Missionary Impossible - A Slice of Real Life
By Craig Cooley | May 8, 2008
I’ve worked as a letter-carrier for many years, and had just started a new delivery route at the Post Office. I was going through the usual learning curve. It’s not easy remembering 400-600 new names, not to mention which houses have dogs, which customers will constantly complain, and which ones will want to visit with me all day, telling me about their lives.
As I was delivering to one particular house, I noticed a religious tract hanging on the mailbox. I assumed it had been left by a door-to-door missionary and went on my way. The next day I saw another tract and noticed for the first time all the religious signs on the porch. “Choose this day whom ye will serve, as for me and my house, we will serve the LORD.” This is the day the LORD has made…” There were about six or eight of these, as well as a hand-lettered sign: “To whoever stole my TV. May God bless you and may you come to know Jesus. I will pray for you.”
I then understood that the tract on the mailbox was meant for me. I left it, hoping the homeowner would take the hint. The prospect of having a religious zealot on my route was not one I looked forward to. It is almost impossible to get away from them. No answer is sufficient to stop their attempts to save someone.
The next day my fears were confirmed. The gentleman caught me. He mentioned the tracts. Then he asked me the question I was dreading:
“Do you know Jesus Christ?”
I had to think quickly. Any answer would play into his script. Tell him I don’t believe in Jesus or God, and I become his personal mission project. Agree with him, and I end up discussing theology. The whole time I was bemoaning his asking me such a stupid question. Who hasn’t heard of Jesus—how clueless could a person be? But suddenly, I had an answer to his question:
“I’m sorry, whom did you say?”
“Jesus Christ”
“No Sir, I’m afraid not. Does he live here?”
“No.”
“Oh, I see. He’s moved, you need a change of address form, let me give you one.” I reached into my bag.
“No no, I’m talking about Jesus Christ, the Son of God.”
“Well I don’t show that name at this address.” I was determined to be deliberately obtuse.
“Jesus died for us, you don’t know about this?”
“Oh, Sir, I am so sorry, I didn’t know you had suffered a loss. I apologize, I just started this route, but you have my sympathy.” At this point, I found it hard to keep a straight face. I could see his frustration rising, but he steeled himself, determined to give his pitch one more try.
“You do believe in God, don’t you?” He looked at me at me with puzzlement, perhaps questioning the Government’s hiring standards.
I knew enough not to give a straight answer to him, because I would get in a lot of trouble if I screwed up. I furrowed my brow and tried to look as confused as possible. My best bet was to ignore his last question.
“I’m sorry, Sir, I don’t understand, this family lived here and now they don’t? Or they live here now? Just tell me who lives here and I’ll make sure you get the right mail.” All the while, I assumed a more professional tone, and then pulled out my notepad and started writing:
“OK, Christ does or does not live here?”
My customer sighed and shook his head.
“Never mind.”
I shrugged my shoulders, trying to appear as lost as he was, unable to communicate my intentions. As I walked away, I heard him mutter:
“I’ll pray for you.”
But he never bothered me again. Mission accomplished.
Topics: Creative Non-Fiction | 1 Comment »
Zion’s Dystopia - The FLDS in Eldorado, Texas (Part 3 – Conclusion)
By Marilyn Westfall | May 6, 2008
As I photograph the Schleicher County Courthouse in Eldorado, a voice behind me says, “Nice building, huh? It’s the same kind of limestone that the polygamists used for their temple.”
Surprised, I turn to see a man maybe in his late forties, five feet away but coming closer, and I ask him, “Have you been to the compound, or talked to anyone there?” The sunshine is intense as we study each other, standing on the tended lawn. I squint but he wears sunglasses, his hands are on his hips, and he seems fit, as if he might be employed in construction.
“Never been there,” he says, “but I’ve driven by, and I’ve seen pictures. Did you know that they have a quarry on their land? They did all the excavation and stone work themselves, putting that temple up, and it’s beautiful, very white—not with all the yellow you see in this stone.” He points to the courthouse.
“So, you’ve never met these people.”
“They kept to themselves, never bothered anyone. Sometimes the men came into town, to trade. You know, I can see their side, because they were just practicing their religion. But they were breaking the law. Polygamy is against the law!” He laughs, and adds, “Man, what a mess.”
