When you and I were Jesus,

[PrinceMyshkin]

When you and I were Jesus,
young, but with the press of destiny
already hard upon us,
did we look at the other boys
and girls and envy them
their early, innocent, delicious
intimations of sin? They seemed to know
that each others’ bodies
were the very fruit of which they’d been
forbidden and foreordained
to eat and their chins
already ran slick with the imagined
juice of that fruit. O brothers
and sisters, did our mortal
bodies cry out to them, how we wish
we could join you in your great
corporeal feast, your frolicking
with the God in each other!

But we have been made
for some other story, more austere,
harsh as the deserts of heaven...
The shadow of the rood
lies over our pilgrimage. Turn which way we might
we cannot avoid it.

Come, let us go
where we must.



Jerry Newman © July 18, 2007

[Pendragon]

Hi Jerry. Mixing Poetry and Religion may come back to bite you. Even though the poem is flawless, your message may be taken wrong. Take it from one who knows all too well... (Recall "Just a Question?")

Pen

http://i94.photobucket.com/albums/l108/AbsalomKane/Smilies/PuppyLove.gif

[PrinceMyshkin]

Hi Jerry. Mixing Poetry and Religion may come back to bite you. Even though the poem is flawless, your message may be taken wrong. Take it from one who knows all too well... (Recall "Just a Question?")

Pen

http://i94.photobucket.com/albums/l108/AbsalomKane/Smilies/PuppyLove.gif

I don't recall the "Just a question" thread you're referring to but I was well aware that there might be a Mrs Grundy or a legion of them who could or would find fault with that poem. I was satisfied that I had neither intended nor achieved anything that was offensive to Jesus or to the more benign of his followers. The Mrs. Grundy's, like alas the poor, we will always have with us.

The poor have my sympathy. Mrs Grundy et al, my disdain.

Whether the poem is flawless or no I won't presume to judge but I did read it over the phone to my older son, himself a poet of substance, and he immediately seized upon and pointed out that where I now have "story" and "pilgrimmage" I had twice used the word "narratrive," which he said was a modern use of that term at odds with the diction in the poem in general.

You have children? If so, you know that there is nothing one can do on one's own that makes one so proud as who they are and their achivements!

[Pendragon]

I don't recall the "Just a question" thread you're referring to but I was well aware that there might be a Mrs Grundy or a legion of them who could or would find fault with that poem. I was satisfied that I had neither intended nor achieved anything that was offensive to Jesus or to the more benign of his followers. The Mrs. Grundy's, like alas the poor, we will always have with us.

The poor have my sympathy. Mrs Grundy et al, my disdain.

Whether the poem is flawless or no I won't presume to judge but I did read it over the phone to my older son, himself a poet of substance, and he immediately seized upon and pointed out that where I now have "story" and "pilgrimmage" I had twice used the word "narratrive," which he said was a modern use of that term at odds with the diction in the poem in general.

You have children? If so, you know that there is nothing one can do on one's own that makes one so proud as who they are and their achivements!The thread begins with a poem I wrote, and you have posted on it, I believe, in the Religious section, where I am beginning to believe it's not worth my time. 3 children, you may find a picture in the Litnet Photoalbum of the clan. My daughter is a published (magazines) poet herself, and a fair artist, as am I. The two boys are into horticulture, the one just graduated High School. Daughter is 20, older son 18, younger 15. I'm to be 48 this year, the wife 47. There you have our history!

Pen

[motherhubbard]

It makes me proud when I hear men speak of their children as their crowning glory. You are both bright examples of how fathers should feel. So often men don’t realize their treasure until they have squandered it.


Now about the poem. I think it is lovely. As you know I am a Christian and reverence Christ. I do not think that this is disrespectful in anyway. As I’m sure you know, the New Testament teaches that Christ was tempted in all things and did not sin. Maybe there are those who believe Christ was above desiring carnal pleasures, but if I could be tempted to get my chin sticky then so could Christ. This humanity is part of his character. However, I’m sure that there are many who would be offended. the only way to avoid that is to write about the superficial.

I loved all of it, but I loved this the most

young, but with the press of destiny
already hard upon us,
did we look at the other boys
and girls and envy them

their chins already ran slick with the imagined
juice of that fruit.

I think it is brilliant, just brilliant. I would love to discuss it further with you. I think this is one of your best poems.

[firefangled]

how we wish
we could join you in your great
corporeal feast, your frolicking
with the God in each other!

[/I]



Jerry Newman © July 18, 2007


You are into something for me with these lines. How much better and accessible an example would it have been if Jesus had been praised as a human being who took full advantage of whatever force made such magnificent creatures as we are (and I mean these with as much humility as can be believed making a statement like this) and that ws the source of miracles and such wisdom. Playing with God in each of us...such a beautiful wish...

