Vulture Magazine The Michaelmas Issue 2013 | Page 20

Glory
I saw glory once. Dripping off the tongue of a Prehistoric
archangel spewing post-prophetic poetry like it were a
second language, begging in monotones for the matriculation of an order amongst men that exists not only in
the fountain of a blind man's song, but swims through
the rush and whir of humanity existing as an inherent
pleasure, to be enjoyed and taken for granted by all.
I saw glory once. A silver dollar skirting around the
rim of a Texan oil well, accompanied by the sounds
of a choir of sun-soaked children whose voices rise
and rise as the dollar sinks until there are no more
notes to reach and they go silent as metal meets
metal and rings like the bell at Alamo.
What once
nourished and allowed this land to breed and scatter and grow strong has become nothing more than
a holy book on which no man may lay his hand and
swear truth. Come rain, come hail, come hell fire,
come china and all the forces of the orient. We will
crumble and kiss the feet of those more bold than
ourselves. Carry your bags of gold, your worldly
possessions, bring the sceptre you stole from the tattooed mystic who sleeps behind the convenience store.
Bring the Indian skull that sleeps beneath your basement floor that you keep as an aid to a distorted vision
that this country was not built upon the bloodshed by
the innocent man as a victim to an aggressor with no more
desire for the pursuit of knowledge than him, but simply
a willingness to use that knowledge in a different way.
Where we're going there are no flags for sale. You
cannot subscribe to the ideas that meet at this place
in the universe where blind human ambition meets
the forces of good on a one way street at the corner of time and less time. Your children who sang
in the desert choir now sleep tight in their warm
unassuming beds enclothed in the imported cloths
of eternity. May they dream just a little longer.
I saw glory once. Tucked into the back pocket of an
American in Paris in 1920. The nine fingered handshake
that allowed the rumbling ground in the east to open
producing a symphony with no key but an all-enchanting
melody. And as we sit, bathed in the eastern aromas of
expensive cigar smoke in the cafes of our own self-inflicted indifference, we hum along as though the vibrations on our tongues that spawned the very dawn of
man are now just mere pawns on the chessboard of the