Steve_Bamlett_blog

From Twitter – delineation of original not preserved in quotations from my tweets. (now mended 18/11/19)

See poem & background: https://endoftheworldpodcast.com/andrew-mcmillan/

Steve Bamlett@steve_bamlett·

lord show me a queer kid who doesn’t

want an answer to the question of themselves

sec. iii

@AndrewPoetry turns to the questioning narrative poem. A powerful lead from our best poet. Andrew McMillan https://endoftheworldpodcast.com/andrew-mcmillan/… via @wordpressdotcomAndrew McMillangospel   i) I saw him first in Soho Square the long thin plank of his body in repose     hair spilling over from the tipped jug of his head he was alone    it’s important to remember that    b…endoftheworldpodcast.com

And this story understands the threshold of agape and eros by invoking the Gospel story. It reclaims culture (& more), and revisions it @AndrewPoetry. In order to do so it reclaims, as art often does, love for the ‘lowly’ on which we stand, long associated in culture with the basest part of the body and rejected by reversal of it’s status, where high becomes low. That has a historically queer feel – Caravaggio to Baroque Spain reacting to Franciscan glorification and love of the humble ‘dirty foot’ foot:

that time we all got high at Simon’s

and suddenly he said let me

wash your feet and nobody said no

so there he was on his knees

sec. vii

It’s necessarily sacramental with the power of the body of love:

and slow something joyful born

of repetition he took my face

in his hands he looked down at me

as though my face in his hands were the world

lord I gently cupped of his thighs

like water and pushed them skyward

sec. ix

The foot fetishised is the foot turned into a principle of communal love, a kind of communion.

I took it as a call to service

kissed each toe took them like morsels

of bread into my mouth …

sec. ix

Here the social act of communion (THE sacrament) , breaking bread and communally consuming the body is an act of love and given as an act of service to a lord. Return to the power of the parable, the meaning of discipleship, love AND POWER embodied:

I won’t speak about the well-known times

the parties where wine seemed endless*

the days in bars people gathered

at his feet his latest parable

or anecdote ..

sec. ii

*John 2:1-11 (NIV)Jesus Changes Water Into Wine – On the third day a wedding took place at Cana in Galilee. Jesus’ mother was there, and Jesus and his disciples had also been invited to the wedding. When the wine was…biblegateway.com

Then if anyone says to you, ‘Look, here is the Christ!’ or ‘There he is!’ do not believe it.

Matthew 24:23

People will tell you, ‘Look, there He is,’ or ‘Here He is.’ Do not go out or chase after them.

Luke 17:23

For the greatest challenge to us today is that ‘love’ is only myth. Making it real means holding together communality and selfishness, body and other than body. To reverse doubts about what love may be, the meaning of agape and eros must be plumbed. @AndrewPoetry takes on the challenge for modern poetry by queering it. This poem is for everyone!