"The leaving:
an allegorical poem of escape"
Foreword
Six years ago, a boy, completely enclosed and trapped in a ball of red and black cobwebs and rubber bands made his presence known and I came to realize that I have never been able to truly be a man even though physically I appeared to be: No, I have, up until this time actually only been what I now term, a manned boy:
But this boy, the one that appeared at this time, a father to the man indeed, has transformed me: He could not nor would no longer be denied. He had been there all along but in a state of numbness and torpor buried so deep, unable or too frightened to move for fear of feeling.
But six years ago he started to wake and stretch and find his voice: And realizing where he was, he started to scream convulsively for help, for someone to unravel the processed prison he was in.
And this poem is part of his story – it could have been written as an auto-biography, but somehow, I don’t think I could ever have done myself justice in that form, nor gotten across all that I so needed to express: So instead, it is a somewhat ‘stream-of-consciousness’ unraveling and needs to be read as such, but over all, an allegory of sorts, in this case, of a person escaping from a cult-like cave, prison brought about by both abuse itself, yes, but sealed so firmly by the organization in which that abuse occurred, sealed because of its twisted beliefs and sealed by its psychological and spiritual inability and unwillingness to do what it has claimed and proclaimed for two millennia to do and be.
But I have woken and am leaving that cave, if not already out – and perhaps this is what this poem is all about – the leaving: an allegorical poem of escape from the abuser’s cave (and the insidious affects of abuse), and, a no less painful and necessary leaving of, in my case, the institution of Catholicism – in fact, in this poem, the two are one and the same thing or process, or cave, the abusers and the church as in RCC Inc.; the followers of the Constantinian version Christianity rather than Jesus’ version, both are the ‘you’ and the ‘they’ which came up constantly as I wrote: Indeed, all those who are consciously or unconsciously even caught up in the entrapment and abuse of minds and hearts in whatever form that entrapment and abuse takes.
Also, I need to explain here, that while most of what I have written is a reflection of what has indeed occurred in my own life’s journey, I have taken the liberty of weaving the stories of other abuse survivors throughout or blending myself with them. I do not apologise for this because in the end, it does seem to have become a problem between two entities, the institution and the survivor. I have not met any ‘happy’ survivors – they may well exist, but I haven’t met them. The only ones that I have read about are those that have stayed in the religious cave, and, if that is their choice, I respect it.
In regards to my own abuse stories, I do not want to give the details: This is for a number of reasons: Revealing them will bring into play a whole lot of pain that I want to spare some people. I also feel that my abuse was no where near as horrific as the many cases I have heard about since ‘realising’ my own and while I acknowledge along with my doctor, that this is an erroneous way to think, leading to a concept that only the worst case should have attention, I simply have tried to express the absolute pain of those I have met, along with my own. I want to mention here now one more thing, however, that the above point reveals; the insidiousness of all abuse: Even subtle, seductive and even ‘mild’ abuse if there can ever be such a thing, can have devastating and life-long consequences on, especially a child and especially when that child’s life is totally immersed in a religious culture that prizes, seemingly above all else, sexual purity. Then add to this that even the ‘mild’ abuse is perpetrated by a representative of that puritanical religious culture its god.
I am trying to explain all this because I just don’t think people get it yet. So, my poem is a way of trying to didactically express what my life has been like and what the lives of hundreds of thousands of others may well have been like, is like, as well.
I will say, however, that I have been sexually abused five times, four of those in the context of the church, once as a result of another person sexually abused by a priest, once when I was all but raped by a church charity worker who seduced me by the possibility of work with that organization and once, and perhaps most devastatingly, a year later, when a priest I went to for counseling because, by that time, my life and sexuality were so screwed up, tried to seduce me during confession. He was the last straw.
But, I successfully stuffed it all down and tried (I now realize) to cover it all up by joining a religious order myself. But the damage was obvious to those that cared and for even this life I could find no way to live. And so, I was set out into the world, still loving my church and instead deciding to dedicate myself to education. But, this, in time was also to be my undoing and the final straw in my collapse when having to deal with so many abused or damaged children, my own unresolved abused child within, decided to finally make his appearance. And when I collapsed, my church collapsed with me – my church abandoned me when I needed them most and I have since come to leave that cave.
A question I continually ask and which continually upsets and confuses me: has there been a deliberate systemic denial of me as a person, one brought into being because I dared question, I dared breakdown and I dared ask for compensation. There is a system in place, the legal one, that deals with the likes of me and somehow, I have ended up almost on the streets and I have to ask, how or why has all this come about given the events of my life. I am constantly told that people within RCC Inc. care and do the gospel thing, and yet, here I am, broken and having lost almost everything while RCC Inc. continues on its majestic and sumptuous way. So, has all this been conscious or unconscious or a result of being caught up in such a huge system that love no longer has room to breath nor people room to be human?
And oh, the anger, when I consider it all as a conscious, deliberate cruelty, or, even of a blind fool leading the blind fool processing. If all these people that have dealt with me are so good and wanting my good then, why do I feel so left out in the cold, when, as I look inside now, I see those of the more equal and holy, basking in worth and smugness? I am dealing with the affects of my abuse but this injustice is what I just cannot get over. At the time of writing this, there is a looming possibility that I could lose my home, having lost career, superannuation and the ability to work fully, all things needed to survive in this society: But, my last abuser, his order having, yes, helped me financially to a degree now fast deteriorating, is now retired having his every need, and more, catered for. And I am by no means alone nor by no means the worst off in this whole shameful and painful scandal. There is something very wrong in all this, very wrong.
