Oh, give thanks to the Lord, for He is good!
For His mercy endures forever.
Let the redeemed of the Lord say so,
Whom He has redeemed from the hand of the enemy,
And gathered out of the lands,
From the east and from the west,
From the north and from the south.
They wandered in the wilderness in a desolate way;
They found no city to dwell in.
Hungry and thirsty,
Their soul fainted in them.
Then they cried out to the Lord in their trouble,
And He delivered them out of their distresses.
And He led them forth by the right way,
That they might go to a city for a dwelling place.
Oh, that men would give thanks to the Lord for His goodness,
And for His wonderful works to the children of men!
For He satisfies the longing soul,
And fills the hungry soul with goodness.
Those who sat in darkness and in the shadow of death,
Bound in affliction and irons—
Because they rebelled against the words of God,
And despised the counsel of the Most High,
Therefore He brought down their heart with labor;
They fell down, and there was none to help.
Then they cried out to the Lord in their trouble,
And He saved them out of their distresses.
He brought them out of darkness and the shadow of death,
And broke their chains in pieces.
Oh, that men would give thanks to the Lord for His goodness,
And for His wonderful works to the children of men!
For He has broken the gates of bronze,
And cut the bars of iron in two.
Fools, because of their transgression,
And because of their iniquities, were afflicted.
Their soul abhorred all manner of food,
And they drew near to the gates of death.
Then they cried out to the Lord in their trouble,
And He saved them out of their distresses.
He sent His word and healed them,
And delivered them from their destructions.
Oh, that men would give thanks to the Lord for His goodness,
And for His wonderful works to the children of men!
Let them sacrifice the sacrifices of thanksgiving,
And declare His works with rejoicing.
Those who go down to the sea in ships,
Who do business on great waters,
They see the works of the Lord,
And His wonders in the deep.
For He commands and raises the stormy wind,
Which lifts up the waves of the sea.
They mount up to the heavens,
They go down again to the depths;
Their soul melts because of trouble.
They reel to and fro, and stagger like a drunken man,
And are at their wits’ end.
Then they cry out to the Lord in their trouble,
And He brings them out of their distresses.
He calms the storm,
So that its waves are still.
Then they are glad because they are quiet;
So He guides them to their desired haven.
Oh, that men would give thanks to the Lord for His goodness,
And for His wonderful works to the children of men!
Let them exalt Him also in the assembly of the people,
And praise Him in the company of the elders.
He turns rivers into a wilderness,
And the watersprings into dry ground;
A fruitful land into barrenness,
For the wickedness of those who dwell in it.
He turns a wilderness into pools of water,
And dry land into watersprings.
There He makes the hungry dwell,
That they may establish a city for a dwelling place,
And sow fields and plant vineyards,
That they may yield a fruitful harvest.
He also blesses them, and they multiply greatly;
And He does not let their cattle decrease.
When they are diminished and brought low
Through oppression, affliction, and sorrow,
He pours contempt on princes,
And causes them to wander in the wilderness where there is no way;
Yet He sets the poor on high, far from affliction,
And makes their families like a flock.
The righteous see it and rejoice,
And all iniquity stops its mouth.
Whoever is wise will observe these things,
And they will understand the lovingkindness of the Lord.

REVELATION: three, seven – the Kingdom of Heaven

The key to unlocking both glory and shame.

Philadelphia knows He’s arriving in newness

inscribing on foreheads His city and name.

(Though it could be on tee shirts or baseball caps, true –

unless someone takes time to decipher the text…

is it Greek? Aramaic? Amharic? What next?)

Don’t be mad – it’s not me but old John who’s to blame.

Of names and on numbers of Savior and Beast

I have lately been pondering, trembling, wondering

mushroom-cloud raptures in mind’s eye a-thundering.

How will we get to that marriage-day feast?

Will my garment be ready or filthy with fall-out?

(The song says His blood will make clean if we call out

in faith for forgiveness, in humble repentance

believing that grace will abolish the sentence.)

You may wish my rhyme to be likewise abolished.

Bear with me. Forgive me, I grant it’s not polished.

I speak what I feel and I write when I’m able;

which brings us to heavenly thoughts gastronomic:

what dishes we’ll meet as we dine at that table-

strict Jewish? Angelic? Or pre-Abrahamic?

Shall they serve us from silver or common ceramic?

Being clay to the potter, an unfinished vessel

I leave all these questions for others to wrestle.

Yet there’s still one more realm I explore in conjecture:

the sounds at that gathering.  Classical?   Rock?

Unending revivalist Christian refrains?

Shall we headbang in heaven with glorified brains?

Psychedelic/Psychotic…? or  Handel and Bach?

