A comet, an ice storm, a cooped-up family drinking game… a pattern I can’t unsee.
She gathers reports from her children. This year’s fugue & pedal point, her table a feast of sand. Youngest Mark files his, a new open source project… “I’m really getting seen.” Lifting my glass to him from the dark walnut table, I sip vodka… neat.
Content Note:
- Explicit language, family trauma, religious themes, substances, mental health struggles, cult references.
Today, I intertwine my birth family, religion, and the dynamics of control. Against the backdrop of real events from my winter of 97–98. When the Hale-Bopp comet was fading in the Northern New York skies. And the memory of the Heaven’s Gate suicide cult was still fresh in the national mind.
This is a hybrid piece. In my mind it’s a movie… with scenes, background music, jump cuts. But, you guys probably loved Pulp Fiction. Given that, I pray you can follow me in this one.
Is listening more your thing? Pick your app: Apple, Spotify, Overcast, YouTube.
Sneaking my mother’s creepy g-d on high
Prelude, December 1997.
ESTABLISHING SHOT
I begin, “There…
There’s Heaven’s Gate.”
She fiddles with the binox dials.
“Where should I look?”
She asks breathless,
Trudging bootless.
I barely hear her
Over the crackling snow
Beneath my feet, but say,
“There…
That smudge in the sky.”
I point again.
UFO Cult Chooses Suicide,
The TV said.
Thirty-nine bodies
In matching Nikes,
The photo read.
No Kool-Aid on crime scene,
The coroner led off…
I close wet eyes
To the hiss & sizzle
Of the Northern Lights
Over my head,
Silence
Then the cold murmur
of the cold mother…
“That’s why they died?”
She shrugs.
My eyes open… careful, I shrug,
“Maybe… they saw a signal from aliens.
Or maybe God on high.
Who knows what grimdark sign
They read that silent night…”
Wordless, clueless… a comet sailed
Ribbons of green and purple light.
One cold blue, one hot pink tail
Fading from history’s sight…
So we stroll on into
Fake New Year’s dinner
Cuz not everyone
Could schedule in
The Real One.
How rare it is
A two-tailed comet in the sky,
A lover doesn’t lie with her eyes,
To greet one free man before you die,
How rare it is
How rare it is
Dinner Music
POINT-OF-VIEW SHOT
my mother in a halo of candles
my mother wrapped in smoke
my mother in dark shadows
measuring the length of my rope
She gathers reports from her children
This year’s fugue & pedal point,
Her table a feast of sand.
Youngest Mark files his,
A new open source project…
“I’m really getting seen.”
Lifting my glass to him
From the dark walnut table,
I sip vodka… Neat.
Martha next, from her foreign outpost
A well-received talk given…
Vodka. Neat.
Second-oldest Luke comments,
Wearing a dead father’s mantle
“So proud of this my family
Progress on nearly every front.
John, you seem…
Well, better… strangely.”
Yeah. Vodka. Neat. And deep.
Mary reports a year in faith.
Jesus gave her home.
Jesus gave her kids.
Jesus gave her strength… alone.
I close my eyes in frustration
See only those twin tails
Sailing in that dark…
No wine, no wafer
Just vodka. Neat.
The broken mother nods,
Waves a weary hand at each.
Then turns to me,
Product of her first postpartum,
Eldest stranger at her table.
She faintly smiles…, “John?”
This last-invited autist
Drunk to a numb survival
Starts slow… and slurred,
“Ya know…?
Never… believed… in heroes.
Those guys & their comet?
They did.”
I hear hands tense,
Casual wear shift & rustle,
Eyes crinkle & narrow…
Familiar, family sounds.
My runaway train
picks up steam
plunging on and into
a dark tangential tunnel
“A part of me rejects a g-d
born perfect without sin,
casually tossing miracles
like candy & coins… sublime
from a gaudy Mardi Gras float
To kids playing in the grime…”
I gulp a breath.
Silence
a child, high on a stone altar
a hand… a knife in mid air…
a sacrifice for appearances
like thirty-nine bodies
in matching Nike pairs…
How fair is it
Jesus and Jim Jones
Both got emails from Beyond,
Love rusts til
It’s just one more bond,
Your soul’s released when
Your last day’s dawned,
How fair is it
How fair is it
Interlude, January 1998
FLASH CUT
Couple weeks later
Ice Storm of ‘98.
A friendly… family,
Game of cards.
Frozen in time, frozen in mind
Aunts, uncles and cousins
No one’s got power, trapped…
Cabin, cards, liquor… discussions.
Killing time… 3 days…
Instead of each other.
Oh shit. Oh. Shit…
There goes that bid
I swore I could make.
Under my breath… “Damn it to Hell.”
Then head down, out loud,
“Oh, Shit.”
I’m staring at the hand they dealt.
So many near-miss combos
So many runs that went nowhere…
“My bad. I shoulda played that 9
My mind’s off wandering again
Let me grab that back. This time.”
“No…
You gotta drink …
Ya gotta drink!
This time…
Every time!”
Rinse repeat
Mistake over mistake
Vodka neat, vodka neat
Vodka…
I… wake to… laughter
“Uncle Johnny, you’re the dude
From stuck up cunt
To puking your shoes.
Man, can you let go… when you want.”
And let go… I did.
A distracted juggler drops his satin ball,
A drunken knife thrower ties assassins & assistants to the wall,
The smoking fortune teller wheezes, “Doom finds us all,”
A Ring Master’s whip echoes through an emptying hall….
Cadenza, for the End of Time
EXTREME WIDE PANNING SHOT
My catechism asked
Why did that g-d make me?
And I ask
Why did this unbonded mom have me?
To both cluck in disappointment?
Over commandments
I was born
Unable to follow…?
To follow a comet into…
Desperation
Dissolution
Suicide
And the Peace…
Of no need for understanding?
Ever again?
There is no hero
No god
No bodhisattva
No parent…
That does not hide
The dazzling Confusion
In a burning bush
Or explains to me
Like I’m a five-year old
Why that twin-tailed comet
Still sails across my mind
How rare it is
To find a god
Doesn’t want more
Than he gave,
A lover who can stay…
Even while I rave,
A man who can live
Not caring if he’s saved,
How rare it is.
How rare it is.
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every clock is a handgun pointed at my head, art, poetry, and raw neurodivergent truth. Thirteen pieces. One autistic life, unfiltered. Available on Amazon
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I’m an autistic poet and spoken word performer, diagnosed at 63. Now in my 70s. I’ve been publishing AutisticAF Out Loud since 2019… work that refuses to be packaged.
My spoken word piece , every clock is a handgun pointed at my head, was published in Wordgathering, a journal of disability poetry & literature. In 2022, I spoke at the UN World Autism Acceptance Day about my illustration work rooted in autism & ADHD.
I live in a rural Indiana trailer… across the courtyard from my wife’s trailer… with my 2 dogs & cat. Occasionally I shave… to face Walmart.
The algorithms hate me. I must be doing something right.
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