Something
I Am Writing About the Rapture
“In
the name of what God or what ideal do you forbid me to live according
to my nature
and where would my nature lead me if I simply followed
it?”
Gide,
A. (1951) “If it Die...”. London: Secker and Warburg. pg. 254.
One
doesn't usually have footnotes in a poem.
I
know that.
You
may think that I am a dummy but I have failed to understand more
things than you have
ever wondered about and that alone puts me in
the company of giants like Socrates whose
measure of wisdom was that
he knew he knew nothing and like Carroll Monroe who was
a guy who
lived down the street who told the funniest dirty jokes I ever heard
and who tried
to live by his nature and who died from emphysema
before this prison we live in was able
bind the last free synapses
of his brain.
But
this isn't really a poem.
It's
an autobiography.
And
that thing by Gide wasn't really an autobiography.
It
was a poem.
Or
maybe an essay.
I
don't know.
The
truth is this is just something I am writing and which maybe you are
reading and
which even more maybe I may be reading to you.
But,
yes. Yes.
Now
it comes to me what genre it was that Gide was writing.
It
was prophecy.
Listen
again!
“Where
would my nature lead me if I simply followed it?”
That
was “the truth that will set you free” posed as a question
because
we don't really know do we?
Gide
relates how once a young and lovely half naked boy in Tunisia guided
him up to
a flowered hillside where the boy flopped down invitingly
on his back
and and
Gide just looked at him for the longest time
watching the laughter
fade from
the boys countenance and an
expression of sadness cloud his face and finally the
boy said,
"Goodbye, then,” and he left.
How
angry I was at Gide when I read this but then he was young himself
and had not
yet grown to his own truth or so it would seem but
then there was an
omission in the text which was designated in
brackets [Omission]
like that by a
translator who might have
been reluctant to translate the best part
with no explanation
so
maybe the story had a happy ending after all.
And
indeed how should I presume to criticize Gide as a young man when
for
sixty years I struggled to learn to live by my nature and when
I
finally did so they threw me in prison.
It
was on the evening news.
This
was just a little before I was raptured.
They
took me out of the court room and provided a brief reprieve in which
to say
goodbye
to the sister/spouse who was my one friend and was loyal to me as I
took
not so willingly the hemlock and we talked about trivial things and
she
did
not cry because it was not yet time for that after which they took me
out
and
displayed me briefly to the press because after all we are talking
about
theater
aren't we,
And
they took my to the jail which was conveniently attached and there
leaving the
tale-tell
little pile of clothes behind me I was raptured out of this world in
an
orange
jump suit and while I would have preferred nakedness and indeed
had
always thought that being raptured might be something like skinny
dipping
this was the best arrangement that could be offered given that
budgetary
restraints had to be balanced with the need to humiliate and with all
the
requirements of this terrible modesty that plagues us,
You
may ask then why if I was raptured are there reports of me lurking in
the
shadows
of my village like a legless beggar in one of Bruegel's paintings.
But
I am not seen.
I
have not been seen since the day of my trial the day of my rapture
the day that I was
taken
out of this world.
They
dressed my remains in the clothes of a monster modeled on their worst
nightmares
and I was leaned against a prop in their theater of the absurd
to
actnout
a major part in their collective psychosis all this without my
participation.
I
assure you.
I
have not been seen since the day of the trial.
How
it must piss them off all those pious ones that it was me and my kind
the poor in
the
world and the lowest on the rung as was prophesied who got raptured
and
not
them who are rich in their righteousness and their powerful friends
who
are rich in their yachts and helicopters and who as we all know
have their
pomp and glitter in this world and who cannot possibly
slip through the needle
dragging
all that wealth behind them.
Not
them but me.
God
is not rapturing the micromanagers nor the megamanagers nor the Bank
managers
nor those who are writing behavior plans for others nor those who
are
monitoring our thinking errors or who would put our love in a bottle.
Being
raptured let me tell you is not all that it is cracked up to be.
For
three years following my rapture I had to encapsulate myself against
hell for like
Jesus
we first go there for three units of time before ascending,
Yet
even there in that almost total darkness where fire gives off no
light even there I
felt
a small ember of joy that flickered precariously like those fires I
meticulously
started proudly without paper when I was a Boy Scout
honoring God
and Country but skinny dipping when I got a chance,
It
was a feeble burning full of hope passing from one tiny branch to
another until by
adding
slightly larger sticks I had a fire that could warm my hands and
cook
my
hot dogs.
Being
reborn is not such an easy thing.
After
they released me from their deepest level of hell and it should be
noticed that it
was
their hell for God doesn't create hells of this sort I lifted up my
head and
looked
around.
God
was it lonely.
For
miles it was no one.
My
friend and I hovered around the fire that almost cheered us now and
when night
fell
we discovered what is most important that in the distance we could
see
other
faint glows and we knew by this that we were not alone.
I
did not ask to be raptured but was beginning to think that perhaps it
was not so bad.
Though
we knew it would be lonely for a long time yet and that the hells of
this world
from
which we were protected by only the thinnest and most fragile warp of
space/time
were heaped around us blocking the way to our rag-tag family of
others
who had also been raptured.
Still
The
sun as it rose the next morning...
How
can I tell you about that sun?