(Lighten up. It’s the end of my bible-school lecture.

You’ve seen a few rooms of my castle-in-air,

and we ALL know it’s reggae they’re playing up there…)

Bernie Sanders hatched a scheme
to rant an old progressive theme.
He left the greening mountain heights
to bellow forth for Social Rights
descending to our nation's valleys
milking the faithful at his rallies.
Mr. Sanders sold the farm,
sounded socialist alarm;
Trading professorial tweeds
for bloviating human needs.
He set the lefties all a-twitter
bartering the sweet for bitter.
He glared through academic glasses
at the doubtful working classes
wondering why they failed to note
just why and how they ought to vote.
Sanders patched up race-relations
fixing holes with reparations,
working up his magic wonder:
horsey voice of righteous thunder
till the clouds hung heavy and gray
portent of a darker day...
Warming up leftover Hope
he spared no change for hangman's rope,
sputtering on, he blew a gasket
redistributing our basket
scolding, bellowing, pumping fist
and waving fingers from the wrist
like politburo retro-chic
a tousled old white-headed freak.

I wonder sometimes
why droll observations;
recollections of a personal and
sometimes confessional nature,
(interesting enough in themselves – if well-written),
get called “poems” when broken up by
weird line spacing. Nothing against
descriptive prose –
but I don’t think it is truly
Poetry. You can call it that
if you want; I don’t
mind.

Oh Language, where hast thou hid thyself?
Thy once-bright spires decline to dust.
The calm, well-reasoned flow of wisdom
a bygone memory. I’ll not trust
these tween-to-twenty-something’s prattle;
endless babble of self-absorption
centered in pleasure-maximizing:
narcissistic thought-abortion.
Dude—they’re SO not app’ed for language
used by dad ten years ago.
I’m totally DONE with their, like, verbiage
They’re all: Smartphone Teenage Show.
It’s just, like, TALKING—without words
in language ghettos; texting proud . . .
Their lack of precision offends my brain—
They ought to be ashamed (out loud).

Vygotsky’s vaunted Z.P.D,
and Bakhtin’s heteroglossic crack
along with Roland Barthe’s pet parrot
Are SO like totally talking smack.

Sustainably globally gay – we need more of it / socially-conscious progressive group-think / openness through tolerance of diversity in perversity / justice for more more more of gay gay gay / it’s progress it’s now its queer-friendly because it's sustainably globally gay / when gay gets gayer the queering gets clearer / so let's start the conversation about ****-**** gayness / inclusion through cluelessness in transparent openness / by the way - get GAY / before the homosexual conversation queers the queerness of the ongoing conversation / let's celebrate gayness, **OK ?

Why is he Vaticanizing
when he could be catechizing ?
This silly man with a funny hat
this doddering puppet
with his dead Jesus on a stick
this irrelevant vestigial *****
this geriatric Marxist-Lite
outdated Liberationist
terminal Global Warmist;

no wonder the World
heeds his incoherent discourse.
No wonder they
listen to him
but hate the Truth.

Frozen rage
slices my cucumbers
slashes my prices
(so abysmally low)
the paralyzed contortion of my
dull & depressing
confession bleeds depression
on the scabs
of terminal teenage nihilism.
Listen to me ooze
oh poison world.
I unleash weak venom
(bad free verse)
I despise the birth that lifed me
and ... and...
(whoops - better take my meds and make sure mommy paid my data-plan this month.)

‘TERENCE, this is stupid stuff:
You eat your victuals fast enough;
There can’t be much amiss, ’tis clear,
To see the rate you drink your beer.
But oh, good Lord, the verse you make,         
It gives a chap the belly-ache.
The cow, the old cow, she is dead;
It sleeps well, the horned head:
We poor lads, ’tis our turn now
To hear such tunes as killed the cow.         
Pretty friendship ’tis to rhyme
Your friends to death before their time
Moping melancholy mad:
Come, pipe a tune to dance to, lad.’