But, please, this is not a hate poem written to incite. There are so many good genuine followers of Christ and his gospel in the church and this poem is not about them even though they are melded to the one ‘body corporate’ by mere identification and assent. It is however, a grief and anger poem, one crying out for hearts to listen and for hands to act in justice: But they just don’t seem to ever come, for some reason, from those that I most need it to come, the ones who had/have power over me. Why the ‘had/have’? Because I am indeed in the midst of change, like I am being winched from a sinking boat to a new safe one, but am only half way across.
What do I need? What am I still craving on my own journey towards healing?
I need such as these, those who had/have power over me, to be completely and compassionately sorry and to turn to me and say to me in a way that eliminates all doubt:
“It’s not YOUR fault……It’s not YOUR fault……No, I don’t think you’re getting it…..It’s NOT YOUR FAULT,” and that I am not bad or mad for simply wanting my life to be restored after being abused, after I broke down as a result of that abuse and then so unjustly judged and cheaply tossed aside, and all within the context of the church of my childhood and life.
And now I still wait in hope (perhaps in vain) for someone to prove their Christic love and to come and help fix my now broken life, practically and until I can again stand on my own two feet, integrated and in joy. But, maybe, it will have to be me, myself that does this, as my own poem suggests.
Either way, until this happens, the following will be the only truth I know, the last perception of my old church as I look backwards as I leave, and with which I have been left.
Originally the poem was called “Meltdown” then it became “Meltdown and Resolution” but it has grown and grown along with the streams of consciousness it has invoked and the new title now seems so much more appropriate. Is it all just a load of pretentious, self-indulgent crap and bad poetry at that, full of mixed metaphors and overcompensations of imagery and icons. Perhaps? But I don’t really care anymore. It is me, an expression of me, that has come from the depths and as I say at the end of the first part, I like it and I like, me: Now that’s something I don’t think I’ve been really able to say with conviction, ever in my life.
As a conceptual journey, it has been a progress from meltdown to a resolution of sorts, within at least, but it is every bit a work in progress and shall be, I am sure for the rest of my life, until full integration occurs in the Mystery – Mystery is what Mystery does.
+
Meltdown!
+
“I am going to have to stop writing”
I said,
“This just isn’t good for me”
“Or maybe it is,
I don’t know”.
Might just jump in the car and take off instead.
Yeh, damn it. Just take off.
Go on,
dare you.
Ah! See! Coward!
No, perhaps I will just write instead.
Perhaps I need to.
You want to know something,
(should I tell them?):
When I write
(Oh God, he’s going to write again.
Oh oh, here he goes);
Most of the
time I am imagining and hoping that my audience
is actually the
princedom of Romani CC Incorporated,
in particular its CEO, you know, il papa..
Isn't that silly
and isn't that
funny
and aren’t I just an unbalanced ‘silly little gay
prick’?
(Well, that’s what they’ve always called me all my them-damned life).
Whatever; saying that should make a few people happy,
you know, those into non-acceptance or even acceptance,
from both camp sites,
those
who have been waiting in the woods
for just this very expected by them,
but inevitably mis-construed moment.
Why ‘waiting’? Why ‘inevitably mis-contrued’?
Ah….well, ‘tis because they are so engorged
with unconscious and therefore,
unresolved and needed prejudices,
you know, those good old ‘faith of our fathers’ ones,
(forget the mothers)
and now they
can, after hearing this
be absolved of any self-measured
requirement
to do or feel anything concerning the likes of me, of
us,
and be all self-permitting to instead get all nice and shallow
and gossipy and …..
thank God for themselves…..
and settle into smug, snuggee
comforting self-righteousness
and sniggling choruses of …
“I told you so, Sharon, didn't I? Didn't I tell you?”
………………See, that's really what all this abuse stuff is about:
………………… la-de-da, and, all that….
………………. ……you know………,
…… and not just that,
there’s a lot of gold-diggers out there too if you ask me.
And as for the abusive priests, well if you ask me
there’s only just the odd bad apple, really…
…………and ‘Pink Lady’ ones, too, I bet (snigger, snigger) …”.
“Ooh, Julie, you are aweful”.
“Hmm. I can feel a poem coming on,
John:
Actually, I think it’s already arrived.
I think I shall call it "Meltdown".
Is that a good name, John?
Yes, I like that: A meltdown inside
a poem”.
“But, guess what happened on the melting road to my Emmaus, John?
I met myself,
and melded instead,
and it became, “Meltdown and Resolution”,
and then it became, “The Leaving”,
and you know what John,
I like the poem,
and you know what also…….,
I like….
me.
Anyway John, let me continue……...
+
Meltdown and Deconstruction
+
......And then I heard the Great Lord proclaim from his enstoned balcony of propped up catholic successionist authority:
“But the modern world has for the
most part,
denied the spiritual definition or
understanding of man”.
What’s that?
The modern world
has what?
Who has denied what?
Oh no. No, no, no, no, no.
You're
not getting away with that.
That's were you get it sooo wrong
my
aeon-leaping lord,
and ‘Gaia’ denier;
it is you that has
‘denied’ so much more
than a mere 'definition':
you
‘deny’ my very essence.
And worse still, you have now seriously dissociated,
denying even your denying.
