Jesusita 

God only had a daughter,
Jesuitta, whom he gave to teach us love. 
She was a good little girl with blond, curly hair, and often helped her mother 
with the washing up and other household chores. 
As she grew up and became a shapely young woman, 
she coveted by men, who could not grasp  her preaching
of unconditional love was not about ***;
They began talking behind her back. 
Rumors had it she had twelve lovers
there was talk of ****** with wine, fried fish, and fresh bread.
She went to the church, demanded to be heard, and asked why there were no women priests and why they let ****** merchants sell overpriced artifacts. 
The clerics, who had had enough of this noisy woman, told Pilatus to do something.
He first ***** her and, to his shock, realized that Jesuitta was a ******; 
This knowledge haunted him for the rest of his life. 
Nevertheless, he threw her to his Roman Legionnaires as a usual ****. And the men taunted her: 
“Is this what you meant by calling love absolute, 
they bawled. 
Their women said nothing. 
They put her on the cross as the ***** of a thousand soldiers 
ran down her legs, she died with forgiveness in her heart.

A Little Fish



I opened a tin of sardines in olive oil for my evening meal.
Headless and nicely packed they were, except for one that
had a head-on was alive. I filled water in a jar.
Put the sardine in and fed it bread crumbs.
The headless sardines in the tin, so still and dead, I could
not eat them, put the tin back in the fridge.  
My little sardine grew too big for the jar, and cats were circling
The house, looking for a way in, so I took it to the empty lake
that once had Bluegills fished to extinction,
set my sardine free to feed on rotten vegetation-
I don't know how fish reproduce, but a year later, a school
of sardines were swimming around, except for one that
swam the opposite way- Bonanza! Grilled sardines and
The people rejoiced, thinking it was going to last forever,
And then there were none except one, my sardine in oil.                 
I went down to the lake when the sardine saw me
was glad, jumped up in the air, and was caught by a bird.
Empty lake, a dead eye in the wilderness, tells no story.

A misfit in Liverpool
I think of oranges when I see a painting by Constable of a morning sun
that looked like blood orange dripping nectar down on some
fishermen trying to catch eels on the dark surface of the bay.
There were sail-ships too ready to hoist sail in the morning wind.
When I lived in England, I met several police constables, most
of them, nice blokes, but during the miners´ strike, they became
radicalized, they had a good talking to by those higher up and
were also promised plenty of overtime.
John, a police constable  fifteen years on the beat and no promotion-
a friend of mine refused to partake in hitting miners over the head,
he continued his lonely beat, but at the station, he was ostracised,
a lonely figure in need of a friend- He often came into my cafe after
hours, we drank ***** with orange juice, lamenting the time we lived in. John took early retirement, and I sold my cafe.

Haifa Oranges

The sky is light blue or pallid
It is late afternoon
Clouds are burgundy and
The sun is a Haifa blood-orange
Picked by a Palestinian
Gnarled hands.
That was his land, but a historical
Tremor came

He has resigned; this is Allah’s will.
But his sons think otherwise,
Blood orange, one day
Blood will overflow, run down gutters
As we have another tremor that
rumbles on an everlasting family feud.

An utterly Useless Tale

On a big round oak table in a living room, a vase, in its small crack, lived two house ants. They were sitting outside,  considering a box of matches on the tabletop.
“if the box was empty, I’m sure I could push an inch or two the first and said. “Yeah,” the other snorted.
A man came into the room, took a matchstick out of the box, and put it back on the table, this time by its edge, and walked out.
The first ant giggled and said, “If we both push the box, it will fall on
the floor, no one will know how it ended there.”
They traversed the vast expanse of the table, pushed the box off the table, hurried back into their crack, and laughed heartily.
They had been frightened
people usually **** house ants at first
sight. The man came back, saw the box on the floor, shook his head, picked it up, and placed it back on the table. Our ants were in stitches
They were tempted to push the box on the floor again
But gave it up, the risk someone could come in  with a duster
was too great
Back at their crack, they went to sleep

A Handcart and a Ring 
 
A man I knew had a handcart and became self-employed
I often saw him in the town with a load of parcels and sometimes furniture
He was a contented man. 
One day, on his way to the railway station, the wheel of his cart came off
four suitcases fell into the street.
So, what to do? 
He traced his steps and soon found the missing pieces that kept the wheel 
on the axle, but he also found an expensive diamond ring 
he put it in his pocket as he was occupied with fixing the wheel 
and get his load of suitcases to the railway station 
In the paper, he read about a lady who had lost a dear ring
he contacted her via the paper, and she was happy, 
she didn’t give him any money because, as she said, honesty has its reward 
The people at the paper thought this was too mean for words
made a collection and handed the kind man the money. 
A Picture of him and his cart, the paper, and a nice story for the paper to sell. 
when too old to push his cart around, he became a poet of the small things in life 
and not about  the life of aristocrats

Worth a Fight.

It is no longer about right or wrong. it is about taking a stand
Against those who came to this country 
to escape poverty and tyranny, and now want to end democracy 
The unwritten consensus among people of different classes. 
We have become soft liberal,  Christianity, you said? 
Don’t make me laugh; we are far too Self-assured 
to believe in God. 
And we are giving way while their imams egg the people 
on and not for a moment do they stop 
No, not for a sneeze of hesitation do they think that 
if they went back to their forefathers’ country
A whip would await them in dank cells. 
Their faith has good points. No, it has not. 
But they have the right to return to their cherished land 
and practice a faith that is still in the Middle Ages. 
Soft liberal, giving way for the sake of peace
a peace I will not accept, and I will fill bullets in the chambers of my revolver to defend what my people fought for is called democracy, shaky, yes, with many flaws
But is a system worth fighting for