  Why, if ’tis dancing you would be,         
There’s brisker pipes than poetry.
Say, for what were hop-yards meant,
Or why was Burton built on Trent?
Oh many a peer of England brews
Livelier liquor than the Muse,         
And malt does more than Milton can
To justify God’s ways to man.
Ale, man, ale’s the stuff to drink
For fellows whom it hurts to think:
Look into the pewter ***         
To see the world as the world’s not.
And faith, ’tis pleasant till ’tis past:
The mischief is that ’twill not last.
Oh I have been to Ludlow fair
And left my necktie God knows where,         
And carried half way home, or near,
Pints and quarts of Ludlow beer:
Then the world seemed none so bad,
And I myself a sterling lad;
And down in lovely muck I’ve lain,         
Happy till I woke again.
Then I saw the morning sky:
Heigho, the tale was all a lie;
The world, it was the old world yet,
I was I, my things were wet,         
And nothing now remained to do
But begin the game anew.

find less than arresting: stilted musings gem-set

in ardent verbiage.

recherché semantics, florid phrases facing a withering sun

or policing of metaphor –

until handcuffed: Italic jewel thief caught on surveillance

Sudden bewildering

                                        spaces with odd punctuation;  ?  &

inward dithering semi-confessions in serpentine

verse.  Badder (or worse)  annoying line

           breaks /

cloying internal half – rhymes,

overwrought.     Over-edited;

over-thought until  you want to see

what’s on TV instead.        As if

the poet’s every random musing was so

essential.  Reverential semi-precious mythos

(Siren’s distant waves echo, shipwrecked rocks: Ossifer,  ossifer –

it’s only boring poetry…

                        I’m so sorry. I’ll never do it)

again.

New York! –
The poets you have bred are few,
And how to rhyme they’ve not a clue –
Oh, fork!
(I know that word should sound like ‘muck’,
But that would make this effort ****);
Well, talk –
Why do the poems in your style
So often form, of crap, a pile?
We balk
At ‘crack’ as drug, or woman’s part,
With dreams of giving life to art,
You dork!
‘Here’s looking at you, kid’ – oh, please!
That ****-free quote is as is cheese
To chalk
Compared with Danny, who’s ‘oh … Kaye’,
And Allen, in a ‘Would he’ way.

To walk
Fifth Avenue, where storm clouds ****
The countryside with ticker-tape …
Pop cork?
‘Bronx hill new moan here’ was the cause;
But Central Park is where to pause
For torque
As that’s the place you would unwind
To wrench from vagrants, that you find
May stalk;
But, anyway, your poets stink –
Their barrel, they do need, I think,
To caulk:
Your school of poets, meter log,
Like what you get in synagogue
Of pork!

This would
have
many self-styled poets
who believe that
taking
an ordinary sentence and splitting it
into random segments
is poetry
up in arms!

Seated in a window was a young man named Eutychus,
who was sinking into a deep sleep as Paul talked on and on.
When he was sound asleep, he fell to the ground from the third story
and was picked up dead.     [Acts 20:9]


Ye Olympian poets, hearken well
while the fall of a tragic youth I tell.
My Lydian lay, unsung by Homer
in pastoral ages far and former
shall warn and chasten your Patrician ears
recalling bygone Hellenistic years.
Pardon the insufficient gravitas –
the intention here is not blasphemous…

Saul, since Damascus and the desert days
had progressed to his apostolic phase;
a minor Asian town, Trojan Troas
lent him their ears. What we came to know as
Western Judeo-Christianity
was birthed in near-comic humanity.
But Saint Paul was completely serious
feverishly focused, quite delirious.

And so the first story he narrated-
second, then a third story related,
foreshadowing from Moses’ law the Christ
and Gentile nations grafted in, or spliced
as shoots from a wild rebel olive tree;
the Eternal One who is Trinity…
and many other holy mysteries
he taught and unlocked with scriptural keys.
By his third story, some eyelids fluttered
the lamps burned low while his truths were uttered.
The allure of Aegean night was deep –
but he offered something greater than sleep.
Among them one languished, barely alert,
a young (very tired) Grecian convert.

Eutychus nodded, his frame lightly propped,
in the night-freshened window. He had stopped
heeding Saint Paul who was preaching Jesus…
and thus he surrendered to Morpheus.

Unfortunate, weary, his tired head nods;
still exegeting from beyond, Paul plods.
Finally, the liminal threshold reached
E. falls – to encounter the power Paul preached.
His toga billowing as he plummets
from peaks of Christological summits,
he descends to gather cryptic renown
and a dubious New Testament crown.

Was E. bored to death by St. Paul’s discourse?
Descending from grace – did he stay the course?
Was his revival a first holy fruit –
or an arrival by alternate route?
One wonders, in retrospect- was he saved?
or is this a picture of mankind, depraved
fallen in slumber, oblivious, dead
until Truth’s unkindness touches our head…
Like Lazarus, this one had to die twice
We ask: how many more deaths would suffice?
Did he talk to the Lord while departed?
Could he fathom what Jesus had started?
Like Luke’s blind man, the sin was not his own,
but that God’s power be openly shown.
For his pains: a two-fold resurrection
rebirth through Paul and divine election.
(Unless the whole thing was allegory –
mere Jewish fable or pagan story…)
Don’t censure my Lydian levity
nor discount apostolic gravity
lamenting the youth bored to death by Paul;
we discern, in Eutychus, our own fall.
Revived, he learned, before the rest of us,
the difference between Christ and Morpheus.

