My PhD Given to Me by God
It started as I was writing another poem with God. I was nearing the end of an additional book. God took note of this poem. God said to write two poems (including this one) about myself and He/She/They will write the third as the last for the book, 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 and that it was a doctorate that He/She/They was granting me with consideration of all my past research and writing. It should be noted that God assists on one level or another with many poems, now and going back years which appear in many collections.
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 all of 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 much more than I was given to know. It depends on which type of professor you ask if I am a theologian (given my master’s thesis) or also a humanities scholar. I also having considerable experience in violence studies and studies in feminism and space/place. I feel, to my best objective self-analysis, that I do qualify as a humanities scholar. It still stands that it took a lot for someone with my disability to have started at community college and climbed to getting a master’s from Johns Hopkins. 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 absorbed in studies.
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
Update 8/17/26 : See exeunt.me for complete Trilogy that makes up PhD.
Update 10/17/26:
At Internet Archive The night God came down
A follow up to Trilogy of Poems (at Internet Archive)
Update 10/18/2026