My PhD Given to Me by God

I wrote a poem with God. I am nearing the end of an additional book. God said to write two poems about myself and He/She/They will write the third as the last for this book, currently titled, Book of Unwritten Art. It is a follow up to Songs for Four Judges, both of which are “songs,” which are poems claimed by God as being credited to Him/Her/Them, some of which were more directly from God than others. I started this poem, “Cordial Sensum of Doctored Appeal,” with indicators of myself, and many memories came back to me from my youth, though to be honest, poverty was not so many years ago. Still, extreme poverty was longer ago. The poem grew over a larger, spreading, public interest. During the course of writing this poem, God told me it was my PhD, that He/She/They was granting me.

When I had returned to college as an adult, I was returning with the core focus of getting a PhD. That did not happen. Many major changes over the course of five colleges later all I ended up with was a Master of Liberal Arts, which though many consider meaningless, I stayed in college long enough for more than two Bachelor’s. But I will not get detailed in that. Suffice it to say that with all my classes and my extra advanced studying outside of college, I ended up well trained in the humanities. Yes, I could be better trained, but I learned enough to teach myself more than I was given to know. It depends on which type of professor you ask if I am a theologian or also a humanities scholar. I feel, to my best objective self-analysis, that I do qualify as a humanities scholar. It still stands that for someone with my disability to have started at community college and climbed to getting a master’s from Johns Hopkins took a lot. I loved college. I have always said that if there was any way I could become wealthy enough not to work I would spend the rest of my life in college, just taking classes and more classes and earning what degrees I wanted. I felt at home in college. It was so soothing.

Back to the point of this post. Below is the poem that God granted me a PhD for, with consideration of all my previous various works in mind. Yes, there are some created words God gave me.

Cordial Sensum of Doctored Appeal

so many years ago now
he came from public poverty
he loved the aesthetic
he did not know it, though

as natural as a cloud of heart dust
as practical as a seeing oblisque highway
dull touch to the stranger’s gate
berry mouthpiece in grantify sands
disbelief in controlling governing councils

the wasted cornerstands in cowhide sarcasm
like Saint-Simonism and authoritarianism
spread over dependents’s support of labor
seeing just how well His/Her/Them mentored Ernest Becker
had control over the sailing sight of branch politics,
over praxis and tolerant obsequence; a note on in-moved stand
the music of His/Her/Them’s voice under the perturbed dense movements
he’s now the soil and power on the tine of a graduate of God’s superseding mention