Tag: Poetry

Why I Believe in God

A friend of mine recently said to me,

“What if heaven is so terrible,

“That you wouldn’t possibly want to go there?”

I thought of my poem describing my idea of what heaven is.

I thought to myself, “Me, in my paltry understanding,

“Can create this place.

“But why did God create the earth?

“It seems so bad.”

I then consider how much I want.

Love. Sex. Good, pleasurable food. Family. Raising a family.

Enjoyment from work.

I look at this earth, and I am impressed by how

Heavenly it could be, if everyone behaved in a decent way.

I then look around, and I see people cause most of the suffering.

I think, “Why wouldn’t God come right now and stop all of this?”

Then I think of my future wife, how we’ll have sex

Marry, have children, cook five star dishes,

An enjoy. I look at what prevents me.

Human corruption.

So, I again ask, “Why doesn’t God stop this suffering?”

Then I think of my future lover’s gentle loves

Eating and working to provide for my family.

Then I wonder why I suffer. It is men.

“Why doesn’t God stop all of this right now?”

Again, I think of the nudity of my future spouse,

The fusing of our genes into human beings

By the most delicious of God’s creation here on the earth.

How I can work, feed them, eat from that work.

Why is there suffering?

Because people are unsatisfied with this.

I’m not, but I see everyone trying to prevent

Everyone else from obtaining this dream.

“Why doesn’t God come right now?”

Because there is a chance I can make love

Feel the pleasure of a family.

 

Round and round this cycle goes

Until I die, and if I have not reached this goal,

I say, “What was my life worth?”

And then God takes me to a paradise

That if it is better than this earth,

I think of the paradise of this earth

And how paradisaical it is.

That’s why I believe in God

Because there is so much good here.

And I know heaven will be great

Because this is the flawed of God’s creation…

It’s flawed because of us.

In heaven, there will be no more of “Us”

And our sin. Which means we’ll have pleasures uncountable.

Because a life with no meaning steals from all men

This meaning I have found…

Men cannot reach the meaning without God.

That is good enough for me to believe in Him.

Because I know without it, men will only have reason to make other men suffer.

With a meaning, we’ll have every reason to make men suffer less

And knowing that men do suffer, and that this earth is filled

With such sublime pleasures,

I know there is a God, and I know heaven will be greater.

A Regea song

Preacher man don’t tell me

Heaven is on the earth.

Preacher man don’t tell me

Suffering is all we’re worth.

Because when you go digging for all that gold

I know eternal life on earth gets old

So don’t tell me things I know are cold.

 

Great Rasta you smoke your dope

Say getting high is for good folk…

Well I tell you all this song

It’s stupid to find meaning in your bong.

 

Because I see you corrupt as hell

Singing songs to the broken man

With all  of the lies you tell.

Saying, “Heaven is a place on earth,”

While billions live and die in crusted dearth.

 

Preacher man you ain’t off the hook.

You use religion and say, “O no, don’t look.”

You are the best magician’s wand

Waving hands say’n, “O, my dear God,”

While you see the people grow old and poor.

You say, “God wants me to have some more.”

 

So get up stand up,

Stand up for your right.

Get up stand up,

Don’t give up the fight.

 

I’m sick’ and tired of your liv’n, giv’n games

Saying, “Don’t live to go to heaven in Jesus’ name.”

Don’t give up the fight

Stand up for your right.

 

I see a world we all must bear

For years on end and that’s why I care,

Don’t give up the fight.

Stand up for your right,

The Elmer Fudd of Today

What surprises me the most

Is having watched Looney Tunes

As an adult, I see Bugs Bunny is in the role of Squidward.

Elmer Fudd, Marvin the Martian,

The Tasmanian Devil,

They are basically Sponge Bob

And Patrick, and Mr. Crabs.

 

It’s almost eerie in a way

That we’ve moved from the Looney Tunes

Where the characters were defending themselves

From being eaten, from their homes being invaded,

From a whole host of things and aggression.

But, Sponge Bob, Patrick, Sandy and Mr. Crabs

Come and destroy Squidward’s life over

And over, and over, and over again.

Now the home invader is Sponge Bob

And it’s ok. The person with the right

To privacy, the right to live and let live

Is being invaded by Sponge Bob.

 

I don’t say this to say that Sponge Bob is a bad cartoon.

I like the cartoon.

I just think it displays our modern archetype

Of the victim being the one to blame

Because they are stuffy, or whatever reason we find.

Often Squidward is innocent in every episode,

And we find a narcissistic pattern in all the characters.

Which, seems to reflect the society.