If there be details still to verify
or vague scenarios to modify,
we shall, in heaven, request to hear it
from the lips of Eutychus’ own spirit.
(And then we can corroborate with Paul
The how and the who and the wherewithal.)

Oh beautiful for specious lies
where Christless values reign;
for superficial battle cries
above the muted strain:
Diversity, diversity
God hides His face from thee—
and frown he should, while planethood
distracts humanity.

How sad it is when victim groups
monopolize the floor;
enabling the marginals
to agitate for more.
Diversity, diversity,
Your queer agenda rules—
with Balkanizing tendencies
imposed on witless tools.

Degenerate in decadence
the ailing eagle flies;
in spirals of irrelevance
through clouded toxic skies…
Diversity, diversity
the Left defines your terms;
the weakened body politic
grows sicker as it squirms.

Oh Lord we need a miracle
before the patient fails;
celestial intervention please
to purge us of what ails.
Diversity, diversity
We shall not overcome—
Unless the Lord reveal His word
twixt here and Kingdom Come…

♥☠♥

Lightweight free-verse exploration,
withered ghosts and wisps of phrase,
breezy unamusing musings
barely raise

a titter, tear or lyric warning –
fail to reach a middling height;
then subside to shallow murmurs
(not quite).

Teenage existentialism
cryptic, dull confessional mush;
suitable for a poker-faced
unroyal flush.

Must you set this stuff in motion
fizzling through our universe:
half-bright comets leaving trails
of boring verse?

Incoherent thoughts meander
through your words like fish through nets
unable to ensnare your reader.
One forgets

whatever it was you started saying
(weirdly spaced, unpunctuated).
Could it be such thoughts are better
left unstated?

☃  ∴  ☼

Al Bandura, Ph.D,
Drove to town so he could see
if society embraced
guided life-change (science-based).

As he floored it toward the town,
he struck an inefficient clown.
Doctor A. Bandura glowered:
“You’re not funny, nor empowered –

get self-aware”.  Then, talking faster,
he offered attainable steps to mastery.
“You don’t seem too self-efficacious,”
Albert added, now loquacious.

Doctor Al set new objectives:
auto-efficient self-directives;
made that dead clown self-aware,
then auto-directed right out of there.

…in every visible character man differs less from the higher apes,
than these do from the lower members of the same order of Primates.

                                                     ­                      Charles Darwin, 1871

The Other claims descent from apes
then acts like a violent monkey.
It pillages, it loots and rapes
performing as Satan’s flunkey.

Its actions bear the mark of Cain;
brandishing cameras, smashing things.
We feel its proto-human pain
yet dread the urban woe it brings.

It tries to justify, with words
its primal carnage, childish rage.
With anthropoid designs deferred
it struts the Darwinian stage.

The higher primate government
rewards them well in ripe bananas
for wrecking their environment
(jungle as well as savannas).

Their mate selection (naturally):
a semi-simian solution:
intercoursing sexually,
to hasten their evolution.

The wombs enlarge—they drop their young
then text their friends while getting high.
They swing from tree-tops, fling their dung,
while down below the humans sigh.

♪ ☠♫☃

Octosyllabic rhyme was killed.
Her epitaph I chisel here…
so face the book and feed your twit;
while I the rhythmic record clear.

The sad remains of Lyric Wit
are here interred – no more to rise
(lest poets’ brains be forced to think
and plummet from post-modern skies).

You  phonies scrolling Twitter-blink,
and scribblers with advanced degrees
look up, and hearken to these words
while feigning your conceited ease.

The academic gallows-birds
reviewing chap-books, high on fluff
make darker the sepulchral gloom –
as if it wasn’t dark enough.

The verdict’s in and all assume,
as measured meaning leaves the court,
he meant to **** her (Poetry).
Life sentences are written short.

The killer grinning artlessly
in blank-verse handcuffs, void of rhyme,
composes abstract lines, the dull
memoirs of his poetic crime.

The prosecution’s notes are full
the case is made, the jury hears
his guilt made evident, at least.
The victim’s mother melts in tears

He murdered her himself, the beast.
then dumped her: a deflowered rose.
His incoherent imagery
dismembered her like slaughtered prose.

She met her end lamentably;
He did her in and cut her down
thus shortening her metered day.
(That free-verse wielding abstract clown!)

Behold her grave – where grass turns hay
as poets’ bones subside to dust;
her soul with God to reconvene
(or wander with bemused disgust).

