Mysterium Tremendum
By Philip Jenks
For Rabbi Berger, Beth El Synagogue, Durham North Carolina
Bess was my gussy friend
She always took care.
From the friction
Or could. a bell is something different.
Altogether. Such costly errors
Of the mind. Eso and exoterror
Skeletons. The pink body
Eating its shell.
She had pleaded not to pick
Up with the underneath
Legs and all scrabbling.
But the fluorescent tests
Allowed for prepreception.
Every ghost limb has a war story.
But not every war story has a limb.
Fifteen thousand candles are
Little kittens. It's an exed out eye
Thing for this one.
Or in the rubble, an Oboe
Tuned by the wind.
Half of him is impounded
In the tree folk
Gemeinschaft
Half of him is a city.
If you call him in the forest
You might get the gut side
Vertiginous and quiver,
Covered in vines and hair
To camouflage
What's on the inside that counts?
What fixed and determinate story
Hails from the forest these
Fisted halls?
Most of him is hanging in the tree you
See blinking in the sunlight, such a drip.
The rainwaiter tickles the private.
Got to get it together.
From formal folk
Comes the shining.
Copyright Credit: Philip Jenks, "Mysterium Tremendum" from Colony Collapse Metaphor. Copyright © 2014 by Philip Jenks. Reprinted by permission of Fence Books, www.fenceportal.org.
Source: Colony Collapse Metaphor (Fence Books, 2014)