the inmate's journal : spring fragrance iv

as foreplay, the people talked about their problems.  problems so distinct in the history of human civilization vast industries are devoted to recording and complicating them.  problems whereby children and parents are collegial negotiators on power’s platforms, both equally inept.  problems of suv intelligence.  problems slightly higher than the angels.  problems not unrelated to the disputes in quantum mechanics.  problems once the prerogative of dictators and titans.  problems requiring collaborative and transglobal infrastructures of post-strategic operations.  problems, ah, dear clouds and roses, tender problems of the middle classes, the middling aspiration of the world.

 

and the tv producer says	there is no greater god than tv.  in the beginning was tv and in the end there will be tv and we producers are squashed in the middle like the holes in donuts, producing so you can consume.  i am become speed, the accelerator of worlds, so you, my suns and fruit-jellies, can burst forth in dreams.
and the politician says	i got an a+ and first class honors in eructation from the university of oxensword.  without my veiled brutishness you’d all be killing each other.  god is behind it all.  the burden of uniting nature and divinity, coupled with the lack of job security, makes me adulterous and manipulative.  that’s the way it is, let us pray.
and the lawyer says	the law is the law.  i am praised less than i should be.  i sprinkle the law with sugar and all i ask for in exchange is money.  money is the law and i am the sugar but the people think i am the money.  all is mixed up and the people think i am responsible.  for this, i overcharge them.
and the entrepreneurs say	we are bespooked on all sides by scorpions.  tomorrow is our today and the praise of hope is on our backs.  the banks don’t like us.
and the middle managers say	we are the banks who don’t like you but it’s not our fault we don’t like you because if we stop not liking you we’ll get fired or, worse, demoted, and we’ll have to use some of our savings and, worse, our reputations will suffer and, anyway, risk has to be managed or the world will collapse and we’re the managers of risk and you’re the risk.
and the housewives say	you’re all aimless meteors around the star of our mocked vocations.  we suckle the past and are acquainted with dish towels.  our towels are mismatched with our men.  we have never been to spain.  we aren’t sodomized readily.  we sob into our pillows and don’t know why.

 

and what did my soft gingham shaman say?  did she have worries?  was anxiety her middle name?  had the tentacles of technology crushed and slimed her?  which thoughts dripped from the stalactites of her mind and could they drip in mine?  what brought her to this troupe of mortgagees to listen to their privileged complaints in silence?  why was my pew companion mute in the midst of such moaning?  did a vocation remain in this post-hamlet world that justified her hideous detachment and could i be her sensitive apprentice?  what crack in suburban mediocrity had she crawled through?  as i sat across from her i didn’t know.  all i knew was that her name was ferrelyn quest and she was pious.

 

the pious don’t think the way the rest of us do.  they have different dreams.  love treads on the pathways of their souls, but leaves neither imprint nor refuse.  with the rest of us, when love’s through with us, our paths are mangled as a subway suicide, littered as los angeles, and soiled as a hostel toilet.  the pious are born in smoke and shadows at the world’s unvisited edge.  the rest of us are born in general hospitals to the tune of laughtracks.

 

ms quest, long before she was ms quest, was a babe in piety’s nurseries, wet with nothing but the bog of holiness.  there she woke each morning, staring at the bars of flesh, knowing god was as far away as truth.  she was a person to chain yourself to and die, as she dragged you mercilessly to heaven’s eternal stairs.

 

i imagined working with andrew lloyd webber on his last jesus musical—

 

ms quest,

you are my quest.

to be like you, to see like you,

to become my very best—

this is what i want to do;

but since my parents and me and their parents and their cousins and my aunts and uncles and sisters and brothers and friends and dogs and cats and goldfish are all such a mess,

how i’m going to be like you …

i don’t have a clue,

ms quest.

 

you are a kind of song who doesn’t need to sing as you yourself are sung.

you are the kind of car that doesn’t need a garage, you are your garage.

you are the type of soil that retains its worms.

you aren’t unlike those billboards on the highway to alaska.

i imagine when you’re in the bathtub

you don’t think the kinds of thoughts other people do.

            i imagine that your sweat and other outputs

are sweeter than free tickets to the playoffs.

you are my couscous, my radish, my non-gmo tomato.

you are the bedrock of the country of my sighs.

ms ms ms ms … be my mrs. quest.

 

how else could i respond to someone so unaffected by the world’s priorities?  the only two legitimate responses were murder and love, but we murdered jesus and have been paying for it ever since - so, i reasoned, ferrelyn, his clear successor, must be loved.