WEBVTT

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All right.

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Two or three more
poems from this book.

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And then I'll read
a few new poems.

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It's called God The Broken Lock.

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And actually this poem
evolved out of an exercise

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that a friend of
mine had given me.

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The poet Rick Jackson.

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And the idea was that we were
going to write each other--

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we were going to
write self-portraits,

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but as each other.

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So here's his act.

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There is a poem in
one of his books,

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which is called Self-Portrait
of a Rivard by Richard Jackson.

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This one is simply called
God The Broken Lock,

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and it is Rick Jackson's
self-portrait maybe.

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I've died enough by now.

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I trust just what's
imperfect or ruined.

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I mean, God.

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God who is in the stop sign
asking to be shot gunned.

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The ocean that evaporates.

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Even as we float, God the
bent nail and broken lock,

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and God the hangnail,
the hangnail.

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And a million others
might be like me,

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our hopes a kind
of illegal entry,

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a belief in smashed windows.

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Every breakage like breaking and
entering into a concert hall.

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The place my friend and I
crawled into an air shaft

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and later fell asleep.

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After breakage, there
is always sleep.

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We woke to gospel hymns from
the dressing room below.

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Songs commending
embrace to the fists

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and return to the Prodigal.

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And hasn't my luck always been a
shadow stepping out stretching?

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I mean, I trust what breaks.

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A broken bone
elicits condolence.

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And the phone call sounds French
if the transmission fritzes.

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And our brains are blessed.

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Desirable brains are composed
of infinitesimal magnets.

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Millions of them are billionth
of a milligram in weight.

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So they make us knock our
heads against hard walls.

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When we pushed
through the air vent,

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the men singing seemed
only a little surprised,

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slightly freaked.

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Three of them in black tuxes.

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And the fourth in red satin.

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Crimson lit up like a furnace
trimmed with Paisley swirls.

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The furnace of a planet
or of a fantastic ocean

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liner crisscrossing a planet.

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We've not discovered
yet a fire you

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might love to be thrown into.

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That night, they would perform
the songs half the country kept

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on its lips for half the day.

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Songs mostly praising, or
lamenting, or accusing some

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loved one of some beautiful
horrendous betrayal

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or affection.

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But dressing between primping
and joking about their thinning

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afros.

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They sang of Jesus.

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Jesus who said split a stick
and you shall find me inside.

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It was the winter.

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We put on asbestos gloves.

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And flame proof, stuck our
hands in the fireplace,

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adjusting logs.

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Jesus, we told
them, left no proof

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of having sung a single note.

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And that, said the lead singer,
is why we all are sinners.

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What he meant was we are all
like the Saints on my neighbor's

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lawns, whose plaster shoulders
and noses, chipped cloaks

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and tiaras, have to be bundled
in plastic sheets each winter,

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blanketed from the
wind and the cold.

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That was what he meant.

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Though I couldn't know it then.

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It's a very familiar image
actually from my childhood.

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And from some of the towns that
I've lived in and around Boston.

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The people have these plaster,
statues of Saints, or of Mary.

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And to bundle them up in
plastic for the winter.

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It's sweet actually.

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