Blues for Brother Ass
(“Brother Ass” was an expression coined by Francis of Assisi. It was the saint’s way of referring to his physical body, which he believed needed to be disciplined and even physically punished for its carnal urges and other temptations. )
Priest, pornographer
drug pusher--
they have always been partners
in the same skin trade:
abuse the flesh
amuse the flesh
so much meat beaten
poked, stroked, whipped
or denied
but it all leads back
to the braying donkey
whose unholy heehaws
are tacit pleas
for disembodiment.
Exchange a taut cilice
or flagellant’s crop
for shots of “H”
a river of hooch
or a steady smooch and rub
of quivering vital parts;
nothing truly satisfies
but the reaper’s final release—
gray blobs
on gray stone slabs
dead weight
of a deliverance
dreaded and desired.
Corpus meum
is a flimflam man
who’s always had
the same slick plan:
to lure us into
pious lust or prurient zeal
the better to conceal
what the mad hand
of the artist
was struggling to reveal
in a starry, starry night:
that this too, too solid world
is but a whorl
a swirling dervish of hues
and tones.
The painter’s feverish strokes
divulged a secret
that an angel
at every human birth
forbids us to tell:
density and dust
are just a trick;
the flesh itself
is light.