Pegasus
A question arises concerning what you most long for. What about this makes you uncomfortable?
“Who wants to be found out,” you say, “as a
man who
longs for things he knows
can’t happen?” What’s so shaky
about the ground from which contentment
arises? Can we not talk openly about it as part of the
New Masculine?
“Who wants to burn himself up
over half measures?” Did he who first rode the winged horse
describe the animal’s moon
-shaped hooves before or
after it threw him? “The wings made the thing more holy
than fast,
and as seeable in
the sky as Przwalski’s horse across the Steppes of
Mongolia.”
Does your longing live behind such
trivia? Leave
you
propped
on your elbows, looking up from the dusty ground?
Forced to, how would you kill it?
“I won’t kill it,” you say, “but
let it have its way
with me.”
Advice to a Cyclops
‘Everyone is ordinary.’ —Terence McKenna
Just
because you feel unworthy doesn’t make it so. Yes, the feelings are there. No
one denies you have them. But when they lead you to this sense of
self-annihilation, they are reliable only insofar as one can say with
confidence that our illusions control us. The big ego you get when you do
something spectacular like beating out gold into a bowl or a ritual mask, or
casting tin-bronze into ingots to smith into bracelets, derives from your fear
not so much of feeling as being worthless. Funny how that
works. When we stop doubting ourselves, the illusion dissipates to show us that
the Self is no power monger. But your suspicion that you are a failed Cyclops creeps back in,
doesn’t it? You again try to prove your uniqueness by heaving a boulder or
scaring the crap out of a wayward adventurer. You rule out (without consciously
ruling anything out) that the man you waylay on his way home to his wife and
children has his own inner turmoil. Forgive yourself for this by thinking of it
now and taking no action whatsoever. Know that like everyone else you are an
original, modest and true, with your famous brow and bulging eye to blink away
the grime of daily living. If you have begun to suspect that you are one-eyed
by reputation alone, let it in like letting light in, while paying attention to
your inner Cyclops and your growing desire, in the parlance of shrinks and
neurologists, to re-groove your brain. Whisper to yourself now as your mother
whispered then, “Stop worrying.”
Cis Men Be Trippin’
Can
in
the
hand,
pea
in
can
clacking,
a
graffiti artist
shaves
their
‘stache
to duck trans
phobic
aggression, they
write cis
men
be
trippin’
in green
paint
drippin’
on
the
sky high
busty
dipsomaniacal
billboard
Bylaws for the
Boys’ Clubhouse
One
What we celebrate here
We must do out there.
Two
We are hungry
But let none of us be exclusive.
We won’t have just perfect people.
No one besides maybe Kendrick Lamar is perfect
When he sings, “Don’t give up, I won’t give up.”
Though we don’t know what other people believe
We don’t ask of anyone, “Are you worthy?”
Three
We are here
because someone loves us
And whispers like Irenaeus
“The glory of God is a human being fully alive.”
Can we try to say this once a week?
To ourselves? To at least one visitor?
Four
In terms of how old we are
We are reaching childhood’s pinnacle.
If we say to ourselves, “In ten years’ time
We will only occasionally remember
What we’re like right now,”
We may nod our heads in agreement
Without fully grasping what we’re agreeing to.
These are our first baby steps in shoes
Of seekers we’re catechized to admire.
Five
Every day is filled with pressure.
We must forget about it
Or breathing in and out and in again
Keep it from showing on our faces.
If we’re ever going to meet with the people
Who seem placed here on Earth to guide us
and to receive our artless advice in kind
We must master not only our facial expressions
But also our rebellious natures.
We must learn to be more helpful.
The King’s Two Bodies
‘I talk but idly, and you laugh at
me.’ —Shakespeare’s Richard II (III.iii.171)
In
the morning, a scene as common as dreaming yourself naked in a public square,
only less anxious-making and, like nudity for some, about liberation. If only I’d slept longer.
I’m teaching my students the medieval politics of the The King’s Two Bodies.
Richard the Second to serve as our model. One of his bodies is natural, which
is to say ‘corporeal’ and ‘mortal.’ The other, the body politic, is pristine,
mystical, positively eternal, when a phone rings an antiquated ring and,
passing amid not a few ardent essayists and at least two furtive chess players
waging war on their devices, I start for the back of the room to pick up. Only
it’s sixty boys now, writing out my rote description of the body politic as the
same body passing from king to king—an animating spirit making kingships
Christic—thus rendering the body natural impervious to any defect of age or
illness that could mess things up for him. The voice on the phone belongs to my
old friend Tim Kane. “Ivo,” it says, “You gotta come down here and get your
dad. He’s making everyone uncomfortable.” Of my late father I say for the first
time ever, “I’m not going anywhere, Tim,” and I mean it. “Do you hear what I’m
saying?” When he doesn’t answer, I say it again: “Tell him what I told you. I’m
not coming for him until I’m done here, and maybe not then either.” Silence.
“Tell me you understand,” I say. “Say it back to me, Tim. I need to hear you
say it. Tim?”
David Booth - lives in San Francisco, California. These poems come from his book-in-progress called 'Men in Funks.' This is a collection about men, boys, and masculinity in our times and across life's stages. These poems reflect on mythology and the deep (real and imagined) past.
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