Comstockery
George Bernard Shaw
“Comstockery is the world’s standing joke at the expense of the United States. Europe likes to hear such things. It confirms the deep seated conviction of the Old World that America is a provincial place, a second-rate country-town civilization after all.”
Anthony Comstock
“George Bernard Shaw is an Irish smut dealer.”
Anthony Comstock, crusader for righteousness, convinced Congress to pass the Comstock laws denying anyone in the U.S the right to birth control, knowledge of birth control, to any pictures of nude people sent by U.S. mail including medical text books.
If you grow poppies, their papery petals opening in your flower garden, that is legal. If you know how to make opium of these poppies, it is illegal. If you own hemp seeds to feed to your birds, that is legal. If they fall into the grass and grow, that is a crime.
Anthony Comstock loved his mother who died when he was ten. Married an older tiny woman who wore only black, became the landscape. I imagine them, retiring to separate bedrooms after a frigid dinner of corn, peas, turkey giblets.
We’re all subject to God’s laws. Anthony Comstock had 3000 people imprisoned. He died a hated man. Except by one young admirer who found his work and methods exceptional… J. Edgar Hoover.
Comstock pored over thousands of pornographic photos. Willing to subject himself to evil to rid the world of filth and purify mankind. A Christ like character, not appreciated in his own lifetime. Unlike Jesus, not deified since. Like Jesus… hated.
My son tells me the world’s all haters or players. Which are you? Comstock was a player for the Christian team. If you fail to appreciate someone purifying the world of sodomy, condom usage, oral sex, you’re a hater.
Some of you know how to make opium from the poppies you grow, have pictures of naked women, have used birth control and taught others to do so, have practiced sodomy. Same sex sodomy is illegal in Kansas, Texas and Oklahoma.
Some of you are not even Christians. Some of you have medical textbooks in your libraries. Some of you have practiced oral sex. Illegal in Georgia. Reach your hand in your clothes. Whatever you find there is obscene.
Gung Pow
You met a girl at a photo shoot.
You were the photographer, she was naked.
You used words like “aesthetic”
to describe the photographs.
Her with fishing poles and lines
a fake stream, sky, fake dragonflies,
her fingers against the pole.
There was too much light in her hair.
You had her move. Did you whisper?
Did you touch her shoulder? Her back?
Did you touch? It isn’t as though
I grudge you some kind of loveliness.
I’ve tried to please you. But so did Charles V’s
crowd of firemakers. Fireworks pleased him,
but many of them died while the king watched
the explosion of color, felt his mistress’ pale thighs.
The Chinese called fireworks “gung pow.”
That’s what Charles wanted in his bed and in the sky.
It’s what we all want. Especially you.
You say you don’t want an ordinary life.
In the 1890’s, the Society for the Suppression of Noise
tried to ban all fireworks displays in the U.S.
Pre Van Halen concerts and jet travel, these fools
complained that our cities were too noisy, folks can’t think right.
That’s completely bogus, you say.
You, who can’t bear Beethoven while you write.
I need to hear you. The Bible says, “Make a joyful noise.”
I want to year you, woman. All right, I say, Then give me.
Give you what? You’re still leafing through proofs.
I’m alone with my reflection, but I can hear you
rooms away. I call out, like seraphim voices reaching
through atmosphere. I call, Give me gung pow.
Corn
The floor was full of corn and my breath of silences.
The leaves were gold, red, orange. I wanted blue, but
there were none. My legs were blue where you slapped me,
but we leaned into corn night after night. The arc
of the moon appearing finally, the husks gathered into fire.
The corn husking lasted weeks. My shoulders bare and whipped along the blades. August burned and blistered. Corn and sorrow taste salty along the rim of the tongue. You, coming apart
at the seams. The kernels so packed on the ears, milky sweet, that when you bit them, they fairly burst.
Roasted with salt they were a direction for life, salt water and fire. I couldn't imagine growing away then. Outside the circle of firelight was unimaginable blackness. Inside, the rain of blows, your hands hard and heavy, corn that would give way
to fall apple picking in the orchard by the stream.
Much later I understood that people dream of life by a stream in a corn field. What they wished for I could not imagine.
The vultures were always there overhead when we husked. I imagined you would kill me some day. Afterlife would be an adventure for me, and a meal for the vultures, surely.
