The First Draft Of My Soul Poem by Eloisa Gearhart

The First Draft of my Soul
*God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him. How shall we comfort ourselves, the murderers of all murderers? What was holiest and mightiest of all that the world has yet owned has bled to death under our knives: who will wipe this blood off us? What water is there for us to clean ourselves? What festivals of atonement, what sacred games shall we have to invent? Is not the greatness of this deed too great for us? Must we ourselves not become gods simply to appear worthy of it? —Nietzsche, The Gay Science, Section 125


They wanted to strip from me my innocence which was my saving grace
On cold days, days so frightening, being alone with my thoughts
When my flesh decays does my spirit climb up my ribs
Oh Jacobs ladder I have wrestled here, wrestled with you
Stepping on every bone, step by step, to reach my eternal home
O does it wilt, does it morph with the decor of my house since birth
Perishing in my box in the earth
For all to declare
God is dead

Weep no more

I learn, at university, to question all the elements of life and sciences
And then to defer to the walkers of the hall, the mini gods, the saviors of the mind
'God is dead and yes it is true, I have killed him in my spare time'

I have killed him with my bare hands
my bare thoughts
I have killed him with my poetry
I have killed him with my willingness
to embrace acceptance by shunning loneliness
to belong to those scholars, the erudite of words, so I would
have someone to sit by during departmental meetings
I would say to them
'Yes, I love classical music' and I would say 'God is not dead, for we are all God'

And I would not tell them that 'Jim Morrison found Jesus before he died
Said so even a week before his death, at a concert'
Nor would I tell them I feel a wilt
for I don't have a spirit
as I once supposed

I am not of them but
I
am
turning
every spin the prism casts a new reflection, blue, red, yellow
I have seen the road before me and it causes me to shake, to grieve
To grieve the night I wrestled at Bethel, the night my hip was displaced
And given a new name, True Believer, a believer in God
Oh hear, Ye Children of Jacob, There is more to this earth
Ascend Jacob's ladder
My soul, will you ascend?

For now I will pierce my brow, I will sway to blues
I will desire sex and lustful pleasures yet still
Wrestle with these things
Is morality relative?

feminist agendas, liberal republicanism or balancing conservative democratic notions
And somewhere in myself, my spirit rose and ascended up my body,
Wrapped around the ribs, twisted and stuck and gnarled and now sits
I live so scared, so alone

For I have looked into their hearts and found their hearts are good
I have seen brown eyes and green eyes and blue and yellow
as passionate as a mother cat defending her kits
Feeding her kits, loving her kits
Licking, parting the fur, coarse tongue cleansing them from all their impurities

I have glimpsed the sliding silhouette upon the fence
Felt the chill that haunts