Brian Yapko – My Hunger for You

Brian Yapko’s My Hunger for You presents a desperate and generally unsuccessful search for God. Though transformation and hunger for divinity don’t lead the narrator to success in the divine quest, God is discovered only though failure. Brian Yapko explains, ‘My Hunger For You considers the sometimes demanding way people can search for God (as opposed to doing so through humility)‘.

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My Hunger for You

My soul hungered as I hunted for You. I
searched through impassable brambles, beyond
jurassic ferns and into dappled sunlight stained
green by the canopy. As I trudged through
humid shadows seeking meaning, I spoke

Your name and was somehow transformed from
a human into a stag! What miracle was this? You
chose not to answer. Instead I was drawn towards
cool waters beside a verdant meadow where I
drank and ate my fill of grass. Then came the

impatience. I had to resume my hunt for You.
I turned away from the meadow and wandered
towards the rocky crags. Again I spoke Your
name. This time I transformed into a mountain
lion. On powerful legs, I was pulled to where

the deer were pasturing. I salivated and the
hunger-lust consumed me. I roared, pounced
and fed until my belly ached with meat and
the bones were licked clean. Then I shook my
head to fling off the blood. Glutted, I turned

my back to the rocks and resumed my hunt for
You. Again, I spoke Your name. Now I was
transformed into a falcon, flying with canny
eyes over the wild land. I saw green grass, red
blood, white bones gnawed and scattered, and

I saw in my demanding hunger the violence I
had done to myself. In mid-air I became human
again, and fell from a precipitous height. I hit
Earth alive, but in pain, I whispered Your name
and then – for a second – I saw You! You gazed

at me inscrutably then left. Was it because You
saw I had survived the fall? Was it because You
saw me stained red with guilt? Or, like me, did
You recoil upon seeing at last the selfish hunger
that has always underlaid my search for You?