Summer 2024

1. Prince of this World

Virgin Mary, I have seen you
And Jesus Christ, Son of God
I have seen you.

The Prince of this world does
Not even know of you---
Nay, he cannot.

2. Providence

When at ease, and fully trusting
One walks through their paths...
All hell and storm abounding
One is delivered from the wrath.

Every clean bird shall congregate
Around you, in each and every bough
Of trees and rivers and lakes
And they shall settle all around.

The Blue Bird, the Cardinal
The Goldfinch and the Grouse
Red Winged Blackbird
The Sparrow and even the Squirrels now.

And if you are in God's timing
You shall walk down the path
And the congregation of blessing
Shall see you are not proud.

3. What Heaven Will Not Be

I come to what is perhaps my most important heaven poem.
Of what Heaven will not be.
Many preachers have preached on Heaven's Economy---
They expect there will be labors in heaven,
When there can be no such thing, as Heaven is Eternal Sabbath.
Also, heaven will not be a place, where we tempt fate
And fear, and try to thrill ourselves with falling
Or with the grotesque. For there will be no fear there.
Heaven will not be a place with horses carrying carts
Or cars and trucks, or even boats---yes, there will be no boats
So it says in Ezekiel specifically, so therefore no machine---
And many have mistakenly and falsely prophesied
That there will be something like Television in heaven.
There will not. There will be imaginations far exceeding humanly imagination
Where perhaps this world is how real our imagination can fathom
But the place of Heaven will be far more real.
But, in that reality, there will be no suffering, pain or loss of fortune.
We are all given one Day's Labor in heaven---
Therefore, there will be no property, but rather status of our wealth will be on display
In our mansions, which will be our homes, but there will be no sleep
And only activity; and many planning, and many goings and comings.
All property is shared in common
For this communism cannot work on Earth because of limited resources.
But, in heaven, it can, for all things are shared the same.
Heaven will not be an endless choir, or church service
Listening to homilies, for there will be no sin, therefore no need for them.
God's Word will dwell with us, as our Hephzibah,
Our heavenly spouse and mate, and this is great mystery,
For the Land shall be called "Beulah."
It shall flow with milk and honey, but there will be no sweat of labor;
The grains shall be mowed, and instantly grow again.
The cattle shall graze, and graze, and graze, softly
And all beasts in heaven shall be like the kine
And graze upon heavenly fruit.
But, there will be no games or strife of competition.
There will be no winning against your fellow heavenly being
And no competitive sports like Baseball.
For, silly thing, if Baseball existed it would be like a Loony Tune
Where they'd hit so many home runs, there could be no other team to win.
There will be games, in the form of child's play,
And activities which the heavenly host do, and enjoy in communion
But no games where one will have victory over another.
Also, nothing like video games, or virtual reality where you will do combat.
Rather, all things will be like child's play, and running with a toy stick fashioned into a gun or sword.
There will be imagination in the heavenly host,
But no pain, no torment, no sin...
We shall go on mental adventures through a land
And be free like Christ was to roam heaven and sing and shout all over it.
We'll all have shoes, and harps, but there will be manifold activities.
We, like Christ was on Earth, shall roam the heavenly cities
And be free spirited, and travel, and meet all the other heavenly hosts
In company, and the discussions shall be politics of great joys and festivals and the great deeds
Of Jehovah-Jireh, which He gave those joys, and they shall be made in memorial.
There will be no science to make machines, but all the heavenly engines will be natural.
Sure, one can study the breadth and depth and width of God's Heavenly Creation
And learn with fascination the many wonders of His law and love.
But, there will be no petty disagreements, or strife over anything, or covetousness
Or bitterness. There will be no joys of spoils over enemies, friends or foes;
Save those you conquered here on Earth.

4. Satan's Temptations

Satan, a loud, obnoxious voice
In my intrusive thoughts
Says, "Stop prophesying,
"Or you will pay the awful cost."
He says, "Know if you were famous
"All Christendom would be lost."
So, I say, "How is that so?
"Because they have not built their 
"Foundations upon the rock?"
If Prophecy is sin, and wisdom wrong
Then it shall be that falling away will
Come in not so very long.

