L.R. Harvey Poetry

WHICH WAY? Moses, that holy everyman,  compelled like us to pick a path in  the midst of a world where Egypt and Israel  are intertwined as a pomegranate and a bell,  a bell and a pomegranate,  made bold request of the cloud that  he might know His ways,  a beat-around-the-bush approach to say  he'd like to best divine a route that's guaranteed to lead him out of his sojourning on a well-trod track. The cloud acquiesced to answer back with something like—to summarize—no;  but go, then testify how I'm there too, a soft but firm correction— re-connection — of the false distinction between His presence and the way, and—all said, one dead—maybe even of Egypt and Israel.

DISRUPTED In the night's tremor  the interior furniture  progressed from here  to there, concluding where it'd never been before.  Surprising all the more as the home had grown anemic in the slow groan of time, evident in the lines of dust that outlined where the pieces pressed.   This was death by rest. A shaking at the core was the one way forward. 

DNR If you find me unresponsive,  face-down in a puddle of  not blood but a fluid  form of God and good  poetry, and if I’m brain-dead, leave me. The rest is more alive  than you’d believe,  and you wouldn’t believe how hard it was give  it up, the reason we’ve equated with the self,  a mixture as ethereal itself as all the firmest things we know. All I’m driving  at is that you'd not resuscitate me me if you find I’ve finally, escaped, crossed the guarded border into truth from order.

AFTER THE ACCIDENT “Allow me the analogy” intones the priest, mechanically inclined, “that given time a bit more fluid will not be adequate to fix the slipped transmission,  man’s mission, by which I simply mean  his automatic drive to get from here to there.” Lifted into the air  we behold the bread, the cup.  “We need a total swap, beloveds. Catch my drift?”  which we do, having whipped a corner over-fast and lost control of steering wheel and road. "We're totaled, I fear." We file forward for repair.

BLAME JACOB’S LADDER Well surely, love, you can see  how readers might—and logically — conclude that the ascending ones are headed back from here , the same place that those they pass  are making for , by which I ask  you to concede, my dear,  how understandable it is if I were late returning from the grocery store. Who wouldn’t stare, grown suddenly aware of how pathetic their disguises are,  these commuting gods with their carts and lists, peering down  on a bag of green beans or brown bread, and then expecting us  to be hard-headed enough to believe that this is necessary nourishment for their eternal bodies? All I'm saying is—and please, sit down for this, my heart— we're surrounded. They're everywhere.

KINGDOM, COME Here is a certain summons  which includes even the earth- worms,  whose emergence from the dirt is an enigma still to the experts  at the Earthworm Society  of Britain, who reluctantly  admit that “though there are  a few theories, it is not fully under- stood why earthworms come  up to the surface when it rains.” And this is understandable, given  that theories of all sort have proven  time and again to fall short  of adequate explanation for  this odd insistence that—even if it kills us—we make our way to light.

THE SEED The important thing to remember,  brothers who have murdered brothers in every way imaginable,  is that yes, even you are yet unable to kill the part of you which is  good. Our forerunner, Cain, was reminded of such while the blood was not yet dry, kin spattered on his forearms as he was warned that Abel’s killer was still at large, that moment crouching outside the door with a lurking desire   “which is contrary to you.”  Tell me then, you intent to loathe your-self, who then is this you at the core of the offending fruit?

ONE I cannot write the poem  which is the silence between  the too-many words I have inked into bleak existence,  nor think the God who is  the hollow space  in every thought of my  concocted God. I do not say  this God or poem  who are one and the same cannot be known, but all the same, that knowing them is but to bathe in the echoes which reverberate from a distance too far—or near—to chart is my best advice,                                    and art.

  THE SILENCE: TWO POSSIBILITIES      I. Millienna of supplication  bat his ear like a gnat, head down in focus over a new canvas that won’t require such vast  revision. For he will be  their god and they will be  his people, right this time.  His early attempts form a pile  in the corner wastebasket which is the universe.           II. The bottom corner isn’t right.  Reporters fight amongst themselves for the tabloids— Breaking: brush broken, laid  down in defeat . Let them babble. Their words hold little   weight, and wait is part and parcel  of the big reveal. He chuckles,  imagines their analysis  of the portrait, perfected: that’s us?!