Let me tell you,
as surely as the soul craves meaning,
you slowly and systematically
de-constructed the man within me who
could have been,
the boy that was me and is now a ‘has
been’
the life that should’ve been mine, and aye, yes, to the
full...
And when I first came to you, limping
in soul
you hastened the deconstruction
and you made an art form of your denying
leaving me to blame.
And you have still not grown the simple capacity to know
that this first meeting,
set me on a whole new grief-graveled, road less traveled.
And now,
to add injury upon injury,
you still refuse to lift
any
of your ring-encrusted,
lily-white fingers
to, once and
for all,
and this is the crux,
to, once and for all,
undo the wrongs,
and their effects,
the now, ever-flowing undertow,
which is equally ever threatening
to keep me and mine, and all those same,
sucked equally ever under.
Whatsoever you do to the least....that you do to Me……..Heresy is what heresy does.
So,
Can you even begin to fathom
my under-sucked reality when I cry,
“What’s that?
The modern
world has what?”
And react thus……
No,
oh no,
you
and your
Constantine-possessed,
monolithic, empire-minded,
modern-world
mauling church
are not going to have the pleasure
of creepily
infallabling
such edicts and attempted enthralls,
….. well, not here, at least,
in my poem
and my life,
in, insignificant to you, me,
at
least.
I am my church now...
...me,
and
it is I that is ‘il papa’ here.
The child has become
papa to the man:
And he is a good papa
a protective papa,
a
strong, manly papa,
with integrity, and wisdom, and without fear
of freedom.
No,
you shall not have the orgasmic
pleasure
of sickly subliminated sex
and power,
neither through me, with me nor in
me
anymore.
I am no longer
your naive little,
easily
seduced boy-toy
on whom you can fan out
all your unresolved
homo-erotic,
divine-mother-worshipping,
judgmental-father-fearing,
twisted
cockpea feathers:
But, uumm,
Hang on a tick,
I'll tell you
what,
you may keep your post-rape,
guilt-vomiting,
and
yes,
may it be repeated
over and over
for all your
Purgatory-time:
It will ensure that you never again have
Freedom
from Hunger.
No, you
and all you other
enshadowed figures,
you are now in my church,
my
world.
And I now
hold my own kingdom keys
to my own eternal
life - or not.
And I will no longer submit to you
penetrating
my soul;
……..never again will you,
undo me.
So whenever you say:
"But the modern world has, for
the most part,
denied the spiritual definition or
understanding of "Man"………,
……..or the Lead-Blindly like,
then
I in turn
shall turn and proclaim,
again and again
and
again and again and again,
indeed, until your heart caves:
"Whatsoever you do to the least of my Body
that you do unto me....Heresy is what heresy does":
And I shall continue to do so
until
you know
that it is you
that has religiously denied
the
very humanness of your ‘Man’,
“He” is not just some abstract
to be defined,
but ‘we’ are actual human beings, with human lives, like mine:
Oh how do I get this across? Perhaps in plain English:
Why am I writing this poem?
Why am I in the struggle I am?
Why did I almost suicide a while back?
Why has my whole past, present and future been stolen from me?
Why?
Because of you.
And you still choose to deny me,
in the hope that I will disappear from your conscience;
to deny me till I am even more nothing:
And I hope instead
to have my pain and existence asserted
back into being:
But my hope, I fear, is wasted and moves you not,
Nothing can anymore – especially my
‘nothing’.
So, now that you have chosen a path
Anti-that of your humble founder,
all that is left for you to do now
in order to secure your own corporate survival
is to enforce even more strongly
the denial of people’s lived reality and
the God given gifts in us all,
the
supremely human gifts
of individuality
and
freedom (oh tremble indeed, 'il papa'),
the denial indeed of
the very essence of:
thinking, feeling, loving humanity,
and to
continue to teach instead
a definition of
"Man", as needed,
……….to
be controlled,
"Man", as needed,
……….to be
processed,
a definition you so erroneously,
dangerously, deceptively and tragically
clothe as ‘spiritual’.
Indeed,
your defined “Man”
is not a ‘life-full’spiritual being at all but rather,
a Platonic-cave dwelling,
shadow-deceived,
brain and heart dead,
subservient to you,
reflection of a half life,
who there, in your stolen cave, must remain,
or else.
But "Man" is not just your
minimalistic, animalistic, needed to be
herded basic;
"He" is so much more.
“He” is
Humanity, the only image
and likeness of God,
Free, thinking, feeling, evolving,
Loving.
And in denying “Man” as you have
And then, subliminally, spiritually seducing
and emotionally blackmailing “Him”
with threats of eternal damnation,
to, instead of serving God and humanity,
subserve your palatial life,
you have done the denying and all this, therefore,
unto God.
Whatsoever you do to the least, that you do unto me....Heresy is what heresy does.
And what of "Woman",
What of “Woman”?
Oh dear God
that is
a whole
other sad, sad tale
of doubly-felt denial
still to
this day,
and one for which
hundreds of thousands of ashened bones
scream to heaven and earth for justice;
another long shameful procession
so over-populated by phobically warped, denied misogyny,
it would take a psycho-surgeon
the likes of God
to explain, to tell,
and to heal.
And your fear of Eve still so embarrassingly
discolours your unclean mind.
No, this “Man” of your religion,
“He” is not the ‘We’ of mine.