Both the “mess” and the artful labor of the YFZ colony in Eldorado were noticed by Flora Jessop, who twice fled the FLDS compound located in Colorado City, Arizona. She finally made a complete break at age eighteen, though at the time she was married (against her will) to her nineteen-year old cousin Philip Jessop. Afterwards she suffered a horrific adjustment that included the use of cocaine, because she was, in her own words, “socially retarded,” having few skills, given her limited education in FLDS schools. Eventually, she organized The Child Protection Project to help kids transition from polygamous families and to bring their experiences to the public’s attention.
According to reports published in the Eldorado Success newspaper in 2004, it would seem that Flora Jessop helped Texas officials to identify the purchaser of the YFZ acreage, David S. Allerd, as a surrogate of Warren Jeffs; she also pointed out that the homes going up within the compound—large and complex cabins—were designed for polygamous families, and were similar to the architecture in Colorado City. The image below shows the three original cabins photographed by a pilot flying over the YFZ compound. More images.
At times, Flora Jessop has been accused of being a “publicity hound.” Such attacks on her credibility, according to the Los Angeles Times Magazine, seem part and parcel with attempts to portray polygamous religious sects as mere eccentric lifestyles, or to treat the abuse endured by FLDS women and children with “flippancy.”
Jessop, however, is persistent, especially as an advocate for her sister Ruby Jessop, forced into marriage and raped. Ruby’s plight was briefly chronicled in Jon Krakauer’s “Under the Banner of Heaven.” The book primarily focuses on the murders of Brenda Wright Lafferty and her 15-month old daughter by FLDS zealots, but an excerpt on Ruby Jessop’s ordeal and Flora’s activism on her behalf can be read here. In summary, the excerpt suggests that if you are born into a religious sect it is almost impossible to have abusive behavior committed against you recognized, investigated, and prosecuted. Perhaps the raid of the YFZ compound can serve as a pivotal and constructive change in legal policy …
Traveling home to Lubbock, less than an hour into a nearly four-hour drive, I decide to stop in San Angelo, 45 miles northeast of Eldorado, where the trials regarding the YFZ children are ongoing. Once there, I find my way downtown without trouble. Just a few turns and I arrive at City Hall and a parking lot. Now late afternoon, about 4 PM, I hurry to take a few photos of the main downtown blocks and buildings, including the courthouse, a grand structure where I briefly watch men working on the fountain.
I cross the street and suddenly a police car cuts me off. “Why are you taking pictures?” the cop asks. Before I can answer he continues, “Do have some ID?”
Debating how best to respond, at last I say, “Sure.” I open my wallet. On the cop’s request, I remove my driver’s license from its plastic-covered slot. He glances at my picture, and then apologizes, trying to smile: “We’re having some security concerns, because of the … incident.” Obviously, he’s uncomfortable, perhaps not wanting to offend me with any reference to polygamy.
“Oh, that Eldorado group,” I answer.
“Right,” he nods, again momentarily grinning, and radios my information to a dispatcher. I wait at the passenger window of his vehicle, wondering if I can be held in custody until he’s satisfied that I’m not a threat; I’m dark haired, olive-skinned, and sometimes mistaken for someone of Middle Eastern descent. Soon after 9-11, I was twice patted down by airport security, before being allowed onto my flights.
Prompted by the cop, I start talking about my life and views of Lubbock, where I’ve lived for almost twenty-four years, and he fidgets. “Just go about your business,” he finally tells me, while simultaneously the dispatcher says, over the car’s radio, “I don’t have anything on her.”
Though I gave short shrift, in previous sections, to the civil liberties of the YFZ community, my encounter with the San Angelo cop reminds me of the erosions of constitutional rights since 9-11. As the fellow I met on the lawn of the Eldorado courthouse said, there is “another side” to this story, and it is true that overwhelming force was used in the YFZ raid. Residents of compound took their own photographs and videos, which show police in military gear, riding in armored personnel vehicles and sporting automatic weapons. Some of this media is available here. According to the Deseret News, lawyers for the FLDS have petitioned Texas officials to “preserve all evidence” of the raid, and are considering federal lawsuits over “lack of due process” in removing children to foster care. (More here.)
