Concerning the Soul

by Brett Rutherford

Because you dream
of parents gone,
dead siblings, the face
and voice and sayings
of a wise grandmother,

you imagine them alive
somewhere, solid, fine,
and feasting as never
they fed in a starved life,

 or as flimsy ghosts
in a tinsel harp heaven
where white-toast angels
attend them, all this

 in desperate wish
that you had a soul
and would travel with it
to the same beyond.

Wishing does not
make it so. The soul,
subtracted, is not the line
between a body
and a corpse.

The soul is a word
denoting no thing
existent in time
or space, an object
of language only.

No thing is
Nothing, and from Nothing
it is not permitted to say
that something comes.
Of Nothing, no substance,
quality or power adheres.

Note how a fool is made
by adding a capital letter
to lower-case nothing —
nothing, null, zero,
Nothing, ah sublime,
extant omnipotent —
as though to kick upstairs
the non-existent into
a respectable place.

Like floating reefs
or fatal Sirens,
beware the lure
of floating abstractions!

  

Dizzying Considerations

 

by Brett Rutherford

1

"Infinite" means only
"unimaginably large."
Infinite in number
cannot apply
to any existent thing,
for if it were,
it would crowd out
all other existing things,
filling the universe
with copies of itself,
cancelling me,
this poem,
and you who read.

2

Infinite in duration
by which we mean
a thing is eternal —

the arrogance
of meteor alone
in space, of smug
planets whose mass
has cleared their path
in endless dull orbit —

the first amoeba's
clear intent
to outlive every one
of his kind —

the urge of every tree
to grow forever
and devour the sun
that feeds it —

means only
that one becomes
"unimaginably old,"

until the sweep
of space and time,
the tug of gravity,
collapses all,

one bubble gone
among the many.

 

At Tower Records

Photo from Wikimedia

by Brett Rutherford

 It was one of those years
when Manhattan shone
not white with diamonds
but lurid crimson, Masque
of the Red Death, tombs
filling as fast as luxury
apartments. A year

 of averted gazes when
a particular face flashed
eyes you thought you knew
but that deathly pallor,
sunken cheeks, unsteady
gait made you look away,

 that year you read
obituaries first, that year
you could not count
on two hands the friends
you lost. One Sunday,

 lost in my thoughts
at the cutout record bins
of Tower Records
(the classical annex of course),
in quest of Handel operas
no one had sung since
Handel’s own day, or some
obscure Russian symphonist

 I saw a man whom no one saw,
or everyone pretended not
to see. Rail-thin in shabby clothes,
torn sneakers, he hurried
from bin to bin, all bent
on the big boxes: Wagner’s Ring
(Furtwangler and Solti, no less),
one each of all the Verdi greats,
a heap of Sutherland and Sills
in all the bel canto must-haves.

 The albums piled
up to his chin, he tottered,
shambled, and pulled himself
to the counter. A few in line
gave way; others behind
pulled back at the sight
of the tell-tale lesions
upon his neck and arms.

 He paid cash. It was all
he could do to carry
the heap of albums away.
No one spoke. Eyes turned
so as not to watch
as he passed the store’s
long windows, to where
a waiting cab, trunk
open, swallowed up
the opera horde
and its new owner.

 We turned back,
each and all,
to our searches.
I knew too well
what this was about.
He had come into
a little money, his life
insurance cashed in,
most likely, and by god,
he was going to die
owning every damn opera
he had ever wanted.

 He would go out like a diva.

 

Thirteen Scorpions

by Brett Rutherford

     A Monologue of The Emperor Qian Long (1711-1799)

I bid you welcome
to the Summer Palace,
to this, my garden
behind the Hall of Paintings,
and now that you,
Father of the Jesuits,
have learned enough Chinese
to dine in my presence,
we shall dispense with bowing,
kowtowing, and the like.

We can speak now,
man-to-man,
though it best be said
as god to man
for unlike your god
who is infinitely
receding, I am here.

I am the Son of Heaven.
For as long as I can recall
I was the Son of Heaven.
Father and Grandfather
Yong Zheng and Kang Xi
thought themselves so,
but they were merely
openers of the way;
they conquered and pacified,
thrust Manchu virtue
into the soft Han underside,
gave steel
where only bamboo
had sufficed.

Truly, I am the most
interesting person
who has ever lived
(or so the eunuchs
daily remind me).
I have composed,
or signed my name to
some forty thousand
poems; well-schooled
in martial arts,
I could break a man
in two, bare-handed.

I hunt. The deer tremble.
I make war. Unruly tribes
flee back to their borders.
My name and seal
are on ten thousand vases.
My visage has been painted
by European as well as Han.
My armies have gone as far
as Lhasa, whose Dalai Lama
bows to me —
                        What’s that?
Disaster in Burma? Vietnam
refusing to bend the knee?
You are impertinent, Holy Father —
time will tell — but here,
the servants come with tea,
dainties and dumplings.

