By JOHN POCH
I try to wish the best for him, our rival. His lines which really amount to nothing, the phrases that his readers fawn over, “I’m here for it” or “What a time” or even single words he uses as lines like “Fair” or “Same” or “Cheers”… I shouldn’t let them get to me. He even rhymes Halloween/Thirteen in a sonnet called “Hell.” People have come to treasure the expected, lavishing praise on the nice and cute, but that is not poetry. Is there something else to it, or is it just a minor cult of personality, the same way cheerleaders are chosen? Those readers who believe in him are the ones who don’t believe in absolute truths so allow fiction in their nonfiction willy-nilly. Gossips, they know little poetry or even of poetry. They fancy themselves naturalists and italicize it. They are educators rather than teachers.
Yet his way with the banal phrase is, I admit, like a drug. Like fast food, good going down. Lately, however, I have been drinking a lot of water, reading proverbs of the persecuted, psalms for enemies, and the dew is off the rose. I have come to a razor clarity concerning the tradition that he eschews. That attraction to a life of ease was like black sludge in my veins, but now my blood runs nearly as clean as any healthy man.
I think of this one often when I flush the toilet. I know that is mean and common, but dilution is the solution to pollution. I do desire to be less toxic to others, myself, and the environment, earthly or spiritual. Then it is I remind myself: bless and curse not. Perhaps it is not a matter of cursing, but a fidelity to description, good grammar, and even the imagination. I confess I have dreamed up so many metaphors for him: rotting irises, bleeding gums, cheerleader for oblivion… There is something to that last one. We all wish we could strenuously forget the score of losing in sexy leaps and cheers. Cheers!
Last night the Earth entered into two meteor showers at once with no moon in the sky, and the weather service said you could see two dozen meteors per hour. Shower/hour. I will go out and see and maybe write a poem, I thought. But when night came, the sky was overcast. I am the meteor shower. He is the thin layer of hapless but problematic clouds. The meteor shower, I was sure, though I could not see it, happened. Beyond my disappointment, it was a relief to smell the wet desert sage. Also, I comfort myself by remembering that on the shelf next to my bed is an actual meteorite I once found walking in the countryside of Umbria years ago. How the heft of its iron feels in my hand as I lie in bed with my wise and beautiful wife whom I don’t deserve. We will drift off to sleep together after so much love, moving one day closer to death, and to heaven of which our love is only a picture.
John Poch is a professor of English and creative writing at Grace College. His most recent book is The Future of Love.
