*Then Peter came to Jesus and asked, “Lord, how many times shall
I forgive my brother or sister who sins against me? Up to seven times?”
Jesus answered, "I tell you, not seven times, but seventy-seven times."*
- Matthew the Apostle
I
Seventy-seven bottles of gin
lie in the guts of sensuous men;
seventy-seven I forgive you's dissolve
in a fanatical mind's resolve.
II
What offence occurred under Saint Constantine's priggish eye?
Was it specious as a Samian's thigh?
Or Sumerians receiving alien diplomats?
Maybe somewhere far under Moscow Putin's massing cloning vats...
III
Whatever discursive and belligerent milieu
church authority finds most tried and true
seems to be the most important decider
in the future of things like the Large Hadron Collider.
Perhaps, unfoundedly, they find it funny that Higgs
(though it seems much like calling the Liberal Party "Whigs")
is a name shared by a man and a theoretical particle
(though it be libelous in any journalist's article),
and thus label similar advancements as "blasphemous".
I guess that this is what it is: believing just because.
IV
Who can know blasphemy from piousness?
Maybe all Luther did was obfuscate a prior mess.
V
Seventy-seven palm-branch-adorned, donkey-riding kings:
an automatic-ring-making-machine beleaguering proselyte rings.