Let us leave politics, and speak
of other things. You know,
I have learned to speak Tibetan,
and their Yellow Church priests
shall be in charge of my tomb
when Heaven takes me.

But tell me true, Jesuit Father,
how just as Manchu conquered Han
yet all of China has ravished me
with art and music and poetry
so that I scarcely have time for war,

does not your little god pall
before the sight of our mountains,
the mists on the Yellow River?
You eat like a Chinaman. I see
the way you eye that eunuch
(I will send him ’round
with the rest of the dumplings
if that pleases you? It does?)

Is China not
the world’s true center? Not Rome!
Although I ban your faith
and god, and god’s wife, and son,
and those ever-bleeding saints
are not permitted here — you stay.

You collect our pottery,
Song, Tang, Yuan, and Ming.
Calligraphy eludes you
and yet two hundred scrolls
of painted landscapes
have found their way
into the Jesuit dwelling.
Does China not always win,
like a great concubine,
by merely standing by in beauty?

Now, walk this way with me —
hand me the cricket jar,
Old Chen! — and we shall see
in this otherwise barren
rock garden, one standing stone.
gongshi, we call these —
how weathered and worn
and full of cavities it is!
Step up to the boundary
of crushed cinnabar
and look close! They come!
They come! Cringe not,
for the thirteen scorpions
are bound to the stone
and the gravel around it.
It is their universe.

Wonder you may
how I have ruled
for sixty years; how none
have raised a hand against me
and succeeded.

One duke, one general,
one martial arts fanatic,
two who called themselves
my brothers and blood-princes,
four who put up banners
and called me usurper:
see how they scurry
away from my shadow!
Emirs and khans and kings,
four I did not behead or slice
now wriggle here and rip
at another’s bodies
with fangs and venom’d tails.

The one on top? You know
I had three empresses, consorts
fifteen, and half a dozen
concubines. Only one was bad,
and there she basks. Nothing
would please her more than progeny.
A concubine
the only female on an island
with twelve male reprobates.
They will have nothing
to do with her. Ironic, no?

They will go on this way
forever, so long
as my hand feeds them
now and then.
Watch, as I lift this jar
that contains their dinner,
as I rattle the lid
just ever so slightly,
like cats they come running.

Step back — the cinnabar
line is poison to them
and they cannot pass it.
Old Chen, come hold
the Jesuit Father up.
He seems a little dizzy.
Is your taste too fine
to witness thirteen scorpions
fight over and eat
a solitary cricket?
It is only an insect.
It is their favorite food.

The dumplings, perhaps,
have made you sleepy.
Rest on this garden seat.
Is this not like
the place you call Purgatory,
where evil-doers reside
on a mount of their iniquities?
Just such a thing, in miniature,
a Daoist master made for me.

Come, take a look
as I uncover the victim.
What say you? Empty?
Why so it is.
Look deeper, Father
of the foreign devils’ god.
Slough off your priestly
robes, your cross and jewelry.
Do you not feel the change?
Catch him, old Chen!

I am the Son of Heaven.
I have always been
the Son of Heaven.
I am the most interesting man
who has ever lived.

And you —
     whom I hold
     in my hand and toss
     into the hungry horde —
you
are a cricket.

 

The Empty Tureen

 

by Brett Rutherford

     In memory of François Vatel (1631 – 24 April 1671)

 To die for the gods,
for one's planet,
for a nation, even,
is honorable

 and we invent Valhallas
where the worthy great
feast endlessly with
poets and composers
all around them.

 To will one’s own death
over dishonor
seems quaint,
and even ridiculous
when psychopaths
caught, just whirl and turn,
accusing their accusers.

 Vatel, the great chef
of the great Condé,
a better man
than his better,
fled the banquet,
hid in his room,
fell on his sword
over a spoiled dinner.

 No one had come by horse,
galloping to Chantilly
as ordered, no one came
with the one ingredient
intended to delight
Louis Quatorze —

 the moment had come
and gone, when one tureen
could be tipped, one course
converted from bland
to sublime. It tipped;
the waiter’s face turned white
when nothing came;

the tureen was empty,
as all down the line
of two thousand dukes,
barons, widows and mistresses,
each silver vessel
was tipped
and came up likewise
void as a cenotaph —

 and so, in the apartment
above, the great chef
impaled himself and died
for want of lobster sauce.

 

 

Partridge Season

by Brett Rutherford

At August’s end
the partridge weeps.
The hunters come
with their slobby dogs
on the morrow.

The hen who laid the egg
that hatched you,
has been taken alive.
The sire who flew
and taught you cloud-lore
and hawk-watch
hides on the branch
of a pear tree.

