04-05-2026, 10:31 AM
HAGIOGRAPHY
You have these dreary religionists
and their lists of saints you go wading through
to get to the good parts. You know, I did my time
of that in university.
The part I liked was because I was nineteen
and my professor had the Italian for many words,
but dropped off forgetting at the English words ending in -y.
This made the communication of ideas slow. Measured.
Like a lecternist at the front of the chapel.
Saints exist, if you let them.
If you believe they are saints, then they are.
Who is not to say that a saint called Teresa really did
pack up one grey morning to trek across the French
countryside and join the Crusades, as the story would
have it, an infant girl?
Well, saints exist if you let them, but for me the idea
of a saint is hemmed in a little. Saints
are for the people: when I was nineteen each region
where I lived had its own, and each cause a patron saint
alluded to, as if their mayors took lamp-black and fried it
to get the inkiness out, then wrote the maps.
But what makes a saint? I remember sitting with Kuya
as he told me about the sin of drinking grape juice, which
is like wine but not an effective wine for communion.
I said I would have used the term productive.
I hadn’t been drunk in almost a year, discussion
of morals were easy for me given that.
Sainthood is for the human, it’s not until later
that the forms are cracked with whitewash.
Kuya is fond of telling a story. People are, when it
comes to the people whose sainthood they believe.
A woman took Communion. She had sores, a soreness
of gums. A middle-class afflicted woman.
Did she have children this woman did her body
in her starched black dress know what it was the Bible knew?
I hadn’t been laid in a year, speculation was enjoyable given that.
In the video, she is alone. Her children, if she bore
them, are a generation removed from trying
the saliva of the faith healer. These statements
are not enough for sainthood:
what makes a saint. Is it proof we are looking for?
What makes proof - the video, I suppose. The woman is alone.
The woman is taking Communion. A voice tells her sternly,
swallow. The video frames jolt. Her face hides itself.
Proof? The cameras have changed.
More people have filled the frame - a lace-
bordered handkerchief swabs at her mouth.
There is something grey in her mouth.
The video starts again.
True sainthood must need interpretation. Kuya tells me:
What this woman has done is eat a portion of a human
heart, but it started off as a Communion wafer. Kuya tells me:
A+, male, thirties, the chewed heart beat its humanity encoded
in by lab test
He watches my face, ignoring my mouth.
I think of the better ways I could fake it,
camera as false journal for the soul.
I think of being nineteen again
I think, in the end (oh ye of little proof): saints
consume the people who believe.
____________
Another story-by-poem. What parts signify prose rather than poem and therefore should be reworked? What am I doing with line breaks? I do not know myself. Thanks for reading my opinions on saints.
You have these dreary religionists
and their lists of saints you go wading through
to get to the good parts. You know, I did my time
of that in university.
The part I liked was because I was nineteen
and my professor had the Italian for many words,
but dropped off forgetting at the English words ending in -y.
This made the communication of ideas slow. Measured.
Like a lecternist at the front of the chapel.
Saints exist, if you let them.
If you believe they are saints, then they are.
Who is not to say that a saint called Teresa really did
pack up one grey morning to trek across the French
countryside and join the Crusades, as the story would
have it, an infant girl?
Well, saints exist if you let them, but for me the idea
of a saint is hemmed in a little. Saints
are for the people: when I was nineteen each region
where I lived had its own, and each cause a patron saint
alluded to, as if their mayors took lamp-black and fried it
to get the inkiness out, then wrote the maps.
But what makes a saint? I remember sitting with Kuya
as he told me about the sin of drinking grape juice, which
is like wine but not an effective wine for communion.
I said I would have used the term productive.
I hadn’t been drunk in almost a year, discussion
of morals were easy for me given that.
Sainthood is for the human, it’s not until later
that the forms are cracked with whitewash.
Kuya is fond of telling a story. People are, when it
comes to the people whose sainthood they believe.
A woman took Communion. She had sores, a soreness
of gums. A middle-class afflicted woman.
Did she have children this woman did her body
in her starched black dress know what it was the Bible knew?
I hadn’t been laid in a year, speculation was enjoyable given that.
In the video, she is alone. Her children, if she bore
them, are a generation removed from trying
the saliva of the faith healer. These statements
are not enough for sainthood:
what makes a saint. Is it proof we are looking for?
What makes proof - the video, I suppose. The woman is alone.
The woman is taking Communion. A voice tells her sternly,
swallow. The video frames jolt. Her face hides itself.
Proof? The cameras have changed.
More people have filled the frame - a lace-
bordered handkerchief swabs at her mouth.
There is something grey in her mouth.
The video starts again.
True sainthood must need interpretation. Kuya tells me:
What this woman has done is eat a portion of a human
heart, but it started off as a Communion wafer. Kuya tells me:
A+, male, thirties, the chewed heart beat its humanity encoded
in by lab test
He watches my face, ignoring my mouth.
I think of the better ways I could fake it,
camera as false journal for the soul.
I think of being nineteen again
I think, in the end (oh ye of little proof): saints
consume the people who believe.
____________
Another story-by-poem. What parts signify prose rather than poem and therefore should be reworked? What am I doing with line breaks? I do not know myself. Thanks for reading my opinions on saints.