The ending is so sad, having to carry on as a God when all he wanted to do was play.

I am reminded of Rilke's line, Oh childhood, what was us going away, going where? Where?

[Virgil]

When you and I were Jesus,
young, but with the press of destiny
already hard upon us,
did we look at the other boys
and girls and envy them
their early, innocent, delicious
intimations of sin? They seemed to know
that each others’ bodies
were the very fruit of which they’d been
forbidden and foreordained
to eat and their chins
already ran slick with the imagined
juice of that fruit. O brothers
and sisters, did our mortal
bodies cry out to them, how we wish
we could join you in your great
corporeal feast, your frolicking
with the God in each other!

But we have been made
for some other story, more austere,
harsh as the deserts of heaven...
The shadow of the rood
lies over our pilgrimage. Turn which way we might
we cannot avoid it.

Come, let us go
where we must.



Jerry Newman © July 18, 2007


Prince, this is an outstanding poem. I can't say I quite understand the religious point, but as poetry it is wonderful.

[MaryLupin]

...how we wish
we could join you in your great
corporeal feast, your frolicking
with the God in each other!

The only glitch I ran into was the way corporeal sounded. It slows the rhythm and the long sounds cor...por drag in the mouth. I guess I would want a word there that feels like someone's smooth skin, or the curve of a hip. That's more in line with the feeling being created in that sentence.



But we have been made
for some other story, more austere,
harsh as the deserts of heaven...
The shadow of the rood
lies over our pilgrimage. Turn which way we might
we cannot avoid it.

Come, let us go
where we must.

This is the part of the poem that truly gets me...I have often thought about what martyrs think about what they are doing. I must admit I have little compassion for them (regardless of whether religious or otherwise). Yet this poem gives me a glimmer of a human beings still in love with the world. That is a good thing.

[Bii]

Hi Jerry,

I liked this very much, there are, as always, some great lines here and the sense of sadness, resignation, the sense of something missed is very palpable. I love these parts:




and envy them
their early, innocent, delicious
intimations of sin? They seemed to know
that each others’ bodies
were the very fruit of which they’d been
forbidden and foreordained
to eat and their chins
already ran slick with the imagined
juice of that fruit.

and



how we wish
we could join you in your great
corporeal feast, your frolicking
with the God in each other!

But we have been made
for some other story, more austere,
harsh as the deserts of heaven...
The shadow of the rood
lies over our pilgrimage. Turn which way we might
we cannot avoid it.

Come, let us go
where we must.

which is pretty much all of the poem isn't it!

[Granny5]

Beautifully written.

[ampoule]

When you and I were Jesus,
young, but with the press of destiny
already hard upon us,
did we look at the other boys
and girls and envy them
their early, innocent, delicious
intimations of sin? They seemed to know
that each others’ bodies
were the very fruit of which they’d been
forbidden and foreordained
to eat and their chins
already ran slick with the imagined
juice of that fruit. O brothers
and sisters, did our mortal
bodies cry out to them, how we wish
we could join you in your great
corporeal feast, your frolicking
with the God in each other!

But we have been made
for some other story, more austere,
harsh as the deserts of heaven...
The shadow of the rood
lies over our pilgrimage. Turn which way we might
we cannot avoid it.

Come, let us go
where we must.



Jerry Newman © July 18, 2007

The 'deserts of heaven' intrigues me. Even Christians walk under the shadow of the cross instead of experiencing the glory of it.
I appreciate so much your line 'Turn which way we might we cannot avoid it'. I picture a small wind-up toy that walks back and forth, bumping into walls and constantly changing direction, until it winds down. But, there are walls for all of us and other shadows and other crosses to bear, so, I think, your poem can speak for all of us. I like it very much.

'But we have been made for some other story'....perhaps the sequel to the rapture. Please don't take that wrong. Your poem has just made my mind wander and it feels good.

[PrinceMyshkin]

The only glitch I ran into was the way corporeal sounded. It slows the rhythm and the long sounds cor...por drag in the mouth. I guess I would want a word there that feels like someone's smooth skin, or the curve of a hip. That's more in line with the feeling being created in that sentence.

In your objection to corporeal you are in the very good company of my first born. I'm not happy myself with the Latinate quality of it, the implication that Jesus might have been sniffing disdainfully at the human body. What better evidence is there of western or anglo-saxon uneasiness about the body and its activities, including aging and death than that all the terms available to us are either prissily euphemistic or smirky or downright contemptuous?

We're still thrashing around over the apes/angels, mind/body, virgin/whore dichotomies.

I will work further on that. Thanks.

