St. Simeon Stylites, Erik Muller

Dale Champlin, Praise Be 2, Collage, 2021


St. Simeon Stylites

 

On a pillar on
your way to heaven

without a touch
of earth, so it

is said, yet food
pulled up by pulley,

excrement let down—
no escaping earth. 

So, old boy, you know
as you know bites

of flies, welts of sun,
you are a poet,

rising above,
trying to take

nourishment from air,
confusing day with night,

pissing from your column.
You lower poems

in your scribbling hand
with any bucket of shit: 

My cursed life, a man
who wishes to be gone.

I can’t rise high enough
to find myself in God.

__________________
Erik Muller

 

 

Scroll to Top