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Religion in 2084: The Beautiful Man
from INCITE 2010
by CIS Ontario
Such supple skin hung from his nailèd knees - ten babes could suck! Hard honest bones; how sticky maids would weep for wanton muck, His eyes, the wizened blood of grapes: Deep Density of Time, His lids, the milky crust of baby’s lip did mime- Oh how sublime! Oh how sublime!
His hands, knit golden gilded grains, would scoop each cup of oil, Then out would flow the golden scales against the nightly toil, They pushed through tender folds until they reached some souring swells, They muffled like a starlit sea dissevered into wells. His heart would sigh, Beat.
The world would stop, he wine back-birth to grapes, And then another cup of oil he’d pour onto his scrapes: His selfish welts.
“Six Shillings for a Shackle, son!
“Fifty for a pack!”
“Thirty brings a bag of rope!”
“Forty for a sack!”
And men would line like sucking twine to wrap round “hand” “a face”, Then pull the shiny pieces of the plastic man they praise, The man with eye would see no thigh and one sees only heart, To see a babe without the breast, see paint stripped from the arts.
The Christian father wipes an elbow dry and mounts it high, The Hindus and the Seeks begin their prayer to an eye, The Muslims prep their feast to see unshackling of a hand, The Jewish walk with care so not to drop a thigh on land.
An elbow
Dry a gorging
Eye a wrangling hand and rotting thigh.
The Horse of troy made peasant hands, the bounteous bread to rye.
And down drops night, and rises plight to land they were before, The shacks unshackle, ropes untie and there he is once more, Without a rod, without a cane, with naught but beaten beauty, He opens back the tin of oil and quests their means of duty:
“If arm cannot live with the foot, and foot not with the eye, What hope? What beauty do I bring? - but just a rotting thigh, I come with arm, and leg, and thigh and make your secret shrine, But when blood can’t reach my limbs, how am I still to shine!”
And unfolds he, to freshened welts: the signature of sack, And scoops another cup of oil and drips it down his back. His withered back. His beautiful back . His withered back.