Indeed the whole species was split by
you,
and ‘We’ became Adam AND Eve,
just as assuredly as
this splitting occurred
in the diseased historical mind
that,
now all over again,
and with renewed lustings for
domination,
is trying to keep the ‘we’,
split, more and
again,
under robotic threats of
"ex-com-mun-i-cate,
ex-com-mun-i-cate":
And in your rush to doubly-deny Eve
You split humanity against itself,
And even manhood against its manhood,
and womanhood, too,
and Christ’s body lies in bloodied pyres, yet.
Whatsoever you do to the least....Heresy is what heresy does.
No, it is you who have so truly
‘denied’,
humanity, and in all its oneness
and who
continue to do so,
by splitting apart,
the earthly
creature,
from the spiritual,
so as to isolate the earthly,
in order to corner, capture, control and process
and even to kill.
And further
you now, still,
torturously immerse your illness
in a seduction of ,
psyche-hurting infallibilities,
on
pain of excommunicatory death.
Whatsoever you do to the least....Heresy is what heresy does.
And into this seduction
falls
generation after generation
of screwed, split minds,
the
minds of your successfully enfeared sheep
and their black sheepdog
high-priests.
And what do we end with?
After the cycle of
every Adam and
Eve's
sexing and desexing,
this de-earthing of the child’s
mind,
there occurs a conversion
from wondrous essential humanness
to guilt-imprisoning, original sinfulness,
embedded so early,
and said to be of disobedience
but really,
“it’s just all about sex isn’t it?”
How do you think this affects a child,
when that anti-sex god and its representative body,
so ever fear-imprinting its mind
then turns around and sexualizes that child
and too early, too deeply?
And then
you insist that the child confess,
and dedicate their life to convert others,
to your definition of “Man”
that you continue to encircle never the less
with more lies and threats and painful abandonments.
But still, it prevails:
there is no stopping this clever usurper,
this award-winning conglomeration
of clever, self-entitled princes.
It is unbelievable how they do it
and feel they can continue to do so.
Only a totally deceived mind
or a totally hardened heart is capable of such
totalism.
And after all this deviously clever processing
(is it conscious or unconscious?)
come the ever so many,
too
many,
resulting inadequate personalities,
espousing by habit,
their need to save and be saved;
to help undo the others’original sin
the fruits of a now necessary,
believed to be real, battle
between a convenient ‘diablo’
and an ever so errant definition of ‘ego’.
But it is not: It is rather,
the enlightening tug-o-war
between everyone’s Thantos and Eros,
Apollo and Dionysius,
Both equally witin all,
To be embraced,
And not spit apart
and one half (and always the Eros/Dionysius half)
banished from the garden,
but rather a journey towards
loving balance and unity,
a life struggle to be embraced
and cherished,
and relished.
But behind your ‘definition’
is a corporately embedded in childhood,
created compulsory instinct
to full-life-denyingly cut and split one’s self
into ‘corpus’ and ‘spiritus’
and it is a need expressed,
performed,
under the ever present eyes
of the holy parents,
echoes of our own,
who have themselves
been through the processing,
encouraged by high-priests,
and as such, are (maybe)
equally damaging beings
threatening punishment
or withdrawal,
in both fiction and fact,
something we, as child, just cannot fathom
or face.
And so the procession of the succession
of the all too willingly obedient,
maintains its steady, shallow flow
and continues…..
……the processing.
+
Deconstruction and Feinting
+
…...And behold, from between the seven-breasted city there streamed a Constantinian possessed, apostolic succession of the processed, one seeking to conquer all humanity with the sign of the cross, but chanting a menacing, humanly foreign liturgy:
"....Gotta do it...,
sorry,....
.....gotta do it....,
it's for your own
good.....,
.....gotta do it....,
it's for your eternal
salvation,
.....gotta do it.....
.....gotta do it".
.......And then there arose from within this ever historically repeated procession of damaged power-hungry successionists, a creepily-sick, subconsciously-mumbled drone of, thought-to-be, divinely-ordered insistences whose inbuilt power some sought to also sexually annunciate, repeating a now cyclically damaged chorus of the apostolic succession.....
"....Gotta do it...,
sorry,....
.....gotta do it....,
it's for your own
good.....,
.....gotta do it....,
it's for your eternal
salvation,
.....gotta do it.....
.....gotta do it".
……And within these within, there was yet a further group, a remnant seduced beyond all wisdom and compassion, who, all too twisted by the overthrowing of right-mindedness, began, with an accompanying blackly-sad, hand-wringing, ego-flagellating conversation with the self, to merely echo the echoes of the echoes of the temple’s official succession, crying, lamenting, chanting, and now, lacking all comprehension, crescendo-ing in ever-rising, incense-laden, bell-tolling, newly ordered, cheap, flat Latin instead:
".....Debet
facere...,
paenitere,....
..... Debet facere....,
is est
pro vestri bonus.....,
..... Debet facere....,
pro vestri
eternus salus,
..... Debet facere.....
..... Debet facere ".
And for a while
it is over:
The work of God, climaxed…...
……And the damaged goods cowers in
the corner
trying, but unable to comprehend
this new
expression of
the subliminal body of Christ:
Now, decades, a lifetime later he sits,
in the room of his secular healer,
his life completely dis-integrated
like oil and vinegar.
