Crippled Strength

[Sitaram]

Crippled Strength
===================

My strength of arms,
A crippled strength
From gripping crutches
Like a cross:

Arms, but no man,
I sing my borrowed lyrics,
A would-be bard,
Bowed under
Fardels, hard to bear.

My mental strength
The strength of scars
From years of abject tyranny.
Perfection becomes
Day laborer
For mediocrity.

I gather words
Which gather thoughts
As ordnance for siege
Against the hordes of
Scavenging everyman.

It is these fragments! Yes!
The fragments, all along!
The myriad of shattered shards
That built the Great Wall
Of my crumbling fortress
Guarding now an ostracised realm
A fictive similitude
Becoming more reality than real.

The only wealth remaining
Is to beg, borrow, steal.
My coffers become a coffin.

To one lone friend,
Invisible, I write
Alone in darkness
As I rail against the
Fading twilight,
A nothing diminishing more.

My pale guitar, stolen!
Stolen all, the words,
These thought, ideas,
Abandoned poems.
Nothing my own
And yet I wanted all.

Desire,
My mistress whore.
The stench of harpies
Lingers at the door.

And wanting
I have wantonly become
The nothing I now am,
Waiting,
Waiting for the end.

Now is the time for dirge and eulogy,
Sermon and litany.

I am no Christian,
But, I understand
That Christ,
Become sin,
Understand that man,
(Why else the darkened sky
And gibbering dead?)
That Christ become the harlot,
That Christ become the thief,
That Christ become idolater,
That eater of filthy things,
That Christ, become all things,
That someone might be saved.

And if you have no courage to become
The harlot, killer or incestuous thief,
If only for that moment of confession,
That honest moment in the morning light
When you say yes to wicked imaginings,
Deceitful above all things,
Then, can you understand?
Can you be honest?
Can you feel?
Can you visit on death row?
Can you heal?

Or are you Pharisees
In whited sepulchers
Lighting incense
To cover up
The stale air within?

- Sitaram

07-21-05 at 3:00 a.m.

[jooliette]

wwo! that was so BEAUTIFUL! you have a nice way with words!!! i really liked how you described Christ not as a human but as something more.. or at least i think you did? but i gotta give you a two thumbs up for it! good job!

[Sitaram]

Thanks for your kind words. As you and I were conversing just now in messenger, and I mentioned some things to you about the Bhagavad-gita, I was editing a small extract for posting. It is coincidental that what I just edited serves as a good response to your point about the Christ, in my poem, seeming to be "something more". The Christ in my poem becomes all things.
The word "Christ" ("Anointed") itself suggest the pouring of oil, sharing the root with chrismation and chrism.

I was thinking of posting these excerpts in the religion forum, but since they will serve some purpose here, I shall post them here.

I am the sacrifice.
I am the fire.
I am the butter that is poured into the fire.
I am the priest who poors.

My true nature is more radiant than 1000 suns.


Although all things are mine and I have no goals or desires, yet I never
cease my activity. Were I to cease my activity for one single instant
then countless worlds and beings would perish. Yet all those worlds
and beings are supported from moment to moment by but a single
spark of my energy and magnificance.


Of sacrifices I am Japa (silent mantra repetition).
Of syllables I am AUM.

I am Ram of Warriors.
I am Shiva.
I am Brahman.
I am being and non-being.
I am death itself, and destruction.
I am life and creation.


But most of all I am your intimate friend and associate.
I am waiting to play my flute for you.
I am waiting for you to join me in my divine lilas (passtimes).

And, here it is again, in a dream I once had, many years ago, a dream that I always remember:


http://toosmallforsupernova.org/page027.htm

If you choose to read about my dream, you will understand why I am so fond of "Life of Pi" by Yann Martel.