The raid may also challenge the “wall of separation” between Church and State. If the FLDS is indeed a legitimate religion, then it does deserve constitutional protections. Keep in mind, however, that the FLDS practices, what it calls, “bleeding the beast”—that is, draining funds from the U.S. government. The bleeding in Texas cannot be staunched, and already the costs of the raid, housing of women and children, trials, and DNA testing are estimated to be near a million dollars. A column by Elaine Freidman, available through the Institute for Humanist Studies website, describes how the tactic is typically used:
“Bleeding the beast” refers to a similar practice implemented by founding Mormon prophet Joseph Smith and his successor Brigham Young during the height of Mormon “persecution.”
“The beast” is not too bright, as it actually enables welfare fraud through its ungodly laws. Since it will only legally recognize one wife, all the other wives are legally single women with large broods to support. The government, recognizing their plight, generously provides these women with welfare payments and food stamps.
Given all we know about the raid and the FLDS, just where are lines protecting freedoms to be drawn? Jon Krakauer said in the closing paragraphs of “Under the Banner of Heaven,” “Accepting the essential inscrutability of existence, in any case, is surely preferable to its opposite: capitulating to the tyranny of intransigent belief.” In this inscrutable, chaotic time, who can be sure that protections from search and seizure—and other rights—will prevail, or if the tyranny of religious practices, enslaving women and children, finally might end? These days it seems that even the humblest investigation into a critical event, like the raid of the YFZ compound, can bring you into the maelstrom, where the forces of freedom and coercion are unbounded, whirling, leaving you unsure where you’ve been and what is ahead.
Topics: Essays | 2 Comments »
Zion’s Dystopia: The FLDS in Eldorado, Texas (Part 2)
By Marilyn Westfall | May 4, 2008
FLDS prophet Warren Jeffs likely succeeded his father Rulon T. Jeffs in 2002; this information is disputed, and Warren recently claimed that he was not the true prophet, but rather had been deceived by evil powers into believing this heresy. The Eldorado Success newspaper, however, has tracked both the development of the YFZ compound and the power struggle within the FLDS, and offers the view that Warren fought off challengers to assume his father’s preeminent position.
Dying of natural causes at age 92 or 93, the elder Jeffs left behind an estimated 19 widows (the number may be as high as 75), all but two of whom Warren is said to have eventually married. Warren also inherited control over an empire, based on property owned by the FLDS under a church trust, mostly located in Hilldale, Utah and Colorado City, Arizona, both locations of other compounds. Conservatively, at the time of Warren’s ascendency, the FLDS controlled assets of 100 million dollars, though some believe the church trust was worth billions. The secrecy of the FLDS makes accurate information difficult to obtain on the sect’s finances and other matters.
The FLDS is one splinter group among many of the Latter Day Saints (LDS) that had rejected polygamy in the 1890s, in a bid for Utah statehood. Many Mormon polygamists who refused to submit to the modified LDS doctrine continued with their now-illegal marriage practices often in remote outposts, such as in Short Creek, Arizona, renamed Colorado City. There, the badlands of desert and canyon insulated the sect from investigation until it was raided first in 1944 by the FBI, and then again in 1953 by the State of Arizona. While polygamy was an issue in these raids, so was the use of taxpayer money to fund the sect’s religious schools and to pay child welfare costs in the millions of dollars. But the raid of 1953 produced images of mothers separated from children, sparking public outcry and political fallout. Afterwards, the polygamists were “given a pass” by law enforcement (also some officers were FLDS members). The same kinds of heart-wrenching imagery have saturated media coverage of the YFZ compound and have been posted online by the FLDS, but the toxic culture of this fundamentalist Mormon sect is at last being given due scrutiny.
