Just two-thirds a man,
His name is Sin; dawns crescent
Moon. A written snake.
Tag: Poetry
My Words About the Revolution
Colonel Brandon had his say—marching with
Washington’s troop toward the Brandywine.
I say… Had Washington’s troops actually listened to that fellow
They’d have knocked him on his rear.
The story was made with today’s so called
“History.”
What we claim to know about the revolutionary war.
The fact is, it seems like rhetoric.
But… using that rhetoric
I wanted to show something good.
The fact that America is worth fighting to preserve.
The whims of an author cannot change history.
We can, rather, just put in our moral say
By the details we have given to us.
How the historical data says Washington’s troops were misers
When, historically, they probably believed very strongly
In the cause of the revolution.
I, rather, can have my say about what I want.
I can reinvent history.
I can rework truth
In order to present another truth.
Stories and works of fiction are never literally true.
In fact, they often get very details so wrong
It cannot be denied that the whole work seems flawed.
But, trade in one analogy for another
The truth is still in there without the details being accurate.
The truth is we, America today,
Are jaded and would not stand by Washington.
The fact is that today,
Washington and Adams and Franklin
Would be trolls on the internet
And nothing more than a blogger or a haphazard writer
Believing the lies about history we are taught.
Why do I bring this to bear?
Because the whole of the truth is that truth
In stories are present today, the age they are written.
And not in the past.
When we dramatize the past
With our stories, often it is today we are talking about.
When we watch the idyllic past
It is the past they are talking about.
Funny, isn’t it?
How art captures the ideal, and the truth
Of the age it is written in.
Judgmental
There were two men.
The first was a prophet.
The prophet, when he saw the wickedness of mankind
Would pray to the Father in heaven
And would accuse men of being wicked.
He would reprove for the sake of correction
And nothing he spoke was with intent to harm
But rather was with intent to increase faithfulness
Among the sons of men.
Never did he say, “You sin like thus,
“And, therefore, you are a worthless fellow.”
But rather, “The whole sins like thus,
“And your sins will condemn you.
“Not that I have never sinned,
“But that you are sinning right now,
“And I am concerned for your well being.”
When men heard this,
They felt sore vexed
Because it seemed like the Prophet was accusing
Them right to their face.
But it was rather the whole who the prophet accused;
And men stood up in judgment against this prophet
To say, “He is more wicked in his judgments
“Then we are in our murders and thefts!”
The second man was a judge.
He would see of men, “They are righteous,
“And they are, for the whole part, better than this man.”
But, when he saw a man’s sins,
He would say, “This man is incredibly wicked.
“This man, I have seen him be wicked
“I have seen his sins,
“Because I have made a diligent search for them.
“I will not depart from him
“Until I am justified in myself
“That I have found error in him.”
This man, all men loved
Because he had accused the righteous
And had encouraged the wicked to sin
By justifying them, and by making himself justified in their eyes.
Wherever he was, he made sure he was justified in their eyes
And that the truth, even, was abominable in the sights of men
Because he would rather be justified in his position
And not the truth; and once he found sin
He went home and said, “I know I am righteous
“And this other man is a sinner more than I.
“For, the prophets are judgmental,
“And I am humble and give grace to the sinner.”
Which man will stand in judgment?
Who is the hypocrite?
The Tragedy of Pekah Avram
There once was an old Jew
Who thought he was a woman.
He dressed up in clothes of a woman
Made a mighty fine one at that…
Though, he was confused because he was a man
But thought he was a woman.
He wrote the book of the Gatekeeper
And a Jewish prophet found his curses.
He, this old Gatekeeper
Was meant to allow certain men
To have access to their meat
For he, with the access to times
Could open the doors for them.
He, quite foolishly,
Did many unworthy things.
He turned himself into quite a nasty fellow.
So, the prophet finding his curses
Said, “I see you speak of me
“And my grandmother
“And I feel your curse every night around eight.
“How you pray your curses,
“And your songs are your religion.”
Yet, he did not know it was Hezekiah
He trapped. Hezekiah,
So the foolhearted Pekah,
Who hated Jews and held them captive
Said, “I shall enter into even greater curses”
It does sound true, doesn’t it Avram;
That you thought, “He calls himself Judah
“I shall make myself The Northern King.”
That is Babylon’s king.
O’ but my name is now Israel
Because you get to call yourself “Babylon.”
You trick, I trick, I am no longer Judah
Because you are no longer Assyria.
Jacob is a trickster
Jacob is a trickster
Trickster,
Trickster,
It all fell down!
On your head.
Thus, the crest of the northern king was on your car
O Avram Ephraim, Pekah King of Israel
With the Six Hundred and Sixty-Six talents of Solomon’s Gold.
Thus, I speak no curse on you.
Rather I bless you.
