Baptism as Metaphor for Suicide
THE day my faith decides to walk on water
Is the day sharks start swimming the sea surface,
Mustard seeds flung beyond my feeble ripples
Faith or fickleness? Feet pedalled by sinking
Leanings; into the tempest!
SAY, I walk to the edge of the riverbed
The ocean shyly kisses the tectonic brownness, brine
Depresses this shallowness. Was planted by the
Waterside, nurtured by Psalms offshore, and now
My root cannot find its tributary to it Roots. And I don’t know
The procedure for this ritual. Flowing white robes, held
Captive, lest seismic doubts prevail. Pleadings mumbled
For new births and beginnings; hands clasped
Body aligned as to practising death. Now coldly submerged
Into the Coldness… I am a spasmic thing
Violent seizures suppressed by eager hands, the earthly
Struggling with the eternal. And there’s a double entendre for
This eerie epilepsy:
The physical, where the body persists for its poison,
THE spiritual, where my Legions are mutating
Adapting to this temporary affectation. But it’s
All perspectives, it’s all
Crossroads that converge at the same Calvary. So
PERCHANCE, my feet drag this weary body to the
Estuary of my existence, my crucible pot
The confluence of my conscience, persuades this
Moulded mischief to mutiny, and in a fit
Of apocalyptic despair glide into the
Nothingness, into that tempest!
Seeking succour in the sadness of my saviour’s sacrifice,
OH! Sinner where is your dignity? Where’s your
Bravado? Where’s the certainty of your convictions?
Three times submerged, in parallel cases,
The returned is a new man
——————
Poem © Emmanuel Idem
Image: Pixabay modified