crazy!

the beggars have gone crazy

fending on hunger

shuffling listlessly down alleyways

they poke for scraps in garbage bins

remnants of superfluous food

dumped to keep the city clean

i look into their ragged face

and see the lines starvation makes

whittled by the elements in all due seasons

hand outstretched, begging for a mammonic gift

my hand should stretch, asking pardon

while drawing in their beggar's breath

i should bend my head, requesting a blessing 

and wash the feet of these long neglected

but i give nothing more than a glance

an emphatic No quavering in my spit

walking quickly, n'arily a glance

*How does one give life without bringing death?  Who has resolved the enigma?  Hades and Dionysus were the same god.  A sacrament was necessary, a seed of resurrection, so that lovers would stop being afraid, would no longer spy on one another, and together would pass through the gate to the universe of persons.

Those who love one another want proofs.  And when the proofs have been given, when they have said, "I love you, I love you," with a voice that was only the sigh of the flesh, sometimes nothing more remains of what had been proven except habit, social necessity, and money.  When people love each other, they want each other completely, but by devouring one another, they are lost.  Woe to someone who wants to know the other completely.  Even more wretched is the one who believes he has succeeded!

-Jean Sulivan