3/15/04 The ides of march To Hershy To those of us humbled? No longer an intellectual quest, No longer an academician's point of interest, the quiet library of discourse, To those of us humbled By the power of this -other side? By its sheer uncanniness, its cunning, Its control over our lives Be it illness, dis-ability, pain or addiction We, who have been humbled, Have a different -knowing? We know instinctively, in the body Some innate sensor, like a cat when danger is at hand Though the body wreaks its havoc The battlefield of lain corpses In this body, the wasteland of past desire. Stumbling, faultily, we hobble home from the lost war, in the broken trenches Whose only recompense is this wise knowing The knowledge of the flesh An ironic reminder of a primordial gnosis In-the-flesh, whereupon waking Those ancient parents felt only shame Soon to be clothed in rags-of-guilt Even God was called in as a tailor For only God could hide this shame, yet Even God could not, would not remove this shame. We do not need Mel Gibson to tell us of Passion We too have our flesh whipped and torn We too run the gauntlet of Prussian then Russian soldiers The snake beating us into submission We too have had illness inscribed into our flesh As carriers for our past, our families our ethnic groups Even our nation. Too much violence out there Too many centuries of torture now inscribed in the chosen ones In pain, in illness, a new cross, a new nailing, new stigmata. To those of us humbled, nailed to the cross of illusion and desire Waiting for God to remove our shame No longer satisfied with mere covering Refusing the tailor albeit divine We say? Surrender! Resist this game Be taken prisoner Prisoner -of-war You warriors-of-the-flesh You?ve won already Because of your burning flesh You have "the knowledge" you know the secret, you have the gnosis Inscribed in you Without even thinking In your stigmata the secret is revealed No longer an ideos In the head No longer a mind-game You radiate it in your broken flesh Your pain and your anguish You, we are the prophets of today.