The majority of the faithful in Eldorado were likely relocated from the Arizona and Utah colonies, including the eldest son of Warren Jeffs, who was arrested during the YFZ raid. There may be five Canadian women and their children among the ranks as well. According to the April 22, 2008 Vancouver Sun, a former member of the FLDS, Teresa Wall Blackmore, said she can name five girls sent from a compound in Bountiful, Canada, to Eldorado; two of the girls are married to Warren. In the years Warren fully controlled the FLDS as President, Prophet and Revelator, he may have broken up 100 families and reassigned the wives and children to other men, making it more and more difficult to trace activity that amounts to international trafficking in humans. Warren Jeffs is not a monster, but rather an autocrat who benefited from protections afforded religion, here in the U.S. under the Constitution and in Canada under The Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
The FLDS is usually associated with the mental and physical abuse of women, including the rape of girls as young as thirteen and fourteen. If you harbor any doubts about the travesty of taking child brides, examine this photograph of Rulon Jeffs with two wives young enough to be his granddaughters.
In fact, even as I write, various news outlets report that thirty-one of fifty-three YFZ girls aged 14-17 have either given birth or are currently pregnant. It is customary to become a “celestial bride” soon after puberty. According to several women who fled the FLDS, their main value was in “keeping sweet,” protecting their virginity until marriage; they were disciplined for flirting with or even smiling at boys. One young woman shared her memories of Warren Jeffs with CNN, and described his manipulations. “Are you keeping sweet, or do you have to be punished?” Warren asked her, while seizing her by the back of her neck.
The first sexual abuse lawsuit filed against Warren Jeffs, however, was by his nephew Brent Jeffs in 2004. Brent pursued legal action after his brother Clayne (also likely abused) committed suicide. The lawsuit accused Warren and two of his brothers of sodomy. Brent Jeffs traveled to Eldorado, Texas to testify at hearings after the YFZ raid, and spoke to ABC News near the compound, alleging the following: “When I was a little boy, around 5 or 6, just attending the regular Sunday school, even when my grandfather [Rulon Jeffs] was the prophet at the time, behind closed doors, Warren was sneaking around behind and would come down and escort me down the hall and into the bathroom and molest me as a kid. Threatening me with eternal damnation if I did not do exactly what he said.”
The control of children begins at infancy, according to Carolyn Jessop, whose autobiography “Escape” calls Colorado City “a police state” where everyone was monitored. As previously noted, Carolyn was forced at age eighteen to marry the fifty-year old Merril Jessop, already with three wives. She bore eight children by him, and watched her husband methodically gain control of infants through water torture. After the YFZ compound was raided, in an April 8 interview with NBC’s Today Show, Carolyn detailed her husband’s practice of “breaking” babies: “He would spank the baby until it was screaming out of control, and then he would hold the baby face-up under a tap of running water so it couldn’t breathe. He would do this repeatedly. Sometimes, it would go on for an hour, until the baby was so exhausted it couldn’t cry anymore.”
Issues of civil rights and separation of Church and State were raised after the YFZ compound was raided. Merril Jessop, the compound’s leader, compared the police to Nazis: “The nearest thing I have ever seen comparable to this, even on the TV shows, is Nazi Germany,” Jessop told Salt Lake City’s Deseret News. Lawyers are defending the FLDS and investigating police action during the YFZ raid. However, the behavior of church patriarchs, like Jessop, who tortured infants, also deserves the full focus and brunt of the law. The abuses of children, women, and of any man who fell out of favor with Jeffs and his crony “bishops” are too numerous to explore in this essay. One particular subject that deserves attention is that of the “lost boys,” teenage males expelled from the sects’ compounds, to keep young women available as brides for older men. Salon profiled these boys in 2006, noting that their restricted, disciplined lives and indoctrination under Jeffs’ rule made them the ultimate outsiders in civil society.
Warren Jeffs is currently serving 10 years to life in a Utah prison, on two counts of being an accomplice to rape. By some reports, he has tried to commit suicide by hanging himself and banging his head against his cell’s walls. Recently, he attempted to appeal his conviction, on the technicality that a juror had not disclosed that she had been raped, but this legal action was denied. Before his capture outside of Las Vegas, Nevada, while he was on the FBI’s most wanted list, he had been spotted at the dedication ceremony for the YFZ compound, a place that might have provided sanctuary for him—temporarily. But the increased political activism of former FLDS women has aimed hot spotlights on several notorious patriarchs, including Jeffs.