Your poetry is amusing.
I should have thought Israel was a safe King
But you are not…
Why I’m not Another Religion
I come to this often topic,
Of why I’m not a Buddhist.
At the beginning of my life
I said of myself I was a “Christian Buddhist.”
It was then said, “Those terms are antithetical.”
Certainly, they are.
Buddhism is a religion that praises suffering
As if it were the only meaning in life.
Suffering, to suffer…
Suffer in pleasure, suffer in pain
Suffer in war, suffering, suffering, suffering.
And after all of the suffering,
The meaninglessness,
The sitting among the tombs,
One’s greatest aspiration is to die.
That is the highest ideal of Buddhism.
Not to go to heaven…
No… simply to stop the reincarnation cycle.
It is what is called, “Nirvana.”
Nirvana is not heaven.
It simply is not.
Greeks and Egyptians have heaven
Yet their gods are vain, and will war among one another.
Viking’s heaven is to fight over a goblet and pork chop.
Islam’s heaven is nice, but how do you get there?
Do you just do a lot of good?
And what about people who did a lot of bad?
Do they just have to work off their good?
Like the Hindus and Buddhists have Karma
Evil must be worked off?
Because I see how evil I am today…
Being much more loving and kind than most people
And I see the extent of my evil
And I know Karma is a bitch;—
It makes a murderer never suffer once
And puts a good man who has a conscience out on the street.
It kind of invalidates itself, doesn’t it?
The happiest people seem to be the most vile in my experience.
So… we know it doesn’t exist.
Christians know this happens. They know…
They expect it… They often guarantee it.
Hindus the same, but there never is a real reward.
Hindus believe the ultimate goal is to be annihilated.
Westerners believe in heaven,
They believe in Hindu’s heaven,
They believe it is Islam’s heaven…
A nice little garden you go to
Where you get to make love and eat and drink.
Rightly, Westerners think all religions have heaven.
Very few religions do, outside of Western traditions.
Because, we believe in Heaven, we know there’s a heaven
And all religions aside, we know it’s there.
I talked to a so called “Religions Scholar.”
He said, “All religions have heaven.”
No… there are about seven religions practiced today.
Four of them do not believe in heaven,
Two of them do, and another just has no faith.
All the others I tend to reject…
Not because they didn’t survive…
My religion won’t in a little while.
How do I know this?
Because men don’t want to believe in the truth, anymore.
A persecuted Minority can be right
If that minority has the truth on their side.
Christianity does.
Why I’m not an atheist,
The simple reason is because it’s insane.
John Lennon says, “All you need is love,”
But he beat his wife.
If his character is anything to display
If Atheists, then I want nothing to do with their religion
Or lack there of.
I’m not Agnostic, because it’s stupid.
If I half believed in God
Then I’d better pick some religion
And make sure it’s right.
Only one seems to advocate truth…
“Turn the other cheek”
“Give to those who ask”
“Murderers will be torn to pieces”
“Frivolous sex is not right.”
One of those I’m sure
Most of you don’t believe in…
The last one.
And granted, your civilization sucks.
I have to live in it.
I don’t want to.
And, I see ya’ll suffer like the Buddhists do
Not believing in Fairy Tales
When the Fairy Tale simply says you’re in control of your own fortune.
Bad fortune? Probably bad people.
Not all the time…
Because they are happy.
I imagine people who live today
Are as happy as a Psychopath
Butchering a sheep or something.
Some pleasure is there…
I know.
But, there are better pleasures.
Buddhism believes it’s not so.
Christianity affirms that there is good.
I think most religions forget that
Or try to say they don’t,
But then when you look at it…
It’s a perfect engine for state craft.
Christianity doesn’t seem to be.
It seems to scorn capitalism
Communism
Socialism.
Everyone wants Jesus to be on their side…
Jesus’ side was weighing a shekel
For a pound of wheat.
And how much better would society be
If that’s what we did?
“No, because Modern society is so advanced.”
You have TVs. Want a cookie?
Because that’s about as advanced as we got in the past 100 years.
I call that a dark age.
And that’s, also, why I’m not an atheist.
And the reason I’m not a Muslim
It must be added here…
If you took every bad thing, thought
Idea—I said the “B” word in this poem—
And tallied it up in a day…
And say gave me time in hell for it…
I’m a student of La Rochefoucauld’s maxims.
I understand that would be my entire life
Spent in hell… and whatever sins I committed in hell
I’d spend that time still in hell.
A cycle, a cycle, a cycle.
Christians like to believe I’m evil…
Atheists like to believe I’m stupid…
The other religions like to believe my religion is true
Because clearly I make a case for it
And they realize, “Huh… this makes sense.”
And Muslims who look at this would say,
“But Hell is so bad, that it burns away your evil.”
