The flesh rebelling

The Serpent in the Wilderness by Edward Knippers
2007, oil on panel, 32" x 24"

                       The flesh rebelling
                       and the spirit unwilling
                       as gradually the soul
                       all lethal loves is killing,
                       a miniature of my life’s full bent,
                       this forty days of fast, 
                       this monstrous Lent!

                       Temptations prying
                       and pretentious praying
                       attacking and adorning
                       the ceremonious slaying,
                       and images and idols risen
                       or deeply sunk,
                       ground up and mixed with blood
                       or water, and drunk,
                       and desert,
                       unremitting sunlight under
                       dark cloud (somehow above!)
                       and thunder pounding,
                       pounding hammerlike and loud
                       on door and wall 
                       and window of the proud,
                       and pagan shower 
                       of wishful floral fêtes,
                       ideals, presumptions,
                       vanities, and bets,
                       illusions, boasts,
                       illogic, lies, and ghosts,
                       all headlong fall
                       before the heavenly hosts.

Spiritual energies and vital

         Spiritual energies and vital, long pent up!
         How they would
         with unmanageable vigor surge
         to sieze their longed for consummation
         and erupt
         in one flaming liberation
         of the carnal urge!

         I know what you are thinking,
         you who read this poem,
         but you are wrong.

         And even I,
         who write what I can hardly see
         with all my concentration vexed,
         must too concede,

         my conqured nature
         is not truth nor lie,
         nothing would commit,
         nor will, nor fall
         against the Rock that it is built upon
         to be dashed and damned
         rather than stand,

         and not my thought, but what it hinges on,
         must only matter
         now, and to the bitter end.
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