My Sabbatical Week

1. The Last Pope

My God, the Catholic faith is good.
Pope Salvatore was his good name;
He did both kinds of baptism,
And many things he had then changed.
Priests could now get married, and the
Pope, he ploughed the furrows and hills;
The robes exchanged for flannel, the
Vatican turned into a mill.
Where besides the Pieta and
Basilica, the Cardinals fanned
The coals, and blacksmiths shoed the
Horses and a doctors healed the lame.
The mill it groundt the meal-corn soft
The world, it grew pale and cold.
For great were the persecutions
Of the young and yes, the very old.
Pope Salvatore, in blue jeans blessed;
The faith had waned so very small;
The sheep were scattered all over
Those who practiced the faith were small.
One thing the Pope sure did always
Was traverse the entire Earth.
Those who labored ever often
He sought to unbound all their curse.
He with his sheep did sing and wept
As they let him down with baskets.
But this Pope he wished he could do
More, and join them in their caskets.

2. My Brother the Tortious

Little brother
So slow at your life;
Bring me some wisdom,
Go find a wife.
Mate all your years
And be happily spent;
Your maturing was slow
And you beat me by tenths.
For you went and did
Each solemn step
And with no waste
You busily crept.
I love you,
You must understand.
But I was a hare
Who, like Barnabas said,
Had chewed the cud
But with carnal glee
Wasted away
By my choice's misery.
And I made haste
To be ever rich:
I love you my
Brother, and bless your niche.

3. The City of God

No more complete opus
On political truth exists,
Than Augustine's "The City of God."
We understand from it,
I use nosism,
We understand from it
The verity of human nature.
Rome, which lasted seven hundred
Years, went through its
Strife. Wars civil rocked it
Where men in lusty power
Vied in all factions
To control the Republic.
The citizens suffered,
The state propelled
Into the mess of Anarchy:
We see in just Roman
History all the states
Of humanity: At last,
Augustine witnessed
That backward state
Transform---by his forging
Instrument---into a state
Of common felicity.
He saw it morph
Into something good
While I see the beginnings.

4. The Martyr

The fermented grape
Is a sweet wine.
The first person to make
The drink, must have 
Tasted a fermented berry.
The martyrs, with
Bad Christology,
His final words
Were, "Is not the 
"Tare to be uprooted
"On the final day?"
Priests with complete
Doctrine burn him
At the stake.
Who is justified?
He who has doctrine
Wrong, but martyred 
For his true beliefs?
Or he who knows
All things and commits
A heinous crime
For difference of belief?

5. The Three Hard Balls

Deborah was a legitimate King.
Lydia a merchant and "Billionaire".
Mary was the flesh mother of our God.
But---no woman can be a saved pastor.

The word for Homosexual isn't 
Catamite, but man-bedder---one who beds
Another man and Romans condemns it
In women---they cannot ever be saved.

Abortion, where is it explicitly
Stated to be a sin? If not when LORD
Jesus called Jeremiah to be knit
And told the disciples to hinder none?

6. If I am not saved

If I am not saved,
I will wonder what saves.
Faith? I know only one.
Judgment? I know only to seek out the sorrowed.
Righteousness? I have none but His.
Repentance? I paid my fifty bushels to one hundred.
All I had I counted rubbish.

Then who is the world's
Saint? A thief, a liar,
A murderer, an adulterer:
Cain, is it not?
They all laude fortune
More than the truth.
"If I am not saved, god is not good."

Yet, as I walk I remember
A life lived in riotous pleasure.
Drunk on the ecstasy of life
I wonder, truly, whether
The one who steals
And kills and destroys
Without mercy or doubts is good.

God can give grace
To an abominable man
But He will not.
My question then remains,
"Is that abominable man me?"
Whom, trying to have light
Am complete darkness, while he who despises good has all.

One moment of salvation
At the end of a life of sin
Can save, but a lifetime of 
Treasure stored in the kingdom
Can fail by one miserable deed?
Then why do good at all?
It seems God saves sinners.

7. Response to Ellen Irwin---A Poem by Wordsworth

Sweet Adam and Ellen
Were maddened by love
My God, I was not.
In Wordsworth's poem I 
Felt like Gordon, but Fein
Let it never, ever be!
For my heart would break---
I know the villain
Who lurks inside of me.
What idyll I made out of love
Sweet Mercy remember me!
Let good Adam have
An Ellen, and let
Me have an Olive Tree!
My bands of angels
Compasse mercy
And feed me with
Her finest meed.
Christ, with warriors
Tried by ill luck
Overcome my every need.
With mercies' bosom
And goodly cheer,---
From sin's bondage
Make me freed.