Did it build the society?

Art tends to do that better than any medium

Because it works on a powerful,

Subconscious level.

And it does…

The question is our response to it as a culture.

Do we let things continue down this path

Of Sociopathy, Psychopathy,

Criminal Negligence, etc.

Because Bugs Bunny always had justice on his side.

It seems Sponge Bob does not…

Very frankly our culture reflects this reality

By giving the Sponge Bob like people

Those haphazard, foolish,

Zealous and lustful about life

The reward, which is happiness.

We prize Sponge Bob in our modern culture

Because he doesn’t question the corruption

Around him, but rather is part of the corruption itself.

You can say Squidward is, too,

But in a sense he’s being exploited

And is in indentured servitude

At least implied a dozen times in the cartoon.

So… it’s eerie that this is our moral compass today.

And again, Sponge Bob is not a bad cartoon.

I think, though, the challenge it presents

To the former ethos is one that presents

Within its design and internal logic

A pattern of corruption that seems to celebrate

People who are overworked,

People who are exploited,

And people who are content with being exploited.

Which, frankly,

That’s the sum difference of Looney Tunes and Sponge Bob.

Looney Tunes the characters fought back.

Both are excessively violent, and display the same

Lewd sexual undertones.

That’s not the issue.

The issue is which side has justice.

And Bugs and Daffy Duck

We saw this same thing…

It’s something cartoons exploit.

It’s not something that ought to be censored.

But often, justice is a very powerful thing

And we need to at least have some semblance of it in our art

As I’m pretty sure most of our problems today

Stem from our art.

The reason why is because

Simply put

They put ideas in our head

That weren’t there previously,

You can lie and say it doesn’t affect you

But you don’t know what an arm being torn off looks like

Until you’ve seen it on TV.

You don’t know what a penis entering a vagina looks like

Until you see it on TV.

I remember flagrantly in my youth

Trying to imagine both

And I couldn’t

Until I had seen it.

And that alone, with the myriad of other problems

Shows how our art is exploitative and a cultural movement needs to change it.

Flag at Half Staff

O flag, flying at half staff

Stand tall, proud.

Men die, and people perish.

Let not your citizens peril.

Fly, raise up on your pole.

Men have been

Since the beginning of time

Murderers. Do you not know?

Why do you sag at every child’s ill fate?

Why do you stoop at every crowd maligned?

Know this, Star Spangled Banner

When you stoop twenty days of each month

The people stoop with you.

The Ox and the Bird

‘When I was young,

I had a mulberry tree outside my front porch.

I gleaned all of the fruit off the street

Then stood on the electric dispenser

And began taking them off the boughs of the tree.

We ended up with a bucket filled with mulberries.

We ate nearly an eighth of them.

The rest went to waste.

In life, we’re like this.

That is what the law means by saying,

‘”When you come across an egg

“In a tree, leave the mother.”

 

When at work,

People have to pay for their food.

The reason why is because of the former.

Yet, the scripture says,

“Do not muzzle the ox.”

That means it is lawful

To allow those who work for you

To eat your food for free.

It is unlawful to not allow them to eat your food for free.

Yet, because the former law is not observed

People are leery about observing the latter law.

Our economic situation is this:

“Muzzle the ox, take the mother.”

That is why all are burdened.

 

How I View Grace

We are all degenerate

Serial rapists, murderers, cannibals

Drug addicts, adulterers, child abusers

And meet Jesus.

We say a thousand times we doesn’t need Jesus

Because we are pretty swell.

Jesus says, “I see there is some good in you.”

So, Jesus spends the better part of our lives

Trying to get himself caught for our sin.

Jesus does get caught, when we confess Him as LORD,

And then Jesus gets put on death row

Where He’s beaten up in prison,

Stabbed, and fed gross food.

We someday forget all of what we did

While Jesus is the one found guilty for all of our sins.

 

This is a helpful tool for understanding Christ.

We all are the degenerate fools;

Jesus is the Christ.

Wasn’t our LORD something of a radical?

The Demon Reality

Torrid, swells

The aquamarine aquatic, torpedoes

To the zealous fate of antlers

Bucking in the wood

Of jousting imbeciles

Wondering, nonsense is the word

To the arrows of squalor pits

In the southern sphere of the flat earther

Birther, certificates of divorce

Yet, reacquaint with me

For none know their murders

Their slanders

Their thefts.

All are murderous

To the wretched swells…

Thus, deeply laden is the sin

Which torpedoes to the crux of civilization.

Into the demon reality

Goes the weary mind

To the swells of the oceans felt

Yet, flee from the nonsense!

