At the Southern Museum of Archaeology, I find
Homo heidelbergensis, the last common ancestor
of man and Neanderthals.
A skull with a sloping forehead, pronounced brow ridges
and no jawbone, a skull that, coupled with a heart,
once contained techniques of ecstasy,
esoteric knowledge of joy, gained,
perhaps, near a gentle soughing stream or
at dawn, sunset, night under the stars or
after a successful hunt or
at his joining with his woman or
at the birth of his children or
at the death of an enemy—
I am much more simple, now.
Tonight, the android Gypsy woman in the glass booth
will awkwardly lay out my cards and discern my future through plastic eyes
and with a resolute smile egest a slip of printed paper
telling me generic-happy-specifics.
I really cannot ever make myself believe
a common augury. Chinese fortune cookies
do not change my life though I have tried.
Benny, a homeless street prophet at 5 Points, tells me
every time he sees me “You are bound for greater things.”
Elijah, my fundamental Christian neighbor, constantly warns me about
a hell that “invades the land of the living and takes prisoners.”
The cards will yield no ready clues.
They must be interpreted by an adept,
a possessor of occult knowledge
concerning past and future.
Heidelbergensis is the first species of the Homo genus
to bury its dead.
I am a middle way Catholic.
I like historical criticism too much, or
I want to like it. In the Church galaxy, hell is a “mystery”
beyond my ability to understand, to understand
the rightness of it, the justness of it
and how God can yet be love.
I believe in geologic time, carbon dating, archaeology.
Homo heidelbergensis could probably ferment a beverage.
He knew about certain mood-altering roots and herbs and flowers.
Did his people suffer from addiction? They had no package stores, no bars,
no coffee shops, no rave clubs.
In Nazi Germany, alcoholics and addicts
were deemed to be “life unworthy of life.”
They were sterilized during America’s early 20th Century eugenics purge.
Now the health insurance companies and hospitals say
it is a disease, a heritable disease
expressing itself on the level of genes.
Chemical dependency is a malady, an unfortunate state
which comes upon us. Like diabetes.
Recovery nets billions of dollars per year in America.
The illegal drug business nets 350 billion dollars per year,
worldwide. And so on. (Alestair Crowley called himself “the Beast 666.”
He died a heroin addict. Did he also require heroin in the afterlife?
Did he need to detox there?)
The next right thing.
I would readily see the lesser secrets.
I would readily see the greater secrets.
I still need help to do this,
to look for the defining arcana
in a random array of circumstances. And
I will learn to interpret the circumstances.
by Bryan Merck
Bryan Merck has published in America, Blast Furnace, Camel Saloon, Conclave, Emerge Literary Journal, Hiram Poetry Review, Literary Juice, The Rusty Nail, Stoneboat and others. He is a past winner of the Southern Literary Festival Poetry Prize and the Barkesdale-Maynard Poetry Prize. He lives in Moultrie, Georgia with his wife Janice.
