It’s nice to know that somewhere out there
a man is painting. Even if he’s painting a wall, it’s nice to know that somewhere out there a man is painting. Even if it’s a color I don’t like, even if it’s a color very few people like, even if it’s a color all the interior designers in the world hate, it’s still nice to know that somewhere out there a man is painting. And maybe the man doesn’t even like the color all that much, but that paint was a real good deal. It was oops paint. It was at the hardware store he had been to fifty times before, and that wall really shoulda been painted a long time ago, and it’s his wall and he can do whatever he wants with his own wall and he doesn’t care what anybody thinks about the color he got. And anyway most people these days are too lazy to get up and paint a wall. Maybe it’s not their fault, all those lazy people. Maybe their fathers never taught them how to paint. Maybe their fathers never taught them that a wall ought to be painted or that their dwellings should be beautified. Maybe their fathers never led them to beauty. But this particular man, the man who is painting, he comes from a different time. The glory of God is upon him. The radio’s on and the song’s familiar. He’s got his nose close to his work. Pretty soon he’s gonna stop and have lunch. I was born a Mormon boy
and brought my parents joy when I stood with the other kids in front of the church and sang, “Follow the prophet. Follow the prophet. Follow the prophet. Don’t go astray. Follow the prophet. Follow the prophet. Follow the prophet. He knows the way.” And I went on a mission, believing I had a divine commission to spread Mormonism abroad. I thought I was serving God. And maybe I was serving God. And sometimes, I really was serving God, as a Mormon missionary, when I tried to cheer up the sad and make someone feel glad. I helped people move from one house to another. I called everybody “sister,” and “brother.” But then, in my late twenties, I found out Joseph Smith was a liar, liar, liar, pants on fire, liar, liar, his body’s on fire, probably, in Hell, right now. The Book of Mormon is bogus! The Angel Moroni and the Golden Plates are bogus! The Nephites and the Lamanites and the Jaredites are fake just like a lot of Mormon smiles are fake and President Russell M. Nelson can’t prophesy! But, man, he sure is good at selling a lie. But, I’m over it. Well, maybe I’m not over it. I’ll never really be over it. Anyway, I’m Catholic now. I converted. You wanna know how? Yeah I wanna know how too. I’d love to explain it all to you. But honestly, asking me how I converted is like asking a caterpillar how he emerged from a dark place as a butterfly, with wings shimmering against the sky. Nevertheless, I’ll do what I can to tell you how I became a Catholic man. After seven years of malaise, wondering what I should do with my Sundays, I happened to be checking the news on April 15th, 2019, And you know what was on my computer screen? Tiger Woods wins his fifth Master’s Title. Justice Department says Mueller Report will be released Thursday. Tornado warnings issued in Georgia and North Carolina. The Notre Dame Cathedral in France was on fire. The Notre Dame Cathedral in France was on fire! It was such a sad sight, and for hours that night, I couldn’t get away from the computer. Smoke. Flames. Fire trucks. Fire-fighters, police officers, reporters, cameras, men wearing crosses crying, men wearing crosses praying. Breaking news. Breaking news. Who did it? Was it arson? The tower collapsed. Would the entire cathedral burn? A priest rescued the crown of thorns! Wait. The crown of thorns? The actual crown of thorns? The Catholics think they actually have the actual crown of thorns? That’s crazy. They do have the Shroud of Turin, though, and that thing is legit. How old is the Notre Dame Cathedral, anyway? And why is it so beautiful? And why do I care so much? Why do I care at all about some old building in France? Wait. Have I ever really given Catholicism a chance? So all of a sudden, I was obsessed. The clouds were parting, and I was being blessed. I searched through YouTube videos. New things popped up and I clicked on those. I watched Catholics preaching, I watched Catholics teaching, I watched Catholics praying and I thought, “My hair is graying. One day, maybe soon, I’ll draw my last breath. And when my children ask me about death, what do I tell them? What will I say? Will I say, ‘I don’t know kids… just go play.’?” So then I conducted an experiment, to try to figure out what it all meant. I got a rosary. I prayed the rosary. It did feel a little scary when I prayed my first Hail Mary but gradually I understood that my prayers were pleasing to God. There’s a thousand other things I could say, a thousand things that happened along the way on my path from the night to the brightness of day. But, long story short, I signed up for R.C.I.A. and Hallelujah, Praise the Lord, I have faith today! So I went to Sprouts and got sweet potatoes.