And he feels the demonic presence of the historical legion
of all his abusers,
and all his oppressors
and all his accusers
and now , as well,
all those who would not take his side
whom he so needed
and so expected to……
…….And he suddenly drops into dead silence
and falls into the abyss of himself.
And his hand starts moving towards his crutch
and he doesn’t quite know why:
It is as if it has a life of its own;
but he is sick of resisting
of letting Catholic embarrassment
stagnate his healing (he has stopped this before)
so for once, at last, he goes with the flow of it all.
He enters deeply into a black space
and all he can see is
"my sexuality has been possessed
by something, someone"
And after what seems another life, it happens;
The gut wrenching sobbing of a boy
whose sexual life had been so infiltrated
and which was (still) under the spell
of the, themselves, abusively possessed ones.
There he sits;
desexed by abuse
With, yes, still the physicality of a man, a boy
but his psyche and sexuality no longer able to be sensed
and, he can no longer hold it back:
"I WANT IT BACK" he sobbs,
heaving in psychic pain,
"I WANT ME BACK"
Please, can I come back?
Is it possible?"
He thinks he will implode:
- the years of pain and anguish and confusion and anger
seem to come together in one massive lump,
one twisted pile of emotional knot
and it just doesn’t let up for another lifetime.
Words are not enough
to describe the anguish of realising
that the damage has been done,
the spirit has been taken, caved and killed
and there was no way again of being able
to retrieve all the lost possibilities:
(It is why, he thinks,
he tried to finish off the killing
by doing it actually, himself:
But on that day,
because he didn’t finalise it,
what he thought could not be more possible,
he died even more).
Ah…..the sheer bastardry of it all.
One cannot describe the pain of such grief,
for utter grief it is,
grief for the lost, no a stolen, murdered life
and a splintered forever, trust.:
“I think I am going to die”, he softly, verbally submits;
“You won’t, Stephen, you won’t.
Please understand,
to allow all this to remain conscious,
is, for most, just too hard
so better to stuff it down deep,
deep into a newly constructed subterranean panic room,
and try to live a 'normal' life and
'get over it' and leave 'the past in the past'
up on the surface”.
“But, see, it just will not be denied.
It will come out in some form”:
“And when it does,
It will be to either destroy or to be healed”.
Let it be known to all
that, while oil and vinegar may well come together,
the blending is
violent.
And now, some wonder why we cry yet,
in
such confusion,
such grief,
such need,
such
incomprehension,
when finally
we come to know,
when
finally we find the deeply unconscious
rage of courage
to allow the
scales
to be painfully peeled away,
and then,
when finally we find our once sexually
stuffed voice
and scream so fucking understandingly:
(“Oh God……”)
“Whatsoever you fucking did to the
least of my children,
that you fucking did unto me...."
(“Oh.... dear God....!”)
Yes,
you made us submit to
the
whole-self, denial process,
the one that told us our bodies were
evil
and 'mere'
and 'doomed'
and to be negated,
sexed then de-sexed
emotionally flagellated,
abused,
totally “denied”,
no longer even a ‘definition’,
not
even a God-loved human
(how could we ever believe this
again)
and in this de-maniacal process,
you
made us split off,
feint,
so as to survive,
resulting in only a half-life,
so
antithetical indeed
to your promised 'life to the full'
(heresy
is what heresy does),
And in doing all thus,
you again made us
again,
conveniently
vulnerable
to the unresolved beings,
who, so forever seemed to be seeking relief
from their secreted unresolvedness
and who
had become so cunningly
good
at 'processing'.
So, again they came
and they
fiddled,
(and not just our souls),
and they
fiddled,
and we were left,
and you moved
them,
and they fiddled again,
and we were left
again,
and you moved them again,
and they fiddled
again,
and we were left again,
and
you moved them again,
and again and again and again,
and so on and so forth.............
And
always
to this discordant fiddle concerto
we had to dance.
And still Rome fiddles
while still we burn.
Whatsoever you do to the least, this you did to ME....Heresy is what heresy does.
And now, to add horror to injury
I see now
you are seeking to abdicate legal responsibility
for the screams and cries of your least of lambs,
crying that it was your black sheep dogs that acted alone.
But, my wimpy legalists,
you are more, not less responsible or liable
than any mere employer:
That, you are indeed, not.
Why?
Because you are
as you, ad nauseum, proclaim to your sinful, secular world,
the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church, are you not:
One,
and holy
and spread all over the world
covering it with your apostolic succession
and its ontological members,
all inherently, necessarily oathed
to its head in the multi-breasted city:
You are supposedly,
and especially to the too small to question or see,
the carnalised body of a single-concepted god
and
your representatives on earth
are to be seen as one and the same as that god (are they not)
and as such
their impact was, is and always shall be
far more murderous than that
of a mere employee.
And they are, beyond any reasonable doubt,
your employees,
these cattle dogs of yours,
these black sheepdogs,
many of them heavily beaded and crossed bitches as well:
All have been collared by you
And you have attached the leach
And you hold the leach
And you control the dog
And you make them go left or right
even with out a leach now they are so processed
and it is you they listen to
whether the command be fetch, sit, or, kill.
And now, you are trying to deny all,
by denying attachment to your dogs
and they to you.
And as such,
still, again, now,
you are trying sickly
to weasel out
of your divinely ordained compassion:
And who is left to pick up the pieces
of pounds of abused flesh you already
and now want to further
deny?
