Category: Poem

The Two Servants of God

There were two men.

One of the men murdered

One of the men committed adultery

One of the men blasphemed unto death

One of the men had made fraudulent oaths.

The other did none of this

But rather had unbelief.

 

The first man,

Seeing he had been pardoned for all of his sin

Decided that it was good.

So, he lived his days securely

Never in fear of judgment.

He spent his days cheerfully

Giving to the poor and receiving nothing in return.

He builded houses and churches and places of rest

For the poor, and thanked God every day

That his blasphemies, oaths, murders and adulteries all were forgiven.

For, he was happy that he was permitted to do his good deeds in the name of the

Father, Son and Holy Ghost.

 

The second man

He did not see a reason to be pardoned from his sins.

He decided that he was good.

So, he lived his days securely

Never in fear of human justice.

He spent his days cheerfully

Not giving much to the poor, but rather expected every borrowed thing to be returned in measure,

As was the custom.

He did not thank God, but rather thanked himself

For all of the provisions he had stored up for himself.

He was happy, and decided that he did good deeds enough,

Sufficient that he had never thought he had sinned.

 

It came to a time when both men died,

The righteous man with the hypocrite.

 

The Father asked the first man,

“What had you done?”

The man replied,

“Nothing father.”

The LORD said,

“Well done good and faithful servant.”

 

The Father asked the second man,

“What had you done?”

The man replied,

“Oh, Father, I made a fortune, and blessed myself upon the Earth.”

The LORD said,

“What had you done with your sustenance?”

The man said,

“Well, I spent it for my stomach.”

The Father said,

“What of the poor?”

The man said,

“I’ve given some to the poor.”

The Father said,

“Yet, I have another man who had just died today.

“He had given much to the poor, more than his ten percent.

“Though, he had never made much, nor blessed himself

“On the earth, he was neither rich, nor satisfied with his life

“Except in his giving.”

The man then said,

“Well, what must I do to be saved?”

The LORD said,

“Be gone, I never knew you, you proud and wicked servant.”

The Modern Reichstag

A thousand writers lay before me

Their thoughts contained in the jars

Of wood pulp, ink and glue.

Numerous thoughts lay before me…

Seneca, Livy, Horace

There in used copies at the bookstore.

Where are they sold now,

New, in those beautiful Penguin and Oxford bindings?

I don’t see them on the shelves at my local book store.

 

Rather, I get one more rejection letter in the mail

Because I don’t sell a detergent.

I don’t sell deodorant.

I don’t sell left or right politiks.

Soon, that large library will wane

And what will be put in its place

Is the cacophonous voices

Of Fox News Analysts,

CNN and MSNBC commentators,

Politicians and the few Celebrity intellectuals.

No serious works of philosophy, religion,

Art or political science.

 

A thousand voices,

All shut up by populist opinions.

Slowly, we deteriorate,

Until the Reichstag is performed by the almighty dollar.

It’s performed, because all ethics are “Too emotional.”

All philosophy is “Merely speculation.”

Technocratic, we burn our books with our own opinions.

They don’t sell, so are thrown into the flame.

 

I read the famous poets.

None of them wrote like me.

None with the modern story telling element—

The clear language and imagery,

The thematic elements of our modern fantasies.

Why I couldn’t be squeezed into that little space

On the bookshelf I saw,

Why, even though there are thousands of famous writers,

Some I have never even laid eyes upon,

Why cannot I be a part of this tradition?

Rather, we burn Seneca with Bill O’Reilly, Glenn Beck and Rachel Maddow;

Piers Morgan, Anderson Cooper and Milo Yiannopoulos;

We bury Pride and Prejudice with Stephen King, Stephanie Meyers

And George R. R. Martin; Fifty Shades of Gray, Hunger Games

And Divergent.

We praise poets like Ezra Pound—

Never reading the word salad of his

Which no man living can decipher;

I’m not even sure it’s meant to mean anything.

Then, of course, there is E. E. Cummings.

Garbage.

Does anyone read Wordsworth, Byron, Keats or Longfellow?

Essayists, of course, are college students

As Shane Dawson writes like he’s submitting a high school essay

And it prints and sells millions.

