Author Information
To The Marred And Vacant See [Repost]
1
Your roommate, having reached his senior year,
declared, with a pompous authority,
that no one who "chattered on a c.b."
could speak in academic, scholarly
terms; with no hope of credibility.
Seniors, then, spoke with full impunity;
nor could be questioned by freshmen like me.
But I did question: you became quite cross,
demanding, at once, an apology---
which I refused. We parted company:
as then, so now---although a memory,
your absence from my life was no great loss.
The future I did not then, nor now, fret.
But, in this present, the internet
displays my poems (and some are scholarly:
the Whitechapel ripper; "Q"; Early Christianity---
foremost): and some of them too long deferred
or postponed. Laugh at them; pretend to be appalled;
to be offended by the reading experience:
who are you to condemn, you crude whore:
ensconsed in your own, self-proclaiming lore?
I defy you, and sign them . . . henceforth . . . J-Called.
2
A friendship that was not meant, nor intended,
to be no more than a cheap ruse, pretended,
in order to achieve insinuation,
can never be restored, repaired, or mended;
nor worthy of a courteous conversation.
3
Without the half-pints, we would not appreciation full gallons.
Without the jackasses, we would not elevate the stallions.
A meal of cabbage rolls will bring out after-dinner farts.
A functional timepiece is more than just its wind-up parts.
Among the haberdashers, where the well-suited reside,
the failed coat-tailers pull thumbs out of bungs to catch a ride.
4
The edges of my life, that year, had been tainted
by your smug and ubiquitous intrusion,
now and then. How much I wish we had never been acquainted:
Christ knows how often I wish it, and with such profusion.
5
I was not, then, so naive to miss the comical irony
of your self-righteous but self-serving hypocrisy:
that certain rights of speech, which you claimed entirely yours,
did not in any way or form redound to me.
And how this led to such delicious metaphors . . . .
6
With no excuse and no apology,
and certainly no lucid explanation,
offered regarding your hypocrisy---
namely that you and those you deemed to be
fully possessed the right of liberty
to think and speak exactly as you pleased,
with no restriction placed on your expression
along with the demand and expectation
that all your words were worthy of respect.
And that these same conditions---in your view---
did not obtain for all (all being me).
At table, I was told to know and keep
my place at all times, until otherwise
instructed or permitted. I might not
deny nor even question those seniors
who were seated around me. Every right
entitled them, and only them, to tell
me where---from their perspective---I fell short.
They thought even the practice of my Faith
was theirs to criticize, and their duty
to show me the deep errors of my ways.
We disagreed so much as to what is
Love's nature, and the proper forms of verse.
And when you flung your crudest slurs at me,
I was not given opportunity
to make reply. In front of others, you
accused me of putting my poetry
into the service of perversity
(that was the nature you believed to be
innate to citizens' band radio):
and to defend myself, or disagree---
was, in your view, a vindictive, vengeful
gesture. You did not share my spiritual
beliefs; nor yet considered yourself a
Christian; yet felt that you were competent
to criticize what you believed to be
my failures in the practice of my Faith---
even citing to me the Scriptures that
you felt I violated, although you
gave them no credence for and from yourself.
J-Called
[*/+/^]
