The Incredulous Vrog (and Other Dream-Lyrics Over the Void)

From a ceramic by David Burnham Smith

I wrote these some sixty years ago--these and more, yellow papers on a high bookshelf--but these persist in memory like childhood songs.

The Incredulous Vrog

The incredulous Vrog

emerged from the mist,

rubbed his belly and looked around.

As was his prerog-

ative, he had desist-

ed from thoughts of the mist-covered ground.

For he walked on firm fog

(in his language earth)

and the earth, in earth's terms, he called fog.

When I said to the the Vrog,

"Sir, you need a rebirth,"

"Up yours too!" said the petulant Vrog.

         Night Journey

I rode a ketchup bottle

to the exosphere

and met a madman sitting on a stone.

I tipped the cap and queried him,

"What are you doing here

unsupported in an exospheric zone?"

He closed his eyes and looked at me

and said, "Good morning, Sam.

I'm waiting for the freezing of the moon.

The midnight bus

to Birmingham

should be through very soon."

The earth was half a dream away

and reeling like a drunk.

The stars were dancing in a scream of years.

And I was silent for a space

from boredom and from funk

and said, "The dancers in your eyes are tears."

Fred in Bed

He-he high on something lay

the acrophobic Fred,

feeling so-so much alive

he thought he might be dead.

Being in a tom-tom

on a yoyo on a Jeep

crashing down a rocky cliff

is like a baby's sleep

compared to the condition of

our catatonic Fred,

mummy on a rollercoaster,

spinning in his bed.

Unasked, His Godhood

Unasked, his godhood asserted itself.

He awoke one day in a vacuum jar

and peopled it with skittering things

that danced around singing har har har.

With boney snouts of pigs and dogs

and fins and skins of rotting gar

and beaks of birds and bulbous knees,

they danced around singing har har har.

They danced around like falling snow.

They were very near and very far,

like years upon years of falling snow

singing har and har and har har har.

Naked before the shreds of his soul,

melting to paint on the walls of the jar,

he forsook his brief divinity,

and glass was smoke, and near was far.

"I rest," he says, "in a world of forms

as cold and exact as iron bar,"

but when the silence roars at night,

he fears and loves the vacuum jar.

Vanessa

Vanessa held her death-day party.

Being a terrific smarty,

she had read the stars,

so she alone in all the world

knew the hour and the day

when someone would call home and say,

"Condolences, it was a girl."

She'd even bought cigars.

The final one reeks of sophomoric impiety, but, hey, the theology is orthodox, at least in the Reformed tradition. (To the tune of "For the Beauty of the Earth.")

Resurrection

Did he suffer then a knock

when the hymen cracked ka-pock?*

Hey, you, Jesu, in the skies,

somersaulting, vaulting, rise.

White-eyed, blithe, reply, "I died.

Death, old womb, took me inside."

But see him leap and pirouette!

Tour jete! "No sin abet!

"Bastards, dastards, without ruth,

nailed, impaled me for my truth.

Flayed, betrayed was I, but, friend,

that low scene is at an end.

"Foes I fry now, friends I bask,

I, the way, the truth, the mask.

I, the word, the sword, the sun.

I'm Daddy now, my will be done."**

*The virgin birth and associated trauma.

**The unity of the persons of the Trinity, Matthew 26:39, parallel verses, and the Lord's Prayer.

From a painting by Yongsung Kim