Emerson, Thoreau, Montaigne;—

Much more interesting… if they were given a shot.

Yet, I have to search the used book stores for Emerson and Montaigne.

They’re both slowly going out of fashion.

Both kindred souls…

Both so similar in their styles.

Plutarch I found, after some digging.

Herodotus tells me about Ancient Babylon,

Yet somehow the idiots online do not believe historians mentioned it.

A rich source of historical analysis,

Filled with Babylon, Persia, Media, Assyria, Egypt, Mesopotamia,

A Greek historian.

Yet… sadly there is online materials that would “prove”

These empires never existed.

Yale lectures that would even insinuate that they never did.

They find a “Sumerian” empire, and automatically say,

“Well there was no Babylon.”

Wholly forgetting that cultures call themselves by different names

Than other cultures. Germany in America is Deutschland in Germany.

Some idiot a long time from now might speciously believe

Germany never existed because they dug up German artifacts.

 

We’re dealing with a stupid generation

Because books aren’t read,

But podcasts are listened to.

There is not a touchstone to the past

Therefore, anything can be made up about it in the present.

And, my writing has touched the past.

But, they can find no place for it in that empty slot on the shelves.

Because, as it still remains,

I get rejected for having a racist character.

Wholly disposed, that the generation I was writing about

Was saturated by racism, and it was about their only sin most of them.

If we could excuse them of it, and wonder at how they were so far superior

To what we have today…

Perhaps we will have a more educated tomorrow

That doesn’t—as every movie seems to do—

Imprint their own values on the past.

Frankly, every movie you watch about history

Is ensconced in its present’s vices.

The best way to know what history was like

Was to read what was written at that time period.

Often, you’d find the most degenerate scoundrel

Had a heart of gold when compared to our modern man.

And that I find by reading history;

Watching history;

Experiencing history in what are called books.

But, today we’d like to invent it for ourselves

To shape it to our modern way of thinking.

 

Why can’t I be on those shelves

To represent modern man

As he truly is?

 

 

Mourning Dove

The sticks of winter’s hoary frost

Stand dead in March’s bitter cold;

The turtle doves find their soulmates

For the last spring is upon them.

 

Whooo-o: Whoooo: Whoo—Whoo

The turtle doves sing for their mates

The sole occupation of their

Innocent minds. All conversing

With the same melody. Not like

Our long, stronger conversations

Who must bond over complexities.

 

They mindlessly sing long melodies

Of whose sounds similar; I sing

Their song; hope for my turtledove,

That maybe she knows this too. And

I will have more springs to sing songs

To the innocent little birds I love.

 

We turtle doves gives all our cry

For the last spring there will ever be.

Cold, for the February heat.

Whooo-o: Whoooo: Whoo—Whoo.

They find love one last time, as their

Innocent loves become extinct.

 

Until man fixes his cold heart

I will hear this sad song every March.

On my mind will be the lowing

Of the Turtle Doves, wondering

Whether this will be the last Spring.

Mourning Dove

The sticks of winter’s hoary frost

Stand dead in March’s bitter cold;

The turtle doves find their soulmates

For the last spring is upon them.

 

Whooo-o: Whoooo: Whoo—Whoo

The turtle doves sing for their mates

The sole occupation of their

Innocent minds. All conversing

With the same melody. Not like

Our long, stronger conversations

Who must bond over complexities.

 

They mindlessly sing long melodies

Of whose sounds similar; I sing

Their song; hope for my turtledove,

That maybe she knows this too. And

I will have more springs to sing songs

To the innocent little birds I love.

 

We turtle doves gives all our cry

For the last spring there will ever be.

Cold, for the February heat.

Whooo-o: Whoooo: Whoo—Whoo.

They find love one last time, as their

Innocent loves become extinct.

 

Until man fixes his cold heart

I will hear this sad song every March.

On my mind will be the lowing

Of the Turtle Doves, wondering

Whether this will be the last Spring.

What Faith Is

Faith is substantive.

People say, “Just believe it, and it will come true.”

This is not true.

If there is no truth in what you believe

It will not come true.

That is why faith is the “Substance of things hoped for

“The evidence of things unseen.”

There must be evidence.

If there is no evidence, then there can be no substance

To the hope, therefore, it is not faith.