Topics: Essays | No Comments »
Zion’s Dystopia: The FLDS in Eldorado, Texas (Part 1)
By Marilyn Westfall | May 2, 2008
The temple of the Yearning for Zion (YFZ) compound gleams, pure and white, in the sunshine of West Texas. I pull over on the side of Rudd Road, a bumpy asphalt strip that divides ranch land and homes, some as simple as singlewide trailers where laundry hangs on clotheslines beneath which pass young goats and other small livestock. In late April, mesquite and cedar trees are greening, and yellow flowers bloom beside the growing, sprouting prairie grass. This rolling land with mesas and arroyos can swallow you up in its vastness. Buzzards circle to the East, intent on something I can’t see.
The vast wildness of the landscape, hiding more than it reveals, may be one reason that the fundamentalist Mormon refuge was seeded here. The YFZ compound is another offshoot of current prophet Warren Jeff’s Fundamentalist Church of Latter Day Saints (FLDS), which already has settlements in Arizona and Utah. I’ve read that each settlement, including this one, is guarded by armed sentries. Nonetheless, brave women somehow managed to flee these strongholds; a few have told or written about their lives in polygamy, perhaps most famously Carolyn Jessop, whose autobiography “Escape” tells of her depressed mother who beat her children—including Carolyn—daily. Eventually Carolyn was married off at age eighteen to the fifty-year old Merril Jessop, already husband to three other wives. It was Merril who, curiously, became the overseer of the Texas YFZ compound.
I can’t quite approach the compound. Equally as white as the temple are the media trucks and satellite dishes, taking up all but a passing lane on the road. I wonder if anyone among that group is photographing me. I may be a curiosity, as I don’t know how many “tourists” or bloggers have found their way to Eldorado, a name that I associate with the fabled “City of Gold.”
Gold is scarce, to my knowledge, in this town of about 2000, pronounced Eldorādo, with an expressive accent to that third syllable, a somber “a.” I learned the correct pronunciation from townspeople I met, after driving three-and-a-half hours from Lubbock (in the southern Texas Plains) to this region of rolling hills, mesas, and arroyos. I wanted to develop my own perspective on the situation regarding the fundamentalist Mormon sect that had purchased the land for the compound about 5 years ago.
The almost 1700 acres of the Yearning for Zion compound were bought by a man named Allred in 2003, supposedly for hunting, says a woman at a museum in Eldorado. I don’t ask the woman her name, nor do I ask anyone else’s name; I simply want to hear people’s ideas and opinions about this FLDS sect, without telling anyone that I write for and edit an ezine with an atheist/humanist perspective. Throughout my visit, I listened to people and then ducked into my car, to record what I heard and noticed.
In fact, even as I listened to this woman, there was a radio show on, featuring a minister discussing the proper interpretation of the Bible. Another woman in the museum, busily quilting, seemed in control of the radio, shutting it off only after I stayed for more than a few minutes to examine collectables. West Texas, though it has a libertarian strain to its philosophical spectrum, is a prime region for all Christian sects. There are signs and billboards on highways: “We Need to Talk. –God” and “Have Problems? Jesus Is the Solution.” As I turned on to Rudd Road, searching for the compound, I saw to my right a large crucifix and church.
“No one knew anything funny was going on. No one knew how many people were living in the compound—not for a while,” according to the woman. It wasn’t until a local pilot, flying above the 1700 acres, noticed foundations for buildings being put into place, that anyone became suspicious of the land’s real use. “They [FLDS] were planning to take over Eldorado,” she claims. “If you have time, stick around, and the pilot can fly you over the compound. You’ll get a better look.”
“No,” I say, “I have to get home.” I ask her instead about the museum, and learn that she is one of its curators, trying to keep some the county’s history preserved. Eldorado is in Schleicher County—sparsely populated with only a few hundred more people than the town. The town sits at the junction of highways 190 and 277. The highways in this region are often beautiful, lonely treks where the landscape is such a distraction that it’s fortunately rare to see another car or truck. The roads roll along with the hilly contours, rising and falling, and at the top of any incline is a view of sunlight and shadow alternating on—what seems—fifty miles of greening ranges, framed by windshield.
The museum is musty and dim, but there are dresses, purses, military uniforms, high-topped shoes, and shawls from the early twentieth century that are either in old display cases or atop them. I admire one purple dress from about 1910, and can imagine how vibrant it looked when first worn, like an iris in full glory. The curator, acting as my docent, points out blankets, products of wool manufacturing; she comments that Eldorado was famous for its woolen mills, which created and sent blankets to the military forces throughout World War II.
