SOUL WINNER, CHRISTIAN BUSINESSMAN, April 20th, 11 A.M.
You can have my soul
spotty squidflesh somewhere inside me,
you can have my mind
with all the neat numbers in it,
you can have my body
fast legs sludging arteries,
you can have my heart
that’s so good in bed,
you can have any part.
You can have my old trousers
if they haven’t emptied the dumpster yet.
But what would you do
with my soul if you had it?
Cut out the guts and the pen,
stomp on it, tenderize it, fricassee:
you’d throw my body against the Saracen,
napalm salvation on a million gooks.
Toss out my body, bury my heart.
You’d have me reborn
on the clutching rotary, the roped wheel:
I won’t be born again.
-
Author:
Robert Southwick Richmond (
Offline) - Published: January 1st, 2021 17:59
- Comment from author about the poem: Soul winner is a somewhat archaic term for an evangelist. This poem got its title from an advertisement for a preacher that I saw in a newspaper in 1978. The squid metaphor I may have borrowed from Tom Sawyer – the guts and pen are parts of a squid, usually tenderized before stir-frying. The emblem of the business organization Rotary is a stylized gear, of Kiwanis a wheel surrounded by a rope. The poem contrasts winning a soul with the Buddhist doctrine of anattā, the non-existence of the soul.
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Comments3
So many theories, so many doctrines and too many preachers. Lets face it none of us know for sure about rebirth, reincarnation, heaven etc for each is an unproven theory and the reality is closed to us.
However, I was surprised some twenty five years, or so, ago at the amount of modern written evidence there was for 'previous lives' in my local library (which was not a large one). I'm not including those hypnosis previous lifes episodes which thankfully lost credibility when it turned out that there were too many 'I used to be Napoleon' claimants walking the streets.
Interesting and thought provoking post from you.
If there's an afterlife, there's nothing we can know about it - everything is metaphor. Too many people think that being a Christian is all about the afterlife, but following Jesus is a matter of the here and now. If there's an afterlife, Jesus will take care of it for me.
I don't think there's any hard evidence for reincarnation, either.
As a result of an error in inventory management, my soul hadn't been recycled since the Paleolithic, when I was either the sculptor or the model for the Venus of Willendorf.
A thoughtful write Robert.
I don't go along with reincarnation either.
I see it as we're 'born again' - the catchy phrase - or 'born from above' spiritually, not physically.
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