 

Faith is not blind.

It is substantive

That there is evidence to believe

What is to be believed,

And that the things you hope for are true.

When hopes are true,

And there is substance to the hope,

And the evidence proves that the hope is true…

Then, there can be faith that what is hoped for is true.

 

Willing into existence something ex nihilo

Doesn’t work. There must be a tangible

String of real continuity.

It is what separates a mental illness

From mere anxiety.

The mental illness, there is no string of faith

To make the delusion real.

Or, rather, perhaps the faith in the delusion

Is that it is true, and that is your punishment.

Or, perhaps the delusion is positive,

And perhaps there is some faith

To believe the delusion,

And the delusion turns out to be true.

Rather, faith is convincing because of the evidence of substance

On which we hope for something.

 

It is why Christians are fundamentally wrong.

They cite Moses in Exodus.

But, could Moses have truly walked into those lands?

Was his people able to do so?

Were they able to conquer giants?

The answer is no.

There was no substance of good

In them, because they were all taken into idolatry.

Therefore, the movement into lands

Hostile, and filled with giant men would have been impossible.

Therefore, they all died.

Not because they didn’t move,

But because their hearts were given to idols.

 

Likewise, when you see a hope dangled out in front of you

And it is retracted,

The best measure of business is to assess that there was no faith

In the hope. There was no evidence of substance to be a reason to hope.

As, faith is logical—

It is not blind.

Rather, if faith is blind it leads to the kinds of issues we see today

Of men zealously trying to climb a corporate ladder

In order to garner the success they so desire.

Faith is not magic.

Faith, rather, is what is.

If something is believed so stongly

As to move a man,

It could very well be a delusion that moves him.

It is not faith.

 

With that, there is plenty of evidence

That Christ is the LORD.

My faith is built on moral observations

And nothing less.

The world moves,

Invisibly,

To the laws set in my holy scripture.

Men behave the way it predicts.

It tells me what I already know to be true.

It doesn’t invent a morality for me,

But affirms the one I already know.

 

Bad people are bad,

And must be destroyed.

Good people are good,

And must be blessed.

There are a lot of bad people who get nothing bad in their lives.

There are a lot of good people who get nothing good in their lives.

But, it’s up to good people

To make sure other good people stay good

By encouraging them,

And being there in their sufferings.

That is what separates a good Christian from a bad Christian,

Is that a good Christian will see the destitute

And have compassion on them.

They will read their law

And see violence was done away with

When Jehoakim and Manasseh broke the Everlasting Covenant.

No longer are we to slaughter infants in battle.

Rather, the patience of the saints is that they will not

Fight, nor lead a man into captivity.

Rather, it is Christ who will kill

On His second arrival.

And will He find faith on the earth?

 

Democratic Debate Fails Miserably

I am watching our world fall apart.

There are no responsible leaders

Anywhere.

I am afraid,

As is true with all Christians,

That the end is upon us.

 

Only, this time, it is not just a hoax.

It is not just a careless shout.

It is, with all truth and honesty,

The end.

 

The democrats, it seems,

Cannot muster the good faith

To help one another.

Warren hounds Bloomberg about non existent sex crimes;

The simple statement, “Women lie,” would have been the first thing that came out of my lips.

And frankly, it used to be that making a reference to someone’s bust

Was merely a summary social faux-pas,

Not a misdemeanor offence.

Buttegieg and the Candidate I did not pray for

Fight and lock horns over who loves Mexico the most.

Sanders, wild eyed, screams about socialism.

Warren defrauds herself to the conservatives

By pandering to Me Too—a cause of false rape accusations

For every woman—

Biden never ceased to make a complete dingbat out of himself.

Bloomberg sympathizes with women who have victimized men.

Nobody likes Me Too;—except the portion of radical feminists

Who can benefit from it.

 

It is like the Democrats want Trump to be reelected.

But, I know their rampant narcissism is the only thing.

Pandering to radical populations

Who want a socialist dictatorship

Where men are forced to become women, and women men,

And every rape allegation is credible to besmirch a man’s good honor.

 

Bloomberg looked good.

The conservatives would vote for him;

The moderate Democrats too.

But he should have ran as a republican.

