*Taken from Paste magazine issue #14 Feb/Mar 05, page 138*
Feeling Gravity's Pull by Tim Porter
atomic bombs and the dying embers of hubris
I'm at a place called Vertigo
It's everything I wish I didn't know
I'm in love. And next to me, my beloved. I have a dream job, a dream life. I'm alove, and I'm home. Still, I toss and turn ... restless ... vertigo.
And the troops on the ground
Are about to dig in
And I wonder where is the love?
Where is the love?
Planes into towers. Tanks on foreign streets. Savage beheadings. Depraved torture and humiliation.
Some people got way too much confidence baby
Meanwhile, back in our jungle, an utter lack of civil discourse. Arrogance takes the land like locusts.
The more you know the less you feel
A child, troubled and now disposable, shuffled from foster home to foster home. Another, preborn, stolen from the womb by his mother's murderer. Two million African children - children - infected with HIV. Genocide in the Sudan. "If you are not outraged, you're not paying attention."
I don't know if I can make it
I'm not easy on my knees
But it's not outrage that keeps me up. It's sadness. I want to be outraged. I want to feel righteous anger. I want to be sanctimonious, to be the good confronting the evil. But I can't even manage a "tsk, tsk."
You love is teaching me how
How to kneel
Because all I can think of is my role in the problem. I think of the bitterness, the pettiness, I harbor. I think of the people I've ignored today in all my self-important busy-ness. I think of the ways I've contributed to bad-faith debates and the ways I've just refused to engage in any discussion.
You steal right under my door
And I kneel 'cos I want you some more
I want the lot of what you got
And I want nothing that you're not
And I think of all the things I haven't done. Just how concerned am I if I haven't bothered to invest in solving these problems? It's been a couple years since I handed out food, drink and clothing at my church's soup kitchen. And it was months before that when I last had a real conversation with someone lacking shelter. Exactly when did I last invite a stranger in? I don't think Paste interns count. It's been a decade since I visited one of my best friends from high school in his prison cell, his home for life. I've never been to a candlelight vigil; I've never contributed to an African AIDS charity, I've never even written my congresswoman. And I want to point fingers at others, pretending I care? Someone, please call "Bullshit!" quick. I'm well positioned in the line of those failing to do it for the least of these.
Forget Outraged. I say, "If you're not both heart-broken and humbled, you're not paying attention."
Come on now show your soul
You've been keeping your love under control
...Lay down
Lay down
Lay your love on the track
We're gonna break the monster's back
It's not that I'm addicted to gnashing teeth or sackcloth and ashes. Newfound love has driven me to grief, ironically enough. I want a better world. And my sincere belief is that nothing truly changes until we're broken. Until I am broken. Truly broken. Divested of myself. Divested of my false sense of moral superiority. Even divested of my well-intentioned tendencies to hide humanity behind a cause... I want a better me. I want a miracle drug.
Take these hands
Teach them what to carry
Take these hands
Don't make a fist
Take this mouth
So quick to criticise
Take this mouth
Give it a kiss
Yahweh, Yahweh
Always pain before a child is born
Yahweh, tell me now
Why the dark before the dawn?
Take this heart
Take this heart
Take this heart
And make it break
*All lyrics from HTDAAB*