To Hershy
To those of us humbled?
No longer an intellectual quest,
No longer an academician's point of interest, the quiet
library of discourse,
To those of us humbled
By the power of this -other side?
By its sheer uncanniness, its cunning,
Its control over our lives
Be it illness, dis-ability, pain or addiction
We, who have been humbled,
Have a different -knowing?
We know instinctively, in the body
Some innate sensor, like a cat when danger is at hand
Though the body wreaks its havoc
The battlefield of lain corpses
In this body, the wasteland of past desire.
Stumbling, faultily, we hobble home from the lost war, in
the broken trenches
Whose only recompense is this wise knowing
The knowledge of the flesh
An ironic reminder of a primordial gnosis
In-the-flesh, whereupon waking
Those ancient parents felt only shame
Soon to be clothed in rags-of-guilt
Even God was called in as a tailor
For only God could hide this shame, yet
Even God could not, would not remove this shame.
We do not need Mel Gibson to tell us of Passion
We too have our flesh whipped and torn
We too run the gauntlet of Prussian then Russian soldiers
The snake beating us into submission
We too have had illness inscribed into our flesh
As carriers for our past, our families our ethnic groups
Even our nation.
Too much violence out there
Too many centuries of torture now inscribed in the chosen
ones
In pain, in illness, a new cross, a new nailing, new
stigmata.
To those of us humbled, nailed to the cross of illusion and
desire
Waiting for God to remove our shame
No longer satisfied with mere covering
Refusing the tailor albeit divine
We say?
Surrender!
Resist this game
Be taken prisoner
Prisoner -of-war
You warriors-of-the-flesh
You’ve won already
Because of your burning flesh
You have "the knowledge" you know the secret, you have
the gnosis
Inscribed in you
Without even thinking
In your stigmata the secret is revealed
No longer an ideos
In the head
No longer a mind-game
You radiate it in your broken flesh
Your pain and your anguish
You, we are the prophets of today.
