God, The Poet Poem by Daniel Ionita

After writing the first indecent poem
I cut off my hand,
the left or the right, I cannot remember.
I would have left it alone,
but it was leading me into the daily sin
and so, I cut it off.

After writing one hundred lascivious poems,
I took my eye out.
The right or the left, I don't know.
I would have left it in its place,
but it was staring only
at the daily debauchery.
I scooped it out with a silver spoon, carefully,
so that I didn't make a mess,
in my sordid quarter of daily paradise.

After my thousandth lewd poem
I started to worry
that I would have all my members cut off - eventually.
That I would soon be confined to
playing just with my daily... ideas.


On my way to the daily abattoir,
where I would carry out these self-mutilations
I met God walking on the street.
Just like that, suddenly, there He was!
He might have been on His way to the markets.
'I'm on my way to sell My poems in exchange for some
gold, frankincense, and myrrh' says He.
Do you want some? You will not regret it.'
He sounded convincing and seemed… well-versed…

Finally, I did purchase from him
ointment for my eye,
the one still hanging in its socket -
He manufactured it on the spot
from dust mixed with spital.
(He had just diagnosed me as a poetus orbi -
He used to work, He said, as a local G.P.
somewhere in the Nazareth of Galilee)

'There's hope for you, too', says He,
for I made quite decent poets out of all sorts of loosers,
fishermen, widows, tax-collectors,
lepers, pharisees, as well as ordinary
(and even some extraordinary) whores.

As He stepped away on the footpath,
I understood,
for the first time,
that God cannot sin,
even though He pronounces many poems daily,
some of them quite offensive,
according to specialists.