My oldest brother is a self-professed boardgame geek. In fact, he is such a game geek that, for Valentine’s Day, he wrote a a series of twenty-one poems for his wife… based on boardgames they played together. Not only that, but he posted those poems online (if you enjoy boardgames, you may want to check them out; cf. http://www.boardgamegeek.com/geeklist/29054).
Now, when we were much younger, my oldest brother and I used to send each other ‘hate poetry’, you know, he would write me a poem about ‘the crazies’ that I attracted, and I would respond with a poem about how he would die when his bowels exploded (he has Crohn’s).
Anyway, after reading my brother’s recent poems, I was inspired to write a poem roughly based upon some of my research, and (even more roughly) modeled after Triumph by the Wu-Tang Clan. This is my effort to ‘out-geek’ the geek. I’m turning this into a rap battle, baby!
[Parental/Evangelical Advisory: The Following Contains Explicit Lyrics.]
Triumph: Take II
The Wu-Tang Clan may have bombed atomically,
But I’m sittin here, and I’m droppin eschatology;
We’re not talkin mystery, we’re talkin historicity,
Rediscovering the Church, as political community.
Aight? Let me break it down for you. It goes like this:
Evangelicals have mapped out premillenial chronologies,
They’re waiting for the rapture, and damning all modernities
Waiting for the day, when the clouds are furled,
When Jesus Christ descends, they’ll yell ‘fuck the world!’
Cuz It’s all about the soul, in their Platonist cosmology,
But we’re still a far cry from any Pauline eschatology.
The Liberals be hatin’ on the Evangelical
They’ve got an education, and gone amillenial
Forget the tribulation, they don’t need a timetable
They focus more on action, and not some end-time fable.
So they’re chasing after causes (which are rather fine)
But all this eschatology is too faux Johannine.
Each in their own way are backing a lame horse
And failin to note the dominant discourse
Cuz it’s all economics ruling the globe
And we’re all renting space in cap’talism’s abode.
So in a world full of petit récits,
We must recourse to Pauline history
(which, of course, is eschatology).
Cuz Paul never thought about the world’s end,
He talked about the Spirit as God’s given dividend.
So while Neocons tell us, our lives are now consummated,
Paul knew, and we know, of a kingdom inaugurated;
Our Age is now perforated, and we won’t be sedated.
Cuz we are a people with memory and hope,
We don’t live in the moment, the man sells us like dope.
So we don’t buy the lie, he be tryin to sell us
About history arriving at its Hegelian telos.
About how this is all as good as it get,
We be followin’ Jesus, and fuckin that shit.
Like a virus we’re spreadin through Babylon
Proleptically anticipating the eschaton
And countering forces of globalisation
With the Spirit and power of God’s new creation.
So seize the day, seize the past, seize the future as well,
Or we’re all bound to freeze in a cap’talist hell.