PostPoems Be Artistic. Be Creative. Be Inspired!

Not just reborn, but really born again;
not teased by covert thrills, but made alive
in Christ:  thus I am free of your coercion,
no more partaking of our past perversion
(but how hard those temptations that I strive
against---the urge to take our choicest sin
back to myself),  Your soft plea, "Just once more . . ."
would make me less your lover than your whore.

How much you weep or curse, or make a fuss
will not dissuade me.  Yes, I know you grieve.
But I belong to Christ.  Now, Eutychus
loves me---since he first came to Mitylene
with Paul.  Three long months since we have last seen
each other:  now, together we shall leave,
be married, and then live in Ephesus.

No, I do not dislike his "monkey face"
(as you have called it).  Our love, saved by grace,
is not subject to judgment or appearance,
nor does it stop for deviant interference.
The Gospel tells me:  I no longer must
defer to this isle's customs or your lust,
no matter how that sets your nerves ajar.

I want that which a Hebrew King spoke of
once . . . Eutychus, rapt always in my love;
to walk with him upon some wave-lapped shore,
barefoot in our desire, with joy in store
for us who chastely waited.  Moon and star
will drift, with us, through those slow, love-swept hours,
with fragrances from sea-mist, mingled flowers,
and candied cinnamon we like to share.
The fetid darkness sought in Mitylene
as canopy to your inverted rite
(left in stark travesty, sterile, obscene)
will have no welcome---no remembrance!---there,
upon our constellated wedding night
as Eutychus and I make love.  The site
will be, thus, sacred.  Yes, I know my name
is Atthis, but that does not grant a claim
to you, or Psappha---or to anyone
on Lesbos---that I must be Lesbian,
bound to our gender, or experience
forced here.  In Christ, I have new residence,
a spirit wholly new with sweet prospects---
not what your doubled mirror's glass reflects.

And, none too soon, our ship departs for sea.

I cannot, now, do what you ask of me.