THE DIRTY KNEES OF PRAYER

Requiem for Jeffrey Dean Shay

“When we are born, we cry, that we are come To this great stage of fools.”

- William Shakespeare

ONE

It’s morning on Muffin Street.There goes the fat man, trundling down, shaped like an egg . He wears a bright red hat andcarries a large yellow bag. This is my breakfast I think, My breakfast haunting me. He looks up at my high windows withhis little peppercorn eyes. Treats my deep seclusion like some kind of yolk…

Apparently when I start again fresh and pink, shitting and squalling, I will be encumbered with vague memories of the unfinished mess I produced this time around. Everything without a file. Scrambled papers on the floor, a porridge offorgotten crops settled into the bottom tray of my old white Inglis refrigerator.

According to one quantum physicist I am deluded by this idea of directional movement, an intent behind the motion of time,my perception of an inextricable plodding forward as if to some goal. Apparently the billion times I repeat the phenomena of shitting and squalling helplessness, all billion are simultaneous. Even with the distracting security of the ready breast.

This physicist, (who chooses to hide in his house), claims quantum theory gave us the cd player the dvd and the computer and because they function, quantum theory pursued indicates there must be billions of versions of each of us, housed in billions of very real worlds. Each of the billions of each of us are simultaneously deciding what to do.

One of me sees a man acting like breakfast; another eats eggs that look like the eyeballs of a surprised person; another me chokes on dry toast and falls down stairs breaking his neck; the next just suffocates on the same wad of toast and some other one of us falls asleep, face first in the plate, blowing happy bubbles in the Heinz ketchup.

The physicist says that if this is not the case then something more bizarre must be. So this physicist-version of him is very careful and stays home while I get the creeps and spend the day in my goose down quilt calling out like a loon on a Yukon lake. I figure one of us must do something like this while the others take their turns dieing. Quantum mechanics seem to allow dementia in lieu of paid holidays.

Let’s start over:

TWO

Sitting on the edge of my bed. Looking out the window. Thoughts that make me want to puke course through my head. Thoughts like ‘a river winds through everything’.

Thinking this reminds me of the health food store lineup. They have the only brand of Chai tea I like so I found myself in a lineup of the well meaning. Slow as corn syrup…sticky sweet. The proprietor and some timeless hippy woman chatter in perky tones, speak of the shifting planets, the influence of the moon, the song of birds, the impending astrological shift at3am into the darkness. “O heavens no! Not the darkness” says the proprietor. The beady hippy doesn’t miss a beat, says “ O yes, the positive darkness, the quiet darkness.” Proprietor,“Yes, positive, good, healing darkness…” Sounds like politicians making an effort to rationalize something distasteful. Sounds like death to me.

Looking out my window and an old truck shoots from the ally onto the main street. It has a yellow hood and a red body. Well past breakfast time. I saw the fat-man today, dressed as an autumnally-prepared lumberjack. He had developed a long stride to go with his red plaid shirt. Even the lamp posts looked vaguely like trees.

THREE: CRUMBS

Somewhere in the ether floats an idea. Tiny as a dust mite and just as ugly. Folded in on its beauty like a confused origami. The sweet vaulting song emerges from the throats of the slaves of G-d and somehow they seem convincingly happy as if their self imposed limitations, their cloistered inhibitions, were the source of freedom from some nagging worry, the clawing hungry, the raped and the raped again. And how this lack of belief and dedication is the alum that makes my morning smile. Expectant, humanistic, yet masking an army of teeth. Ready to gnash.

Somewhere along the line I got lost and realized I had never had a thing to say. Now I mumble to myself a lot and demand the Earless Infinite return my stolen house, Call on my dead great aunt to adjust the lottery results and help me get mystolen house and its fruit trees, its gardens, back. It is as close as I come to the dirty knees of prayer.

There is this theoretical bottom we can hit yet I continue in free fall through the wet atmosphere. There is so much time to think and though I was never issued a parachute I remember encouraging stories of World War II pilots abandoning flaming planes and falling four miles onto a little bush, which apparently was just enough to save every bone in the pilot's body. But as the wind whips by and the rain lashes my face, I know secretly that I have fallen further than four tiny miles

When I woke up on Saturday I was suspended in a mulberry tree. The monkey said, “Yer sure a lucky cat!”I never leave my house because I am alone. The world is not safe. The adventure I wanted is not in a book. The fish I dream of detests the hook. My father roasted the tongues of cattle in our oven and said this is like corned beef. He told me what was really in wieners and stole the picnic I still search for. I left my house and they stole it too.

I want it back.

I rode a bicycle along the river. I sang a song. I said, "why can’t we make it better?" With band-aids. Yesterday I saw band-aids in a store window. The design printed on them made them look like strips of bacon. I thought I would send some bacon-band-aids at Christmas to all Jews and Islamic peoples with a message encouraging Christian healing. Why do good intentions so often fail?

