THE LAST SAINTHOOD

An Orison Viagra for the start of the millennium

Clinton's mind, this dawning day, and history
All are clear. Four young deer skitter
Across the gravel road beside the wood,
Above which he can see the shooting star.

One hundred more newspapers yet to go,
One hundred more orange tubes he has to stuff.
The headlines echo "HIV and Democracy:
Extinct, Extinct, Extinct"

To search his recollection was not hard.
He knew the past and, now, could cite it all,
Like walkers in Fahrenheit Four Five One,
He'd memorized Nineteen Nine Nine events,
That late but final freeing of our needs
Of human flesh. It came late, yet it came
And came to stay and came again, in rerun.

Government then prepared us for the end,
Decreeing that the lie would never hold,
The nucleus had loosened, spreading outward
To the rim. Our secrets would be told;
No detail could be spared.

They should have stocked the cellars
To prepare for the millennially rotting chip
With rice and beans and tuna fish.
The water must be purified. We all make do.

Now Clinton brings the news, his new post, door to door.
We have swapped responsibilities, switched roles and class
In a new century, after the fall.
Politicians are the poets; once-professors dig the wells.

He hears the AM talk shows as he drives,
From Pittsburgh, Georgia, Ciudad Mexico.
Dialect and twang and tongues reveal
Their pasts, not now perverse,
Since the lie has gone away for good.

The white crane circles Hiawatha Lake, assessing ice,
In search of landing sites. That trampoline in tatters,
Suspended in a tree, might well suffice.
A pickup truck is hauling pigeons in a cage
Back to the homes they would not home to in their rage.

That orison Viagra rose Niagara-like into the skies,
A prayer of pride and shame and fury, on that day that day.
A mixture iodized, a purifier for the water in our cellars,
For the years we wasted, back before the martyr lay,
Slain the saint of oral sex, the crippled grin, the sad device.

And all knees bent and all heads bobbed that day that day.

Once Barney knew the glories well that Monica had owned,
How she knelt before the offering, its modest point and dull surprise,
Described in court as quarter-thick and penta-length, this stele.
Clinton's arms, outstretched to sides, reached phone and Betty's page device.
The crucifix position, with his back against the desk and Barney sees, envisions,
How the issue came to rise, how the spew of ecstasy and ivory,
A guilt of gilded declaration, fireworks so fixed in time,
History's propulsion, with a splashdown rivaling Apollo's,
Upon the fabric blue, like ocean waves of icon matter,
Pattern worship object for tomorrow's classroom text..

Once Maxine grieved her race, the chains that bound them,
Chains of iron metamorphosed, link by link, to family ties
Unearthed by the founder's love for Sally, how he put his aged hand
Deep in her reproductive roots, his fingers striving, reaching out
For the excuse of ownership and finding naught, an emptiness
So black and rich that Maxine rubs her checkbook to her cheek,
Her chest, in vain, also in search for kin and coal
That might have changed, compressed itself to diamond roses,
Ropes of helix DNA, men twisting in the wind.

And Mr. Hyde thinks of his last transforming, when the draught
No longer served his lust. The child he grunted into life
Now gazes down from far across the continent,
His slavish drool imposing heat on Mr. Hyde's unhampered head.
That child, now grown, had driven spikes between two unions,
Severed vows, imposed a prophylactic curse, a vampire Frankenstein.
The haunting passed and absolution antidotes concocted
In the House of Usher. Webs dangle from the furniture,
All weeping sacrificed.

And Newt, who licked the cantaloupe, comes out of hiding,
Longing openly for Clinton's taste, a sample of her melon sliver,
Fragrant oval crevice where the whitish jet of blissfulness
Splatters nose and teeth and tonsils, such abandonment of haste,
But he can only wish that it were his endeavors
That made monitors ablaze, that hit the books, that flat recorded
Lessons in the way to please and pleasure. His was not the orgy
Taken to the grave yet made eternal, etched in the stone tablets
And the wooden schoolroom desks where children carve
Our nation's new publicity, since privacy was slain that day that day.

