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Couthless
Some people view the constellated sky
as just another kind of entertainment,
sometimes a little inconvenient, but
an acceptable fallback when something more
engaging or exciting is just not available;
and you know how much a movie ticket costs these days.
This reminds me of Nero's nocturnal garden parties,
illumuminated by living Christian bodies aflame,
having been covered in pitch, then hoisted on poles
and set on fire---always a slow and agonizing burn.
After all, Nero said, eating outside after dusk is so much fun.
Or the sight of two long-haired boys, in some public venue:
they must be only nineteen or twenty years old;
casually clad in faded, bell-bottom jeans (the cuffs frayed or fringed);
shirtless and barefoot, long hair spilling down below their shoulders;
passionately kissing in public, after a long, slow walk---hands enclasped;
just a defiantly subversive demonstration of lust, say some who think
(if haters can even construct a consecutive thought)
that those boys cannot possibly be experiencing ardent love . . . .
Starward
I think this is a very
I think this is a very provocative and moving poem. Love is a complicated issue. I think in reproductive terms and biblical, that marriage was never about love, it was about survival. Love is not a survival mode. It's a higher cognitive function but then what is lust? A lower cognitive function? Agapi as in the biblical sense is the love of ie care of well-being, nurturing and appreciation of a fellow human. Lust has a bad rap and quite deservingly so, but does this mean that lust cannot be a precursor to love and vice versa? Love is never outlawed in biblical senses. It is never prioritised over copulating that produces populating. There are many reasons why the full text lays hidden in the Jewish annals. And Yeshua never part took of the cultures and traditions of Sodom and gommora to main train his connection with the almighty, the lesson is this was not respected and the pride of the people who opened thier hospitality to Yeshua was deeply offended to the point where they wanted to force themselves on Yeshua. For this reason it was destroyed. There were many cases where Yeshua never judged and always accepted people but did reprimand actions. Alot of this rheology has been condensed or rephrased and become subverted as dare I say it, 'homophobic'. The justification for this is far too small. We are all against rape I hope? And the dignity and respect was so not present, that this was the abomination. But theology is moot as each will have thier own mystic experience preconcieved thoughts and outcomes as well as biases. Best blessingss ss
Don't let any one shake your dream stars from your eyes, lest your soul Come away with them! -SS
"Well, it's love, but not as we know it."
Thank you very much for that
Thank you very much for that comment. The poem began as an expression of a "pet peeve" toward those who see the constellated sky as a mere entertainment, or something just tp be gawked at to pass a few boring moments. Then, I thought I might attempt to link that to two other pet peeves: Nero's horrific atrocities against the Early Christians, and the societal persecution/isolation of same-sex couples, which I witnessed first-hand when I was an adolescent. And I do think there is a theological distortion prevalent in the Church: a distortion set in motion by Augustine, who raised his personal guilt feelings into a dominating theology. My use of the word lust is not to disparage sexual desire as a preliminary process of love coupling, but to indicate an assumption made by haters that only their definition of love is licit. To me, lust is not erotic desire but the selfish compulsion to impose, inflict, deconstruct, or destroy; essentially, a form of rape.
Thanks again for your comment, and I definitely appreciate your perspective on these issues.
Starward