Her grave-site paints a pastoral scene,
poetic fodder – life from death…
and calves shall fatten near her tomb.
Oh coward reader: take a breath !

‘Tis but the flapping of the sail,
And not a rent made by the gale!

                          H. W. Longfellow

When bureaucrats, with obfuscation
monotone in data-speak
and mumble to their mutinous nation,
bloodless vessels spring a leak.

Scan in vain the rolling breakers;
leadership is out to sea.
Overscripted undertakers
claim to speak for you and me…

The Ship of State, adrift, becalmed
floats on; a most ill-fated craft.
The body politic, unembalmed
begins to ripen fore and aft.

The crew, grown callous to the rot
and numbed by such expediency
with one last desperate cannon shot
forsake all hope of mutiny.

While computers spit statistics,
crewmen spread the expectant word;
(no more trust in mere ballistics…
hope delayed is hope transferred.)

“Make ready to abandon ship !
The captain’s just a talking head.
Lower the lifeboat, let her rip –
before, like him, we end up dead…”

The Ship of State is rent with breaches
data-leakage, data driven –
the lifeboat flounders, coral-riven
seeking distant wave-washed beaches.

♀↵ϖ†∅↨⊕☺☼↑↓

Apples will be cantaloupes
depending on their nurture;
and so I cherish rainbow hopes
for our collective future.

Oranges elect their hue
improving Nature’s seal,
while pronouns stifle what is true
suppressing the appeal.

Fruits may choose to change to nuts
and fowls select their plumage.
Why settle in Tradition’s ruts?
Such rigid roles do damage.

Nuts in turn, may feel like flowers,
picking how and when to bloom.
So ambisexual thought empowers
androgynes to court their doom.

A leopard, too, may change his spots
(or turn into a vegan bunny)
No law’s tittles, neither jots
make Speciesism funny.

If you decide to see it so
the sky above is yellow.
Perceive as pink the grass beneath
and better times must follow.

Gender? Merely social constructs –
preach it to the masses
until tradition self-destructs
and *** takes off her glasses.

Babies need no Dad (nor Mother):
sexist labels, obsolete.
Love is blind. There is no other.
Bats must bark and chickens bleat.

Integrated water closets
show how far we have evolved:
urinary bank deposits
(with no member account involved).

Foolish thinking from the past
(like water being wet, and such)
calls for re-education, fast.
The State will lend its human touch

compelling all to sing the hymn
with genderfluid motions…
so birds can preen their scales and swim
in dry and waveless oceans.

(Yet “hymn” sounds sexist said out loud –
we ought to sing a “her” instead…
no – make that “us”,  since we are proud,
lest misconceptions be misread.)

Shake a healthy dose of salt
upon this strange post-modern food.
May God re-set us to default
with human common sense renewed.

ϖ↑∅⊕↓☺↨☼♀


The dawn is nigh at hand. The clouds
begin to lift above the grange.
Arise, O Phoebus, bless the crowds—
let poultry roam the range.

I’ll bind a broom of gathered hay
to sweep the hen-house free of hate.
Let roosters hail the crack of day
and chicks with ***** tempt fate.

A fractured self and a challenge hurled:
they left the shell, but found it rough
because our bigoted barnyard world
cannot get queer enough fast enough.

They flutter through the *******’s farm
subverting gender’s useless role.
We feel their pain, and mean no harm—
yet question this progressive goal.

They cluck a brand-new barnyard song:
Gender Identity Obsolete!
(As long as they claim God hatched them wrong,
biology signals their defeat.)

While poultry scratches rhymes for “hen”
and chicks are combing crests for *****
let’s ring the dinner bell and then
we’ll synchronize the global clocks.

Let Mankind’s unmanned race delight
at Jesus’ gender-free return.
Soon Africa shall see the light
and Araby’s sun more brightly burn.

Then dawn shall break o’er Russian plains
to liberate the Tartar races;
loose their limbs from Gender’s chains
to stride with polymorphous paces.

China too, and Southeast Asia
swift shall follow in their train
celebrating ***-aphasia
joining in the West’s refrain.

Hindu multitudes will rise
to vanquish gender, caste aside
and shake the slumber from their eyes
with metro-ambisexual pride.

Carib isles, with Latin kingdoms
From the tropics to the mountains
Shall announce they too are Wisdom’s,
drinking from de-gendered fountains.

Juveniles, raised to simply be
shall pioneer new modes of life;
explore horizons happily
set free from biologic strife.

Then shall our earth, in glad array
***** dirt upon Tradition’s tomb;
unshackled from that dark dismay
to grieve—but nevermore exhume.

