Explaining Force, by Dean Blehert

[Doreen Peri]

a poem from the upcoming Studio Eight writers pages

Explaining Force

I
The child can't understand your words,
so, for his own good, you force him
to do what he should. There's no time
to explain to the man charging you
with a bayonet that you're just
a nice guy from another place,
so you shoot him. You can't make
the mugger see that there are
better ways to be, so you
lock him away.

Your not being able to explain
recoils on you: You say you just
don't understand children, women,
men, criminals, lawyers, anyone
you can't talk to.
You think you understand
ashtrays and tables and doorknobs
because you never tried
to explain anything to them.

Some people get used to your ways,
kids grow up, learn to understand you,
sort of. You explain yourself again
and again, or where you can't,
you explain the need for reasonable
force. Explaining yourself
gets more and more like explaining
the need for force.

Hardest is explaining evil when
it looks like you. The murderer
or the clerk who is sorry
he can't help you faces you
with a simple gaze as multiple
as a fly's, its twinkle
a broken glint, faceted by a thousand
failed utopias. He answers you
in human words; even letters
from the government sound like
human words. A madman
is a bureaucracy. Ask for the one
responsible -- no one answers, a great
mystery if you think you're
talking to a person.

II

And you, though you know they are bad,
you still do certain things. You just
don't understand yourself. God
is what understands you, and nobody
understands God.

Can what can't be understood
understand? Stones, ashtrays,
tables, doorknobs, things: frozen
in random vectors of force. These
you cannot understand, though you insist
you do, insist this is just a dresser,
just a doorknob, an eye, though sometimes
half-awake at dawn, you are surrounded
by nameless forms, even the mask
in the mirror, utterly senseless,
as if God surrounds you,
understanding nothing, nothing
to be understood.

You do your job, you do
what you're supposed to do
like a doorknob and everybody
understands you and there is
nothing to explain. You watch
TV, flinching from the rough tongue
hot on your cheek, the intolerable
sweetness in the eyes of a dog.

http://blehert.com/

[hester_prynne]

Man, this is gooooood.
My appetite is duly whetted.
Thanks muchly for this preview Doreen..
H