I have been very influenced by the notion of "becoming all things."

http://toosmallforsupernova.org/page002.htm

The history of God and creation is the history of art in reverse. The big bang is abstract and postmodern. An absinthe soaked demiurge places a canvas of bare being on the tsimtsum floor of fantasy and savagely splashes disjointed, rabid colors of quantum, driving googles of naked, crazed angels to wallow and slither with barest feet. Drying across burdensome, spanning eons, these frantic antinomies come to symmetrical focus in the mayic vision of nebular consciousness as the classic romanticism of relativity, in procession through the doric, newtonian columns, perfected in indolence to the ideal temple and ark of the mosaic, and finally framed in historical archive of archetypal campfire flicker in dreamtime caverns.

http://toosmallforsupernova.org/fromtheauthor.htm

Here I am, Odysseus strapped to the mast, Christ-like, in amidst a thronging multitude of oarsmen with wax-deafened ears, while the lusty naked Sirens flog my tormented vision with their glistening quivering breasts and reddening hirsuite loins, singing their forbidden song for me and me alone. I am enflamed by the perfumed scents of their secret places and can almost taste the salty condiments of their ardour and desire.

http://toosmallforsupernova.org/page049.htm

I am not speaking to you now. I am speaking to that other person (over there)... you see. Oh, I guess you can't see from where you are. But that other person has been reading me for a while now. They sort of started reading by accident, out of curiosity. But then, as they read, they began to know not just the words, but me, behind the words. And as they read, I opened up to them, and they opened up to me. And I showed them more and more of myself. I exposed myself slowly. I stripped before their very eyes until I was as naked as the wrestlers in the Palaestra. But then, I stripped down even more, exposing the atoms of Lucretius. And before they could catch their breath, or say no and leave the room, I stripped down to the very waves of Patanjali. But for all my nakedness, they never came to know the me that I know. They fell in love with the me that they thought I was, and that me became them, but a them they shall never show to me. So now, there they are, over there, looking somewhere else than my direction. And now, I feel slightly cold, being so naked. But that is ok, because if it werent for being that someone else that they love, I would never have been anyone at all. And it is the love which matters really, not the self. Is this not so?

http://www.literature-web.net/forums...68&postcount=1

Whenever I attempted to write, I sought words as weapons to immortally wound the souls of others. I wanted my words to by that exquisite virgin child dancing, secretly, shamelessly and seductively, naked before the gaping eyes and speechless opened mouths of a throng of aged renunciates
stunned motionless yet trembling at the sight of what they have
always longed for yet never dared imagine much less speak.

[chispa]

interesting!!!

[mono]

How fascinating!
I had to read the poem a few times to allow some of the lines diffuse into my head, and look up a word, absent from my vocabulary, but it sounds so much like such a work of sorrow, finding strength in perceived weakness, light in darkness, and companionship in solitude - in a way, much like some of D.H. Lawrence's less invasive free-verse (I hope you take it as a compliment ).
In certain passages of the poem, especially: "I am no Christian, / But, I understand / That Christ, / Become sin, . . ." I feel you assume no bias or organized perspective (though I cannot call religion a bad thing), but conceive of Kant's idea of subjective reality as you will. This idea, alone, seems the greatest separation, deviating the poet from all other surroundings; this, I believe, creates the undeniable wisdom and admiration of poets from others - owning a perspective that occasionally seems torturous to the poet, but enjoyable to the readers.
Well done, Sitaram.

[Sitaram]

Thanks Chispa and Mono for your interest and feedback. I am fascinated by the saying, of Paul Valery, that a poem is never finished but only abandoned.

I came back to this poem, this morning, and made some minor changes.

Sometimes, changing a single word or punctuation mark can make such a difference.

My MAJOR change, this morning, was to add a lot more thats to this stanza:

That Christ,
Become sin,
Understand that man,
(Why else the darkened sky
And gibbering dead?)
That Christ become the harlot,
That Christ become the thief,
That Christ become idolater,
That eater of filthy things,
That Christ, become all things,
That someone might be saved.

For though I am free from all, I have made myself a servant to all, that I might win more of them. To the Jews I became as a Jew, in order to win Jews. To those under the law I became as one under the law (though not being myself under the law) that I might win those under the law. To those outside the law I became as one outside the law (not being outside the law of God but under the law of Christ) that I might win those outside the law.
To the weak I became weak, that I might win the weak. I have become all things to all people, that by all means I might save some.

In Sanskrit, the word mleccha means "eater of filthy things" and is a word which appears as early as the Vedas to denote a foreigner.

There is supposedly a verse in the Vedas which uses that word to prophecy the coming of Muhammad as the Kalki Avatar, but I think the interpretation is somewhat strained and far-fetched.