5. Metaphor of Christ

Christ is like the wind, my tongue the rudder,
And the world is like the seas.
Sploosh, I fall in,
And He plucks me out, you see?
That thing Theophilus the thorough
Examiner of the faith, received from Luke,
It saves, yet so many are ground to dust
By that same Bible’s opal page.
To know our LORD, and use it
Like a guide for the blind—-
The volume is written of Him
So He is Who shall have the prize.

6. When the Armies Surrounded Jerusalem

The sleeping slumber, slipped     My startled soul 
When the Phalanxes fell     Fated upon the frail faults 
Where they beat perfectly brazen     Beasts on the first battle. 
But, the great horsemen came harrowing    Harrowed upon the hills 
And the Phalanxes could not turn     For, though Cyrus fought in those Phalanxes 
Alexander the Great aligned himself     With the all coming animals 
Who would feast upon flesh     In battles gross and bald. 
Thus, the Phalanxes could not furnish     Their foes, for Alexander's rush attacked 
Them from the port guard, and grueling     Gore spilled over the gargantuan gorges. 
Cyrus' numbers were no more.     Alexander had numbered them with the null. 
Who will assay Alexander though?    The Abomination surrounded Ariel  
And who, but Christ, will Christen the victor won?    Can anyone but He defeat and pay the cost? 
Therefore, Jeshurun, flee to the hillocks and dales     And don't come down, even if he says "I am David". 

7. Freedom

A poet's freedom, is they can preach
On battles never fought, and cities never breeched.
For in that year of Eighteen Hundred and Three
England was not invaded by French, and there was no victory.
Yet, Wordsworth boldly prophesied, of victory that day;
No English soil was spilled with blood,
But in October of 1803 he did say,
In anticipation of British guns
To defend the Isles of Arthur
He had declared Britain a victory won.
No prophetic power, no fulfilled truth
It was only an idle boast...
Yet where the poet is not free to say
That brings on a mighty host.
For, illiberal are the times, and olden victories sore
Even if no armies assail, or come upon American shores
We have lost our right to speak and buy
And have lost our rights to privacy.
The poet's not free because the citizenry
Wish him to be fettered to their zeal.
For freedoms hard fought are gone
And the opposition against it childish.
For if peace lasted like so a thousand years
It would be the utmost vilest.

8. Pharisees and Sadducees

Pharisees

Oh my! This man has found all the evidence
And yet he is a miserable sex offender!
If the world knows about him, that he found all these things
Oh that rascal, the whole world would stop believing!
For why would God give prosperity to a letch like him!
Why is he so creative with his thoughts?
He rebukes us at the dinner table for saying what the Bible says
That Jephthah murdered his daughter, and God's silence is aught!
To die, means one descends to the grave, and only afterward
Do they rise and meet their maker! Yet he said 
"To be absent from the body is to be present with the LORD!"
Oh, this offender! This letch, this terrible letch
Undoing all our Religious Dictatorship! Paul said "And" not "Is".
His evidence is 100 years different than what is spoken by Paul!
And, then, he rebukes a good man about the man whom
Jesus healed, and asked if he wanted water!
We know that man is a sinner, for why would God
All knowing, ask such a thing? We understand God's thoughts.
This letch, we must steal his bread, and fortune, and prosper ourselves
For if he is known among the peoples, they shall all laugh at him and lose faith.
He even has the audacity to say God's law is self evident
And need not He to be true! Why must aught be true
Unless God makes it? Why? All things are only  known
Because the Bible tells us so. And nothing else can be known at all.

Sadducees

Oh my, this person preaches on sin!
And he is a miscreant!
Oh, we love our God Sin, that is God
The brazen bull, and he wishes to break it to pieces!
We shall have our Abomination set up in the temple
And Theophilus never heard one true word about our God.
We shall let the sodomites be married!
There is not one shred of evidence that God exists
And we know Zoroastrianism was the first Monotheistic faith.
The Jews were Pagans, and Polytheistic
And worshipped at the altars of sin,
This we know because of much evidence;
Until that miscreant Josiah changed the religion.
No, their books were not written
Until after the exile, this we know---
(Despite it clearly being established on evidenced not to be the case.)

9. Am I An Elitist?

I’d argue that I’m in no way an elitist, 
Because the elites agree with you. 
You, indeed, are the elitist now. 
And you now hold the literary pretentions of a generation.

