The Golden Calf
A reading of a new poem for Palestine + an introduction for new subscribers.
Hello friends, old and new.
Today I'd like to share a new poem with you. If you've been following me for some time, you might be familiar with my other poems dedicated to Palestine and the fact that the latest instalment of the onslaught on Palestine was the trigger that made me return to writing after a long hiatus. I see many new subscribers here, so for them, here's a warm welcome and a quick introduction to what you can expect in this space (you can also check out my About page to learn more).
I'm an archaeologist and writer living on the north coast of occupied Ireland. A former journalist and short story writer, I abandoned writing some ten years ago due to what I now recognise as a perpetual autistic burnout. In October 2023, sadness and rage made me write again and I submitted a poem to Dlúthpháirtíocht, a compilation of Irish solidarity poetry and art. Poetry soon grew into essays that started taking a peculiar ecocentric and decolonial direction. In a way I'd like to call myself a nature writer, but you won't see me writing a travel guide or using our natural environment as a simple escapism. You will find me dissecting human relationship with Nature through myth and science, examining the extractivist psychology of colonialism and capitalism, rethinking grassroot anarchist praxis and refusing to pander to the violent colonial system we all live in and its alleged “lesser evils” (something that costed me quite a few unsubscriptions after my last newsletter, which I find rather hilarious). All of this is informed by my animist spirituality and reverence for our Mother Earth. As a writer, I want to unravel small details to build the big picture; as a human forced to live within capitalism, I want to attack the culture of compartmentalisation that makes us detach politics from our everyday lives and turn a blind eye to the destructive reality we live in. Some say I'm “too political”, some don't like the insertion of politics into Nature and spirituality — to them, I have nothing nice left to say, that ship has sailed and sunk. Our every step is politics.
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Back to today's newsletter — this poem is a bit different than my previous ones. It’s titled “The Golden Calf” and I feel it's darker, more layered, loaded, harder to process, being built directly upon Judeo-Christian imagery and macabre words and aspirations of those committing a genocide.
I believe some poems are best delivered when spoken rather than read, so I'm stepping way out of my comfort zone here and filming myself reading this poem. I'm not much of a spoken word artist or content creator and I feel very uncomfortable with public performance because my neurodivergence is messing with my memory and mannerism, but I've settled for reading and I thank a number of fellow Substackers for encouraging me to do it. In the past few months I participated in two poetry evenings for Gaza and expressing myself and meeting other like-minded people finally gave me a sense of beginning to build a community where I feel safe, something I've been searching for my entire life; something I wish for all the people in this world.
You can read “The Golden Calf” and listen to it below. Let me know how does this poem resonate with you.
The Golden Calf
You call yourself a man of God
Speaking of Amalek, an ancient foe
While safely sitting on your golden throne
The emperor of the artificial life
you built for yourself under an iron dome
And underneath your feet lie
shattered remains of many a bloodied bone
You call yourself a man of God
Quoting the scripture and sending soldiers to slay
And then, amongst the rubble, to kneel down
on the screaming, wounded ground to pray
As if anything holy could ever be built
on top of a lost limb and the remains
of a 6 years old little girl named Hind
Maybe, just maybe, you can magically conjure
something sacred with the help of your God
But what God would find pleasure
in carnage and smoke, unless he's a demon
A demon of death who reeks of
concrete dust, brimstone and scorched flesh
For that is who you serve
You, a child of darkness
You bow to an idol stitched out of bowel and tendon
A golden calf, his belly slashed open
With a moan and a shiver and a hellish stench
So its intestines pour down its legs
Into a pool of blood, ankle deep
This, this is the memory that the world will keep
This, this is the memory that my mind has made
while mothers and fathers and babies fade
An eternal shade
An eternal shame
Depicting so accurately the hypocritical soul of those who use religion to excuse despicable perfidy is bound to cause the ire of those who cannot or choose not to reason but rather to follow conditioned prejudice or preference or the very deeply destructive and insidious installation of doctrinal dogma.
I've written reams about the tragedy that has unfolded over many years and come to haunt the last 10 months and I feel and bleed for its victims but your poem says more and better than I ever have been able to express.
True poetry, in my view, leaving aside formality, (though not dispensing with it), emotes feeling of the poet and engenders feeling of the reader. What you've offered here is precisely that but more, because it deals with much more than beauty, taking the risk of reciting actuality and laying its perfidy bare.
Thank you.
Take care. Stay safe. ☮️
Ramona I can’t help but see you as a kindred spirit. I love the subjects of politics getting oddly mired with spiritual life, intersection of colonial impact on the non-human world, and mother earth with her agency and volition.
And the poem, dear god, you were on fire. It was dark, layered, and necessary. Thank you for your evocative recitation.