Mihai-Willitts

Worship
(Based on artwork by Florin Mihai )

1. Post Industrial Age

The church basement holds a giant butterfly hostage.
It is escaping the sacraments.
It is fleeing from the incense wisping from the globe
swinging fiercely for the cleansing of evil.
The confessors still feel the plush felt stool
and the rosary bears witness until you can hear virgins weeping.
The globe swings like a mass bell in the tower
rattling the asymmetrical wings of the monarch.
It crashes against the stain glass until it is stained.
Outside a toy train moves without tracks towards somewhere.
The passengers inside are busy having their tickets punched,
a child with cherub cheeks notices, nudging his dad
clicking his pocket watch as if disturbed from the newspaper.
The boy’s lips flap as wings beating against windows
trying to escape his father’s retribution for the disruption.
The child will crawl back into the tunnel of his stained crystals.
In the basement the alter boy removes his vestments
under the watchful, priestly fake eyes on the wings.

2. Technic

The computer works like clockwork.
All it needs is Charlie Chaplin and a monkey wrench.
The motherboard cannot feed us fast enough.
We are starving for more.
Our fingers lock together as a flywheel of hopelessness.
We pray things come to us faster.
We cannot get enough fast enough.
We adjust the treadmill, but we do not go any faster.
The wrench might as well not be adjustable.
It is like the mainspring sprung loose as falling trousers.
It is like a stock market crashing.
It is the heart stopping longer than it should.

3. The Meaning

there is no meaning. That is just a trick.
An illusion. It is some impractical joke.
We can pray all we want to,
but we cannot become butterflies

the candles on the alter
are not train wheels to heaven

the gears in our lives
do not take us where we need to go

the newspaper folded like prayer hands
can still deliver bad news like clockwork

4. Long Journey Home

We are told that Jonah was swallowed by a whale
and we swallowed it
hook, line, and sinker.

I traveled the world
80 days in a hot air balloon
past the weathervane with the crane on it
searching for the truth

brought back fiction as holy wafers
dipped my pen in holy water,
wrote with a quill in candle light
while my grandfather’s clock wound down
from High Mass in three languages,
my train of thought going into dark tunnels

5. Hung Up

If I could remove that church window
and smash that glass like a piñata or cocoon
to release the alter boy doing penance
for something he did not do
tricked into thinking this was
god’s work when it wasn’t
I would, I'd hang that window onto winter branches
so everyone could see for themselves
so no one could claim their eyes were affected
by black incense from a wood burning train

I’d put it out so everyone could see,
snuff out the lies like candles,
stop time and spin it backwards, eat the rosary
as if it was bitter pills, let the boy grow wings
flying in and out of the shattered windows

pray for me, I need forgiveness
let me forgive those
that trespass before me
let me fear no evil
lo, though I travel in the valley of darkness
I shall not live in fear,
amen

6. Writer’s World

Let me take these things with me into the chamber:
a fountain pen, a timepiece, a pair
of pinching scissors. Let me sit on the wooden chair
simple as words spoken to the wife
as she sets before me some tea.
Let me sit among the classical Greek ionic columns
straight as the letters spilling as blood from the pen.
Let me compose something

anything but reality

anything except an alter boy begging for mercy
or the sound of my fear swallowed by whales

let me take a moment to rest before I begin
unlacing the gears of my anger, let me pray
pray that butterflies will dance on my window
once more like they did when I was a child
not knowing any of this was true

7. Butterflies’ Memories

what do they remember, those butterflies?
Do they still tread across leaves and fruit
eating their way toward change? Do they know
afterlife is around the corner? They sleep in silence
dreaming of the past while I want to forget mine

when they step out, emerging as some
thing that is new, why do they plan how to fly?
Do they sit on my fiction reading it?
Are they critical as I?
I remember less daily, not remembering catechism
or taking my secret name at eleven
when my heart was a train stopping at a station,

I forget the Stations of the Cross,
the darkness of the confessional booth
how nervous I felt
feeling I had to make up sins
in order to gain forgiveness

saying three Hail Mary ’s
one
Our Father
lighting candles as I prayed
for sins I never did

8. The Captive

the branch I was going to nest on
was removed by the roots

I was evicted for writing too loudly
using the cross as a pen
using my whale oil blood

the root was strangled
twisted to a grinding halt
:
an alter boy too frozen to flee

a train waiting for passengers never arriving on time

a whale breaching the surface on butterfly wings

9. Censorship

Here there was a statue of Mary praying,
you can see the ring of dust still if you look
under

there is the stigmata of the holy water bowl
the pipes of the rusted spring water
the tears of the alter boy fluttering in his arms
the editor refusing to print my treatise
on poverty and forgiveness

saying
no one pays any attention to the less fortunate
why should you?
Take a train trip somewhere, or boating excursion,
or drink wine until it turns into vinegar

just do not float your ideas with hot air balloons

10. Equilibrium

I have lost my balance

I started to write about the alter boy
cringing under the vestibule
crossing his finger across his chest
praying, don’t let this happen

instead I got derailed, my gears slipped,
time got past me, it’s late now,
my tea has cooled, my balance unnerved
the deadline has passed as I flung harpoons

I forgot about the butterfly
hanging on the end of a Calder mobile
with the incense ball as the fulcrum
a drying leaf on the other,
dry as a tear held back

I must never forget that
I would never forgive myself if I did
all the confessing and praying in the world
naming all the saints
praying until my knees get bruised

none of this
will let me forget
so I go to bed without supper

lay me down before I sleep
for if I die before I wake
my soul do please take

11. Magic Camera

Butterflies lifted my ear trumpet pass or past
Russian orthodox spiral steeples

over the angels searching the houses
for the needy and bringing baskets of forgiveness
fresh baked loaves of warm bread to break
dip into the blood turned into wine
an anchor trying to hold back
the sheltered alter boy
in the hole from the missing window
his wings dominate in the frame

this is something I wanted to hear
some good news for a change

I think I will save this for the scrapbook,
let them try to deny such things are possible

12. Learning to Fly

so he flew out, becoming a herd of butterflies
easy as breaking hosts into smaller white pieces
the swarm filing the sky as gears on a printing press
breaking rules of censorship bringing news

news read on a train by impatient fathers
too busy to listen to boys pointing
to the strangeness breaking waves of clouds
a whale swallowing sin, a timelessness breaking apart,
the snuffing of candles, the draining of the incense
from the swinging metal ball as it breaks glass
as a wrecking ball, as loosening flocks of butterflies
as free as forgiveness and not held back

I too was set free as I sprang to my window,
flung it open as church bells made waves
as crucifixes were embraced on my palms
as I leapt out in the sky, no anchor holding me