10. Mrs. Elena

Do you hear the subtlety of her breath?
The terse, spondee sentences? 
Declarative, and so direct?
Do you hear how she makes
Me like Thomas Chatterton
And with lies, demolishes an entire career?
The Special Education Teacher
Meets the Poet, the Essayist and Novelist
And she in one utterance undoes it all?

Yet. I still write.

For if I wrote by her rules,
I'd have little joy.

11. I Worship a God Who

I worship a God who drowns the world because it’s painting cave walls with paints made from human blood, and pottery, and keeps dead relatives' corpses with them as decoration, and does who knows what else.

I also worship a God who tells the Israelites to destroy nations that cannibalize their own children, and have orgies just so they can cannibalize their own children, to practice gross satanic rituals.

12. The Vain War

Armies railed against
Each other for forty
Years. Their ships
Beaching upon shores
Their planes bombing cities
There men, women and children
Lie dead in valleys.
Waves upon waves collided
Into each other, numbering casualties
In the billions.

The only thing that stopped it
Was that both countries had nothing
Left... both economies in shambles
Their natural resources expelled;
The Oil and Natural Gas wells dried,
The fish depleted,
The farmland all made marginal,
The wild game destroyed,
The shelters all broken,
The walls all torn down,
Their silicon and minerals no more,
Their gold and silver all spent...

There was no winner.
There was no loser.
It was just an awful draw;
And who suffered?
Was it not everyone
Save those who perished in the waves?

13. That Perfect Day in May

Heaven shall be that perfect day in May
When the leaves have newly unfolded
And they impress upon you a sense
That the whole world has changed in one instant.
The roses shall be in full bloom
And scent the forest with subtle perfume
Not overbearing, but natural.
The black snake shall slither upon the path
And it shall have a joyful jubilance
And a tiny little life imbued within it
And feed upon the dust;
No one shall be frightened by him.
The ivy shall not be poisonous
And shall give forth its hips
In scrumptious berries, 
Twelve kinds, to the ever changing
Seasons of Heavenly flora.

14. My Bride Wisdom

My cherished cherry blossom
With the petals of silk,
Thy allure is thy beauty
And my children's thy milk.
Come find me, o Wisdom
Find me swift and strong
For if another finds you Wisdom
I shall for ever be wrong.
God, bring me the cherished beauty
Of Wisdom Grace and Peace.
Oh Cherry Blossom,
My promised Heifer
My all I shall sacrifice for thee.
Ask me to lose life and limb
I shall... ask me to give up 
The Riches and Talents of Solomon
I shall... just, do me one thing
Never let me lose my Wisdom
So she can be wedded eternally to me.

15. The Ballad of Matilda

Ah, Matilda and David, you have
Gained through Scythian war the world.
Ah, Ferguson, Matilda Maeve,
You three gained possession
And took the burden off of my yoke.
I did not want it... you may infinitely have.
Make many children, and sire many young
And remove the curse far from me
As far as the East is from the West.
You have fought well, and gained it.
And I thank you, for now I do not hold
The contemptible office my soul dreads
But you do, for many ages and eons
May your reign last forever!

16. Dietrich Bonhoeffer  

In you was a heart of gold
And lead tongue.
You were a man who lived the Gospel
Not one who preached it very well.

But, to do is weightier than to say.

17. You Beautiful Songbird

I hear you, as the roses give their scents
And you sang at my window in February.
A muse for a poem... so beautiful is your song...
I know not what you are, but you sing
"F F F E♭ a sesqui-flat D and D♭.
What beautiful bird are you?
I don't know.

18. The Good Sultan and his Camel

The Sultan worked in the stables
Cleaning out the stalls for his beloved Dromedary.
She had just lost her calf,  so she wept bitterly
Throwing up her head in mournful lowing,
And the Sultan came to her, and through up his hands 
Around her giant body,
And cried, "Ah, my Aziz is crying for her calf
"I know, I know, the world is hard, my precious.
"For you weep, and so do I at this world's evil."

19. Word for Modernity 

Know
The LORD
Is Who saves
And no other.
Not I, or Antichrist, or Thaddeus---

So, you: wonder strong
At the Laws of God, serene
In contemplation.

For all goodness flows through His beautiful
Word, since your deed
Need perfect
Guidance
From.


©2024 B. K. Neifert
All Rights Reserved