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Loving Judas

20 · Dec · 2002

I’ve often thought that if I could go back in time I should go to meet King David. I thought of us as twin souls. I could relate to having royally (pardon the pun) screwing up one’s life because of personal untamed desires. And, of course, I consider myself to be truly “after God’s own heart”. But there was always something amiss. David was incredibly good-looking, we’re told; so charming everyone wanted to be near him. This does not actually fit with the kind of person I find myself drawn to in my present life. I figure those people are so distracted by their own popularity, they hardly have time to consider things that are truly beautiful.

Following this same vein, it occurs to me that the number of people I have trusted in my life is so few, there is no reason to count them. Smaller still is the number of people whom I am so tenderly connected to, the slightest shift of their eyes from heartache or joy can leave my wholly undone.
Do you know about what I am speaking?

It would be careless for me to try to explain why. Blame bumping atoms, chemical reaction, past lives or a familiar grin.

But if I go back in time, I will call on Judas.

for NY who is silent
and for Jake who cannot be.

JUDAS, son OF GOD

I’m begging for silence
in this centre
where all hell has crept in.
Judas, my brother,
my lover,
my friend.

They fault us
for all humanity
yet we are not creators,
merely vessels
of destined calamity.

Let the crowd rage;
say what they will.
I have you
silent and still.

Let them praise the murderer,
the adulterer,
the vain house of David.
For you alone knew your heart,
and what history has made it.

Let them call on tall tales of Moses,
the bleeding heart of Paul.
In repetitive madness
we are fools one and all.

Penny René

somewhere i have never travelled, gladly beyond
any experience,your eyes have their silence:
in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me,
or which i cannot touch because they are too near

your slightest look will easily unclose me
though i have closed myself as fingers,
you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens
(touching skillfully, mysteriously)her first rose

or if your wish be to close me, i and
my life will shut very beautifully ,suddenly,
as when the heart of this flower imagines
the snow carefully everywhere descending;
nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals
the power of your intense fragility: whose texture
compels me with the color of its countries,
rendering death and forever with each breathing

(i do not know what it is about you that closes
and opens; only something in me understands
the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses)
nobody, not even the rain, has such small hands

-ee cummings

Posted by Penny Rene at 05:09 PM