That was his only mistake.

 

Frankly, we need God right now.

No politician will fix this mess.

None can. It is impossible for them.

As it is, Trump might be our president for another four years.

All I hope is that he does not know;

And if he is angry at me for saying the truth,

Then perhaps the truth needs to be said.

Perhaps he doesn’t know.

Or, perhaps all of congress knows.

More than likely, that is the case.

Let All the Magic Flow/ Into a Little Crazy Book I Know

Let all the magic flow

Into a little crazy book I know.

Let my mind’s greatest fears

Relieve our listeners and reader’s leers.

 

Oh, how crazy is the thought

Of a magic witch hunt in the spot

Where my ears had seen

Such delusional nonsense to preen.

 

Oh, make it so, that this little delusional book I know

Takes up all the magic in the land.

Let my books be fair and grand

To help our peoples of the land.

Let them see and read and fuss

And be thrilled by my stories’ rust.

 

Oh, please absolve me from the sin

Of looking at those pages grim.

Send all the magic into that book

Of fairies, orcs and goblin spooks.

 

I say, it is all a lie

Simple fairy tales are meant to scry

Into our hopes, our dreams our failings.

They are not meant to cause our railings.

Forget me not! Read my tales

As words that help heal our fails.

 

Let all the magic flow into there

A little book, a little tear

A little wrinkle of failing ail.

For a desperate monster is this

Book of lies and lustful tricks.

 

Stay away, let the magic stay…

Please, let my tales be light and gay.

Not to be believed, but rather a farce

To help the subconscious defecate

Its deepest fears in the dark.

 

For magic is delusional thoughts

Magical thinkings make the brain rot.

Let my books be nice and hearty

Not a magical word spoken tardy.

Let my words be simple tales

Which help my readers feel, so frail

That our sins need washed and bleached

Let the magic go into another book

Not mine, which are so meek.

My Aspirations

I would hope that one day my work

Were like a bridge to the classics.

That a reader would pleasantly love my verse

And start reading more.

 

Though, on a second glance

After reading those daunting litterateurs

There will be a realization of how poor my craft is.

That my writing, being a bridge,

Brought you to the banks of a better shore,

And my writing was simply a boat that got you there.

Soon, I would wane in significance

As the reader began tasting the treasures I have tasted.

 

However, when reading over my verse,

There will still be joy,

Like an adolescent writer jotting down journal points

Which are read some years later.

 

My poetry, compared to the old masters

Is like an adolescent.

It is hard to put down when youths,

But into our blooming years of success

It becomes a sort of gesture to smile upon.

 

I would like to be smiled upon

By my readers, years after I have been read.

Not as something emulating or imitating old masters

But as someone filling a void in literature that might

For as long as there are letters,

Never be filled again.

Our Missuses

It amazes me how something

Finds its niche

And gets misused.

How YouTube could be the premier site of an education

But it gets used so stupidly.

 

I think of WordPress.

It could be used for so much more.

I think of Poetry.

It could be used for so much more.

I think of Novels and Science.

It could be used for so much more.

But, it finds its popular niche,

It finds its populous milieu,

And that is what it is known for.

WordPress for journaling.

Poetry for confessionals.

Novels for entertainment.

Science for blasphemy.

 

WordPress could be used to share cutting edge ideas.

Poetry could be used to share important truths.

Novels could be used to teach us how to live.

Science could be used to end famines.

 

I suppose there is nothing to offer.

Our moral education is in the Bible.

Summed up, there is nothing new to discover.

Science blatantly contradicts morals

So every discovery must break down our belief in good.

Why then is it a problem that these innovations get used

So poorly?

Maybe I am just a mouse turd in the peppercorn.

Or, maybe, I need to convince you to read your Bibles…

Because there are answers in Genesis,

But it’s more important we understand the story’s moral

Rather than the story’s literal application.

Who knows what Science will learn 1,000 years from now?

I don’t, which is why I find satisfaction in the Bible’s

Moral suppositions.

They work. They predict society.

They even help you live with a clear conscience

If you’re paying attention.

Whether there really was a Garden of Eden,

Let’s live like there were.

That way we understand the story is about

Growing up, and discovering what it is to have sinned.