You watch from where
the hedge-row nest
gave shelter. Fledgling
just shorn of baby feathers,
you tremble and wait.

Giants tread back and forth
in boots that smash
all the good things beneath;
the dire hounds clench
and unclench their jaws
in practice, tails wild
with expectation.

The captive hen
is placed in a cage,
atop a tree-stump,
away from hedge-rows.

The men hide
in a thing made out
to resemble
a boxwood shrubbery,
a little green castle
brimming with
shotgun barrels.

They know the hen
will call out plaintively.
They know another male
partridge will come
a-calling, and another,
and maybe another.

They will circle the hen-cage,
they will pick at wire
and wicker, calling back
at her song of distress.

The hunters’ blind
trembles. Not yet! Not yet!
Another male arrives.
A shot! Wings fly!
More shots! The dogs
run after in howl and fury.

One hound comes back
with your uncle in his mouth,
another, your brother.

Into a sack they go.
This, they call sport.

The Only White Boy

 by Brett Rutherford

Newark, New Jersey in 1969.
I lived there, in student rooms
not far from where
the burned houses still smoked.

One Saturday I stood
outside a downtown theater,
scrawny white poet amid
bereted and tree-tall giants,
black men brimming
with gasoline anger.
Arms that had hurled
molotovs, bodies
that had taken a beating
and kept on coming,
pressed in the line
behind me.

I mind-read dark thoughts
directed at me, at what
might happen
if they saw me after,
but we were here
for one common purpose.

The marquee decreed it:
NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD.
This was not to be missed.
I would sit with anyone,
anywhere, to see this.
It was that important.

I sat in my seat of seats,
fourth row, center.
All those I feared
were far behind me.
Not half an hour in,
the men began screaming.
With cries of "Oh my god!"
and "No, no, no!"
I heard them rush
to the exits.

When zombies ate innards,
I heard the sound behind
of muffled vomiting;
more footsteps retreated.

By film's end
I was the only one left.
I strode through the lobby
smiling.

 

Quart d'Heure

 by Brett Rutherford

Well, that was a “carder,”
the Englishman said,
after his rude encounter
with a pack of dogs.

How quaint to call trauma
un mauvais quart d'heure,
a bad quarter-hour,

quart d’heure
just long enough
for the bullies to pull
your books, your coat,
backpack, umbrella,
and send them flying
over a high fence

quart d’heure
just time enough
for a rapist to do
what he wants to you,
zip up, and flee
the scene

quart d’heure
ill quadrant
of the clock of doom,
the time it takes
to bleed out,
pass out, expire

quart d’heure,
nine hundred
and thirty seconds,
to be precise,
the stone-cold interval
of falling out of love.

 

Alien and Invasive

 by Brett Rutherford

In the language of exclusion,

queer means

not harmlessly eccentric

but dangerously odd,

not just outcast, outside,

unwelcome by nature,

but eager to convert,

recruit, corrupt, seduce.

How would it feel

to be called a weed,

a more sinister slang

for "garden escapee," —

How stung would you be

to have beside your name

as asterisk, footnoted

"alien and invasive species." —

How being on lists

to be anathematized,

lobotomized and

sterilized, must feel —

How walking fast

on certain blocks

in front of taverns,

playgrounds, you hope

just not to be noticed —

How being told

by the holy fathers

you are condemned to Hell,

and lawyers who fight

for civil rights, avert

their eyes when yours

are being taken —

The weed, the wolf,

the furtive coyote,

the creeping vine

with trumpet flowers

in rainbow hue --

we are just one

of every ten of you.

Backwards

 by Brett Rutherford

Is where we wake
from where we sleep
the same, or other?

What if the morning clock
ran counter-clock
and the numbers read
12-11-10 instead
of 12 - 1 - 2 - 3; 

what if I see
the letters run backward
on my computer screen,
not mirror, but everything
turned wrong-way round?

Hot and cold faucets
now cold and hot; a jar
I try to open unlids
by turning right, not left.

The books are now shelved
from Z to A, each title indexed
in reverse order. I seem
to remember tomorrow
and I have no idea
what will happen yesterday.

 It could be worse,
forward, backward,
right, left, time past
and time to come
I can learn to deal with.

 I could be upside down,
you see, my bed up there
on the ceiling, my tea
refusing its cup and flowing
up and out the window.

 I could, on hands and knees,
crawl up the street, or stand
and hurl myself from pole
to parking meter, each step
at peril of sending me skyward.

 Better it is to stay
asleep, and spin the odds
of waking up where left
is left and right, right,
my bed awhirl
among a maelstrom
of gravity's variants.

 (Illustration for Poe's "Descent into the Maelstrom" by Harry Clarke.)

