We are legion

Liesl Jobson

Keep it up, Big Boy. Recovery is hard to do. One slip could be fatal. Each step back from the slippery slope and you’re closer to where you must go.

Put on your clothes. Worry not about ironing. Sweep the house clean, but do it only once. Don’t get trapped by laundry.

Copy lyrics onto a piece of paper, folded in your wallet. Even if it’s empty. Especially if it is. Sing the words until you believe them. I’ve got all my life

to live, and I’ve got all my love to give and I’ll survive, I will survive! Wear your grandfather’s cufflinks. Gratitude will save your life.

You’re just a late bloomer, like that poor schlub in the Bible coming down from a bad trip. Maybe if Jesus had stopped by a week or a month later,

self-care would have been back in place and that herd of Gadarene swine would not have dived headlong into the lake. At least there’d be no conflict

between the church fathers and animal rights activists based on that particular exorcism.

Don’t obsess about good juju and bad. Addiction is epigenetic. Demons are everywhere but you needn’t offer them caviar. Behaviour is learned. Self-

care starts with chocolate. Healing is real. If somebody wants to give you a titanium hip, write a new liturgy, and say thank you. Be your own priest.

Featured on 23 September 2021

The Song of El

Mike Cope

Note: El was the chief Canaanite deity in pre-Biblical times. He had a wife, Asherah. He and their children, the Elohim, were assimilated into the later

conceptualisation of God, but the all-male priesthood appears to have left Mrs God out. The poem is from my novella, The Fall of Ugarit.

How can I speak of Asherah

when there was neither an I who could speak,

nor an Asherah to be spoken of,

when there was only a single life?

How can I not speak of Asherah

when I must speak,

and there is nothing else

that can be spoken of?

How can I compare her

to the pomegranate or the rose?

Apples and dates are useless for similes.

Pure milk is sour beer, fresh dew is mud.

She was my day and my night.

When I opened my eyes,

it was her image that filled them.

When I closed them, it was to dream of her.

I was the right side, and she the left;

she was the front and I was the back,

each giving meaning to the other,

each nothing without the other.

She brought the rain in from her blue sea.

I plucked it from the clouds

and watered all the flanks

of Mount Saphon and beyond.

When I was lost among the oaks

on the flank of Mount Saphon,

she came for me.

She led me to the best path though I didn’t know it.

When I came to the Mountain,

she was already there.

She caught me in her noose.

She tethered me at the summit,

helpless beneath the Sun and the Moon.

Featured on 16 September 2021

When Ancient Anatomists

Bernard Levinson

When ancient anatomists

opened the heart

for the first time –

God was asleep

in the parachute cords

of the small valves.

A finding

of some moment

and much bewilderment –

not in a church

or a temple –

but there

between the soul’s breath –

God lived in the ebb

and flow

of the blood’s tide.

Featured on 9 September 2021