The Messiah
When he remembers me, does he think of The Messiah?
I played it in the van on the way up the ridge
to a tree crushed house where the neighbor smoked a cigarette
and walked us through the damage flicking ash on fallen insulation
because the tenant had fled biting his nails to nubs
and shouting that the dog in back was a CIA plant with a camera on his collar.
We let in light ripping off black paper pasted to windows,
cleaned up what we could
carrying debris through the small sheltered porch,
and eyeing mist we were sure would turn to snow
as it hung there cold in the pines. And back in the van,
winding down the canyon shrouded in rain
to the highway skirting eastern foothills:
another town, another job.
In this one a sewer backs up through a shower
in converted garage apartment adjacent to the meth makers
who say everything’s fine in their place
as they carry two gallons of bleach inside,
and converted garage apartment tenant glares behind steel rimmed glasses,
behind pock-marked face, behind grey wall eyes,
and we know how much he hates them
and only barely know how careful we are not to access
history, bitterness and pain.
Why should we? We’ve got sewage to clean.
And then again, back in the van, heading home
through pellet water afflicting gray land and gray sky
soundless and drowned in his hearing for the first time
what I’ve heard again and again. And again as if the first time
the choir’s chorded movement through structures impassioned,
the freedom of rhythm without a beat,
the meeting of mercy and truth expressed when inspiration met with logic,
the hand divine sublimity resting on the human
of all our most ridiculous and disappointing moments of routine.
What are his thoughts? What, his emotions?
What, Comfort Ye? What, He bore the sins of us all?
What, Hallelujah Chorus?
He shakes his head in far off contemplation, says:
I hate moving. I’ve got so much crap.
So he’s gone now,
gone to Southern California,
bone dry and winterless,
a refugee in search of new country.
He found his life in eye of one dimension,
spends his days cutting footage to seconds’ associations
making frame by frame a feeling general
and unlike any paradox we live with.
Beautiful people picture short conflict,
easy won ecstasy,
a fortune wheel of extremes
spinning almost too fast to catch
where the camera neither glances nor exposes,
neither cuts short nor elongates,
neither zooms in nor looks away,
and he feeds himself, his talent to this:
the center of all our attention.
The rest of us sit with bony backs on metal hot garage door,
tyvek suits slung down around our legs,
respirators hung, dripping sweat that filled them.
Old Hispanic woman passes by,
tries to peak inside the house we’ve told her not to enter.
Sons check in on her
and wait to fix the damage no insurance company would touch.
We think of him and wish for him the best
of all we’ll never have,
savior of our abandoned dreams,
hope for us by proxy,
pride for us by association,
every desire to break free
fulfilled in him who’ll never again return to touch us.
When he remembers me, does he think of The Messiah?
Because when I remember him,
I think of Rock and Roll.
