asovereign (on schmitt)
a poem by yanan melo
About the author: Yanan Rahim N. Melo (he/him) is a theologian and composer from Cagayan de Oro, Philippines, who works at the intersections of theology, politics, and the arts. His writing has appeared in Sojourners, Christianity Today, Geez Magazine, and Bittersweet Monthly, among other outlets. In 2021, he released a piano-based record called After Supper, a set of musings on eucharistic decay and the poetic nature of faith.
this poem is dedicated to all those who suffer, in Gaza and elsewhere. offered as a prayer, a song, and a yearning for a world otherwise than the one we have.
i.
the past shapes us as much as now and tomorrow “striving forward as much as backwards and sideways” there is no self only fragment s …
ii.
“question therefore the age.” someone once called it “extinguishing the self,” wherein the self is a matter of interrogation; a matter of failed … subjection … the ringing of my mind rouses another plurality; schmitt tells me what to do. i laugh, can you see his fractures? flesh and bones stirring in a pot, over embers like whisper smoke.
iii.
just another friday night. fractals of sunlight allure, carried by a decayed autumnal glaze. there, i saw god in his glory, riding a chariot without wheels. sovereign is he who decides on the exception. yet there is nothing if god is in flight, carried in sackcloth and ashes
you can eat him now.
is the sovereign he who decides? when a body could not be found? merely indwelling the flesh of another. this body deferred, entering an everlasting starting
point: narcissus' mirror, an extension. gnawing the same.
i understand now why infallibility and sovereignty are perfect synonyms. self and mirror, both the frame. no wonder the body dissolved, passing a game. capture the body, a god you can tame. god’s cornea: a kingdom with no face. gods parousia: mere crown, dead faith. now interior, enteric, a pot with no stew. he laughs,
it's called a miracle.
well no wonder the body dissolved, he left behind a frameiv.
i have sought to delineate sovereignty, the exception. what another calls sacrifice: a state of necessity. i have sought to find that sovereignty in, there is not a face; i have sought to find the sovereign, there is but a whisper; i have sought to find a sovereign, there is not a body to too long of a wait i hold my breath. this autumnal blaze hastens... for me? maybe, for me. this whispering if you can heed, don’t believe that sovereignty. believe only what your eyes can’t see ...
v.
the past shapes us as much as now and tomorrow “striving forward as much as backwards and sideways” there is no sovereign only flight;
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