Alas, the global dreams descend.
We’re back in the barnyard, gender-queer…
where hens have ***** and eggshells bend
transcending Nature’s reign of fear.

The henhouse still votes hetero;
their eggless chickens cluck for rights
biologists, ex utero
are born to further futile flights.

(Because I was almost one of them
I’ve earned the right to make fun of them.
Time alone will tell if the trend
remains coherent to the end.)

666

The cat once killed again takes up her plume
to write in the air with a sinuous tail;
a valiant attempt at true life to resume.
Penultimate of nine? Or eighth to fail…

The literate lioness’s spectral quill
fresh-dipped in fountains of blood-red ink
(along with sharpened claws) warns: time to **** –
but God would give us all more time to think.

Although certain races and social classes
display not a trace of Curiosity,
Humanity (being higher than their *****)
should counter such donkey-like paucity.

Boredom is beastly – it burdens the mind
one should be able to sustain some good talk…
If you finally perceive they are not of your kind
then pity them. Smile – and let the dullards walk.

A good conversation (by block-heads reviled)
costs only the interest – it’s free of price!
This birthright of every man, woman and child
imparts life to variety, adding spice.

A bite on the tongue, or a shake in the pan
enlivens the food, while enhancing the taste.
Be it preaching or sophistry, blessed is the man
consuming such dishes, no wordage to waste.

Yet most are content to survive on stale bread,
or drive through for fries and a Happy Meal.
Then, quickly digested, the pleasure dead,
it’s on to the stop sign. Their tires squeal.

Attempting to talk with such silly people
whose frame of reference is mainly: What?
Can drive one to brewery, cloister, or steeple
in search of that city whose gates never shut.

When word, wit and wisdom flow out of the mouth
enjoyment sings welcome as springtime arrives.
But ignorance pushes the birds further south
re-freezing the surface of puddled lives.

If you need some assistance, go purchase a cup
or run down to the liquor-store. Brew up some tea.
Be sure that your affective filter’s not up,
grammar monitor running functionally.

Art, sports, philosophy, music or *** –
please make it a good one. The topic is moot.
Don’t bore me with shopping. Don’t mention your Ex.
But swim to the deep end or bend for my boot.

The cat is now road-****, her mission has failed.
One *****-life left. Let your next chat count.
Don’t claim that you didn’t know what it entailed,
were unsure of the topic, idea, or amount.

♠ ♠ ♠

Pseudo-Oriental visions
Haiku, Tanka, exotic terms
Vapid New Age vibe-transmissions
proliferating eastern germs…

Anarchistic thought collages
Existential lacerations
Nihilistic heart-massages
Incoherent lamentations,

Communism on a mission,
grievance-mongering, stewed in hate;
pounding Fascist fusion/fission
chanting harshly “ours the state”,

Hymns to Gods who choked on *****
undertaken in overdose;
rocks that never rose to comet
rolling – but ending comatose,

Hipster ironies, tongue in chic
Metro-wimps who feign the normal,
Redneck rantings up the creek
semaphoric,  semi-formal,

matron’s maudlin observations,
motivational hypnosis,
(sentimental medications
offered prior to diagnosis),

coldly abstract neo-nonsense
read (by dullards) as cutting edge,
letters void of correspondence;
well-trimmed words’ linguistic hedge.

Climate whining (tried untrue)
with eco-prophecies warning doom,
Wiccans and tree-sprites trying to
undo the curse and lift the gloom,

Feministic tribal ranting,
Race-complaining, agitation,
GLBT gallivanting –
all are blights upon our nation.

Boring modernist excess,
(no longer daring  –  formulaic)
confounds –  yet never can address
what’s wrong, and so becomes prosaic.

Lists like this are perhaps  the worst;
another symptom of our times:
we who are woefully unversed
in rhythmic complaining that rhymes.

Can the Ethiopian change his skin, or the leopard his spots?
then may ye also do good, that are accustomed to do evil.*

                              Jeremiah 13:23

We’re tired of your feline past
predatory darkness cannot last
your claw and tooth, your fangs, your youth –
they get old fast.

Your sullen, incoherent style
has grown intolerably vile.
After the ****, your prey is still
in pure denial.

Leopard-phantasms feed the flames;
the thing that spawned you whines and blames
although we could call Motherhood
by harsher names.

Jungle law enforcement should
stop crowning you with victimhood
erase your spots, connect the dots –
we wish you would.

Then lambs with lions shall rejoice
while lines with iambs raise their voice;
spotted pards play wiser cards.
(A better choice.)

You want the high lonesome brought down to earth –
the value of gold – devoid of its worth.

