.

16 blocks south of downtown

The church stands,

Paint peeling off of the outer walls and

Wooden boards wedged in the

Windows of yesterday,

As if to keep the rats and mice warm,

Or maybe to keep our hearts a little warmer.

.

I suppose the rodents can still pray in there

But for us, the house of God has perished,

As we scornfully shirk its visage

In animalistic transactions of alien ore.

 

My oracle descended on me

Like a panorama of night through

Divergent clouds

.

When the woman struck my heart

And gripped it with her hands,

Clutching and shaking it into life

And into cognizance.

.

As I stood there making small talk,

Issuing smiles and

Cracking amateurish jokes,

.

My spectacled oracle related to me

Exactly what was happening, the

Woman spreading her crystals

And powderized chlorophyll

.

All

Around

The parameters of my heart

.

As if planting a seed

Of something that can be felt and

That can be smelled,

Like a whispering spring wind

Bringing you to quicksand eyes.

I missed the wedding,

The entire thing,

The entire 15-minute wedding,

Because I couldn’t find the banquet hall

Where it was located

In my own hometown

And no one else knew either

At the gas stations that were within a mile of it,

Out in the country.

.

I got there at 5:15 —

A cloudy, generally pleasant day in July

With light rain.

.

The time that I got there

Was exactly concurrent with

The opening of the bar,

Which we were all free to indulge in

Limitlessly and

At our own discretion.

.

At one point I caught sight of this

Attractive redhead I’d worked with

At a sports bar in town,

Me cooking and she waiting tables.

.

I couldn’t catch her eye but

After the meal and the bussing

She seemed to be standing by herself

So I went over and said hi to her.

.

I’d noticed that

She’d been there with a boyfriend

From the activities before

But at this moment she was standing

By herself.

.

I got a friendly greeting from her —

A smile,

And eyes that were lit up,

Sort of like a reference back to the

Volcano of elation

I assume

To

Exist

Up in the sky, somewhere.

.

We made small talk and

When I asked her if she still worked at Brothers

She went “Uhh,”

And waited like five seconds,

Before answering “No,”

With hilarious deliberateness and

An intense look into my eye,

As if she’d just come upon

A significant revelation.

.

At one point I got a finger against my chest

With eye contact and conversation and I thought,

There’s no way this is really happening.

.

Plus she’s with a boyfriend.

.

Well I did have on my $20 straw Fedora

That I’d got at a 7/11 one summer,

So you can kind of see how

Things were working out.

.

I picked the right time to break off the conversation

And said “see ya,”

Strolling then back to my mom’s table with

I’m sure an extra bounce in my step.

.

When I saw the redhead later she was flushed,

Sitting with the boyfriend which was this huge dude,

Outside the stoop of the wedding at about nine,

Maybe waiting for a ride, or something

Along those lines.

.

It was going to be a long day the next day,

For sure,

I got the idea.

.

The wedding was great —

Or, I should say, the reception,

Which as I alluded to,

Lasted three hours and 45 minutes,

In comparison with the

Actual wedding,

Which lasted 15 minutes

(All of which yes I did miss for reasons partially my own fault).

.

I’d drank two Beck’s on the way up

And I had one left in the car and I figured,

Well,

It’s about time to get back to that.

.

I’d said hi to the bride

At one point, who was my cousin,

Said hi to the groom, with whom

I got along real well,

Greeted any number of relatives cordially and

In general found it a near flawless experience,

For all intents and purposes.

.

That redhead girl I saw was in nursing,

Which she’d turned to after waiting tables

At our bar.

.

Medical clinics and oncological units

Flooded our town like wildfire and

At weddings, the spiritual formality was scant and the

Alcohol consumption rampant.

.

Nobody asked why.

.

Nobody had to.

The woman and I both realized internally

That we needed some conflict in order to be happy —

.

That the being “friends” thing didn’t really work,

We both secretly hated our jobs,

Hated the clothes we had to wear

Into our jobs,

.

And we were both a little bit scared,

Too,

When

.

We drove across town passing

Boarded-up blocks and

Societal refuse with heat outside the gas station

At night.

.

We’d shout, then,

Shove,

She’d bite me on the leg and I’d

Smack her in places of her body

I can’t disclose, we

.

Got to body coating

Like a high school rite of passage

Officially endorsed by The North Face,

Then quit,

Then still hated our jobs we had to go back to

The next day.

.

I said to myself,

Hey,

I’m the king of my little

Fucking mole hill here.

.

So we tried being friends,

It was night in winter

And we both felt a sun burning

On the insides of us,

.

Perceived a red,

Bulbous ball arching up around us

With us at the excretory bottom and

The man in there was playing a harp,

.

It was a paean to death,

The death of the white man and

His blood running like sangria

Across the frozen ground

The same damn color, after all.

Oh, bad actress,

You emit a spiritual odor

That’s unapproachable

But I love you anyway

.

And it’s not even that I love you for trying —

I love you for how you hide,

For how you’re disappointed by Whole Foods cashiers

For no reason,

How you

.

Don a flannel shirt and jeans

In a Western town and

Can’t seem to find the appeal in the Fleet Foxes

.

And how nothing works,

For you,

You portraying this malady

With a conclusiveness so final that it’s beautiful and

.

Everybody knows you,

Bad actress,

Knows you well,

And I love you for that.

Once upon a time

Somebody saw somebody gyrating

And creating various

Rhythmic, physical mishaps in

No

Particular direction at all

And thought to

Themselves, this

Is an art, “Dance,”

And

So

An

Art was born out of

The absurd and the surreal

And the

Surreal encompassed the

Blinding generosity of

Baring herself to the

Stone, gluttonous masses.

