Searching...

 Searching – Homo Disneyana, Call of the wild, Perspectives, Held, Belonging

Homo Disneyana

        I.

Homo Disneyana

Lopes through the litterscape

Of the late Anthropocene

Leaving a trail of 

discarded identities

From whose throes arises

An army of the maimed.

Disneyana stands, turns,

Proclaims his creed as 

a counter-curse: “I

can be anything I want!”

But the spectres unimpressed

Crowd forward and

The pursuit begins. 

        II.

Scrolling through the screenscape

Of the early thanatocene

Disneyana hopes a void 

To echo his vacuity… 

But the stardust drifts 

into disturbing shapes

Almost as if there were a mind…

Jabbing out the cosmos,

He rams in his earbuds

And grabs for a safer app - 

“I’ll catalogue my selfies!” -

Not to hear the Voice, 

Not to see the Face:

“I can be anything I want,” 

“Except Yours.”

        III.

Saints Walt and Jeff, Saint Mark and Saint Elon

Are gathered round the bed he lies upon.

They’re watching every flicker of his eyes

And planning means by which to monetise

Each moment of his rapt attention

As he performs his daylong adoration

Before the glow of their iconostasis.

Those saints have greedy looks upon their faces.

Some think they are the guardians of our soul

Some think that they intend to eat us whole.

Call of the wild

One of the beautiful things about being a Christian is that, God having amazingly made reconciliation with us through Jesus, we find ourselves loved and forgiven. This marks the beginning of a long journey of reconciliation: because the healing of our relationship with God has taken place at a very deep and still being-worked-through level, our relationships with the world, with others and with ourselves is now also open to receiving God's healing. Even the parts of our being of which we have no conscious awareness are open to the vast mindfulness of the One in whom we live and move and have our being. So here is an attempt to imagine an encounter with my inner stranger, deep in the jungle of the subconscious...

So if the wild is out there,

Who is this yelling in here?

Are you an anthropoid ancestor,

Born to rampage round

The forest of my mind?

Or did you retreat deep

into the darkness from

The closed faces and cutting words?

Was it horror beyond hideous

That hounded you to hide in the dark?

Are you my rage at the dazzling

Digitised, dehumanised world

That has made its distaste for me

So contemptuously clear?

Was that your lonely calling?

Were you clowning in the clearings

when there was no-one to see?

Or could it have been me?

 

I think it might help us if we could

meet and learn to be friends.

Can we coax each other out and let

Our howling grow into healing? 

Perspectives

I consider, I consider

Two eyes staring in a mirror

The seer veiled in the sight.

Dark suns in a blue corona

Show only shadows of their owner.

I lift my eyes to the light.

Father of light, now let me raise

My sight to meet Your radiant gaze.

What You behold me to be

Is who I am – beyond surmise

Is Love in the Beholder’s eyes

Whose seeing me makes me see.

Held

I am a stone chipped from a cold white tomb.

In your firm grip I'm comforted and scared,

my jagged edges fit wrong in your palm.

Both strong and tender, soft and hard, you hold

and hold and hold and hold; I am transformed

deep till the pain of being slowly eases,

quiet your life seeps in until I'm calmed.

But from your hand around my sharpness oozes

Redness. You could not grip me without wounds,

My name engraved in pain in your pierced hands.

Belonging

Master, how many ways are there that I am yours?

As the poem is the poet’s, You conceived me.

As I am my mother’s, by Your Spirit You bore me.

As my hand enacts my thoughts, You embody Yourself in me.

As the field is the warrior’s, You conquered me.

As the hoard is the hero’s, You despoiled my enemies of me.

As the pearl is the merchant’s, with all You had You bought me.

As a house becomes a home, You inhabit me.

As a chair fits to its carpenter, You fashion me 

As the garden is the gardener’s, You labour in me.

So Yours that if You cease to think of me

I must return to quanta fizzling aimlessly

Into the void, and can no longer be.

Then since I am Your own so variously

One more way to be Yours now offer me,

The grace to give myself, entire and free.

So I am Yours, You mine, eternally.