Like herbless reggae – or atheist Bach
like love without romance and time with no clock –

it’s smokeless jazz without the snap
buried treasure without any map.

It’s Andean flutes without the coca
Moon with no shine – un Raton sin Boca

You can’t have your culture without the Gospel
like rain without water, it’s simply impossible.

You can’t keep the tree without having roots
or gather a harvest without the fruits.

So get the hell gone with your atheist bluegrass
lest someone imply you’re an unsaved *******…

One thinks  on Calvin heav’n’s own spirit fell;
Another deems him instrument of hell;
If Calvin feel heav’n’s blessing, or its rod,
This cries there is, and that, there is no God.

Alexander Pope

A transcendental tulip
is blooming in my garden.
Before the petals wither,
before affections harden,
I pray it may diffuse its scent –
so gloriously redolent.

Encouraging the faithful,
it blooms in any weather.
In sunshine or in shadow;
let us, elect, together,
enjoy its sanctifying smell
While warning careless souls of hell.

In Him we stroke the petal
That proves our own depravity
The flower that declares our heart
apart from Christ, a cavity
where only evil may be found
by One who dares our depths to sound.

The second petal beckons
and sings of pure election;
where souls are freely chosen
by God’s divine selection.
(As yet not offered to the masses –
Unto whom His wrath now passes).

Thirdly shines the Limit
of Christ in His atonement:
benefits are thus withheld
in God’s eternal moment.
So let the worldling rant and bluster;
Raging will not dim the luster…

Fourth: shall the fallen Adam
hold out against omniscience?
Will puny human being
Prevail in disobedience?
The Lord on high will hound you down –
His grace to place a golden crown.

Point five unfurls its essence;
as saints arise, and striving
shake off the dust and onward march –
though never quite arriving;
while God empowers to go the distance
Persevering with insistence.

Behold in full the blossom!
In Grace it shines, reflecting;
delighting in God’s wisdom,
the lead to gold perfecting;
Magnanimous floral alchemy
bestowing at last true liberty.

Jesse Jackson, mug full of mush
hustling, shuffling race cards—
hush.

your mouth mutters on,
with vague perversity
staking claims upon diversity;

Stirring pots and agitating
mumbling, blaming, *******-baiting.

We know this is your bread and butter—
but must you thusly slur and mutter?

Rather than home-cooking sessions,
take some elocution lessons.

Spit those crackers out yo' mouth—
the gravy train is headed South . . .

Get a REAL job. Join the People.
Stop carding wool and fleecing sheeple.

You're hard for the herd to understand—
if I were you I'd change my brand.

♪♥♫♥♫♥♪♥♫♥♫

My fantasies turned blonde in ‘seventy-six.

Bjorn, and the flickas sailed  from East to West.

Santa Lucia never shone so blessed

as she did in my private Euro-mix.

Perfect pop longs for that feminine fix.

Cassette wheels whirred –  branding, then impressing

grooves upon the brain; my thrall confessing

love for Nordic light (in Disco metrics).

The names still strike flames, kindling bright renown:

Frida, Agnetha  –  your longships linger

Your Viking faces sacked my harbor town.

portaging hope to this shipwrecked singer,

enwreathing smiles to reach our further shore.

I Do… (times five – and will forevermore).

ººº

Beware lest anyone cheat you through philosophy and empty deceit,
according to the tradition of men, according to the basic principles of the world,
and not according to Christ.

Colossians 2:4-8 (NKJV)

His Nietzschean trip moved from Comic toward Tragic:
Deleuze’s delusions flew out the fenêtre
Airborne and ****** on philosphy’s magic
(the nihilist suicide’s raison d’être…)
Propelled from the window, transcending the Ontic,
his organless body in textual flight,
a schiz-flow beyond on a voyage turned frantic.
His thought – a nomadic adornment for speed,
multiplicitly viewing a thousand plateaux
was a force for unhinging the doorways of light
and a plea for postmodern decoding indeed.
His frame soon encountered pure striated space
in the form of the pavement caressing his face.

He joins other smokers of Gallic tabac,
other esotericians of cognitive frenzy
(those mullahs of madness, those sultans of Whack…)
Sorely missed by his victims, disciples and friends
he is mourned, misinterpreted, copied, dismissed
– but for semioticians he heads up the list.

Another brave Frenchman, some guy named Debord
a bespectacled Marxist (who missed all the marks)
made the mediums’ message a radical bore
dialectically fading the lights into darks.
Indirectly disrupting pop-culture with Punk
and other anarchic phenomena-junk,
he too chose to leave with a nihilist bang –
while we whimper and suffer down here with the gang.
The old situationist’s last situation:
an agit-prop funeral short on elation…

So to French de-constructor-philosopher-ravers
and all who rejoice while society wavers
I offer these lines, like a quick coup-de-grace
and be warned – they’re now viewing the Good Lord en face.