Gordon I wish not to be,
Like a Saul lurking in the wood
Or Absalom with David
Who thirsts for kingdom's good.
But, my brother, be a Jacob
And I an Israelite true;
Let not I be like Cain
To Abel, Lot from Sodom flees.
Oh! Precious Mercy, thy bands
Of truth, "Misserie Misserie me!",
If I press not Mercy's Bosom,
Or if I swallow the Pear Tree.
For my heart it seeks justice
I am a wicked, foolish son!
For if my heart returns to Sodom
I'm afraid my foes had won.
Brother, press good Ellen
Eat the berries from the vine;
Let you have her that's yours::---
God, also let me have mine.

8. The Four Soils

The thorns are prickly,
Those worldly cares.

The rocks are hardened,
Like a heart turned back.

The Roman ways gross,
Their pleasures deafening.

The good soil lush,
Every seed blooms.

9. The Valkyries of Babylon

Great Nebuchadnezzar saw
His daughters the Valkyrie
Sought war in the land of Egypt.
Thus one clever Jew named
Samson lay there, knowing
Babylon Suzereigned the
Land, and wished Egypt
To fight against Sodom.
He decried the tyrants
Knowing all plants were
Spoiled, should the Brimstone
Be called from heaven.

Thus, Samson cried out for
Peace, and cried against Cataline.
Yet, Caesar, you could not know
Lord over Babylon, he was
Sore wroth with Samson.
Yet, Caesar placed Samson
Within his soul, being sold
By the Prince of Tyre.
Samson made war through
Objections of peace!
Yet, they fell upon him,
And turned him into a smith, for Samson knew
The formula for making
Damascus steel. Samson instead
Took his right to the grave,
And died a cruel death of 
Torture. Loosed his tongue
It was cut out and his death
It was quick; his
Tongue was not cauterized
And he bled in the pyre of flames
And he bled out and died
And burnt to ashes
Rather than consent to a war.

10. If Life Were a Game

If life were a game,
It were only a crapshoot.
The best can get injured
Or corruptly treated.
The worst could be promoted
To the top.
The innocent could be sorely abused.
And the bully force his will on his foe.
The Trash Talker with marginal game
Could override a lifetime of joy.
It were best life were not a game.
It would be contest with all
And all pushing to pull their scores
To best their neighbor's stats.
Life ought not be a game. 

11. Two Meditations on Politics

I

A complex civilization
Is rooted in its logistics.
Peace is more serious
Business than war.
Getting goods to and from
Far way places is the mark
Of a high sophistication
And high prosperity.

In war, disrupt peace
Through attacking supply chains.
That is also why I 
Hate it! For more interesting
To me is how Rome 
Brought Blocks of 
Glacier Ice from the 
North Pole---which was
Used heavily, for things
Ranging from air conditioning
To ice water for public
Baths, to refrigerators---
Than how Caesar
Beat Ptolemy
Which was just
A matter of 
Stubborn dumb luck.

II

I learned one thing
Studying politics:
That peace can be full
Both with love and lust;
And peace can be suffering
With both State and Neighbor.
Charity tends toward
Peaceful hearts:
Strife tends toward bitterness.

12. Mercy's Bosom

O! Mercy's bosom give to me
For the health of my children's meed.
Not a god, is this blessed wreath
But a crown in Thy victory.
Oh, Christ, mount Zion's blessèdness
Shall be purged of all sin tonight.
For upon my bedrock of stone
Is Jesus Christ, and He alone.
He stays my hand to do no sin
And upon my bed of sickness
He covers me, so I will win.

13. Shakespear's Sonnets Interpreted

Hamnet, you have won such high born fame.
When your papa wrote your gracious name.
Born you were from an African slave.
Loved by your father more than all things.
He told you to go out and find a mate
So this you did, but herself did hate;---
Whom this girl you loved, like a Daughter
She rejected your son, so thus did slaughter
He by his own two hands, so you wept
For your son: I understand, he slept
Though having been a riotous youth,
He took her cherry, and his grave was loot'd.
He an artist, a beautiful young man
He left you with only that good Anne.

14. How We're Saved

We do no work that we may boast,
But rather to join in heavenly host.
In pure conscience and in truth
We do good so we can be proved.

For not because of heavenly prize
Do we do good, for this is wise.
That our hearts by mercy need be freed
From the bondage of the world's kings.

For we do good because we love God;
We build our foundations upon Christ's rock.
Not to get a heavenly writ;
But because we actually love what's right.

So to close this heavenly Hymn
If you love not the good, you love not Him.
Keep His word stored in your heart
For He who is saved, loves God's Law.

15. Believe

O mercy, follow me:
Find me---
Look for the diamond of truth
My blind lover---
Who sees nothing ill in any.
My nose finds
My poems sing,
But too many odors have
Driven me insane!
A light air follows you
Wherever you go.
Let mercy follow me
And also peace.