Hand

Hand 

                                                                                     for TH

The commonplace

Is hardest to see. 

For ages we didn't guess

We are apes 

Our very hands

Wrought from terrible labor. 

When we did learn,

It was a while 

Before we grasped

The compliment. 

We felt degraded

And went to church to pass.

But the Lord jeered:

Are my apes inferior to you? 

Now we wonder:

Are we at least important? 

In our power to destroy

Are we at least significant?

Outside of money

Being actual 

How will we know

If we do not bomb 

Do not bulldoze,

Or spurn the unknown?

Let's conceal contempt

For the other 

Within,

But make of him 

A unique genus,

And study his Agon

In the for-profit halls

Of silver Universities. 

If you imagine

That we evolve 

By fruitless labor,

Then you concede

That taking sides

Solves nothing. 

Futility

Is futurity's inception

Striving for the time

When looking outward

Will be looking in;

And the ghost inside 

Coalesce

And possess a name. 

Till then

We are free 

To degrade flesh

By spirit, 

Confuse myth

With meaning,

Display the selves

We do not know. 

The spirit of the Lord

Hid in Siwah Oasis,

In the reeds of Osiris,

Sacrifice in secret.

If it is in our power

To deform creation,

Mustn't we act

To prove the Father strong? 

Body-born Osiris

was phallus-eaten.

Melville's sailors mutually

Massage sperm-whales

Far at sea:

For the State requires 

A timid citizenry:

Not Behemoths. 

But new species arise

From Gargantuan drive.

Restored by Isis

Osiris does not stir. 

His kingdom lasted

Three-thousand six-hundred years.

The King of the living

Reigned over the dead 

And Anubis clasped his hand

At the last judgment.

The curve of free-will

Bends to worse 

When accuser must accuse,

Else no resurrection. 

This, we are told

Is the Lord's will: 

Which Lord?

Grain or humiliate? 

We ask ourselves

To walk the serfs' path 

Knowing it only postpones

A passive reckoning. 

For a soul invisible to men

Cannot save them. 

So if we obey

The laws of physics, 

And the laws of economics:

And the police 

Apocalypse will unfold

Just as the preacher preached.

What do we require

What is our wish? 

Our desire

Is a mystery. 

In the preacher's sermon

The contest is good and evil.

Osiris was the true bread

The staff of life that dies.

In the preacher's homily

All contests are good and evil.

His good is supernatural

Overwhelming bounty

Manna from heaven.

Osirian wheat is practical.

Preached evil is real

Though no part of us,

And if our powers too are real

But we do not use them, 

What do we gain?

(Buddha rightly brooded) 

Do we die?

Speak poet, if you know. 

The line is silent.

Those have learned have learned. 

Those who have not learned

Have not suffered.

Jesus fled the mount,

Marx resigned to wages.

Are we the bored

Messenger of the Lord? 

Does the hidden talent

Defy Usury? 

Who cares for artists

If art is decoration on a tomb?

Who cares for the State

If our mother bore us? 

The Lord hid his face

In Babylon. 

But once-upon-a-time

Creation commenced:

Once, you saw me

Sitting alone, 

Yet approached.

Without a word.

Sensing my solitude--

You reached forth your slender hand,

And placed it in mine.

Slowly, and with tenderness

Holding it in your own

What seemed centuries.

A brief extenuation

Obliterating names, forms: 

Sustenance of a crazed ecliptic,

Restraining fall. 

Until, that clasp withdrawn,

We parted.

And still I feel

Your gloze glowing on my palm. 

Will Morgan