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☺♥☺♥☺♥☺♥

The worst will be found toward the end of the book
When you’re scanning the lines of a weighty anthology.
Centuries have shaken what works can be shook,
and what’s old is refined – and I make no apology.

Angst-ridden ramblings, so fashionably bleak
Start appearing somewhere past the middle, I fear
With those modernist psyches, whose raggedly weak
and depressing confessions sling mud in the ear.

Like the scribblers of Suicide, brimming with bile
or the autodestructive self-pitying ******,
whose quaint observations enshrining the vile
are a crime against life – and an art for the loser.

You ideologues, with your axes to grind,
propagandizing causes in militant styles
ought to  stay in the hills, where the struggle is defined,
and spare us the old dialectical wiles.

The Feminist scribe, with her *** for a mouth,
Ever pressing her case, for fallopian reasons
Grows saggingly sterile. Her muses fly south
with the passing of harvests and goddessless seasons.

Absurdists, surrealists, and nihilist mystics
whose hymns to destruction make glory of chaos
should leave the black humor to God and ballistics.
Your poems, like Judas, are bound to betray us.

The Freudian flirt (whose neuroses abound),
And the Jungian shamans (their animas, too),
ought to rest on their couches. Why should they be found
By the wellsprings of Spirit, whose guidance is true.

The art-lover’s lines gild a frame around Knowledge.
Their poems are like an art history course.
As they flit past the idols they studied in college
their name-dropping odes are a grand tour-de–force.

Sixties drug-revelers, love beads a-jingle
And brothers dashiki-clad, howling at Nixon
no longer strike chords in my soul. Not a single sitar lick
nor visions of hippie-chick *****.

You rhymers and rappers of rhythms in sample
Whose words like a kick-drum send shock through old Whitey
Now cease from your chanting. The genre is ample.
Your gangstering paeans are too fly-by-nighty.

Revived Roman legions, who relish things Latin;
Your martial convictions inspire the hero.
But while you are looking for cities to flatten,
remember – old Julius was nobler than Nero.

The theme of World Peace –  this crops up near the ending:
a desperate hope for New-Agers and liberals,
who cherish a dream of reality-bending
Through networking, magic, and energized crystals…

But what can be shaken shall perish, forgotten.
Anthologies show us that truth is enduring.
All praises and laurels shall prove misbegotten.
The Word become flesh is the most reassuring.

So I leave the anthology, closing its cover.
Three-quarters at least seemed like nonsense to me.
Yet still, I admit, I’m a poetry lover.
Let time do its work and in future – we’ll see…

☺☻╬☻

Finish the crackers --- grab a smoke . . .
of Ferguson my muse will sing.
A call to arms --- God’s fires to stoke;
let Truth and Freedom ring!

Take to the streets; avenge this wrong
and hasten the end of racist rule.
Justice, though it may tarry long
will find its target in the duel.

Young Michael Brown, like all true saints
found himself craving Swisher Sweets.
He robbed a store, whose camera paints
impartial portrait. In the streets

the thief refused to be detained
and so threw off police restraint.
Though sin escaped, the Law remained
and made a martyr of this saint.

The agitators did their thing:
inflaming thugs to smash and loot,
while racists baited hooks, to string
the press. Officials followed suit.

Angels, although not always kind,
do not display this attitude –
aware of how the police mind
responds to such ingratitude.

We ought to thank the police force
for showing mercy under stress.
The culprit chose a foolish course
and made a God-awful mess.

Prince Michael met ignoble fate
(that ghetto-Christ, that righteous youth)
His sacrifice in vain --- though great,
could not impede the march of Truth.

Ferguson, our eyes turn towards you . . .
are you now able to admit
while reality rewards you
that looting and lying ain’t ****?

☺☻☺☻

When painters who paint about painting
meet writers who write about writing,
self-conscious redundancy
bordering lunacy
ends in esthetic in-fighting.

These modernists, right about nothing
(mostly nihilists mad about something)
are so lost in the process
they vent all their excess
in metacognition: dull writing.

You poets who muse about musing –
unaware you are reader-abusing,
provide a terrific
verbose soporific,
yet not of the hearer’s own choosing…

I long for some righteous verbosity –
but I’m stifled by all the pomposity.
This dull erudition,
“sub-metacognition”,
is but an artistic atrocity.

You thinkers who think about thinking
drag my spirit far lower than sinking.
What we want is a Word
which we haven’t yet heard –
so till then I’ll just drink about drinking.