Egoinos

Well, this is my rather sucky attempt (that actually sounds rather disgusting...)

Anyway...Ecce Homo:

Touched with drops of illusion...
Or madness...
The rotting naked corpse
Laid bare on crumbling wood
Transformed
Becomes a man, beautiful,
Golden power flowing
From emptied veins
On a cross of Lebanon cedar.
A sacrifice
But no horror nor senseless death.
Sweet-smelling salvation is its measure
Glorified in awful death
Remembered long.

The glowing man on wood
More alive than life
Sings beauty to the watcher
Sings of release of fear.
Beauty that makes knees bend
In unconscious adoration.
A picture hung
From every wall
The sum and substance of faith
Conclusion of the old world,
And beginning of the new.

But illusion cannot last forever
Once gone cannot be rekindled
When wood dries out
And winds dry the body
Then we shall see.
Unthinkable horror,
Rotting body on rotting wood,
No object of adoration he
But mere corruption
We all come to.

Take down the cross
Take down the man
Let the body come to dust
And new life come from death
As new plants from old grow.
Reveal the beauty of the living
The glory of the human heart
The power of the human brain,
Not a travesty of our virtues
Dead and decaying on a cross.
Give the man dignity
Let him die
And in so doing
Give us all life.
---

Ta da!

--Egoinos--

ApostateAbe

I finally found it in me to write a poem of my own. I am pleased with this one:


Dwindling Deity


God’s sky dome holds clouds it’s believed
‘til climates with mist are conceived

God makes the lightning strike ground
‘til electrical currents are found

God's rainbows are magic of skies
‘til diffraction of light we surmise

God’s Earth is a disk we are told
‘til the knowledge of sages unfold

God tells us the Earth is immovable
‘til an orbiting Earth becomes provable

God's fallen angels possess us
'til facts of psychology bless us

God made our females inferior
‘til humanity makes none superior

God made all life in six days
‘til our knowledge was given a raise

Is Yahweh perpetually shrinking
With each step to the next in our thinking?


--Abel Dean

chiron64

It seems unlikely that anyone else will ever read this poem I began in '95, so here's my chance to use my allotted 15 minutes of fame. It's not finished and I don't know if I'll ever finish it. Writing it was rewarding but also exhausting. I had envisioned god disappearing to Asher once the paradox of free will and omniscience became fully apparent.

Fatal Questions

A God in Heaven once decreed,
“Let there be Man and let him lead
A life that’s good and pure and right,
And pleasing to his Maker’s sight.”
And so it came to pass.

“Behold, a creature made of flesh
And deathless soul in perfect mesh.
An animal in form and cast;
A freeborn spirit, unsurpassed
By any earthly being.

All angels raised their voice to He
Whose words become reality.
“Praise be to Him Whose mighty hand
With naught but clay made brother Man.”
And God was pleased with them.

But one amongst the Heavenly host
Was not content with Great God’s boast
That Man, of every earthly beast,
Was ruled by Nature’s law the least.
So Asher questioned God.

“My Lord and God, how can it be
That Man’s immortal soul is free
To make a choice, it’s own delight,
‘Tween bad and good; ‘tween wrong and right?”
And God did make reply.

“Precious Asher, 'tis plain to see:
He knows his soul and it knows he.
Though true that man is free to sin
‘Ere long his mind will look within.”
And Asher knit his brow.

“The brutes of earth and of the sea
Behave as is their destiny.
A plan is written in each heart
From which each act cannot depart.”
And silent Asher nodded.

“No animal can e’er be blamed,
Nor can it ever feel ashamed.
Like every star above the earth
They follow laws set ‘fore their birth.”
Then Asher rose to speak:

“But Man can err, obeying none,
And know the evil he has done.
A blackened soul can’t be ignored
When mind’s eye sees this thing abhorred.”
And God smiled at Asher.

“Thy brief account, so plain to see,
O’erflows with Thy profundity.
But still, one thing, Consoling Lord,
Thy wise reply leaves unexplored.
Wilt please Thou ease my thirst?”

“Dearest Asher, thou knowest well
Thy gravest hungers God will quell.
But beware, thou tread’st a way
Replete with woe none can allay.
Take not this perilous path.”

But Asher’s mind was undeterred,
For greater, still, than Lord God’s Word,
The hellish flame of His design,
Despoiler of the Plan Divine,
Was Asher’s curiosity.

“As Thou did’st make the fertile earth
To float beneath high Heaven’s berth,
Both man and beast are thus denied
Th’eternal view Thou did’st provide
My astral kin and me.

“His mind perceives the mortal world
As a manuscript unfurled.
Or as a searcher in tall grass
Whose rearward steps, as clear as glass,
Receive the name of ‘past’.

“The place from whence he must proceed,
From whence he sees the towering reed
That once concealed what is now known,
And certain as God’s will in stone,
This place he calls his ‘present’.

“To man, ahead, there is no trail
That lies behind the dark-green veil.
The future is, to men half-blind,
A cold equation; undefined.
The source of all his fears.

“And yet to God on Heaven’s throne
Man’s life to come is writ in stone.
It is a well-defined trail
Of which, Thou know’st, he must avail.
My Lord, is this not so?

“If each man’s life is in Thy mind,
If each man’s end is predefined,
Then who darest judge the soul of Man
When each man’s end, ‘ere Time began,
Was even then as now?

“And what becomes of sin and blame
And loathsome hell’s malicious flame
If, at the wheel, life’s fountainhead,
Man’s fragile, evanescent thread
Is spun and culled and cut?