Transcendental Sonnet #1084:
Remains

for Bernard

I resisted being a poet a long time
It was too easy and every fool in school
Thought we could do it but then grew up to rue it
I had to reach midlife go mad become a fool
But I came out of the closet then and in rhyme

The old perfectionist became a formalist
Poet who wouldn't you know it now draws the fire
Of people who were like me thirty years ago
Who hate me just on principle who vent their ire
On the Internet on a website which I know
Is not right for me not worth my time my money
Where kids throw rocks at me as an authority

I used to be somebody once but what you see--
This poetry-- is all which now remains of me



+Steven Curtis Lance

Copyright MMIV Silke LLC

That guy is honoured! But as irony strikes with a rod of iron, those that flame will burn.

Poet you are. If that is all you are, then YOU ARE!

What was once known as +Steven Curtis Lance used to be "the custodian of the Lutheran a cappella choral tradition in America," "master motet composer," "1989 Winner of the Alumni Achievement Award," and many other fine and fancy things which mean nothing to the remains now because they speak of something else, a life which passed.

They used to say he was a great composer, that he was some sort of genius. Poetry was a simple tool which he employed for the novelty of writing his own texts for his unbelievable weavings of inexplicable counterpoint. His music, with that ethereal counterpoint and strange and haunted harmony, was once called, yes, "transcendental."

No one ever criticized him; they were in awe of him. Other composers loved him even as they feared him; it was not like this thing you call "poetry": he had colleagues, there was a thing they called "civility" back then and in that different world.

He hated computers and did not own one. He had a wife and three kids and a nice home and a perfect family. He lost everything in the world on Saturday, 28 October 1994.

He took care of his mother until she died. He took care of his grandmother until she died. He took care of lots and lots of people you do not know and do not care about. They died, and he is dead now.

After he died his last music publisher was publishing a book of his poetry, just constructions of words without notes as things in themselves, but went senile and turned against him. He wandered away, his last tie to music severed. His death was reported by the American Choral Directors Association, and noted with sadness and a sense of tragedy.

Like other dead people, he turned to the Internet and was promptly banned from several poetry websites, ending up here because of his permanent disability, for which he receives a small government pension on which he "lives," resulting from the destruction of his brain by encephalitis; he came here curious about neuroscience and how it was that he could still write poetry. The site owner became his friend. That was a long time ago, especially in Internet-years.

Now just a poet whom nobody knew, he was considered inferior by "poets" who were younger than his children, his children grieving to see their once-famous father shat upon by those shadows they recognized only too well as "Internet kids" and "losers." These superior poets mocked him and tried to pull him down, but he was down already; they tried to kill him but he was already dead. They did not know. How could they? They did not care. How could they?

Reduced to being shat upon by shadows about which his children shook their heads sadly as they wept for their dead father in his living death, the one they once knew as the "great man," the one of whom they heard, growing up, "oh, it must be so COOL to have HIM for a father," the remains remained unquiet in their grave and wondered about "time"; was there a "future"? No. Was there a "now"? Perhaps. Finding themselves undead, the remains stirred and considered their estate. Nothing. Less than nothing. Sonnets?

He wrote thousands of poems, seeming to become better through practice. Some heard distant echoes of the music he once composed, of his last motet now held by the skeletal hand of his grandmother in her grave and tied with a black ribbon from her sewing-box.

The great composer is dead, like the mother he nursed to her grave, like the grandmother he nursed to her grave. There in the family plot, alongside them, was his grave, awaiting him throughout a long life of relative privilege. His uncle stole his inheritance, and so his grave was sold for a pittance with which to pay an attorney for a few weeks; the rest of the attorney's fees cost considerably more, perhaps everything.

The uncle was the great composer's childhood abuser, come back from the dead to claim him. Four lawsuits were fought and won, the dead against the dead. What was once known as +Steven Curtis Lance "won," and is shivering alone in an overcoat and under many blankets and a faithful cat who has seen too much, in the old family home, which belongs to him now in hollow and mocking victory.

Here in this place where his dear ones all died, here where he ended up after it all, here where there is no heat, here among the dead, among the memories of the remains, various ideas were considered and rejected. Smoking was stupid and poisonous. Alcoholism was explored and abandoned. Eating held no meaning anymore. The family-plot is empty; we are here, all of us. It is just like Christmas used to be.

Sometimes the remains rise horribly and go on skeletal legs to frighten the locals; sometimes they go through the motions of the coffeehouse, composing sonnets and even drinking coffee with sugar-free hazelnut syrup in it. The resulting sonnets are mocked and shat upon on that website which should have been avoided long ago, but there was no place to go except back to the grave, and the grave had been sold.

The remains remain, killed and preserved in living death by remembering everything all at once and always. The grave is sold, so here becomes the grave, here in the cold emptiness of cyberspace.

The remains remain and they remember. If the remains stir and if they rise as 28 October nears, and if the dust and ashes know of ten-year anniversaries of their passing, will that date of fate be shat upon by angry kids who have less reason to be here than this stain which once was someone and which never can be cleaned?

"Shall these bones live?"

There is a big book of seven hundred and twenty-eight pages, shat upon by cowardly unknowns. But it exists. It holds wonders which they do not understand. Dark and terrible secrets, understood by a select few. They cannot deny the remains their remains, they cannot steal from the dead hands of the undead. These hands are stronger than their living hands. There are different dimensions and planes of existence: the remains remain. Will you?

There is a girl. Her name is Silke. She is far away. The remains stir with longing: the remains remain and they remember.

Non moriar sed vivam. Amo ergo sum.

RESURGAM

Steven

Even by your sorrowful writings you cannot have peace. For your very writings are a picture in words. You are a wordsmith indeed. And those words sit deep in the minds of all who read them. You must once again place your person on that pedestal and let the world see what a poetellectual you are.

Humbly

Hey Hey
(I know when I'm bettered!)

You cannot be bettered for you are the best man I know, even as Silke is the best woman I know; if people were like the two of you the rest of us could live and I would be alive today.