Monday, January 11, 2010

The Ten Commandments of Lust

One:
Lust for fame, beauty, wealth,
possessions, position,
not what matters.

Two:
Lust for the idols and images
you create for yourself, the ones
that all, oddly, look like you.

Three:
Lust to be cool and sound cool,
Oh My God, or because
you have to fill the empty air and
don’t know what else to say.

Four:
Lust to work, and to fill your life with
busy-ness and every good and
bad thing so you don’t have to
think and if you stop the frenzy
of activity you’ll find the
emptiness within and you don’t
want that.

Five:
Lust to forget where you
came from because face it, parents
can be embarrassing and just want to
talk sometimes and your time is more
important and maybe you’ll have a
chance to call next week.

Six:
Lust for anger, revenge, gain,
destruction and death, and
self-obsession, too, because
self-obsession is a kind of
murder.

Seven:
Lust to possess others’
bodies and hearts and souls
because God just
wants you to be happy,
right?

Eight:
Lust for everything you do not
own or possess, and that’s
a lot of stuff to
lust for.

Nine:
Lust to promote yourself or destroy
someone else with a lie or
a rumor or a quick gossip
exchanged in total confidence,
of course, because
that’s how the system works
and the ends are always justified.

Ten:
Lust for everything your neighbor
has or owns because
he’s no better than you and
probably worse and
you deserve it more
anyway; and if you can’t
figure out what to lust for
just pick something.

Obey these commandments;
lust for any and all of these
things.

And I will have to die.


(This post is part of the blog carnival sponsored by Peter Pollock and Bridget Chumbley. To see additional posts on the topic of lust, click here.)

25 comments:

Anonymous said...

Glynn, this gave me chills! Powerful post...

S. Etole said...

Oh, my goodness ... nothing but death waits in these commandments ...

Sherri Murphy said...

Ain't it the truth?

So good to see it in black and white- great post!

Unknown said...

Great post, Glynn! And to think that I almost wrote a complete post about my lust for an iPhone... or Google Phone. I'm surrounded by lusty phones!

JoAnne said...

Your words, "Not what matters" really struck a chord with me. Sometimes I believe we forget that "lust" is something that isn't limited to one definition.Your 10-Commandments clearly do a great job of spelling that out Gynn.

katdish said...

Okay. That's a print-out-and-post-on-my refrigerator sort of post.

Excellent. Number 2? Dang. Ain't that the truth?

Anonymous said...

left me with no words

Jeffrey Holton said...

Glynn, this was beautiful. I mean...in a twisted, dark, literarily brilliant way.

Have you by any chance been having coffee with Screwtape?

I got totally hung up at point four...

"...fill your life with
busy-ness and every good and
bad thing so you don’t have to
think and if you stop the frenzy
of activity you’ll find the
emptiness within and you don’t
want that."

Blaise Pascal would feel ill after reading that. Anyone who can make Pascal feel ill is a heroic writer.

Jojo Agot said...

I could never write anything like that!

Russell Holloway said...

I'm going to have to print this out and read it closer ... Thanks Glynn

Stephanie Wetzel said...

Love this Glynn! Such truth, written so beautifully. I'll be printing & posting too.

Anonymous said...

Glynn, that was awesome. Simple, yet powerful.

Anonymous said...

wow...really powerful! thanks.

Joyce said...

Wow...this was really powerful. Lots to think about...I'm going to come back and read it again.

Kathleen Overby said...

Raw, naked truth words. Gulp.

Marni said...

This was very powerful...and accurate. So scary, isn't it?

Marshall Jones, Jr. said...

Excellent. I liked the second one best: "Lust for the idols and images
you create for yourself, the ones
that all, oddly, look like you."

Or look like your perception of yourself.

I was on question seven before I realized they mirrored the real Ten Commandments. It made me have to go back over them. I enjoyed it.

-Marshall Jones Jr.

Maureen said...

Excellent, and a very creative approach to writing about a challenging topic.

In those commandments where you leave out punctuation until the last word, you create a breathlessness that impels the way lust when acted on itself impels.

And that last line! It leaves me breathless.

Lorrie said...

That's a pretty lusty list! I like number 8... just the way you wrote it makes me smile. All good points.
wonderful ending :-) :-(

Ginny (MAD21 said...

This is awesome! What a great way to present. Very well written!

Anne Lang Bundy said...

Glynn, I'm speechless.

Powerful, POWERFUL words.

I'm keeping this post.

Helen said...

Glynn, that was amazing. That last line was so powerful.

Jennifer @ JenniferDukesLee.com said...

Powerful. Brilliant.

Thank you.

... And ouch.

Candy said...

wow - convicted! Copied, pasted, printed, & Evernoted. Thank you, Glynn. I think.

Fatha Frank said...

You could put this on a tombstone and it would describe all of us at one time or another. Thanks be to the grace of God.