I had a dream not too long ago and I was very happy. My heart condition had disappeared, some fool had bought my broken van and I had lots of money which I’d found in an abandoned paper bag. Life was looking pretty good. Even my ex-wife had found someone else to focus on. My crazy prodigal daughter had become dictator of Wyoming and wanted to buy me a fast car. I could see again and felt no obligation to praise the Lord. I could chew once my teeth had been ransomed from some evil fairy. Everything was looking up and I wasn’t even worriedabout being loved…as I say, I had a dream…

And now I ride my bicycle attached to a generator which makes my TV work. It is my way of saving the world. I think of the past constantly and bake things that only my dead grandmother knew how to make. I keep thinking in a disjointedkind of way that It’s time for something new.

FOUR: CRUMBY

Today, no idea is a good one. The clouds clamour like nervous tarot cards. Everything seems to mean several things. Everything does mean several things. Simple devices refuse to cooperate. My toothbrush leaps from the shelf to toilet baptism. It is obviously not appropriate to think of the similarity between my body and an October squash abandoned in some damp field. (And once I loved the squash, its tenacity, its globular mass miraculously manifest from one tiny seed. Voluptuous, abundant, cornucopic.). Like me, then; cornucopia of sinew and energy. Now; giant mass from tiny seed. I catch sight of myself entering my funnel shaped pants and though never a good idea I think of my father in ancient times watching TV on the couch. His vast belly shiny with whatever greasy thing he’d been eating. As a teenager it was the most disgusting sight imaginable. I thought if I ever looked like that I’d kill myself. So I’ve had to reconsider. Even though there are no advantages anymore, and they’ve stolen my house, and my daughter The Dictator of Wyoming dictates the fate of nations from her dumpster office I have decided to seize the day, have no ideas, and not even think of relief, joy, ecstasy, love-making, inclusion, world peace or the inflated price of my favoured greasy pork chops.

A tennis shoe on the side of the road, mysteriously deposited, mysteriously unclaimed. The stupid drunk poet needed a ride so leapt in front of the speeding car. They say his body shot out of his shoes so quick that the shoes stood there for hours, exactly where he’d stood, as if they were waiting. Waiting. Apparently there is no need for shoes in the House of Jim Morrison. The stupid drunk poet sits there now, on a cloudy bench. He has applied for some eternal job tending the diaphanous tables of the dead. Please allow me to serve a dollop of fresh air; or this bubbling flute of nothing to speak of.

My hangover memory, My hang nail, My brother hanging, hanging fruit, hung juries, well hung daydreams. A shrug. A grunt. A snooze.

Once dreams were hopeful things, augurs, signs, omens. Now, awake and asleep I have little idea of meaning or direction. I am the type who wanders aimlessly. My day is a success if I find a penny in the traffic lane. Horns honk like trumpets. Drivers yell like peasants… my blind and alcoholic and dead grandfather drives by, whipping the ghostly horse as it pulls his demented carriage down the freeway. He is always off to the races.

My hangover and hangnail conspire against me. My brother was the Houdini of Suicide managing to hang his entire six foot four body from a beam in a six foot tall shed. The night before he died he told a Mormon Elder that he’d really like to meet Jesus as he had a few things to ask him. The hanging fruit falls wasp-ridden and rotten to the ground near my stolen house, while the world starves. The world an indecisive hung jury where passion is replaced by day dream, bug eyed andlascivious down the long staircase of chronological decomposition. I am guilty. I am sentenced. I thank G-d for my daily pills…I sometimes almost feel normal.

White rented party tents. Knights in garters, Ladies in their cups, Those who continue to marry and those who continue to look to the G-d of blood revenge for simple solace…I burned the rice pilaf. The pork chop is tough. This shrimp scampi tastes like fish! One daughter suffers burdens of real sorrow.Another daughter has tattooed lips and studies the arrangement of flowers. The third ascended to the secret crown of Wyoming. (As her court clerk I prepared a genealogy. When I demonstrated that our family tree went all the way back to mythology and here, see, your 68^th great grandmother was a Valkyrie….she said…."Finally! About time you found someone interesting.") Her train of rags raises the applause of the dust and a tintinnabulation of pebbles. She knows the forgotten martyrs of Heroin and the Pope of Pop Cans. I appeal to her for a title. She gives me a fiefdom and calls me Keeper of the Ashes of Sentimentality, Purveyor of Honey Nut Cheerios and the Queen Daddy. I am satisfied. Everything is so tragic I have learned to laugh along with the great comedy of slapstick dirty dish solitude. I mutter a lot about getting the joke..how the punch line winded me when it hit me in the gut. Most days I see stars. Real nice.

A very specific destination in no particular direction. Plot is a plot. Plot is the sound of a slow heavy rain stealing your time with its sleepy song. Plot, plot, plot, the sound of your wet shoes strolling home from walking on water. Again and again you’ve walked on water but only when the faithless are asleep. Plot is conspiracy.

Beginning, middle, end, climax, anti climax, resolution. How is the masterpiece chained to presupposed outcome. If there’s no story there’s nothing to lie about. And can’t you see I’m telling the truth now that my brother has finally taught himself to be quiet for long enough to listen to my sonorous wisdom…my inflated rubber pontification?

-Timothy Shay