Song of a Reformed Headhunter

"Bull Eclogues" is a sequence of poems I am writing, in the voice of a Ted Haggard-inspired speaker. The central conceit is to compare Haggard to Pasiphae, the Cretan queen who fell in love with a bull. I've completely rewritten Poem Six, which covers his outing by the sex worker. The Cave To be found out sounds like a sharp relief, for godless enemies, and not for me, a wide primetime report--ripping sheets off private beds--of public sentencing. Or else it sounds like holy disbelief, confusion in the ranks, complicity, on stony floors the awkward scrape of seats pushed back, the quiet airconditioning. At home it makes a smaller sound, like grief. The click of a light switch. No mercy in the darkness or the light the house repeats, but hiding for a time, however brief, in me, as in my den, I hear the plea of an unfired bullet in the drawer firing. *

Bull Eclogues “There's a part of my life that is so repulsive and dark that I have been warring against it for all of my adult life." The Cretan The Island The Drug The Oracle The Maze The God The Brazen Bull Great story, Pasiphaё. Queen falls in love with a white bull, and builds a wooden cow she hides inside to consummate her lust. She’s not the cow, you see. She just needs help. This thing of darkness, we all have one. Or two. I’m working hard on changing, with God’s help, my harmful ways of thinking, and my wife, bless her, has stuck by me throughout this time. I want to speak a straight word to my past. M.J., I know you’re watching this, my friend. I believe we’re not the creatures of our genes, we can change. Who could have imagined this, a young black man would enter the White House? This is the golden currency of dreams.

Bull Eclogues “There's a part of my life that is so repulsive and dark that I have been warring against it for all of my adult life." The Cretan The Island The Drug The Oracle The Maze The God Bullshit. I’ll make you eat your words. I’ll— I’ll crush your balls and make you drink it up. When I’m done with you, cunt, you’d wish you could crawl back to the hole you came from. I thought I couldn’t feel it any more but shame covers its face from cameras, cowers into the cave, thrusts out the man— pastor, husband, father—to brave the light. But my shame is a flame. It lights the hand that crushes me so as to make me new, the light that plays the lyre for his praise. And for his story, I will drink your words, will eat the goat who glorifies my God. Who else could change you, Judas, to a judge?

Bull Eclogues “There's a part of my life that is so repulsive and dark that I have been warring against it for all of my adult life." The Cretan The Island The Drug The Oracle The Maze Some say the puzzle is the palace. Home, its gorgeous wall hangings, gold passages, the hoofs stroll round, unable to kick down, the kitchen an aroma of lamb stew. Some say the world is riddled with tall caves that beckon the explorer, strong and young, deep into the intestines of intrigue, and then the rectum's private resignation. Between the world and home, I am lost to shame, having given up the old habit, guilt. What is this spool of red spun through the maze, I cannot say but see it to the end. The ball shrinks fast. The pattern almost done. Why does the wool look so much like a web?

Bull Eclogues “There's a part of my life that is so repulsive and dark that I have been warring against it for all of my adult life." The Cretan The Island The Drug The Oracle I want to tell you how the White House calls for faith to light again the public square, and fight the culture wars: because of me God has a hearing with the President. I want to tell you thirty million heads, chastised before the altar of great change, pray after me, Your will be done on earth, and watch the fire eat the ballot box. I want to tell you all that I have done but how can I? Outside this hotel room, I am the man with no accent but God’s. Inside I have no language except lust. Outside I shout, God bless America! Inside, Fuck my ass harder. Harder. Fuck.

Bull Eclogues “There's a part of my life that is so repulsive and dark that I have been warring against it for all of my adult life." The Cretan The Island The Drug What do you have? Will you sell it to me? This ecstasy fell from the sky one day and pulverized to powder on the ground. We snort into the brain dead snowflakes. This liquid crystal slammed into the vein like lethal waste pumped from cattle farms in drinking water is forgetfulness. Is this the speed you have? Will you sell it? Or are you plugging that fool’s gold called love, disguised as fucking bought and sold like fags, lottery tickets, gum, or vitamins? I puff a cloud and change into a herd my human senses and intelligence. My soul roots for a corn-fed meal, and squeals.

Bull Eclogues “There's a part of my life that is so repulsive and dark that I have been warring against it for all of my adult life." The Cretan The Island From week to week I walk on water, fight the urge to look down at the deluged faces whose liquid hands support my stony feet and hold on for the heart’s faltering hit. When squalls rise up and shake the long-stemmed brain, even the faithful look for land, and land their bodies on the strong arms of a beach, the grass of books, tobacco flowers, nightcaps. Turned, blown, off-course, I throw me on this room. For here the kri-kri leaps with the white mountains, the citron bubbles in the hand, the olive branch presented to a beast is not so beastly, but promises a civilization of the sea within, though not the sea without.

Bull Eclogues “There's a part of my life that is so repulsive and dark that I have been warring against it for all of my adult life." The Cretan You come out of the shower, warm and wet, and towel your head with rough deliberation. Those wide shoulders, untouched by a plough, you wear like a smile, and the world is new. I know I should have sacrificed you to God, I should have raised the knife despite its stone, and saved its bullion in your bull-cow heart, I should have turned from fucking with a beast. Instead I let you lash my legs to you, haul me through contracting caves, and grind into the ground the altar of my lust; yet, stubborn, round and gold, the violence rises from the deeps, the pressure lessening, as if a treasure is dragged from the sea.