Your body will betray you.
Without consent or reason,
Without preparation or solution,
Without fairness or predictability,
Pain and tumors will colonize.
Ideologies and histories colonize, too.
Suffering will reign in the body.
Your body will betray you,
Until an expiration date suddenly reveals,
“Life is over,”
And interrupts all.
Your body will betray you,
Always, betray you.
Without consent or reason,
Without preparation or solution,
Without fairness or predictability,
With lies and broken promises,
Your country will demand you.
And betray you:
you and your body.
Such demanding, victimizing religious patriotism,
Binds people and money and ideas,
Blinds and tortures.
With acknowledgment and dissatisfaction,
Your country and its conformists will betray you,
Always, betray you.
Epilogue:
Events surrounding Trumpism, generally, and Kavanaugh, specifically, inspired this poem, as well as Joseph Schreiber’s essay and my never-ending health problems. In addition, before today, I made several unsuccessful attempts to explore this theme of body, country, and betrayal in this medium. The poem is both personal and artistic.
Finally, the following quotation is important:
On the one hand, man is a body, in the same way that this may be said of every other animal organism. On the other hand, man has a body. That is, man experiences himself as an entity that is not identical with his body, but that, on the contrary, has that body at its disposal.
Dr. Andrew Joseph Pegoda
Dr. Andrew Joseph Pegoda 