A Functionary of the National Security Agency Encounters the Holy Spirit at His Work

Books and Literature, Poetry

Priest, confessor, bureaucrat, alone
in a warehouse full of ordinary dreams,
aspirations and unexpurgated streams
of consciousness, all context, lacking tone
or affect, notices a bird has flown
in through a window, perched among the beams,
black-beaked and tiny, singing, it seems
semi-demiurgic, though a known
and common type, taxonomized and quite
familiar; still, indoors, becomes a kind
of miracle, unseen except by this
thin-wristed man beneath fluorescent light,
glorious excess born of a bored mind,
transubstantiated into bliss.

7 thoughts on “A Functionary of the National Security Agency Encounters the Holy Spirit at His Work

  1. Most of the enjambments are professional and amplify meaning; one, however, sticks out as having been obtained on the cheap. Enjambment via comma-separated lists is for novices and poetasters. Please rework the lines in question.

  2. IOZ, I note you describe the avian intrusion into your poetic space as “black-beaked”. Later you invoke “fluorescent light”, which is known to denature colours to the human eye, potentially making them appear darker than they are in reality. As somebody who has undertaken a bachelor’s degree in poetry (or at least flipped through Leaves of Grass a couple of times), inconsistency brings a tear to my eye and a curl to my lip. I shall expect an edit and apology by this evening.

    1. Ooh Sean – as Susan Kohner said to Sal Mineo in “The Gene Krupa Story” …

      ….play some more of that scary music, Sean

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