Already, it has more been
your despised secular world
that has been left to pick up the pieces
in every emotional, psychological, legal and financial way,
after you have hidden your ontologically changed lovers
(and others)
and tossed aside your damaged goods.
And now, you want to make it more so.
As I move myself now towards healing
I have crushingly come to realize
how utterly cheap you are
and how you have gotten off so cheaply,
in every sense of that word:
I have lost everything,
and you,
with legal imprimateurs
(and threats),
have tossed to me only
some crumbs from your sumptuous table;
and even for these I had to beg.
Oh how good you are,
how unbelievable adapted.
How
did
you
de-construct life, my life, me,
so thoroughly, so surgically?
How did you get me to a point where you could
so smugly manipulate me against myself
and
so sharply shatter my mind
and cauterise my body
and make me believe that,
“behold,
it was good, and all for my own good”.
How did you, so cleanly,
teach
me to split
my 'self' from myself?
And
oh what effective surgeons you had
to dismember me from my soul
self,
then, to hide the damage
in
the prepared tomb you made me to be,
to complete the corruption:
Such
surgeons who so knew how
to groom and then worm their way in
and
find
that entry point of vulnerability,
inside my brain,
my
heart’s womb,
my inner childhood,
and livelihood,
and
penetrate it
like a pathetically powerful virus,
feigning
love
but ejaculating poison,
and aborting the man who could have been.
Oh, if only the corrupting feinted child
had been found by any Magdalen, earlier.
If only….
But, no, stop!
‘If onlys’ will kill even the, as yet, unkilled parts.
Whatsoever you do to the least,…what….so…..ever....
And Constantine did proclaim one day past:
"In hoc signo vinces" !
Yes, in this sign you did conquer
and get rich
and powerful
and somehow, in the process,
demonically,
totally turn the whole original meaning of that sign
upside down.
So, now, further more,
with all
that has befallen,
I accuse you RCC Incorporated,
of committing the unforgivable sin
of denying my very Spirit as well
and as such,
because,
“what so ever you do to the least….”
the Spirit of Christ as well:
You are a Spirit-denier,
A Spirit-killer.
And oh what a killer you are,
Why?
Because you expose yourself to the
world
as the sola-apparitio of
the
one heart that loves
and the
holy mind that teaches
and the
catholic hand that leads,
and the
apostolic god that saves:
You come as
the sole, whole,
soul-completing package,
and promise
the utter,
ultimate existence – “life, and to the full”
and then
take that life
away
and imprison it in a cave
where only you
can have your with it.
As such, you are an abusing seducer,
an
enticing, faking Spirit and Life sucker:
And you know what I would really like to know;
Oh if I could only know the answer to this:
Was this, is this, a
conscious or unconscious process?
But, you know,
What I do know is that
it no longer matters:
The results
are the same.
It could have been so otherwise:
Oh how otherwise
it could all have been
had you but been
the true body of the true Christ,
instead.
But instead, what you preferred was
a usurped body of Christ
- the
possessed one -
which had come equally into existence
(and I
wonder why ‘equally’,)
and it was this firmly lodged foreign body that became instead,
that to which,
you submitted
and that to which, to wit
all in turn had to submit.
Too gone again now is the glorious original incarnation
known and met in the deeply
life-altering meeting of eyes and hearts,
and replaced instead by
this alter-incarnation
this corporation of
mere froth and bubble,
(toil and
trouble),
relying so heavily on the back-curving tonnage
of sexed-guilt and power:
And what an exquisitely divined cover up,
Albeit a corporate structure
Which, needs be, due to its hollow interior,
must be scaffolded by
a succession of
blinding obedience,
rubrics and timings,
costumes and choruses,
bells and smells,
aqua and oils:
(‘Arsenic and old lace' for some reason, comes to mind).
And in the central, mental room of this alter,
the living Corpus Christi is again being forcibly tabernacled
into a more static one,
a noun more so than a verb,
needing,
instead of the transformational meetings of fleshly eyes and hearts,
a mere temporarily transcending, external, conveyor-belt ritual,
necessarily requiring,
in order for the whole carnivaling process to trans-substantiate,
absolutely-only,
the incantations of a manly (and
de-sexedly clean) chosen few,
(the ontologically challenged,
particularly of the female kind, need not apply),
incantations now, again, made distractingly seductive by a more mystical ‘Latin’:
(Ah, ‘tis a process, a ritual, a language
deeply awe-inspiring to little ones,
suggesting such depths of worth
and godly inspiration and presence
but also, so cleverly capable of covering up,
and deflecting (and they know it)
the undertow of a festering reality,
still not willing to be faced
but which will not be denied
and will out
somewhere, somehow, sometime -
like, NOW).
Oh how could the last meal of friendship and love
between heaven and earth
become so ‘fast food’,
so one-sidedly staged and caged by magic;
so used?
Yes, perhaps all this is a Marxian necessity
to control the masses with moral certitude and mental quietude
and needing a body corporate to manage and oversee:
But this body corporate,
now has itself become
too total,
too-heavily manned,
and too-heavily reined,
and is fear-falling back once again,
on a previously genesized
historically-recycled impoverished perception
of ‘humanae vitae’,
while your own unavoidable flesh and blood
lie still aching and wounded in your back yard
and still needing,
not the macho-crack of a damnation’s whip
but rather, a Christ-balanced, Magdalen’s
healing balm of Love’s understanding.
(What so ever you do to the least, that you do to me).