Every Muslim, listen to this.
I do nothing on the account of a day, beside say the “B” word
That, in your eyes, would constitute as sin.
In my eyes, in my heart, I know how desperate I am.
I understand that I write this poem half to convert you
The other half is to eat.
I understand that I want love
Half because it will make me better,
The other half is because I want to eat.
I understand that I don’t like clothes
Yet I buy them… and have a lot more than Jesus recommended.
I understand I argue…
I understand I am hard to deal with…
I understand I insult people…
And though I do it all with the best intentions…
Converting a soul…
Removing a mote…
Discouraging bad behavior…
It is all sin.
At my best, it’s filthy rags.
You, yourself, are the same.
You worship Allah, what you call god
And “he is pleased with you…”
Your desire to be rich
To eat…
To have wives…
To have children…
To protect your own…
And then my religion,
God dies for you.
Did your god die for you?
He doesn’t even want you to be filled with him.
He wants you to bow to a stone
And he wants you to sit and say a repetitious prayer
Five times a day.
He wants you to fast once a year.
He wants you to go to Mecca to worship that rock.
Why? My God, you worship Him by feeding the homeless.
You do it by being kind to a person in a wheelchair.
Yours, you do it by bowing to a book, a rock,
And that’s all Allah is, I’m afraid.
He’s a book. He’s a rock.
And you look at Christians.
They worship a book.
They worship a rock.
So does the rest of the earth.
Me, I say the “B” word,
And I know how bad I am.
I know it… I see it… I hate it…
And your god says it goes away by touching your head
To a rock every day.
My God says, “I’ll take it out of you.”
And He does.
Day by day, it disappears little by little
And that’s the proof I have that He is LORD.
I don’t doubt Muslims are good people…
Or Hindus, or Buddhists, or Atheists, or Jews,
I just doubt their religion is what made them good.
Often, what’s good in them is the very God I worship
And when that starts fading,
It’s normally about the time that they get ensconced in their faiths.
Me… I get ensconced in my faith, too.
It’s simply to do what’s right,
To know I’ll never be fully good,
And to just say, “I’ll do my best,
“And Jesus will do the rest.”
Because my God said, “He who feeds the least of these
“Feeds me.”
All worship in my religion
Is centered around how you treat others.
It’s not prayers, Hail Mary’s
Or anything of the sort.
It rather is a religion about love.
Love sometimes rebukes.
My friends sits across from me
Gets angry that I said something that was right…
He leaves…
My religion is that it won’t be the last time we ever talk.
My family hurts me…
My friends abandon me…
My religion is that I’ll put in the effort needed to mend those wounds.
Because surely every other religion is about
How everyone around you isn’t perfect.
Christianity is about how you aren’t perfect.
And yet you should strive to be.
God Made A Good Earth; Men Just Abused It
The pleasure of sex
Brings a child.
That child grows
Under your thumb
And becomes like a half of you
And a half of the person you had sex with
That beautiful pleasure.
Then there is work.
You build a garden
An alcove
Vineyards
Pleasant houses;
You trade precious stones
With each other
To get things that will enrich you.
You work to compile wisdom
And skill at your craft.
You build shoes,
Art, paintings
Cupboards
Wooden ducks and chess tables.
Then there is pleasant sunshine
There are animals,
There is a wellspring of life
And clouds and blue sky.
In that heat, you build.
In the cold, you cuddle up next to a fire
With your beloved, and children
Huddled there all winter
In a cocoon of love.
The rain comes, it smells good.
The bees pollinate the grass.
Flowers come in all different colors
There are words for different things.
Teals and greens
And fuchsias
And magnolias.
Men are born…
With some pain…
The baby comes into the earth crying
And that little thing
Grows to be a man or a woman.
That woman or man makes love
And the cycle repeats itself.
You, the next generation,
Build a life with those you love.
Why is there suffering?
Can you truly blame God?
He builds the Earth,
And like the fruit on the tree of good and evil
We pluck it.
It is there, so we pluck it.
We pluck it, and eat.
That is why there is suffering.
God says, “Do not do this
“Or you will suffer.”
And we do.
All the beautiful things above
God has given us.
Heaven will be wondrous
Because we will never have to sin again.
We will never sin, we will never sin
We will never sin, because we cannot.
That is what we hope for.
To be like Christ…
Unable to sin.
The Builder
There was a man who was a great builder.
He was skilled in his craft.
He saw a river which needed a bridge
In order to be safely forded;
Therefore, he set to task
Building that bridge.
It was his only occupation for ten years,
And he lived off the fruit of other’s aid
Because he could neither afford to gain an income
For all his time was spent building the bridge
That was needed to get to the pastures on the other side.
The peoples became wroth with him,
Though, believing his work was for nothing
And therefore those who aided him
Wanted him to obtain employment
And therefore cease from building the bridge.
