Christ died for my sins, but I wish he'd done more;
that he'd participated in the ungainly,
not merely known about the unsaintly.
That He would crowd out the loneliness
of error, of failing underwear elastic,
that the sacrifice wasn't his life but
instead also living mine.
"Jesus also didn't pronounce 'masochist' correctly the first time."
"Jesus also had a shoe that squeaked so,
and everyone in the library would look at him."
"Jesus also was too shy to ask anyone to prom,
and had wedges of fat on his underarms
visible above purple prom dress satin."
"Jesus also ignored his pathetic mewling cat
when making up with that middleschool friend
who failed kindergarten, which never lasted,
and the cat died in a day."
Isn't this the thrust of that 'Footprints' poem --
"The times when you have seen
only one set of footprints,
is when I carried you" --
that he was there the whole way through?
What a wonderful device, a perfect 'me too,'
the ecce homo finally
turning all my bloopers into
a "we too,"
"so what,"
"halleloo!"
[Haha. I can't decide how cheesy this is.]
3 comments:
I would say this is one of your strongest poems! I like this a lot! I wonder if you should just begin the poem with "He died for my sins" -- that seems to suggest "Christ" clearly enough without being too blatant right off the bat. Also, I like the 7th line without the word "also" --> "that the sacrifice wasn't his life but/ instead living mine" because for me this slightly redirects the poem as offering an alternative rather than simply demanding more (and, by the way, I don't think that change is incompatible with the first three lines). Anyway, I don't mean to be presumptuous, your poem just clicked with me and got me thinking! I think it's very good! Nicely done!
:) Thank you, Derick! I appreciate all of these points. I read an article about a family where the younger of two young daughters passed away from a surprise medical condition, and the author talked about how his older daughter had a martian toy that she seemed to be practicing language on, where she would talk about her sister's medical issues as something that the martian had, of how the martian felt about it. It seemed like a way to test the language. It got me thinking about a person who you could attribute anything you wanted to, and I thought a bit about how one way a secular person might rationalize certain Christian beliefs is that at any moment it's a comfort that someone knows about what you're thinking about, that someone forgives you for your worst, and I wondered if you might want to attribute your most embarrassing moments to someone else, too, because what makes the worst moments the worst seems to be a kind of loneliness, so if you could have someone else to dissolve that loneliness, you could raise the rest up. Sometimes philosophers worry about how the word 'I' works and what can rightly be attributed to 'I' and why, and it reminded me of it.
Thanks for sharing the backstory! I think what I particularly enjoyed about your poem is that (similar to what you said above) it points to this very basic need to be understood by others, especially in our struggles. And that there is something redemptive about finding that you are not alone in your failures, errors, and woes. It's something that I had always experienced myself, but never put words to until I read your poem. So thank you!
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