But now I,
fool that I was,
have
regretfully uncovered
my own and this truth
and feel I
have been now,
left stupidly standing stripped,
in the middle
of an ever-spreading field,
my mind atrophying into corky clouds
a target still for all the bored members of celibacy
and, with now also with all your
churched princes’ piercing eyes
peering and laughing me
down
into the earth,
into the mud,
like a peg being driven,
driven,
and they, mocking:
“Oh, what a fool you were,
you
infantile, stupid, bloody idiot
to actually believe in and trust
in
our ‘divinity’ – we don’t,
well most of us anyway – but there are the deluded few:
no, it’s all a business,
and the ‘church’, the ‘spiritual’ part,
well that’s just a cover
for an envied life of power and wealth
and sex on the side;
but don’t tell anyone,
‘cause, if you do,
we’ll deny that as well
as you ".
("You know,” the neighbours always said,
“he was always
such a trusting child,
and ever so sensitive”).
Yes,
fool that I was,
I did
always trust,
the alluring figure of authority,
the seductive
apparition of spirituality……..,
……….the suppressed
unresolved angel of hidden phallic light,
And now all has lead to
my almost utter inner dissolution
and my almost utter outer
dislocation;
But, another angel intervened to prevent the diabolical ‘uttering’,
an angel of survival breakdown,
a meltdown.of life’s mysteries,
all of them, the joyful, luminous, sorrowful and glorious.
.
Whatsoever you do to the least of humanity
That you do to Me....Heresy is what heresy does.
+
Feinting and Restoration
+
So now,
so many years later,
years unbounded by actual time,
and by some miraculously secularised
life-wish,
some deep, survival anima-instinct,
there is, in my
life at least, still,
a perpetual daydream of some half-remembered
hope,
constantly playing back.
And in this daydream
it is like I am seeing, sunken
at the deepest part
of a
mermaid-filled, pool,
an ancient encaved lake of evolved
collective unconsciousness,
I see…..a holy grail,
or perhaps a
golden chalice,
or…..,
(Oh what is it, what do see? What do I need to see? what do I need it to be?
And, for God’s sake, why always these churchly symbols? Enough already).
No. Yes, better still,
yes, yes, I see
a glowing, beating, fleshly heart
yes, that’s it,
belonging, yes,
to some other, sunken, hardly known… who? What am I saying?
Yes, that’s it, isn’t it.
I
see what I think is another’s heart,
there, in the depths of this encaved pool,
But it is not, is it?…..It is my own heart and it is my own life’s pool,
a pool fed always and only, yes,
by my own eternal streams of unconsciousness.
And my othered heart lies there, now, in wait,
instincting survival,
wanting to be re-birthed,
and re-uinted
as promised.
So, there now I lie
like Narcissus,
not in vanity,
and not in vain,
but in longing
and in waiting.
Oh dear God,
is it any wonder I too often think,
and
it too often feels,
all too languished,
too late,
(and, oh the regret of grief this
brings)
and that the songs of Misters Keats and Eliot,
(goal-keepers of my polar opposites
and reflections, themselves of my other
Greek hemispheres)
and their birds and elements and flowers
words, laments and bowers
and their
ecstatic or gloomy endings
(depending on whichever unexpected extremity),
is it any wonder
that these seem to forever be
my
company.
Like two life-lovers within me,
they both try in their own-ended way,
to restore me,
to resolve me,
to gather up the bits of me
(and yes, perhaps on the viewless wings of poesy,
despite my perplexing and retarding brain),
to gather up the fragments of me
that lie still scattered
over the lands of my history and future:
They both try in their own opposite way
indeed, to revive me back
by mind and heart,
into one living rhythm;
to restore the broken, split adam
I have become.
And is it no wonder that
at times, and in a flash,
triggered perhaps by such musings,
and usually when in states of therapeutic numbness,
I see within,
my split self, more clearly,
and I am some disorientated, disempowered god-man,
now become mere-man
split,
holding a feinted son-self in a pieta of confusion,
and both mere-man and feinted child,
are trapped in some deep tomb,
or cave that is in fact,
my whole life
and we wait,
we await,
what?
Resurrection?
But then, as well,
menacingly (and how I so hate it),
on the edge of resurrection, always,
and too often at such times,
a meltdown mind-mare comes back to me:
And it plays out like this:
The mere-man-me
begins eternally,
madly,
repeatedly,
thumping and pumping his heart,
trying to revive the subconscious child;
and, at first,
madly, hopeless-full-ly, summonsing,
“Live, (pump) you bastard (pump), please (pump) live (pump)”,
but behind the summons there groans an impulse-willed but doubt-mangled mesmeric muttering:
“I do believe (pump)… I can do this (pump). I do, (pump) I do. (pump)
I do believe (pump)… I can do this (pump). I do, (pump) I do (pump)”.
And then it comes:-
Some deep, other half-remembered,
fatally grooved,
but still, still, not-expected,
darkling, life-companion,
(you shall not deny this stranger)
implanted in times forgot
by a conglomeration of perpetration:
A deep, life-doubting-born curse,
once housed with all the other tricks,
in the same old shed of the abusers’ art
but that, now, somehow
has grafted itself into me:
This curse
worms its ever-presence in again
trying to undo my life-strength:
Like a hand reaching up from the underworld,
To pull me back down just as I reaching the light:
And this curse,
this mocking, ‘Forget-me-not’ riddle,
incomprehensible as it is,
and yet,
for some reason, inherently understood,
again subtly sucks at me, like a death-eater,
this time
by hoarsing out the uninterpretable words of a song I love:
“Time’s lost.
