The Waterwalkers
While poetry and writing occupy a large amount of Clint Smith's creative energies, currently his focus is on music from rock and jazz to world music and Afro-pop, and back again. He performs in and around NYC both solo and with the Non-Aligned Movement, a loose-knit collective of musicians who play music from
around the world.
By Clint Smith
I will not leave you orphans. I will come to you. Yet a little while and the world no longer sees me ... if you were of the world, the world would love what is its own. But because you are not of the world, but I have chosen you out of the world, therefor the world hates you. Remember the word that I have spoken to you: No servant is greater than his master.
John, 14:18-19, 15:18-20
Invocation
Swallow fire, incendiary,
your lyric festival an
annunciation of invincible powers
for your revolution, like all, begins and ends,
swells up from austerity to birth, to be
taken down by Midas, Rome, empire,
insane conspirators.
I
Virgin birth?
A belief unabsorbed by Julius' vengeance ... the way
the messianic face was impressed on the dried
fruit of a cactus, potential seizures & a
face wiped dry of sweat ... someone in the temple
grappled with Christ, prophecy of the psychotic
fire of the morrow. Convinced a mere child
with the shadowy
tensions of his hallucinations wage war against sin, Jesus, for it is afraid,
fearful, interwoven with poor destiny ...
II
Jesus wept
He believed in Yahweh & believed in the abyss,
the adversary all about,
poverty, slingshots of suicidal corruption ...
Jesus chose the moon's path,
sleeping under nightfall with his disciples,
moon rays scattering sand trails for other
vagrants to follow.
Jesus in his most challenging moments
would ask God who widowed him
ardent questions have I satisfied you Lord?
My men are not of gold,
The are of crows, vulpine,
misbegotten ... yet still we vow
By the moon & sun,
Profess our love as our bellies empty save
For myths of Neptune, & Prometheus, & terra firma
God was his courage as he stopped the sky.
A frozen manipulation of light ...
The wind winked.
III
Under heroin's snare,
walking to the lectern of the cross,
recalling 1/2 inch of sewage placating vermin
in the underground shelter
trashmen had combed over his office-box
tenement seized with waste compactors
rabbits scattering as the homeless toked on foot-long
joints wrapped in multiple layers of ripped-off
toilet paper ...
Remembering
IV
The junkie spoke.
I remember stumbling in the puddle, stuck by a multiple who'd forgotten to take his meds, I remember feeling sleepy, can't say I thought about dying because the world was disappearing. My own blood was mixing with the shit under my feet and I felt the bellies of rats, or cats, mosquitos drinking from me. I saw Jesus walking over a sea of blood, and mosquitos underneath exploding like little sparks. I remembered that even the son of man had the courage to bleed for me. They stuck thorns in his head. Then they led him not to his death but to his resurrection. In the Middle East, in South America, I saw Christ talking to someone in a new tongue. Someone grabbed me as I fell over, the insects scattered. There was a glowing. There were sirens ... I ...
a children's choir sang
from a Latter Day Saint hymnal, miming
harsh Montana winter,
snows of Canada surrounding the Atlanta mission.
V
Jesus was gored on the cross,
searching for belonging
with lust's intent, sorrow of my mother ...
He screamed, the vultures stabbed, envialing
His insides with envy, spitting flesh
upon the thief crucified beside, birdsong
morbid & majestic, Complete in their
one-ness Jesus & the thief reposed in the
crowd of barbarians. Jesus said, I forgive you,
I spoke with the vulture & heard your
question, and I must not rest in this time.
of God's unrest.
Jesus' wife, divinity parted &
in the dominion of her own yokes, her
vision of second and third and fourth comings ... she looked
up at him from beneath. Death approached.
2003
Published May 2005
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