[Pendragon]

As a footnote to this poem, I may add that these lines:



...They seemed to know
that each others’ bodies
were the very fruit of which they’d been
forbidden and foreordained
to eat and their chins
already ran slick with the imagined
juice of that fruit...


represent what I actually believe was the "forbidden fruit", as it is what allows man to procreate, make life, like God is said to be the only one who can, and the punishments given: Eve must now bear childen in painful childbearing, Adam must work for their living, the serpent now becomes something to be feared and hated, a dirt crawler. But this isn't the Religious thread. Good poem, my friend.

Pen

[PrinceMyshkin]

As a footnote to this poem, I may add that these lines:



represent what I actually believe was the "forbidden fruit", as it is what allows man to procreate, make life, like God is said to be the only one who can, and the punishments given: Eve must now bear childen in painful childbearing, Adam must work for their living, the serpent now becomes something to be feared and hated, a dirt crawler. But this isn't the Religious thread. Good poem, my friend.

Pen

Many thanks. You may have expreienced in your own writing that not every
poem one writes demands or offers an opportunity for the best that one can do, and how grateful one is for those that do!

Plus, although I had never heard that theological interpretation you make of the forbidden truth, what brilliant sense it makes!

Thank you.

[dramasnot6]

This poem is truly excellent Prince, i do not think I could add any criticism to what I have read above. I like it's religious references, they are presented in a way that makes the poem open to a range of interpretation,which is often best.

[PrinceMyshkin]

This poem is truly excellent Prince, i do not think I could add any criticism to what I have read above. I like it's religious references, they are presented in a way that makes the poem open to a range of interpretation,which is often best.

Many thank.

[Debrasue]

Usually I try to avoid commenting on political/religious themes.... but.. Prince...this poem is beautiful...I am in total awe....

[MaryLupin]

In your objection to corporeal you are in the very good company of my first born. I'm not happy myself with the Latinate quality of it, the implication that Jesus might have been sniffing disdainfully at the human body. What better evidence is there of western or anglo-saxon uneasiness about the body and its activities, including aging and death than that all the terms available to us are either prissily euphemistic or smirky or downright contemptuous?

We're still thrashing around over the apes/angels, mind/body, virgin/whore dichotomies.

I will work further on that. Thanks.

You know what strikes me about Jesus and his thinking about body is that he was born into a time when the fertility cults were still strongly practiced within Judaism. The temple, after all, was patterned in exactly the same way as the temples to Asherah and Tammuz. And many of the Judaic kings had pagan wives as a political and military strategy. The violent swings between building the Asherahs and destroying the priests of Baal must still have had a profound influence on the idea of what body means. I mean there were male sacred prostitutes as well as female sacred prostitutes. Given that I suspect that Jesus, like other Jews of his time, had mixed feelings about the whole subject of fertility. This is why the books like The Woman With the Alabaster Jar and the idea that the Magdalene was a sacred prostitute (i.e. a devotee of Asherah) so interest me. I mean if she was it would fit extraordinarily well with other Kingly couples in Judaic history.

It's one of the reasons I like this poem. It hints at his historical and cultural positioning between the law of the book and the law of the world.

[PrinceMyshkin]

You know what strikes me about Jesus and his thinking about body is that he was born into a time when the fertility cults were still strongly practiced within Judaism. The temple, after all, was patterned in exactly the same way as the temples to Asherah and Tammuz. And many of the Judaic kings had pagan wives as a political and military strategy. The violent swings between building the Asherahs and destroying the priests of Baal must still have had a profound influence on the idea of what body means. I mean there were male sacred prostitutes as well as female sacred prostitutes. Given that I suspect that Jesus, like other Jews of his time, had mixed feelings about the whole subject of fertility. This is why the books like The Woman With the Alabaster Jar and the idea that the Magdalene was a sacred prostitute (i.e. a devotee of Asherah) so interest me. I mean if she was it would fit extraordinarily well with other Kingly couples in Judaic history.

It's one of the reasons I like this poem. It hints at his historical and cultural positioning between the law of the book and the law of the world.

Fascinating! I have the feeling that one might utter any old word or phrase in your vicinity - e.g. "tapioca pudding" - and you'd respond with some apropos historic, anthropological or mythological insight into it. (No, that's not a challenge!)

[ampoule]

This is why the books like The Woman With the Alabaster Jar and the idea that the Magdalene was a sacred prostitute (i.e. a devotee of Asherah) so interest me.

Excuse me just a moment Prince....MaryLupin: I have that book right here behind me, no, I have it right here beside me now. Have you by any chance read Mary Ellen Ashcroft's, The Magdalene Gospel? It's very good.

Thanks Prince. Back to you now. ;) ;)

[Countess]

This is a very beautiful, complex poem - though I steer clear of religion / politics in poetry. However, I think you dealt with the subject very tactfully, and that gets you off the hook. (-:

[PrinceMyshkin]

This is a very beautiful, complex poem - though I steer clear of religion / politics in poetry. However, I think you dealt with the subject very tactfully, and that gets you off the hook. (-:

Many thanks. So much for those who have been dissing your taste in poetry.

