On the Open Sea

A harpoon is stuck in the side of God, below the fluke where the heart is.

God is his real name, her’s too, the name derived from a real object that led to the creation of real words.

The villagers have killed God—there’s blood everywhere—the villagers need the meat to feed the village. Every part of God will be used, nothing will be left behind, even the bones will be preserved so that shelters can be erected to protect the villagers—men, women, children— from famine, pestilence, crime.

I live in the city, in the midst of civilization, I can only watch the tragedy from a distance. God seems to be dead, harpooned by a whaler, a member of a small indigenous tribe governed by ancient rituals and superstitions. It’s my fault God is dead. Had I been praying as a sovereign individual instead of as a member of a mob perhaps nothing like this, this sort of bloody encounter involving God and Man would have ever taken place, this savagery, this massacre…

San Quentin, ‘The Big House’, December, 2024. Photo by author.