At least, I thought they were sweet potatoes. The sack said they were sweet potatoes. There were six of them in that sack and it said “sweet potatoes,” and I’m using quotation marks because I’m actually quoting. When I got home my wife said they were yams. I should sue Sprouts. It’s not right. It’s not right to tell a man that those kinda orange kinda brown things in the sack are sweet potatoes and to make him believe he’s buying sweet potatoes when actually he’s got his hands on yams. Yams yams yams yams yams yams. I feel like Jacob must have felt. He wants to marry Racheal. He thinks he’s marrying Racheal. Laban says, “Don’t worry, it's definitely Racheal under that veil,” but the next morning when the sunlight streams into the tent there was Leah, laying there, looking like a good-for-nothing sack of yams. Eventually that old man gave Jacob the right bride plus a bunch of sheep but what did Sprouts ever give to me? Just a night full of marital problems and a coupon for twenty-five cents off my next purchase of yogurt. I went there a couple of times
and every time it sucked. There were lots of plants there and they all sucked. The butterflies and ladybugs all sucked too. There's a bunch of sucky benches to sit on and a bunch of sucky paths to walk on and a sundial that sucked and guess what? All the people there sucked. A man named Greg was there. Therefore, Greg sucked. So yeah, I was there, so I sucked too. Usually I'm not sucky but when I'm at the Boyce Thompson Arboretum I suck because I can't help soaking in the suck. People told me that place was appealing but the only appealing thing I ever saw there was the banana in my backpack I brought in for a snack and the only non-sucky things there were the succulents. And I don’t know who Boyce Thompson is but I don’t care because he probably sucked and I signed up for a sucky yearly pass because my wife wanted me to even though the sucky arboretum sucked so they started mailing me monthly newsletters and guess what the newsletters do? They suck. In one of them I’m a snake
and I have to eat apples. The more apples I eat, the longer I get and I gotta watch out for my tail because if I hit my tail, I die but I gotta keep eating those apples. That’s the whole point of the game. Eventually, I die. Eventually, everyone dies. It’s one of those games nobody can win but as long as you’re slithering you gotta keep eating those apples. In another one I cut fruit that’s tossed up in the sky. Watermelons, cantaloupes, kiwis, whatever. I cut them with a machete, the juice squirts out, I get points, and that’s the whole game. And in another one I’m a man on a motorcycle, a red motorcycle, and I can ride that thing forever. I put it on easy mode and ride through the day and ride through the night and ride through the day and ride through the night. Eventually I have to quit because eventually I have to sleep but it sure is hard to go to sleep when I know the games on my phone are so much better than my dreams. Don’t do it.
Whatever I can say to you to stop you from killing yourself, I’m going to say it. If compliments help, I’ll give them: Your hair is fantastic. Some of your stories are really funny. You are worthy of love. If jokes help, I’ll say them: What’s brown and sticky? A stick. Did you hear about the restaurant on the moon? The food’s great but the atmosphere’s terrible. Three cannibals were eating a clown. One says, “Does this taste funny to you?” If a scripture helps, I’ll quote it: Do you not know that you are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwells in you? If anyone destroys God’s temple, God will destroy that person; for the temple of God, which you are, is holy. If songs help, I’ll recommend them: Everybody Hurts by R.E.M. Blood on the Tracks by Bob Dylan, the whole album, or try the blues, maybe Bukka White, or anything with a banjo in it. Look, buddy, stranger, fellow human, maybe someday, things will be different. Maybe someday, you’ll have a friend. Maybe someday, you’ll make something beautiful. Maybe someday, out of the blue, God’s love will descend upon you, filling you with joy, warmth and gratitude. If poetry helps, go read some, something better than this poem which is basically just prose arranged to look like a poem but I don’t care because all I'm trying to do is to stop you from doing something you’ll regret in the afterlife. And yes, there is an afterlife. Have you tried Charles Bukowski? Try Alone with Everybody. If nothing I’ve said helps, at least write a good long suicide note. Make it beautiful. Ask somebody, anybody, to review it, before you actually kill yourself. I walk around on the ground.