You lost the will
to revoke the lying dog”.
What does it mean?
And yet, even as an incomprehensible,
it is ever a symbol for all my failings,
and its mere momentary appearance
makes my will fade to that
of a meeker, sadder, more life-servile note
as I pump away, less convincingly now:
“Live! (pump)..... Pleeease! (pump)......Pleeease (pump)...... Live!”
Heresy is what heresy does,
and it has been done unto me
………and God…it…hurts.
John, are you still there?
I need a break.
Can we chat plainly for a minute?
Listen to this….
What if the ‘lying dog’ is ‘depression’?
Suddenly it all makes sense.
The curse is what automatically came with the abuse,
It’s an effect of abuse. To lose the will to say no to depression
This means the curse of depression becomes your character, runs your life;
And oh how powerful a curse it is.
Oh John, it all makes so much sense now.
You know, I was always taking in stray dogs when I was a kid.
But, you know, I don’t think they actually were strays;
I think they belonged to the abusers
And when they abused they also released a dog.
It’s still a curse and maybe forever;
the brain gets damaged by abuse, especially the child’s brain,
it’s a scientific fact,
but at least I am aware now, and writing this poem has done it for me;
made me more aware.
So,
yes, darkling, I do indeed listen.
And how I so know you now, more than ever.
Is there yet
a nightingale Christ
whose humble, simple voice
will toll my lost boy-child
back
from all this,
and restore his soul again into a sole self
so
that I may finally
come to recognise that 'self' again,
or perhaps
for the first time
and finally, finally
have some taste of that
implanted, embryonic
yet decades old,
Imago Dei within
And, aye, yes, to the full –
The living of God in Me
being Me?
And
Shall all be well, As I
have always clung,
and
Shall all manner of thing
indeed be well?
and,
Will the tongues of my flame
become in-folded
into the crowned knot of human fire
And will I one day be able to,
in complete and rested satisfaction,
triumphantly, knowingly
cry
together with the voice of the enrosened God,
"And the fire and the rose are one".
Ah, the final, eternal restoration;
the eternal, final resolution.
I used to believe
And it was so
sweet,
so sweet.
But...
....fled is that plainsong
now.
Do I sink or swim?
+
Restoration and Resolution
+
………..And then I saw a sight I never thought possible:
the Great Lord and his succession was finally undone,
humbled instead,
by a roughened by life, yet angelic, sisterly voice
one, etched with empathic identification,
calling from her melodious plot of Ballinaeic beachen green…of Love:
"YOU SWIM, YOU HEAR ME....YOU BLOODY-WELL SWIM….."
Swim?
Shall I?
Shall I swim (and not to Lethe-wards sink)?
“Yes!” I said,
“Yes, I will.
..Yes!” I echoed.
But does the ‘father-to-the-man’ believe?
Dare he, again?
Can he?
Will the inner battle ever achieve armistice?
“Choose, Son! You must choose!”
“Are you saying I may choose?
Am I no longer……… denied?”
“But I don’t know how to choose.
I have had no practice.
Tell me what to choose and I shall choose it”.
“Which has the words,
no not just the words
but the Love of eternal life,
and not just eternal life
but life here, and life now?”
“Is it the Great Lord?
Oh no, no way, not him.
Why on earth or in heaven would I now choose him?”
“Then, how about the roughened-by-life sister?”
“Closer, much, much closer but
no, not even her, wondrous as she is.”
“No, it is your restored, melted self alone
that you now have no other choice but to choose:
There is indeed no other choice now
because, there is indeed no ‘other’;
You must choose
him.”
And the father-god then proclaimed, through him, with him and in him:
“In the melting you have also been melded
and you are a re-birth,
a restoration,
in the waiting.”
“You have always trusted, even against hope,
that good shall be the final goal of ill,
And, it shall come to pass.”
“No longer shall you be denied:
Rather, you shall be crowned!
Enter, now, life
and yes, to the full!”
Be it done unto me according to…….
+
Resolution!
John, I just want to thank you so much for being here.
You have been my “Shirley Valentine Wall”,
And indeed a wall would probably be more capable
of understanding and empathizing with the likes of me
than all the theological, philosophical,
psychological and financial/legal ‘greats’
of the incorporation.
Writing this poem has been such an unbelievably cathartic experience for me.
But have I been too harsh? (What so ever you do to the least….).
Have I been deceived? (Life is what life does).
But, oh, John, how could it be anything other than good,
When it’s all so been like when that beautiful doctor
(why can’t people in the church be like this)
like when that beautiful doctor
took her patient, Sybil to that peaceful park,
(did you ever read that book)
when they both knew it was time,
and all Sybil’s little alters
came out from behind the trees and bushes
and walked slowly up to her, and, in tears,
tears of utter relief and gratitude,
she integrated.
You know what John,
you know why you understand all this
better than all of those from the more corporate world,
that world of shallow rituals and binding laws,
do you know why you understand it all so well?
Because you are absolutely,
nothing like them;
and because you are in fact,
me.
(Written in hope - June 30th -11th July 2011)
Editor's Note: This poem is not of my making. I post it on my website as an act of solidarity with its author. Until he chooses otherwise, he shall remain anonymous. Tony Lawless.