God's Eternal Blindspot – Kai Edward Warmoth

November 8, 2019

“Here We Are and How We Got Here”

 

(Prologue🙂 

My maternal grandfather died in his early fifties from lung cancer. 

My paternal grandmother died in her late forties or early fifties of a brain embolism.

However, my paternal grandfather died in his eighties, the quiet sins of the body and patience prevailing in their insurgency of his pleura. 

My maternal grandmother lives to this day, with all of the cognizance and functionality of any average woman.

…

My father sobbed into the center of the sink,

told me with no uncertain words that he did not want me

to think him a murderer. 

 

My mother asked her nine year old son, of which I was, to read a story at six a.m.

about an actor.

Someone thought it opportune for Ronald McDonald to visit terminally ill children

and the rules were clear that hugging was forbidden.

Waves and the waning currency of the clown, smiles abundant, 

“I sure hope you can make it in for a large fry!” and the generous 18 inches

negative space when posing for that picture.

Even the insurrections within their cigarette bodies cannot quell the child’s coveting

embrace.

Touch; where all God’s children can dance.

And so the story goes that our raconteur merrymaker found himself confronted

with what we can assume was the most pathetic and despairing of child,

Dismas in a room without a view,

a hug all that left him wanting still of the ensnarements of carnality.

Lament the car and payments still needed,

lament the way the back deck can finally look,

lament the asylum of employment,

lament! Cruel Order of Clowning!

Our actor enveloped the child and met Mammon atop an ass.

(Or so I recall, nineteen years later.)

Upon finishing the final sentence, I lowered the large paperback from my face

and my mother was crying,

in her robe and the television hadn’t been turned on.

 

My father stood in the midst of the mirror, 

trying his best to fit slumped shoulders into two phenomena.

In man’s reality:

an officer shot a man with a BB gun spray painted sable 

after this man had pointed its barrel towards the face of another officer,

demanding he place the weapon groundward and come peacefully to the cell.

In god’s reality:

my father shot a man with what he had to assume was a Glock

after he placed its sights towards the head of a man with which he shared family dinners.

The shower took away the cordite smell and left only the harbors of uncertainty. 

He was 22, my father was 39, I was 14.

A chip and seal backroad and this man’s cousin sat at my lunch table.

Lament the guilt of not knowing,

lament the way a family organizes the chaos of loyalty,

lament the asylum of employment,

lament! Cruor baptizing brass sized .223!

Our Father enveloped me and asked me to forgive him,

as if I were even capable of blame.

 

 

 

“Saints rise because of the circumstance of their times.”

 

Dog-masked philistines rape Lady Chatterly on the library steps;

brings your children to learn how to always nod upward,

always show the throat, 

always make the apple available for snatching.

We have no time for the Gardener’s problematic rules

He has so selfishly imposed on the bodies 

He crafted.

 

Does this upset you? Do you find you want to add to the discourse?

Here is a mad-lib. Here are the words we’ll accept;

the verbs are softened, the adjectives are our own, 

these nouns are professional.

Does this frustrate you? Do you find you want to lash out?

There are healthy outlets:

Weapons of war will not be on our streets.

Hell yes we’re gonna take your AR-15.

You can have it back when we drop you off outside Idlib.

The boxcutter boys need our help.

The Sanhedrin needs the good ol’boys to lend a hand.

It’s your patriotic duty, but let’s keep that between us.

It’s sort of an old world concept and when we go home,

to the future,

it’s best we play this close to the chest,

best we hold it deep inside,

best to keep it in the realm of nightmares and unbroken stares.

If it gets to be too much?

Hell no we’re not gonna take your handguns yet.

There’s still time to pop that bad boy in your mouth

and wet the barrel with Captain Morgan spittle

and then do what you savages do and solve your problems

with clamorous claps and shrieking steel,

loud enough for the children to hear them next door.

Think of the children!

Maybe bring them to the library steps, 

let them watch us punish the past.