Steven Hirsch's Demon Commuter

 

Steven Hirsch’s Demon Commuter from Giant Steps Press is available at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and elsewhere for $19.95.  Further information on Hirsch and his work is available at the Giant Steps site https://giantstepspress.wordpress.com/steven-hirsch/.

 

      Steve Hirsch’s readers expect a lot: great poems of corralled consciousness barely contained in words stretched to the breaking point.  Hirsch captures the unique moment, but his imagistic precision mingles intimately with the recognition of the socio-political-historical dimension of the scenes of his life, and with a view longer yet, his lines are lit with glints of what does not change, the illumination which is for him less a conviction than a habit of vision, nothing more than the way things look.  

     In its most literal reading the title refers to Hirsch’s (and many other workers’) daily routine, the commute to earn a living, the mental “drivenness” imposed by the reality principle.  Taking a step back, Hirsch makes it clear that his own sometimes ill-fitting vocation is embedded in an inescapable system that privileges greed and aggression, giving the demonic the face of war and exploitation.  Yet in his final vision, everything is transformed, redeemed even, and “demon” can regain a numinous glow.  But even once the demon of the title has appeared in beneficent form as the sort of interior muse of which Socrates spoke, now and then he seems more closely to resemble S. Clay Wilson’s Checkered Demon in his frantic, barely controllable impulsive energy.  

     With a Mahayana impulse toward sympathy with all sentient beings, Hirsch imagines what burdens may weigh on the psyches of his fellow citizens.

 

the dark bags you carry

the persnickety boss, the wear of

gravity, knees chafed by

seat backs, groveling and

fruitless weekend prayers to a god

that simply is not there

as maddening as a crossword

missing a critical clue

 (from “Demon Commuter”)

 

Often the hurrying lines of Hirsch’s poems overflow in catalogues, words falling as in a cataract.  In “Supplication to the Muse of a Dark Age” specific signs of the season lead to the definition of a psychic hunger and then to a masterful concluding image, so natural it seems a proverb.

 

 

Full force fall in a rain of leaves, crops trimmed

& drying in large bins, shrink wrapped sanity

convenient and hermetically sealed.

Last little green tomato at risk to ripen or rot before

winter frosts the cold stovepipe and eaves.

Try to talk sense so I hear you through the rain on the gutters

the sirens, derailments, hurricanes, flak —

A mask surrendered is a

mask traded for another mask that masks the mask Jack

 

     For Hirsch current events are as much an element in the phenomena boiling all about him as the autumn.  He reacts to his local nuclear plant and the Mueller investigation and reviles “Vlad the scum-paler,” but in the end these are the fleas of the world, the social projection of the comedown inscribed in miniature on every waking day.

 

At 5:58 again

no matter what the song

clockradio curdles spirit

sours mind, kills dreaming

slays the composer writing aubades

in lazy morning afterglow.

On the dawn-chilled depot platform

(“Transgressions”)    

 

Yet the dreaming may be overcome, seen past, transcended with high thoughts and the illuminated dreams of art.  A longtime Buddhist practitioner, Hirsch has studied what he calls the “blank book of Zen” and realizes that irritation and desire do not vanish, but rather assume a place in a whole and perfect picture.

 

Deer ticks leap from tree bark

to truck their miniature dose of Lyme

into the truck stop of loose socks hanging

over a row of hiking boots.

Hold cosmic mudra below my navel

for another quiet hour until the gong

and then Kin Hin walking like mountain

(“Zazen Weekend at the Grail”)

 

We all travel together as demon commuters, all passengers on “The Train to the End of the World.”  No need for sighs. 

 

No muscle can lift

the unsurpassable.

                                                            (“Zazen”)

 Yet there is beauty and solace and vision in Hirsch’s small machines made of words, one all the more necessary for frantic commuters, anxious householders, and those terrified by the evening news.

 

[This poetry is a rescue

from the death of all dreams.]

(“Urban Verses”)