god

[kolemath]

This poem captures an intensity of character and ritual quite well.  I'm a bit confused on the mix of sex, religious symbolism, and god.  Not that I'm against fornicating deities, but the language seems to mix these ideas.  A few lines..

god
 
I hold my breathe.
I twist my tongue inside my mouth, as
I exert just the right amount of pressure on the syringe.
I push it down onto the cotton lying in the spoon.
I slowly pull back on the plunger.
 My breath goes out as the fluid
slowly steals its way up the hollow plastic shaft,
a release that is almost orgasmic: as someone mentioned a bit preemptive, but what's the release? its connection to god?
anticipation of what is to come.
I lay the needle carefully aside,
I don’t want to catch the point on anything and dull it.
I take out one of my several bandannas.
I quickly, but carefully, wrap it around my left arm.
I tie it in a slip knot that
I can release by pulling it with my teeth. like i said, the language of the ritual is strong
 
My breaths coming faster,
short and controlled,
in the top of my lungs.
I open and close my left fist.
I watch, fascinated, as  the vein rises above the skin.
I rub my finger up and down the vein,
I caress it, as a lover would caress a nipple. the nipple image doesn't fit for me; can veins be shafts if we're going for sex? 
I pick up the paper square that encloses the alcohol swab.
I tear it open with my teeth. Removing the swab,
I run it up and down the vein.  Ritualistically,
I prepare the vessel to receive the holy sacrament.
 
I am a fastidious acolyte, not because
I am naturally so, but, at the moment,
I have the time, and at the moment,
I have the better vestments of my religion.
I have sterile saline to wet down the powder.
I have clean cotton through which to strain it and,
I have a sharp new syringe in which to put it.
 
In the past,
I have used the water out of toilets to wet it down . I like the reflective switch to present-perfect verbs here
I have used cotton out of the butt of a used cigarette.
I have used my own spit to wipe the dirt off my arm.
I have sharpened a dull, much used needle, on a book of matches, to get it sharp enough, to pierce my skin:
a mini-crucifixion,
A stigmata from and for my god. good connection
 
I need no Romans, nor a Pilot, nor a Judas.
I am a willing sacrifice,
I have sacrificed everything for my god.
I have been the lowly worshiper, begging for scraps, and
I have been the high priest. At those times, when good language connections in this stanza
I have the powder…the other worshipers come to me.
They beg my blessing, willing to do whatever penance your blessing or god's?
I might set for them, so that they might receive
the holy sacrament. so is the drug the god or is the drug the holy sacrament?
Women give me their bodies in whatever way
I demand. the language of religion is lost here to my reading, unless the sexual violence of circumcision can be worked in; what other god images are sexually violent? how about deuteronomy 28? yikes..
They would give me their first born, if good old testament reference
I required it. When
I have the powder,
I have the power of a god:
I can command anything, and my will, will be done. comma between will and will breaks comma rules (no comma to separate subj and verb)
The followers of my god are faithful, faithful unto death. No other religion demands, or receives, such devotion.
I watch as the sterile water snakes
its way up through the golden liquid
in the hard, hollow, plastic tube of the syringe.
I love to watch it rise slowly up through the yellowish oil: Yellow oil transmuted from white powder, a transfiguration of the mundane into the ecstatic. mundane and ecstatic connect to ritual/religion how?
I take the needle, and gently, slowly,
I slide it into the vein.
I pull back on the plunger.
I see the blood spurt up into the pale yellow oil.
I pull the bandanna with my teeth,
releasing the pent-up pressure from my heart.
I push the plunger down, discharging the yellowish liquid into the red pulsing blood of my vein.
For a brief and fleeting moment,
as ether-vapor hits the back of my throat,
as a surging wave rolls through my skull,
I come face to face with my god.
We are joined in an ecstatic melding. Then, again, the ritual work is strong, but I'd like to see more of the god/worshiper interaction; ecstatic is repeated here, and I like the idea of melding and a rolling wave as visceral sensations, but how can the moment with god match the strength of the ritual descriptions and the worshiper profile?
I fall into the depressive after-glow of the union,
I am already anticipating the next time. again, can 'next time' fit the idea of god/worshiper more closely?                      
 
erthona
 
©1996

thanks for the read