The town of Eldorado was established in 1895, and the museum preserves (on a very minimal budget) artifacts from across the social spectrum: those of ranchers, teachers, a beauty queen, prominent military and sports figures—they’re all featured. Generous families have their own display areas, with creatively arranged photos, clothing, books, dinnerware, jewelry or any worthwhile item that can fit onto a shelf.
I shake my head, pondering the contrast with known family history, on record at this modest museum, and the genetic testing that YFZ children are currently undergoing. Both the women and children of the compound have given authorities false names and ages, and for many there are no birth or marriage records. Thus it is impossible for civil authorities to determine, sans testing, who is full brother or sister, who half-brother or sister, who first cousin. Compounding this confusion is the fact that wives and children were sometimes shuffled from one patriarch to another, based on the whims of Jeffs, a true autocrat, ruling by intimidation; children may not know which man is their biological father. As there are multiple wives, children may bond with women who are not their biological mothers.
“Those poor kids,” the curator moans, grimacing. She recalls that whenever an expert in a technical field was hired to assist at the compound, he would at first find children and mothers working in superbly tended gardens, but they soon hurried away, vanishing into large cabins. She estimates that the youngest brides— fourteen to eighteen years old—are third generation polygamists. Can they know any other way of life? Can anyone really change them? She shrugs and waits for answers, which I can’t provide, though I say that perhaps kids younger than five have some chance to adapt, away from the influence of the patriarchs.
“In foster care?” she replies. “I don’t know about that. What are they going to do all day, watch TV? They don’t even know what it is.” Even as she is speaking, in fact, all 460-plus children from the compound are being removed to foster care, under court order—or so I later learn, back in my car, listening to the radio.
The Spartan lifestyle dictated by Jeffs forbade watching television or movies, listening to music, and playing some sports. Swimming was not allowed. Generally, children were educated only until age fourteen while being continually indoctrinated. One young girl who escaped the FLDS talked of Jeffs’ holding a funny and spirited child upside down in a classroom, supposedly to shake all the evil from him, but really to frighten other students into submission.
In a recording available on-line, Jeffs can be heard instructing children on sexual abstinence and plural marriage. His voice is strangely soft, as if he were intent on hypnotizing his audience. “The boys must leave the girls alone. The girls must leave the boys alone. […] The only ones worthy to go to highest glory in the celestial kingdom…are those who enter into plural marriage through the prophet of God.” (Watch Video)
Topics: Essays | No Comments »
First Communion
By Cliff Saunders | April 25, 2008
I stand on a peninsula,
watching a lifeboat guided
by three nuns come ashore.
One holds a neon candelabrum
while the others drop lily petals
on the shoreline breakers.
They are here to inspect
the portfolio of my sins.
Slowly they turn the pages,
murmuring at the last picture
where I’m kissing the exposed
breast of an ecstatic crone.
The nuns don’t say a word
as they climb into the boat
with frowns on their faces.
I tremble as they rip out
whole pages from the portfolio,
crushing them in their fists.
And then, to my surprise,
they tenderly swallow each page
before returning to the sea.
Topics: Poetry | No Comments »
A Pair of Poems by Steven Sloan
By Steven M. Sloan | April 23, 2008
Characters Of Lead
Some people, to be politic,
Keep heavy words inside their head.
But, the full weight of such a word
Won’t dissipate when it’s not said.
Too, the lighter words they pick
Will seem as though they each have shed
Their meaning, since they will be heard
To name the famished as well-fed,
Or call dead-soil a flowering bed,
Instead of what all plainly see.
So, don’t set light lies in truth’s stead
As there’s a cost you will incur–
The irksome weight of truths unsaid!
For records of hypocrisy
Are writ in characters of lead
Which chafe one’s mind, you may be sure,
And make life something to endure.
The Broken Reed
Some lives are like the broken reed
Which in the bleakest winds has sighed
And whistled at what Fate decreed
So as to stoically elide
A future it has not agreed
Should be the one to which it’s tied.