Bag of Bones

by Brett Rutherford

When they arrested him
in his Brighton Beach hovel,
amid the dust and termites,
the untold generations
of roach egg-cases
and rodent droppings,

when they surveyed,
for evidence his vast,
uncatalogued library —
mostly Judaica and thus
unreadable to detectives

they knew they were beyond
their depth, despite all
the hidden cameras
that more than proved
he frequented the morgue,

and entering with a stolen key,
had had his way, some way,
with lady's corpses, but left
no sign except those deft
incisions in their backs,
cracked spines
the only sign
of his intrusion.

And more confounding
yet, were the tracks
he left, matched to
his shoes, into and out
of Mt. Sinai Cemetery,
the freshly-dug graves
disturbed, coffins
most assuredly opened,
the female occupants
disrobed and turned
face down -- again,
spines cut and cracked
like walnuts.

And what they found
was this bag of bones,
like knuckles or parts
of vertebrae. The DNA
from in the marrow said
"Human," but no one knew
just how these malformed
pieces had ever been
inside a human form.

Only a week in jail
and the threat
of what befell
such a frail young man
when the lights went out --
ah, he confessed.

He was the last
in a long line of thieves,
his uncle the last one
to pass the secret
of how to steal the "luz,"

the bone unknown
to anatomists because
it was invisible in place,
the indestructible bone
at the heart
of resurrection.
No luz, no afterlife.

How could this ghoul
have hoped to profit
from the kernels of souls?
Did he make soup from them
in hope of longevity?

At last he confessed it all:
that he was known
to a circle of unhappy men
who were schooled in Kabala,
how they paid him well ...

"For the bones?" the detectives asked.
"Did they seek to make magic
with these impossible bones?"

"Not so," the luz-ghoul answered.
"They gave me the key to the morgue,
the names and dates, the map
to the gravesites I was to visit."

"To what end?" the detective demanded.

"So when they rise," the thief smiled.
"Their dead first wives will not
be there awaiting them."

My First Jewish Boyfriend

 by Brett Rutherford

New to the City, I am struck

by the beauty of young Jewish men.

Red-haired Princes of the City

they seem to me.

They know everything about everything.

The one I am most enamored of

I see at the opera in standing room,

at the cheap seats in Carnegie Hall,

in the library at Lincoln Center.

He notices I notice him. We talk.

His Ashkenazi genius is assured.

He knows the words to the operas,

as do I. He knows the difference

between one conductor’s Beethoven

and another’s. He shows me

the right restaurants, and where to shop

amid the delis and stores

of the Lower East Side.

After two dates, I am taken home

to meet Mother. Top of a high-rise

not far from Grand Army Plaza,

windows with a view to die for.

Mother regards my clothes with pity,

sparks up as we talk about poets

and Russian music. “Oh, well,”

she sighs, “I see why my son likes you.”

As she prepares dinner, he confides,

“Mother so disapproves of me.

We had painters in last month

and she warned them, said right

in front of me, ‘Pay him no mind.

You are not to speak to my son.

He is a homosexual and is not well.’ "

Then, whispered, “Of course I had sex

with all of them before a week had passed.”

I am introduced to matzos

and a chicken broth that was not

to be forgotten. The dinner was peppered

with questions about my family.

Each answer I gave was worse

than its predecessor, until I felt

I was the merest mongrel. I doubted

that dessert would come at all

as my family tree was no more than a shrub.

What business had such a prince

with a poet whose glasses

were taped together, whose clothes

were more clown than scholar?

He vanished after that. I called,

but he evaded me. Finally,

outside the opera, he said,

“Look, there’s something

I need to tell you. I’m not

any good as a friend to anyone.

You don’t want to know me.

I was sent away to an asylum.

My mother had me committed.

It was all I could do

to talk my way out of that place.”

I assured him I did not care.

There was nothing wrong with him,

and a great deal wrong with his mother.

“I can’t see anyone,” he answered,

head drooped as he walked away.

“No one should want to know me.”

Months later, a man comes up to me

as I lean on the rail in standing room.

“I know you liked Michael,” he begins.

My head turns enough to see

this is no one I know. “I saw you

together, and more than once.

You’ll want to know he killed himself

about three weeks ago.”

Pity the Dragon

 

by Brett Rutherford

PITY THE DRAGON

Surveying my vases,
teapots and paintings,
I count no less
than thirty dragons
leaping from peak
into a sea of clouds,
ever in chase
of that flaming pearl
it is never allowed
to swallow, apart
from its kind around
the curve of vase,

contending with phoenixes,
cloud clots, and even
perversely huge flowers,
it is never permitted
to meet one of its kind,
to caress, converse,
make love. One wonders

if new dragons are ever made
at all. Seldom entirely
free, one claw behind
a tuft of smoke, the edge
of a clifftop, the line
of a rooftop — even
the artist constrains it
with such device
in fear of its free flight,
its all-consuming
flame. How free
is free if one is ever
alone and above
the loved world?