Note: I am posting this week’s Sermon-Poem a day early, as I will be spending the day tomorrow in deep contemplation.
-Father Ridire
*The Lust of the Flesh* – Rending. Frenzy. Ecstatic loss of form. This is the breaking season. Masks split. Old skins tear. Desire overruns restraint. The body speaks first and loudest. What cannot survive intensity is shed.
Rupture is an inherently embodied phenomenon, and the Season of Rupture is the when the body stops asking permission.
It tears through restraint. It finds the places where we have learned to hold ourselves still, hold ourselves quiet, hold our breath, and it demands more. More breath. More sensation. More. Please.
This is the erotic violence of becoming embodied: the moment the body speaks louder than the names, rules, and stories imposed upon it. Sometimes we have to rupture before we remember what it feels like to breathe.
(And yes, the poem that follows is very much about spanking ✝️😈✝️)
(L)earning Breath
we (l)earn our first breath
with a spank,
[breathe]
wailing at the firm hand,
allowing it to resonate,
not knowing the words to keep
going further:
[breathe]
more. please.
[breathe]
these exhaled words
mirror, rel(ease)
us from apneic silences
parenthetically surrounding
being
cal(led) on or
calling after.
[breathe]
more would have be enough;
please would have filled us,
but instead they impose
a name on us
[breathe]
and give us first n(our)ishment from
mothers’ breast milk. we
forget breathe,
learn consume.
breath becomes
a thing that lives outside moments,
becomes
baited
in(be)tween.
[breathe]
this is how you come to me:
baited and living outside,
fighting to inhale,
frenzied to exhale,
unable to even cry(anymore)
or to beg
well enough to
choose your own name.
[breathe]
you lean in(to
my firm hand),
but my words
demand that you
arch: more. please.
[breathe]
you start to
remember h(ow)
to breathe,
to y(earn),
to beg:
[breathe]
more. please.
[breathe]
we (t)each ourselves
anticipation.
[breathe]
we call each other
our by (h)our truer names.
[breathe]
we learn together
what breathing really means:
[breathe]
rhythmic. resonating.
unrelenting.
[breathe]
-by Father Ridire
Liturgical Cycle of the Hedonic Year [Link]
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