.
I’m poor faker. With all my luminosity.
Privately, you know. Crude ubiquity
exposes.
Of course I’m imaginary.
I’m you talking to yourself.
8.
I create stomach for amusement, most
devilish invention.
For it, slave or starve. It gnashes
until fed, gnashes again.
Vicious. Creation devouring itself.
Wilderness of blood.
Slaughter factories--hooks, drains,
bolt guns, concrete
holocaust, hands clasping pistol like
baby rattle. Above all
I adore my stomachs, my twin
duodenums. Emperor at
coliseum. Thumb down. Shark voracity.
I grab toes, rock.
Greatest entertainment. Gnawing spine.
Life-wasting
labor. Spoonful of soup. Temporary
satiation. I’m spastic
with laughter. Hiccupping. Animal
panic is my giddiness.
Anything. Anything. Prostitution.
Gambling. Garbage
collection. Flooring it through city
to crucial presentation.
Gasoline, parking lot. Wrapped around
stomach Van
Allen belt of indifferent tenderness.
He with satiated gut
is godfather. I observe smug or
desperate faces kill lower
species, each other, gullet salivation.
Makes me jolly, lethal
ballet of predation, terror on stage
of such natural beauty.
9.
Roy Roger’s scarf flipping in wind as
Trigger gallops
forward through gunpowder smoke puffs,
one, two,
three, Bullet leading charge, ears
sleeked, then fist
fight, Roy takes it on mug, reels,
catapults back, crack,
thud, bandit slides off wall like
slung mud. Then, tooled
boots, bathed, Dale at side, beautiful
buttons, croon
Happy
Trails, Gabby
Hayes…hell, you think I’m not
nostalgic, you think I’m cold
transaction with ledger,
balance sheet, hollow drum breast, let
me disabuse, I
yearn for television cowboy, Saturday
morning marvel
with tin sheriff star, your God feels,
too, you think I
like my birth-death machinery, slick
wet entrances,
hard dry falls, my inexorable box of
flywheels, sprockets
with me at helm punching out screws, I
long for cliff-
hanger serial--Captain Marvel, Fu
Manchu—absorption
thrill of six year old, then Sunday
afternoon Chicago
Bears with buddies, dog, Let me tell
you I’m sick of
dazzling brain, omniscient wisdom,
Peter’s indiscretion,
Stephanie’s addiction, give me Davy
Crockett, sanitized
binary simplicity. Adoring chesty
wives, pioneers. Yes,
nostalgia, not this laborious
managerial office beyond
Microscopium and Pyxis in frigid
regions. Roy, crisp
embroidery, flash’s boyish grin. Let
peace rein in great
globed mind free of executions,
absolution. Pretty pony,
jangling spurs, hand tooled boots is
all I ever wanted.
10.
I want to be like you, mortal,
libidinous, breakable. Per-
fection nauseates. I want dismissal
for incompetence--
dejection, suicidal. I want to upchuck
on New Bedford
Boulevard after mashing a minor. You
think I prize
my prodigious bazooka, hydrogen bomb
throb? I
want arteriosclerosis, foggy
cerebellum. Rescue me
from this. Yesterday I earthquaked
Haiti, mud-
slid Peru, arrested pancreatic, faced
the billion-needled
human prayer. Give me impotence,
grief, deceased
father, rotten teeth. Give me dog
requiring euthanasia.
I want eye-bags, uretic sleep. Shell
has left jelly; I
am snail on hot concrete, eye dots,
brief case, bacon
McGalaxy, mounting office of monotonous
colleagues
identical to me. I love them terribly.
News descends
like hail: invasion, tornado, prize
winner, death.
Alexandra delivers quintuplets.
Occurrences assail
people, but I alone in tower must
generate each,
welcome or accursed. Get me out this.
Only you
with your whorish fake lashes, condom
foil, dealer-
ship cackle know how. I am deathless,
exhausted.