’tis only nonsense.

That is what it means

When Jesus washes away our sins.

 

The mermaids live in the yellow submarine

The giants in the plane beneath the earth;

To this yellow submarine

Goes our sin.

Wretched, redeemer Himself

Ran to us with blood soaked hands

Redemption

Our spotted souls

Need only succumb.

Flesh rots, stunk up the carcass

Of our six hundred and sixty-six lies.

For money, for fame

To see the lands beneath our lands

In leviathan’s belly;

Torpedoes the soul

To the land of candy and answers

Where the childish souls

Seek to die. Oh how they seek to die

In a land of candy and answers

Where above that, say, is the heavens of heavens of.

I skipped to it, yet was freed.

By blood, soaked in the cloth of Turin

Where my heart was made and ripped into bands

Knowing the full breadth of sin

Could be laden on my

Time phased heart.

A thousand lives, a thousand lives

We live it, and are shifted.

The blood and water washed them all away.

The Empress Wears No Clothes; My Retelling

The Empress Shi Wu was extraordinarily beautiful.

Her bosom was supple,

Her face like a well sculpted diamond,

Her stomach like a sack of wheat

With four precious stones,

Her legs were thighs of strength

And her feet were like sparrows.

Her hair was that of a frame

Which framed beauty incarnate.

 

At the beginning of her reign

She saw the people were poor.

So, she began by making the people richer

By adding tin to their silver coin.

This, by reason,

Made the coin much more plenteous.

 

The people became poor.

 

Then, she began to build the merchant guilds.

These guilds she would cause to make merchandise for the poor.

The merchants built and made much merchandise,

So Shi Wu put more coin into the land to buy merchandise.

But, the merchants ended up with all the coin,

And would melt them to make pure silver,

Buying the poor’s merchandise with the dross.

 

Shi Wu then began to become rich by the merchants

Who supplied her treasury with great merchandise,

Even from greater Persia all the way from the other china.

Shi Wu became exceedingly rich.

 

The people became poor.

 

The people had traditions,

The people had great science.

Their science said the world was round

That God created the world through nature

And that men were made up of smaller parts.

Shi Wu then saw this.

She said, “Tell the people there is no God

“And that their traditions are worthless.

“That their God says the earth is flat

“And that God did not use nature to make the earth.

“This way, they must buy more.

“Make enriching me their religion.”

So, she did.

 

The people had tin

And not silver,

And a shekel of tin was worth a grain of wheat.

 

The people became poor.

 

But Shi Wu, they heard,

Said that their traditions were stupid.

So, the people began to believe that the earth was flat

Rather than believe Shi Wu.

Obviously, if the earth were flat,

It would explain the lie of Shi Wu.

The people also believed that people

Were not made of smaller parts…

Rather, the people were just one whole

Flesh of writhing sinew.

 

Their traditions, they thought,

Were correct, so when Shi Wu said

The traditions of the ancestors were that men were sinew

And that the world were flat,

The people began to believe their traditions

Instead of Shi Wu.

This angered Shi Wu,

So she began to tax the people.

For, their traditions held that the earth was flat

And now the people believed the Earth was flat

Because of their traditions

Which Shi Wu said were not good.

 

Thus, Shi Wu in one last act of defiance

Disrobed, and called in every male within the borders of her country

To come and view her.

Lusty she was,

She did obscene things before their very eyes

Just to humiliate the traditions of their ancestors.

She said, “See! Is not my beauty sufficient?

“You all can have Shi Wu who wants her!”

But, there began a rumor saying,

“The Emperor wears no clothes.”

This angered Shi Wu,

So she said, “Anyone who says, ‘The Emperor wears no clothes,’

“This man, woman or child shall be put to death.”

But, the people, all having seen her shame

Did not believe her, though many were put to death.

For the traditions of the ancestors were stronger

Than the tradition of Shi Wu.

Lazarus and Judas

“Jesus, I have healed in Your name.

“Cast out demons, seen amputations healed.

“I had spoken Your word with truth.

“I have given what I could to the poor.

“I have tried to be kind, and give just reproof.

“I had tried to make the brokenhearted smile.

“I had done this all because I loved You

“And had believed You loved me too,”

Spoke Jesus’ friend Lazarus.

 

“Jesus, I had healed the lame

“And prophesied in Your Name.

“I tithed to the church my ten percent.

“I had not made sinners ashamed.

“I had done this because You glorified me,

“And I continually remembered Your burnt offering;

“I had known I am a sinner,

“So, therefore, by knowing I have sinned, I am justified,”

Said Judas Iscariot.