The weather tiptoes a sterile path

From dusty chalk to blinding sheen

But you would not know it

Trespassing

.

On the plastic grass

So professionally smattered in

Perfect emulation of

What’s come before like an

Ant farm terrarium,

.

The sun paralyzed and

Spat back on the windows 700

Feet off the field and

The stands are empty while we

Postulate on improvements.

This isn’t something I’m going to make too emphatic of a case about because with me being a guy it’s not REALLY any of my business, but I thought a word or two on the issue might be appropriate toward providing a sociological perspective on our current time and also alleviating what I see as some unnecessary psychological strain and tension.

So as many of you know along with the “Me Too” movement, which I guess was like making the outrageous claim that you shouldn’t rape people, or something along those lines, there’s also been a “Body Positive” movement, which, I guess you could call a feminist movement although it’s presumably meant to apply to all women regardless of political stance. And we’ve seen naked fat people. And we’ve seen endless Facebook posts which seem to be like setting up a straw man that condemned women for their bodies, when probably 999 times out of 1,000 men want attractive women to be wearing less clothing than they are.

I mean, I just feel like women indiscriminately liking their own bodies in this day and age and acting like they can do no naked wrong might be more trouble than it’s worth. I’ve made the point, I know, numerous times, on at least my music Dolby Disaster, that, basically, since the sociological demolition of abstract expressionism, the female body basically IS the sum total of “visual art” in our society, from MTV and Madonna in the coned bra, to the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue, etc. And I don’t think this is really anyone’s fault in particular — if anything, men are probably more to blame than women for this being the case.

But I think this “body positive” movement confuses freedom with just the fear that we’re human. Being human, it’s actually likelier than you might think that people manifest instincts to cover their bodies, so that they can assimilate to society and not be a distraction. It could actually be an intrinsic motive that women wield psychologically. Billie Eilish, for one, made the hilarious comment that she always covers her “big a** boobs,” adding that “I was born with boobs, bro.” Certainly, I think, we can all agree that she’s got a pretty heady view of the world, in terms of art and fashion, and where she fits into it. I had this other women who was a boss of mine at this restaurant who was highly attractive but would always wear loose clothing, hence, I think, maintaining a successful professional relationship with her employees. She was an individual who was busty and I’ve heard other girls say “they have a love/hate relationship with their boobs” (Facebook can be incredibly informative sometimes), but it might be as simple as knowing when to flaunt and when to conceal. If feminism is truly to work toward equality and “blur the gender lines,” as it’s advertised, then maybe an impetus to hide one’s female bodily distinctions could just be part of the natural progression of our basic motives as a society.

To develop and wield an ego

Is to rationalize,

To

.

Make rational your current situation

Of life on earth as a human being.

.

Without this rationalized explanation

Of your predicament,

Your thoughts, your feelings and your

Conceptions of this vituperative reality,

.

You would be

Crushed under the constant malady of

Your conception of your own

Mortality and futility.

I’ve become obsessed with process. I think it just comes from creating so many things over the years — from poems, to blog posts, to what ever the everyday things might be that men create.

The pinnacle of the feeling comes at the beginning of the creation process, when I get an idea. From there, I have an internal, unhindered view of what seems like the potential for an explosion of progress — I’m existing on an entirely different plane entirely from the rest of the world and what manifests is bound to be an ingenuous, original plaint of some sort.

And just think about this phenomenon as it pertains to football. I’m a Michigan fan, so you might say I’m doing a little “soul searching” right now, with our team being 1-2, and having fallen for one to Michigan St., a group of especially loose-tongued Michigan haters.

But think about how football began. Was it with a win? Was it with a championship? Was it with Paul Finebaum cajoling your favorite team on ESPN?

No — it was an idea. The idea, by scraps, grew into a concept. The concept, then, rested on practice, the process of perfecting, or rather manifesting in physical form, the idea. In this way, the “process” behind the end result is in a sense a purer facet of the enterprise than an inevitable result — a championship, award or what have you.

After all, if one team is winning, who’s to decide that it’s time to end the game? The length of the game is completely arbitrary.

We get caught up in results. We want a promotion. But what of the guy who wanted that same promotion and missed it by a hair? We want our son or daughter to be valedictorian. But what of all the other parents wanting the same thing and the limited number of spots on the ceremony floor?

And we want our football teams to win conference championship, to defeat their rivals (all three of them, if you’re like Michigan and tend to be in the spotlight quite often), but who defines when the game ends? And when you look at the Mona Lisa, is that the last moment of your life, for her to sovereignly allot where and in what moral stature you’ll rest for all of eternity? No — looking at the Mona Lisa makes you more alive than you were before. This is exactly why it affects as art.

Look, results are great. We all love rings and trophies — the championship game is usually the most exciting game of the season and it’s the champions that make the most noise in the realm of history.

But you play because you love the game. The championship is the goal but the exact motive driving you into this way of life, this grueling schedule of repetitions, workouts and playbook-memorizing, is the process. It’s the feeling of putting those cleats on and gathering speed like a freight train, it’s gripping that leather ball against your gloves like it’s your last possession, it’s looking to the side of you and seeing 10 guys with the same jersey on as you, the lights and cameras even, themselves, more alive already, as a result of your presence.

Herman Edwards once said that, “You play to win the game.” That may be true, but that result of winning, sitting there with the trophy, the accolades and your name in the newspaper in huge print, looks back in astonishment down a mighty big hill, at the process that got it there.