The shepherds told him to cease
His fathers told him to cease
His mothers, his friends, and his aunts and uncles
All told him to stop building the bridge.
For, they believed that the bridge was not worthy employment
And believed that the ten years were spent in vain.
It had happened that the man was finished with the bridge
But for spite, none of the peoples of the towns would use it.
For, they were haughty and said, “The man had not gained an income
“These past ten years, and spent his whole fortune
“On building a bridge. Therefore, none of us will use it
“For though the toll is affordable, we believe he ought to have been
“Employed by us, so we could exact his labor for nothing.”
Therefore, the peoples did not use the bridge
Because they had become jealous that he had finished what he set out to do
And secretly wished him to be like them
Working for unjust and unfair wages;
Therefore, they would not give him his wages.
It soon came to pass that a great flood of troubles was upon the land
Where the peoples needed to ford the river.
The peoples all saw the signs, great thunder clouds
Were amassing, and the clouds would return after the rains.
Therefore, the people were still haughty
And decided that in spite of the bridge being built
They would ford the river where it was shallow.
They got to the place, where though it was shallow normally
The rapids were so strong they could carry a horse away.
The peoples stubbornly said, “This bridge is not sacred,”
And, lo, the bridge was not sacred, this they were right.
But, the bridge was built when the waters were shallow
So the people could find safe pasture into the other lands.
The man, however, had crossed the ford with his wife and children
Safely, and there found pasture on the other side.
When the neighboring village saw him
They were astonished that only he had crossed—
For the other bank was high, and went up to mountain roads.
They said, “Had you not worked for ten years on this bridge?
“And had not the peoples of your own town been wise enough to cross it
“Instead of Fording the rivers? We surely would have taken the whole
“Of them, except bodies are washing ashore where they seemed to have crossed.”
That is this generation.
A man has his skilled work, but none want it and complain
That he is lazy.
Two Men
There were two men.
The first, a lot of what he predicted was wrong
But he did what God told him to do.
He’d say, “On this date, this would happen.”
And it didn’t happen on that date.
It, rather, happened, if it happened, a lot longer.
He, making one thousand shekels a month,
Gave twenty-thousand shekels to the poor.
He healed the lame with his words
And comforted them.
He spoke what was wise
Though he got his predictions wrong.
He also condemned the sinners with his words
Though he did not judge them
The sinners felt condemned when he spoke
Therefore, they hated him.
The second man, every word he predicted came true.
He didn’t do what God told him to do.
He would say, “On this day, this will happen.”
And it would.
He, making two billion shekels a month
Gave none of it to the poor.
He would tell the sinners, “God loves you”
But would not correct them to their face,
But it made them feel secure.
He would hug the sinners,
And make them feel very happy about themselves.
He never told anyone that they were wrong,
But rather, everyone was right because he was a murderer
And he didn’t want to accuse others for his own sin.
Every sinner felt like they were saved
Though they had great sin,
And they were comforted by this word,
“A mass murderer, if on his death bed
“Confessed Christ, he will go to heaven.”
So, they all committed murder
Believing their final confession would save them.
Which is the prophet?
A Little Parable I Told
There were two men.
Both heard God’s voice.
God said to both,
“You do what I ask,
“And I will give you everything your heart
“Desires, even wives, children, and vineyards
“And man-servants and female servants
“And oxen and sheep in great number.”
The first man,
He listened to God’s voice
And being a great sinner
He hindered himself
And caused a great calamity
Against himself.
He had sinned
And therefore had shame cast upon him.
For, his sin was known to everyone.
But, he had only made it known because God had told him to repent.
He believed in God’s voice
But, the more good he did
And the more he waxed in righteousness
The more he grew hesitant in his belief that God would save him.
He believed God would not even
Give him a mote of what his heart desired.
The second man,
An even greater sinner,
Knew he had heard God’s voice
But decided instead to act very foolishly.
He went out and began to torment his family and friends
And began to spill innocent blood.
He began to whore-monger
And would not repent.
When asked about his crimes
He felt shame, but would not repent.
He said in his heart, “There is no God
“And I don’t want to be mad like my brother.”
So, he continued on sinning.
Which is faithless
And which is unfaithful?
Who is the greater sinner of the two?
The man who did what God told him
But didn’t believe there would be justice?
Or, the man who did unjustice
In spite of God’s commandment?
God Bless America
This is the Way I actually sung it In Elementary School:Â It’s a Little Different, but I never would have known it. I always made up lyrics as I sung these songs.
God Bless America,
Land that I love;—
Stand beside her,
And guide her—
From the fight in the night—
From above.
From the mountains,
To the prairies,
To the oceans white with foam.
God Bless America,
My Home Sweet Home.
B. K. Neifert 