I walk around and around and around. My right foot moves forward and my left foot moves forward again and again and again on the sturdy, familiar, sunlit ground. Thank you, ground. You are a good ground. What would I do without you? Hello little rocks. Hello all you million-billion little rocks. When I walk through you, you make a crunching sound, crunch crunch crunch crunch. A million-billion rocks all over the ground. This is the stuff they call gravel. My mind is tired. My body is tired. I’m walking, but I have no place to go, and I want a hamburger with pickles, and maybe a TV show, but it’s gotta be a good one though, and I want a nap. But I don’t want soda because I don’t drink soda because soda is bad for your teeth, not to mention the rest of your body. I have standards. But maybe I do want soda. What’s that? Is that a worm? Yeah, that’s a worm. I wonder if it's dead. Why is my life so comfortable? Why were some people punched by their drunken fathers but not me? I don’t know. But God is real and God is good and God is just and God is merciful and God is loving. It’s a little uncomfortable to look at.
There’s a part of me that would rather see something nice on the wall: a painting of flowers, a photograph of myself, maybe a clock. Jesus is nailed to the cross. Nails are in his hands. Nails are in his feet. Thorns are sticking into his head. The man is about to die. He’s bleeding. He’s suffering. Maybe he’s already dead. It’s a little uncomfortable to talk about. If we have to see a depiction of Jesus, we’d rather it be a nice one: Jesus holding a lamb while the sun sets; Jesus taking a walk with his friends; Jesus smiling, surrounded by happy and clean children. And if we have to see a cross, we’d rather it not have a single drop of blood on it, let alone a bloody, beaten man, writhing in agony. But we weren’t put on this earth to be comfortable. And, if you really want the demons to go away, put up a crucifix. Look at it everyday. There’s a lot of lonely people in this city
and maybe you’re one of them. You probably are. Why else would you be reading a poem titled, A Poem For Lonely People, Living In The Same City As Me? Well, I’m lonely too, so here I am, staying up late, writing something that probably won’t amount to much, while I listen to Christmas at Mary’s Shrine, 2011 edition, by the Choir of the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception, and maybe later I’ll put this thing on my website, Ben Bird’s Poetry, at benbirdspoetry.weebly.com. I got the CD at the library for 25 cents. They got a spot where they sell books, magazines, CD’s and DVD’s they take out of circulation. Good stuff. Real cheap. Some of it never got put in circulation. Guess the library didn’t want it. Sometimes I blame myself for my loneliness. Sometimes I blame society. Where’s the town square? I wanna go there. Isn’t there some crowd I can join? I’ll chant something I don’t even believe in just to be shoulder to shoulder with men. The parks are so empty at night. Maybe that’s because the sign says “Closed at night.” Well, they haven’t caught me yet so I went there again a few hours ago and took off my shoes and took off my socks and took off my shirt but don’t worry, I kept my pants on. I looked at some ants. Isn’t there a village somewhere where everybody knows each other? And why don’t we live there? How did we end up in this sea of garage doors that open so rarely? Why do we drift towards isolation? Have you heard Sacred Harp Singing? It’s on YouTube. Everything’s on YouTube. And have you seen the videos where warm and beautiful people look right into your eyes and say, “Hey, it’s so good to see you!” and talk about what they had for breakfast? I’ve seen those people in those videos and when they say “Hey, it’s so good to see you!” I think I really believe it and I really want to hear all about their eggs. I don’t know what “smeks” means
but that’s OK. It’s real. Smeks are real. I promise you, it’s a real word. It has something to do with car-wrecks. Wait, no. That’s wrong. I’m pretty sure smeks was something from a long time ago, something large, something from an Empire, yeah, probably the Grizzabline Empire. Yeah, they were tools used during the Grizzabline Empire, things that were actually very useful back then, you know, whenever the Grizzabline Empire was around. OK, OK, OK, so, it’s not a real word. But it’s here now anyway. I said “smeks” and you read “smeks” so maybe that’s worth something. I used to be so sure of things. I used to look in the dictionary more. I'm sleepy. Hey remember how my Mom put a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and an apple in my lunch sack everyday? And the apple smooshed the bread? Well she packed me some smeks one day. They glowed in the darkness of my lunch sack, but then as soon as I opened the bag, they stopped glowing. Smeks don’t glow when you look at them, but I know they glow. I know they glow. That glowing gave me courage, and so for that one brief day I was an airplane, I was a sunflower, I was a rattlesnake, and I kissed Lizzie Bennington, on the lips, in the cafeteria, in front of everyone, and it was March 17th, 1992. Principal Kinterhalter said it was sexual harassment but he only said that because he didn’t believe in smeks. By the way, I was king of the prom. Yeah. Prom King. That’s me. |