It does not beg Grim Fate, nor plead
For the future He has denied,
Believing in the chance to lead
Its wanted life with Fate defied.
Topics: Poetry | No Comments »
Pilgrim in the Buff
By Cliff Saunders | April 21, 2008
Going naked for God,
you ride a festooned animal
that has lost its horns.
You’re a pilgrim wearing palm leaves
as proof of a holy visit.
Life is so much ventriloquism,
of that you are quite certain.
Mostly it’s tossing crabapples
into orchestra pits, burning
moss off dumpsters, but that’s
about to change. From now on,
you’re going naked for God,
riding a ceremonial ram
to the isthmus of forgiveness.
You will speak only at night,
and if, by the sea, you break
a few windows with your violent
rejoicing, that’s no problem.
Chameleon stuck in one color,
you have fully given yourself
to the wind, that breath
born of sharing, and tremulous.
All is forgiven, every sin.
Now swans surround your shadow
on the edge of a duckpond.
Go forth, pilgrim, and remember
how one evening a swan
drank freely of your shadow.
Topics: Poetry | No Comments »
Solipsism
By Steven M. Sloan | April 16, 2008
Nothing exists outside of me
For all the world’s my fantasy –
Thus, “reality” is but a lark
In which I’ve set my fancy free
To fill this void & endless dark
With worlds that have no words for cark,
Or care, or woe, or misery.
And yet, at times, these dreams turn sour,
Commuting with nightmarish power
To stain themselves most bloodily . . .
Which sets this stalwart soul to cower –
Though what else could these visions be
But nightmares of “reality”
Made of mere thought, once it’s turned dour?
For it can’t be that such exits(?!):
Hate-mongers, gangs, the clenching fists(?). . .
Trench-war, H-bombs, & poverty(?) . . .
Or religious fanatics, and old-racists(!?);
How else could such things come
to be Except in twisted fantasy,
Which lasts but while this mind exists?
Topics: Poetry | No Comments »
Two More Poems by Steven M. Sloan
By Steven M. Sloan | April 14, 2008
Enigma
A flash of lightning
In the darkest night
May seem like nothing
More than vivid light,
For this frequent sight
To some may seem trite;
But over water
Such flashes of light
Fill me with ardor
To free fancy’s might
In symbolic flight –
The better to spite
Those narrow of mind,
Whose thoughts are too tight
And heavily rimed
To be recondite
At the common sight
Of black lakes and light.
To me, a white flash
Reveals the surface
Along with its crash,
So that the lake’s face
Seems veiled in fine lace
Of silversmith’s chase
To hide a great truth,
There in that dark place,
Since Death won’t take ruth
And show his true case
To our mortal race
By doffing from face
This filigreed sheen
Of lightning flash lace
Unless it has been
Supplanted apace
By his blank & base
Enigmatic face.
A Simply Planted Seed
There is a simply planted seed,
Which has spread without my tending,
Springing-up and now extending
Beyond winter’s frosty weeding.
Hope has always been self-seeding –
Re-sprouting in me like a weed.
Topics: Poetry | No Comments »
Two Poems by Steven M. Sloan
By Steven M. Sloan | April 10, 2008
Sour To My Taste
When lingering over my past’s cup
Of deep draughts to partake,
The quaffing of old sorrows
Brought changes with self-hate.
But, “what ifs” and “might have beens,”
Life’s pities and mistakes,
Are for some a pleasant world
To view and contemplate.
Such believe there’s no free-will:
Man as tool of fate –
A conceit designed to quell their souls’
Anguish and heartache.
Hence, “what ifs” and “might have beens,”
The pities and mistakes,
Become for them a staff in life,
And complacency a mate.
Yet I believe I hold the sway
My future’s form to state,
Because I see the “might have beens”
As goads to alter fate.
Cache
In the dimmest long ago
Lie touchstones of my past:
Actions, styles, and ardor’s glow
Fixed in my memory fast -
For fresh-faces I did know
And shadows I once cast
Live so long as decades flow
From now into the past -
Where I know I too will go.
This life flies by all-too-fast . . .
A pity even so . . .
For mortal minds, how’er so vast,
Must flee with life, and cannot last.
Topics: Poetry | No Comments »
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