How much of me is to be occupied with birthday parties How much of the instrument of God is to be set upon monitoring some individual sadness Explain the holiness of worry over hurt feelings Extol the virtue of preoccupation with the feeling, or dread of the feeling of feeling like a shortcoming These are the contradiction of woman for man: Not enough flowers, too late a greeting ATTENTION: your attention is needed! Yes, I am aware: don’t think on god. Pretend you’re He in the flesh (and perhaps you are.) All the more to the point. How can I bare disappointing the good lord, and worse, spirit disguised in feminine splendor, and to His -her- face? One way or the other I am man before God in sin. Which then is lesser? Only so much I have, and you do not give but require; and surely for good reason—for you mean, and have need, to give all, don’t you. And perhaps giving is the salvation I just refuse to eat; I am drawn toward it, like hunger: to rid myself of myself, to give my all. Instead I rid myself of hunger, like a true poet would, leaning out of himself from within. Sacrifice for beauty is sacrifice unto it: but then “it” -she- is an idol? And a golden smile she dons, shining like the Horus-sun; oh, the Passion she inspires without so much as a wink, a ray with an honest heart's beam. This is my question mark: To "Marvel" or to become? Submission to a smile, lost in the sun -or- the becoming of man inside the peace of himself; and are these not one and the same? And I am hated for choosing the latter No, not by you. You of all understand me, don’t you. No I’ll be hated by the me who wants too much: woman and god, love and understanding, pride and humility; but a married philosopher, where is it he belongs? No! You are not my God! You apparition of gold! You milk and honeyed promise! I am no drunkard. A holy man, sad and holy, I Am. A holder onto my misery, as Satan clings to pride. How is this supposed (by God) to work? By sacrifice? Another pound of flesh! Milk from God, then; this is what I deny? The poets all struggle this paradox But in here with me, with these books and the ancients, we, the inbetween: the muse lives in us and thereby the music. And this too is of God; hence our singing...our wailing. Choir of Sirens We’re all a divine splitting, a rack of bodies across the sacred chasm, we die fools possessed or else to woman as god; I will die then, with pride and Aquinas. And with that I can live.