A Toast to Oblivion Were the crooked road right and rended matter mated, the end of Time would rhyme with all that climbs, drunk and elated. Were the gnatted nest of noise and winded music married, the offspring of Chaos would offer poise to all who stagger and are harried. But till we find there''s no more fight or our end has left us laying on that blurry bed of cloud, I''ll goddamn well continue saying: The crooked road is right-- and drunk, sotted passions must be allowed to celebrate breathing by reading poetry out loud! Yonah ''Of what people are you?'' ''I am a Hebrew,'' Yonah replied. ''What must we do to you to make the sea calm around us?''. He answered, ''Heave me overboard and the sea will calm.'' Yonah 1:8, 9, 11, 12, 15. 1. When words, speech, still left Yonah''s lips like shivering waves unleashed, white waters crashing across captive crowds, caught in the current of his language''s content, did he wrestle with love? Or perhaps being a prophet meant he couldn''t be human, have time enough to mount a body with whom he could feel spent while trying to deliver the vision for his people that would be certain to keep his kith and kin safe? Read a people, a future, one''s own damn self, then throw in the mix, as we most often must, another for love and lust-- the heat of the heart''s hearth-- without putting one''s own soul on a shelf, is a tall order.

2. So forget about Love! That''s set aside for the questions: True or false prophet? Poet or just another struggling man, uncertain himself of what his words might mean? Bottom line: Yonah thought there was no profit to his going to Nineveh, capital of the Assyrians, the hostile next-door neighbors of the Hebrews. So, when G-d commanded he go there and speak, Yonah''s heart was torn--to enter a town, certain all the Pagans would look down on him and his words-- Better to leave the city, just get his feet off the ground, entirely leave all land behind, hit the sea, even if it meant to drown and give up the effort of trying to understand. 3. So, Yonah hit the road, headed for Jaffa to catch a boat to Tarshish, stumbling like he''d a head full of Hashish-- lungs and thoughts coughing smoke. This is how a prophet riddled with doubt races against a spiritual debt-- how he hears his own Voice as a noise that falls, collapses, as he does, to his knees. This is how Yonah, like a bum off the streets, remained mute, digesting his dread, already half-dead in his head, unable to buy even the possibility his words might fly. Or worse, perhaps Yonah feared any word of his that flew wouldn''t soar like a bird, but would just buzz and be heard like a mosquito, a bloodsucking pest that carries disease--not at all the stuff that might resemble a divine call.

4. Finally, when Yonah was sure he was emptied of all vocabulary, he''d no more to do but reach the shore, keep his eyes down, like a fugitive, skulking from G-d, bent on his path to port. Once he reached Jaffa, when he booked passage on the ship making for Tarshish, I see Yonah, as Melville''s Father Mapple did: a shady figure, surely on the lam, looking to go to sea to escape some crime he''d committed on land-- albeit a crime of omission-- Once at sea, Yonah''s face, his obvious self-condemning condition, spoke to the sailors, raising their suspicion of him, though how could they understand their ship would come to be called, the first of recorded smugglers-- or that Yonah was the contraband? 5. Staring at the waves ahead or the wake behind, it surely crossed Yonah''s mind, it sucks to be a prophet, like some no-name poet-- There''s no line of folks waiting to sign up for the job, to be chosen to live so numb to common notions, their minds can climb, with a rare agility, the cliffs of Time. Mostly, being a prophet is a job you''d run from, but it''s a job that got thrust on some, like Moses, who held his people''s feet to the fire without revealing one fiber of fear. Still, Yonah probably guessed Moses knew people would stray as he ascended Sinai, but what could he do but climb? Pacing the deck, staring at a sea that swallows, as thoughts wander, Yonah didn''t wonder, but also guessed Moses knew, thin-limbed, hand a tremble, beard white, falling on his stick in sand, he''d die before making it to the Promised Land. 6. When the storm kicked in, tossing the ship in waves that kicked the shit out of the vessel, waves taller than the mast of the mainsail, most of the sailors started to wail, praying to their Pagan gods while Yonah, remaining below deck, knowing the pounding, furious black waters had his name written in their depths.

Perhaps he knew a big fish, a whale, a behemoth, or leviathan waited when he finally came on deck, even while all struggled to stay on their feet as the ship rocked and Yonah shouted to be heard above the storm as he owned up how he was the cause? At first, they tried a few times dropping him over the side, then pulling him back dripping, before they came to decide, they''d no other choice-- they had to permanently dump the Hebrew. 7. No doubt, he noted the perfect parallel between his body''s external descent and his heart''s internal descent, as both sank fathoms into salted darkness. But from the black pitch, the slimy seaweed that wrapped round Yonah''s head-- weeds like no laurus nobilis or wreaths made of laurel leaves yet to be worn by Roman poets-- it was clear: his punishment would be inglorious. As it was: swallowed by the whale, white teeth, huge prison bars, the belly of the beast, his grave, appointed by Duma, the angel of silence. Yonah felt the whale''s giant ribs, and his small self in a mist, before he saw his fate to be fair-- finally prayed to G-d for freedom anywhere, to be spit onto land as a gilgul-- And like most true prophets or poets in the end, fumbling to G-d or the future, in poems or prayers, Yonah now knew the words he uttered were not his. 8. I wish I knew more about the Truth, why we waste so many words, muttered sounds that itch the ear where we hurt each other, scratch and bitch? Maybe we''ve each our own Yonah inside and this is why we''ve each a storm we can''t hide from, but must face our own foul weather, each drop to our own depths or wither to nothing, before we might wake on a beach alone, stand, wipe sand off our skin, ache in every bone.

Maybe that''s what it takes to speak, to open one''s mouth, move one''s lips honestly, with love shown from the heart--after we''ve sunk in our own deepest darkness and emerged--so language alone can rise true in light, one word after another. As for love, of which I know so little, Yonah, swallowed and taken to the middle of the unknown, tasting death, I believe, in the whale, learned of love, the struggle to heal, so his soul and voice was blessed--renewed, wounded but whole. Sleep Is a Ritual of Disorder I know most people have perfected the art of pretending they''re not troubled by Life or Death, perhaps they even do sleep like babies. Of course, I should make an effort to be more like them, instead of w.