Is the earth ancient and are you a young child,
wandering her surface and running your small hands over the bumps and buckled
plates of her wisdom? Or are you the old one, tired and cynical and wise, trying
to recapture your innocence by walking barefoot and kissing the feet of a
newborn morning?
Is goodness somewhere deep in your heart, laid
in before the ages and waiting for the year of jubilee? Or is goodness a damsel
locked in a distant tower, and you the prince charming who will redeem her at
any price?
Are you dragging store-bought values behind you
on a little string, smiling like a rube and looking for applause from the
masses? Or do you listen to the mysterious voice that lives in the low places
beneath your heart? Will you proclaim those words in public, or don't you have
the courage?
Can God be jerked out of the heavens and thrown
to the ground? Will you leer at her there and run your clumsy hands over her
body? Will you brag to your friends later that you’ve known God? Or is God the
ultimate seductress, unmoved by our adolescent advances, laughing at our wanton
desire and sitting, legs crossed, just outside the orbit of our highest
thoughts?
And if you do meet God on the way, how will you
stand?
Will you stand frightened and cowed, mired in
ancient dogma that binds your feet like sheets in a dream? Or will you laugh in
the face of God, smirking and superior? Will you cleave instead to the cyborg
beauty, the sacred science you have set apart and called your own?
Or perhaps, having tried all of these things,
you will cast off your clothing and stand naked before the horizon, watching God
flutter away like a butterfly, soaring beyond all words, swooping east and west
to gather all mystics and cynics into the delight of her bosom.
Who are you?
Where are you?
What are you, and what do you intend?
Tell me, for you intrigue me, and I would know
you like a father or a brother or a lover or a friend.
rlp