Now saints all and the radio explains to Clinton
Wrapping up the paper route
Of fishing spots in Arkansas, of copper flies if weather please,
Or nickel lure those sunny days,
Or fun in hunting squirrel meat.
Another caller tells, confessing, to the station, so routine:

"I have fucked at dusk in flowers on the Croisette by the beach in Cannes.
I have fucked along the railroad tracks of Rome.
I have fucked on grassy mountainsides outside Xalapa, Mexico.
I have fucked in crashing waves and underwater.
I have fucked in doctor's offices in Bogota, Columbia.
I have fucked in a tent in Yellowstone.
I have fucked in a sleeping bag at Big Sur, by the oranges of Hieronymus Bosch.
I have fucked in a carnation greenhouse in Denver.
I have fucked in a mobile home outside Miami.
I have fucked in the doorway of a quaint European hotel.
I have fucked while dining in a Paris restaurant.
I have fucked in an ancient stone windmill on a Greek island.
I have fucked in the back seat of a car on Sunday afternoon on a country road outside Urbana.
I have fucked during a Wim Wender's world premiere movie screening.
I have fucked in the Louvre and in the Chicago Art Institute.
I have fucked on the equator.
I have fucked in Golden Gate Park.
I have fucked while listening to "A Chorus Line."
I have fucked in a moving car, while driving.
I have fucked in the back of the bus.
I have fucked on the nude beaches of the former Yugoslavia.
I have fucked in my parent's house.
I have fucked in a very clean park in Zurich.
I have fucked in cyberspace.
I have fucked in the Denver Public Library.
I have fucked on a train leaving Barcelona at midnight.
I have fucked in London.
I have fucked in France.
I have fucked in somebody's underpants.
I have fucked in ancient Mayan ruins.
I have fucked on hotel balconies overlooking the Caribbean and the Pacific, in Veracruz and Maui.
I have fucked in prison.
I have fucked in graveyards."

Owing to the fact government pierced the lie,
Removed the veil,
Destroyed the split between all thought and deed,
There was no difference,
Just like Jesus always said.

To tell the children? How to not?
Or let them overhear?
Sit them down at the beaming hearth and listen, listen well.

A spring of urine, arc transcendent,
Leather in the kitchen cupboard,
Hot and red the spanking bottom,
Anus, mouth and organs pulsing,
Missionary impositions,
Ancient multiples in India,
Those who touch themselves, no other,
Those who cannot touch forbidden,
Fruit insertions maharaja,
Fingers, feet, and penis proper,
Impotence and faithful sadness,
Pure and pervert anesthetic,
He who knew a thousand others,
She who singly had accepted
Stranger's commands for another pat
Of butter on the plate,
And those with fantasies beyond
The reach of an ability to state.

Children read these books and hear the stories told.
Uncle Remus limps to woodshed archives.
Look at woodcuts of affairs official,
A new national geographic.
The box was opened. Christmas came.

A line of 2000 women, naked, standing tall and short, obese and willowed, black and pale and Asian-eyed, those who disdain and look at broken watches, those who gasp and remember rapture, and Clinton must service all, bowed down, his penance for a time, but not eternity, so we may be forgiven, long forgiven, long forgotten what to our forgiveness would be due. Is there time to pay the penance? Who had guessed such penalty was joy?

Still, there is time. The clocks have stopped, the pre-ordained disaster when the numbers rolled around and hit the marker, the millennium, the dates and figs of flavor while the Senators spent their final hours dissecting spots of semen and measuring the penis, counting pubic hairs that danced atop a soda can.

He yawns and sees the ranch house nearing.
The radio plays on, the national confession.
Hillary is sleeping, waiting, outstretched everything
Beneath the goose down comforter.
He's coming back where Y2K had leveled all,
Us all, and nothing more could be sold by showing skin.
We were sated by the secretless of life,
The end of privacy, our home.

A sonnet must be written for order
To be found. Composing thought in heaven,
He sits beside the wood stove, where even
Owls peer in and quiz him. Fence and border
Crumble dusty, like disgust, and are gone.
He could write a speech or he could wander.
Smoke ascends to roof. He waits for thunder.
There is none. Peace in Saskatchewan,
In Vegas, Bombay, Durban, Monterrey;
The world, an image nation, one at last
And free. Clinton stirs the ashes. Night's passed.
Time to rouse mate, roosters and a new day.
"Ask not where finger ends and synapse starts.
We're dreaming; flesh is what composes hearts."

© 1998 Springer-Petrie, Inc.