Poem: Unbecoming

It is very meet, right, and our bounden duty, that we should at all times, and in all places, give thanks unto thee...

This piece is part of The Choc Board, a 30-day writing challenge from my friend Chocolate Knox. You can follow Chocolate Knox’s Diagnostic Doxology on Substack, as well as his profile on X.

Unbecoming
It is very meet, right, and our bounden duty, that we should at all times, and in all places, give thanks unto thee, O Lord, Holy Father, Almighty, Everlasting God. Therefore with Angels and Archangels, and with all the company of heaven, we laud and magnify thy glorious Name; evermore praising thee, and saying:

I.
The Dragons old all lived under the earth,
Their bones from stone ask riddles dark and deep:
Was War in Heaven while Adam tossed in sleep?
What Grace extends to beasts of monstrous birth?

The dinosaur’s a comic clumsy beast
Who shares his story with the trilobite,
But Dragons fell from Heaven’s holy light
And lost their seats at Heaven’s cosmic feast.

Remember now just how the World is worked,
And what the Heavens did at Story’s root.
The Tree is upside down, the Head’s a Foot,
And leaves from Sky intrude into the dirt.

This is the way the World is made:
Not with a whine but with timber.

II.
Today Mankind has separated Art
From Hell, from Heaven, from Earth, from Stone, from Sky.
Untethered, rootless, given to a Lie:
That Heaven and Earth must spend all Time apart.

Our offspring have become the comic beasts,
They’ve turned into that pair of ragged claws.
Their Bellies have become their only cause,
Their Art a fruitless wait for wild Yeast.

All this Becoming is nor right nor meet,
But not because a Change is to be feared,
Nor yet because we mayn’t rejoice in Weird.
We neither Movement hate, nor the Complete.

The problem’s never been in Growth or Change.
The plans God had for Adam were immense.
The evil’s rather in that old pretense:
An apple a day to keep the Heavens contained.

The problem’s never been in Change or Growth.
The mandate given Adam was immense.
The evil’s rather in that old pretense:
The World is not built by Word and Oath.

The problem’s never been that we have Moved.
The movement asked of Adam was immense.
The evil’s rather in that old pretense:
That Earth from Heavenly matters is excused.

The problem’s never been nor Time nor Wheel.
The Gift of both to Adam was immense.
The evil’s rather in that old pretense:
That we could build God out with a dome of steel.

III.
All this Becoming is nor right nor meet,
But not because a Change is to be feared,
Nor yet because we mayn’t rejoice in Weird.
We neither Movement hate, nor the Complete.

The evil’s not in Change, but Change to What.
The evil’s in the crushing, not the Wheel,
For movement was built in to all that’s Real.
The evil’s in the killer, not the guts.

And now Mankind has separated Art
From Hell, from Heaven, from Earth, from Stone, from Sky.
Untethered, rootless, given to a Lie:
That Heaven and Earth must spend all Time apart.

IV.
This is the way the World is made:
Not with a whine but with timber.

This is the world the Word has made:
The Spirit a flame to its tinder.

A sharper grass is coming up from ground,
The Tree’s intruding past the dome Man built.
The Dragons are so many Stars that spilt
From Sky and lost their flames in floods, and drowned.

Remember now just how the World came quick,
And what the Heavens did at Story’s root.
The World-Tree comes out of Sky with fruit,
The leaves of Sky are healing all the sick.

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