[Countess]

Many thanks. So much for those who have been dissing your taste in poetry.

I don't apologize for my high standards (okay, that was very Jules-ish of me).

For me good poetry is like porn: "I can't define it but I know it when I see it."

Yours is good.

[PrinceMyshkin]

I don't apologize for my high standards (okay, that was very Jules-ish of me).

For me good poetry is like porn: "I can't define it but I know it when I see it."

Yours is good.

Now I feel challenged to write a porn-poem, or at very least an erotic one. Give me an opening line.

[apples of gold]

I've read through all of the responses and I do see what Pen was talking about with the strict religious standards. But Mother has said it best.

Prince you know how I considered this poem a personal gift for me, especially for me, when you read it to me over the phone. And it's because of its personal impact that I could only see this as being an absolute hit with the Christians; verging on the order of religious text in its own right. Might I say that? And I could easily have rushed out onto one of the religious forums, before the ban, and been quite politically incorrect there, in saying so. Well, that would have been a bit tactless of me. Yet somehow you have managed to coast in on your lapsed-grace finesse and have fully redeemed yourself for several months worth.

I don't know how do you do it. You're such a super schmuck.

Well done governor and thank you.

[apples of gold]

Now I feel challenged to write a porn-poem, or at very least an erotic one. Give me an opening line.

OK, you just lost it with that one.

[apples of gold]

It's a good thing there's no limit on the number of consecutive posts made by the same poster. At least there's not that I'm aware of. MaryLupin's post has jogged my memory and I must take the liberty to post this one I wrote quite a while back.


Be Seated


Mercy dwells behind the silken walls
of our wounded hearts
because we knew him before we came here.

We have no courage to speak in fear.
He crashes into us
His mystery bleeding its truth
upon the blunt knife of our desire.

Though a banquet is ready now
and a feast waits in the inner court
we hunger for things in the dark
the darkness that drapes itself
in plain site around our loving hearts.
We seek a brief illumination to reveal its edge.

It would consume the darkness
but we would be blinded as we gaze
on the pristine chamber of the temple
burning its glory in a sacred moment
we may not recognize.
Who would want to kneel to enter?

There is no more refuge in hope
only the long journey
from this word to the next.
But if we would pass under
He will string a delicate thread to tug upon
when we lose ourselves in the dark.

~

Sorry to steal your fun there Jer.

[PrinceMyshkin]

It's a good thing there's no limit on the number of consecutive posts made by the same poster. At least there's not that I'm aware of. MaryLupin's post has jogged my memory and I must take the liberty to post this one I wrote quite a while back.


Be Seated


Mercy dwells behind the silken walls
of our wounded hearts
because we knew him before we came here.

We have no courage to speak in fear.
He crashes into us
His mystery bleeding its truth
upon the blunt knife of our desire.

Though a banquet is ready now
and a feast waits in the inner court
we hunger for things in the dark
the darkness that drapes itself
in plain site around our loving hearts.
We seek a brief illumination to reveal its edge.

It would consume the darkness
but we would be blinded as we gaze
on the pristine chamber of the temple
burning its glory in a sacred moment
we not may not recognize.
Who would want to kneel to enter?

There is no more refuge in hope
only the long journey
from this word to the next.
But if we would pass under
he will string a delicate thread to tug upon
when we lose ourselves in the dark.

~

Sorry to steal your fun there Jer.

My God! If this is your concept of "stealing" my fun then please go ahead and engage in wholesale burglary!

But look at the line


we not may not recognize.

and use the edit button below the original post to correct it.

[PrinceMyshkin]

You are into something for me with these lines. How much better and accessible an example would it have been if Jesus had been praised as a human being who took full advantage of whatever force made such magnificent creatures as we are (and I mean these with as much humility as can be believed making a statement like this) and that ws the source of miracles and such wisdom. Playing with God in each of us...such a beautiful wish...

The ending is so sad, having to carry on as a God when all he wanted to do was play.

I am reminded of Rilke's line, Oh childhood, what was us going away, going where? Where?

Someone I missed reading and responding to this comment of yours and want need (?) to say how deeply I appreciate it and to add, not so much about my own poem, but about poetry in general: that it provides us at times the astonishing privilege of saying things with the whole of our being or with parts of it that 'normal,' fearful, tactful, 'civilized,' politically correct discourse does not allow... without which we walk around half-invisible or mute to each other.

[Moira]

but about poetry in general: that it provides us at times the astonishing privilege of saying things with the whole of our being or with parts of it that 'normal,' fearful, tactful, 'civilized,' politically correct discourse does not allow... without which we walk around half-invisible or mute to each other.


How good it feels to come back here after a long time and read such beautiful poems and thoughts......... thank you for that.