Yes, it is a wonderful thing to do. I looked over the site and realize my poems wouldn't quite fit in there; I haven't written anything about the experience of being a jaydub, or about leaving.
Here's one of my newer pieces, though...with an explanatory preface:
The sin-eater was found in England, Ireland, Wales, parts of the Southern U.S., and, of a sort, in India. The sin-eater was a person, usually a social outcast or recluse, who was brought into a village whenever somebody died. The body would be laid out with bread and salt on its chest and coins in its eyes. The sin-eater would eat the bread and salt, thus taking the dead person's sins onto himself (or herself). In payment, the sin-eater could take the coins from the eyes and then was chased out as a human scapegoat. According to lore, the only person who could absolve one sin-eater was another (who took the old sin-eater's accumulated sins onto himself) or the sin-eater's son.
Sin Eater
In the old days they used to pass me a slice of bread across the corpse
And I'd eat it standing over the coffin; but now
The corpses meet me in the cafeteria and
We eat each other's troubles like dandruff on our daily bread.
If we speak at all.
O America give me your sins or I'll take them by force
Of habit.
Your clamorous troubles fill me up and make me hungry.
Beaten children, homeless men, needles on the pavement:
I'm hungry
For kif, for chocolate.
Rape, queer-bashing, threats of war:
I'm hungry
For spangled skirts, for pretty stories.
Acid brown skies, treasuries scoured empty, aliens thrown together:
I'm hungry
For sex, for starry nights, for living trees.
For solitude.
For your happiness.
6/3/02
Gently Feral
Edited by - GentlyFeral on 15 June 2002 15:49:32