Ivars Balkits | 3 Works

Last Days before Y2K

It took exactly one hour to read the 22 chapters of Revelation on our local community-based television station during the staff and volunteers Christmas party (coincident, unintentional). Agapi and I read alternate chapters from the New International and the King James versions. My daughter, 9 years old at the time, read a chapter as well.

The anti-inspiration to do so was my coming across one of those myriad thrift-store books interpreting Revelation based on current events. At the time of publication of this book, somewhat dated, Janis Joplin was at the peak of her career and, so, she was the Harlot. Interpretation was the point. 

John of Patmos’ recorded vision speaks of stars falling onto Earth. One could interpret these as meteorites. Or, possibly, under those projected conditions (i.e., Day of Judgment), laws of thermodynamics and what-have-you possibly might not apply. Science would be suspended or cancelled (as many believers hope). 

I found interpreting it at all would be wrong, however. The last chapters say why: whoever adds to this account or subtracts from this account (as written) is doomed, damned. All those people making hay on meanings and messages in – supposedly hidden in – Revelation are, therefore, doing so at grave risk. To point that out was more or less the point of our reading.

A few weeks later a man, possibly a pastor, approached me at the Library to praise our having read the entire Revelation on tv. I explained we intended to read other works so people might be informed of their actual contents. Our next project would be the Communist Manifesto. It might take two hours of programming, I said. I don’t remember his response.

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Gut Disgust Discussed…

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The music one whistles to, the song one sings along to. These mitigate the injustices, the freak-out sessions. But the gut won’t let up. The enteric mind reacts when the face is still and smiling. It doesn’t forget. It continues analyzing, digesting, reconfiguring that negative information, sends little spears into mucosa and muscularis – these spasm while the shoulders remain slack and friendly.

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Drained of purpose, drained of struggle; of needing clarity; and the desire to impress, the desire to record, to leave an epitaph; and the desire for revenge and “closure” to one’s unexpected losses, or expected ones, you know, uses up energy. Then, the desire to veg, to laze, to retire, prevails.

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Still, days, months later, a sinking sun in the gut. Still the breath crashing down in the vacant plexus. Rays from the universe can’t find their entrance. There’s a bolus in the works, cramping my style. Laying like a hod of bricks in my colon. I seek to stop the burp fest in the mid-section and to mitigate the bloat. Already it is morning. Not to get too descriptive, but it’s the shits. 

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The dramas of the daily interaction nearly constantly stabbing at my gut. The nerves of the gut absorbing all that mental and emotional shrapnel. I make feeble attempts of will to parry. I’m thrust out, can’t muster more than a few guttural utters of protest. As these geometries leave the throat’s abode, the heart must be prodded to re-act, i.e., act again. Indigestion provides the prod. The time to wake up, overthrow, replace, has come. I was hoping to relax.

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Losing Face

When you weren’t tired.
When all the signs were right.
When you laughed for joy at your luck.
When you felt balanced… just before you fell,
breaking your face. 

The blood draining from your face.
The shock on your face. 

Spat on, frowned on, pity-piled on, regrettably,
but that’s how it goes, it’s the way of the world,
you couldn’t have known,
why the face?

Why so long and droopy?
It was the turn of events, just a toss of the—

But you continue to dwell there in that rat hole.
For reasons that shouldn’t be,
still unable to take face, and erase face
though having known all forms
of its loss before.

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