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Sitaram · Site Admin Joined: 14 Sep 2005 Posts: 1079

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.

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