[Newspoetry] telempathy

[DL Emerick]

Body Language in Mind: Telempathy

The tongue is, so gossips say
while wagging their tongues,
a tail on a mind's telling:
a part of a body of thought,
deigning to speak doggedly on.

Body questions sip the Bloody Mary. 
One drinks unto red or white or blue
walking over some Cola-Red Sea
while yet others die, drowned out,
when outted from a Book of Life read.

I went to some humanity's play,
To William's Merchant of Venice,
in early summer, on early eve --
to hear what I could see,
to think what I could not.

Play subjects people to its law
and always more, far more:
community, custom, rite and ritual --
promise ever vows its performance;
contracted views of man and woman,
scenic reductions in stages taken.

To flesh out contractual play,
question all by blood lettings:
virgins by virgin lovers,
children by child parents,
merchants by mercantile states,
borrowers by bankrupt bankers,
everyman by all golden gods.

Shylock impounds agony's flesh,
forfeit for a furious Christian:
foreskin foreshadows foreplay.
Can such a cruel man convert,
take away his hardened heart;
may by-pass operations save lives?

Penis envy is a fetish of flesh.
Holy, holy, holy; be holy to me:
Better circumcise a penis,
Than fill hell holes, whole:
So Shylock might have thought.

The State strips Shylock:
His expectations are defeated;
His contract is upset, perverted:
Shylock who says "I but mime
What I see Christians do"
Is forced to go all the way,
Walk extra miles no X ever went.

The State could have said,
"Taking blood was an implied term:
Let the contract be enforced" or
"No force of law upholds terms
When they are unconscionable;"
Instead, the State acts unjustly.

There is a Right to One's Religion
Which no State may infringe nor take,
Under any pretense of precedent --
Fools may love their own Gods, lawfully,
But only folly forces unnatural acts,
Such rapes of man as it calls love.

Capitalism all too easily survives
decent annulments by State and thrives:
Voiding bad bargains, like bladder bags,
Are ordinary acts origining every State.

Precedent is always a Presence of Mind,
Where Any Body is rightly concerned --
And yet a Worry when no mind is mindful,
When bodies ever fail, always fall,
Freed from grace, nor given disgrace.

My play ends as gentle rains began,
cold showers falling ever faster:
Is a body wetter than wet, Portia!
Is blood not but a thicker water?
Go to your flow and be swept away.

The problems of other minds,
or the mind-body problems lies
when other Gods are also made-flesh --
deadly bodies become killing beliefs,
steeling flesh-and-blood idolatry.

So says a dog, his tale-wagging.