{"id":50690,"date":"2022-04-10T10:53:56","date_gmt":"2022-04-10T14:53:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/?p=50690"},"modified":"2022-04-10T21:41:20","modified_gmt":"2022-04-11T01:41:20","slug":"a-poet-speaks-of-the-debacle-of-our-lives","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/2022\/04\/a-poet-speaks-of-the-debacle-of-our-lives.html","title":{"rendered":"A Poet Speaks of the Debacle of Our Lives"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

William ‘Cody’ Maher is an expatriate American poet and performance artist living in Berlin. His most recent book of poems, The Return<\/a>, was published in 2020.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/a>
William ‘Cody’ Maher<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n
THE DEBACLE OF OUR LIVES<\/strong><\/em>\n(Odessa circa '91-'92)\n\nLet us be clear about something\nI have been meaning to give this lecture now for years\nI know my lectures have not been what they were intended to be\nI mean to say my lectures have fallen on deaf ears\nThey have been trampled upon by wild beasts\nThey have been ignored\nThey have been stolen\nThey have been placed in the wrong institutions\nI have been invited in the past to give my lectures\nAt some of the most prestigious . . .\nThe most meaningless . . .\nWhat am I trying to say?\nNo one\nAnd I mean to say NO ONE<\/strong>\nWould ever have conceived what actually took place\nIt was in the city of Odessa\nWhere are my assistants now\nTo provide for me the name of the church?\nOnce upon a time it would have been immediately clear\nWhen I spoke of a church without a roof over its head\nSo that the heavens looked down upon it\nRained down upon it\nAnd now of course<\/strong>\nIf I spoke of a ruin of a church in Odessa\nI could be speaking of the future\nThat will soon be past\nAs my past will soon be over\nBut let me continue with my lecture\nIt was in the city of Odessa\nIn the year of '91\nOr was it '92\nIt makes little difference\nI was engaged to give a lecture\nOn the subject of bringing humanity together\nWhich I had no interest in doing\nIn fact my only intention<\/strong>\nWas to keep other men's hands\nOff another man's wife\nBecause she was in my hands now\nYes, let us be honest\nThese poets who express the great\nImportant subjects of the day\nWhen they have not had their kill\nI mean, have not been the predator\nThat they were born to be\nI have stilled the beast<\/strong>\nBut let no conceit stand in the way\nOf my ignoble intentions\nIn those halcyon days\nWhen Russia and its neighbor\nStood on their hind legs\nAnd then laid on their backs\nExtended their reach\nFor the cookie jar of the West\nAnd life took on another meaning\nBefore my eyes\nWhen I took another man's wife\nAway from him\nBut that is not the subject\nThe subject is the lecture I gave<\/strong>\nAt that ruin of a church\nIn the heart of Odessa\nAnd this is important\nI am not making this up\nI arrived late\nThe master of ceremonies\nBeing the other man's wife\nShe had me by the throat\nOr the neck of my balls\nI was a puppet in her hands\nI was a poor excuse for a human being\nAnd yet\nDays before I met\nTwo henchman from the church<\/strong>\nDressed in slick suits\nWho asked what we had proposed\nFor an event\nWhere two hundred Baltic Germans\nWould be present\nWhy they would be present\nI have forgotten\nOh yes, something about\nHumanity coming together\nI told them my performance\nWould be entitled\n\"Worlds Apart\"\nWith the notion of how\nThey could be brought together\nI had notes I read from\nThey appeared suspicious<\/strong>\nAnd yet they agreed\nThat I could do the performance\nI arrived late\nWhile the priest was\nAnointing the flock\nWhich consisted of older men and women\nStanding huddled together\nI stood in the ramparts\nIn the back\nNervously pissing on the wall\nAs the priest was finishing up\nThen I was introduced\nI had in my hands<\/strong>\nA globe of the earth\nA cheap plastic one\nWrapped around it\nWas the soiled torn sheet\nI had been sleeping in\nIn their wooden shack\nAs I walked to the scattered stones\nThat doubled as a stage\nThe gathered crowd parted<\/strong>\nLike the Red Sea\nI noticed the two mafia types\nIn the audience\nI began my performance\nSinging various national anthems\nBefore reading blasphemous texts<\/strong>\nI saw the henchmen raise their hands\nThat the performance or lecture\nWas now over\nAnd moments before I\nWas escorted from the stones\nTo wherever bodies are dumped\nBy the scruff of the neck\nI brazenly gathered the earth in\nThe torn sheet\nAnd once again the crowd parted\nThat stood in utter confusion\nDespite the translation<\/strong>\nFrom the mistress of ceremony\nWho laughed later in my face\nAt the debacle\nOf our lives.<\/strong><\/pre>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
When I spoke of a church without a roof over its head
\nSo that the heavens looked down upon it
\nRained down upon it
\nAnd now of course
\nIf I spoke of a ruin of a church in Odessa
\nI could be speaking of the future
\nThat will soon be past
\nAs my past will soon be over<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":39877,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[26,18,4,23,17],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-50690","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-books","8":"category-literature","9":"category-main","10":"category-news","11":"category-political-culture","12":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/05\/Willam-Cody-Mahler.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pbvgEs-dbA","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50690","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=50690"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50690\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":50720,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50690\/revisions\/50720"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/39877"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=50690"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=50690"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=50690"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}