Sometimes I wonder why the someday of
Negro spirituals cannot be today
Spirited people high on hope, seeing the promise
Through the tainted telescope of crude imagination
.

Imagine you, on a bike, Sunday evening
An antagonist wiggle of his bike
In an epileptic attack
You feel the impact

You try to stand
But your balance gives way

Face to face with the sky
You search for God
But you found Him in cuts
Milometers away from your eye

A still small sigh saying
Hitherto it came, but no further

“Now you bear in your body, scars that show
That you belong to the cause of Christ”
“Now you bear in your body, scars that show
That you belong to the cause of Christ”

The physicians caress your vein with the love of needles
Hugging your face, lips, and inner cheeks
With the foreplay of stitches
The partial paralysis of your mouth

That night four emissaries
Took your bed corners like they were
The arrow heads of the cardinal points
The four corners of the earth

They brought no patronizing words
But reminded you of your oath,
your allegiance and the cup
They brought words that the path of the cause
Is one of sacrifice and death
And to continue is to brace for more
For the cause is greater than us all

Somehow these words brought more comforts
God’s foolishness
Irrationally rational
So your knees obey
Renewing your allegiance

Your face is swollen now
Like a deformed beach ball, round on one end
You look into the mirror
Thinking it could have been worse

Then you ask
If it had been worse
Would you quit?

Would you have given up?

But you remember Sokari Braide
Unnamed martyrs burnt at the stake
You remember John Hus
Executed with prophecy on His tongue
You remember Bonhoeffer
Obedient unto Nazi treason

Men have died for lesser cause than this

Whatever God breathes into you
Live it out to your dying days

You are prophecy
Witnessed by the blood of martyrs
The stubbornness of those
Who took God at His word

Now is your turn
Forging eternity and posterity
In this cosmic progression of time, space and age
As for me

I will kneel
In the audacity of prayer
With stitched mouth and rounded face
Saunter wherever He bids me go

That I may stand
And preach the Gospel
Men have died for lesser cause than this

Editor’s note: This is the substantially condensed and revised 2026 version of For Lesser Cause Than These, first published 11 December 2017. It is the Hunger representative from Under the Influence (First Edition, 2026).