"cleric" poems
A haunting stare with a serious note
Originates in a lad just thirteen
Ready to command or to set to task
Obedient, mature, and quick to rule
More comfortable with adults than peers
An old soul has he, loves cars from the past
Collects Civil War relics and antiques
Spends most his time reading and researching
Reads historical fiction, lost in time
Analyzes plants, insects, and ol' coins
He could be described like Chaucer's Cleric
"And gladly would he learn, and gladly teach."
He desires, especially, silver
Yet, gold and ex-presidents faces too
Protects younger members of his small clan
Only his hand will be attacking foe
It might be his fine grades, his quirk or two
That humbles his parents. Proudly they stand
And admire their first born miracle
A babe no more, his age will meet his soul.
Jan 2, 2013
Jan 2, 2013 at 7:11 PM UTC
"The global bull market has continued its seemingly relentless advance, unchanged by geopolitical concerns…….."
• The Israeli-Hamas conflict now blazing in Gaza, Palestine, two military forces locked in a deadly struggle to the end, killing and maiming thousands of ordinary citizens.
• Malaysia Airlines flight 17 blasted out of a clear blue Ukraine sky by the Bus surface to air missile
unleashed by the Pro-Russian Separatists killing 298 unsuspecting, innocent, international travellers.
Culpability denied by all.
• Anwar Al Awlaki, the American born Cleric, directing clandestine terror attacks and assassination by Al Qaeda beyond the Middle east into Asia and Europe.
• Deposed President, Mohammed Morsi’s Muslim Brotherhood, responsible for terrorist activities including multiple car bombings throughout Egypt.
• President Bashar Assad of the Alawite minority, an offshoot of Syria’s Shiite religion, waging religious genocide against his own nations people
and now in open conflict with the Muslim uprising Sunni forces of the new Isis Caliphate.
• The beheadings, slaughter and terror unleashed by the Sunni, Isis Caliphate uprising rampaging through Iraq.
• Russia’s sudden invasion and forceful annexation of the Crimea.
• Russia’s brutal pressure on the sovereignty of the Ukraine through its clandestine weaponry supply and sponsorship of the Pro-Russian Separatist Forces occupying the nations East.
The Middle East is now…an Apocalypse.
This epoch of cruel waste
Where man kills man
For God and gold,
For power’s lust.
Where the Sword of Calamity
Wields destruction and death
On those who can least afford it
By they who should never impose it.
**In the face of all this …..an unbelievable prioritization with this headline quote from today’s NZ Herald….
“There are financial risks to be endlessly jumping at shadows…to overreact to market noise!"**
UNBELIEVABLE!!!!
M.
Auckland,
NEW ZEALAND
31 July 2014
Jul 30, 2014
Jul 30, 2014 at 4:59 PM UTC
What can we do once we are ordinary?
Mother Teresa an ordinary nun, just a woman.
Oscar Romero an ordinary cleric, just a man.
The Beatles an ordinary band, just musicians.
An ordinary office worker changed all of China when he stopped the tanks in Tianamen Square.
An ordinary woman changed the rules about ****** harassment in the American workplace, by accident, just trying to embarrass a Supreme Court nominee.
An ordinary housewife changed the world. In a peaceful way. In a non-violent way. Corazon Aquino toppled the might of the American-backed Marcos regime.
We need moms and dads, teachers and technicians, people who work and people who play.
Pearl divers and trash removers. We need ordinary people doing ordinary things everyday - like being a carpenter - to make our world an extraordinary place.
What can we do once we are ordinary? We can save the world.
Jul 14, 2015
Jul 14, 2015 at 7:59 PM UTC
Black bombs fly
religious people lie
sky scrapers cleric capers
THOSE!!!! archaic papers rise
here human dwelling must crumble
and masses must die.
WHERE ARE THEY GOING TO???????
in this barren space of Arabic land
feet aimlessly plod
the elderly pray
widows wail
orphans weep
and babies cry
on the order 1947
sacked from a place called heaven
waves in a sandstorm
40 nights and 40 more....
THOSE!!!! ghouls are rotten to the core
killing innocence
and much, much more....
Oct 17, 2023
Oct 17, 2023 at 3:15 PM UTC
10/09/2013
For the kittens
This day the third has gone, congealed like peas.
Mother readies the small grocery bag:
The dying kitten coughs its final wheeze,
I exit the house & light another ***
Death has plagued this litter, and the world, too.
We're scarcely born than the struggle begins
To nurture those or what stand in death’s queue.
Mortality may result from immortal sins,
But I’m no cleric, and loss occasion
For rabid lectures from a fired pulpit;
Nor do I welcome secular equation
On matters dear to the human spirit.
This morning we have lost another one.
I pray tomorrow death’s foul spell has gone.
Oct 9, 2013
Oct 9, 2013 at 1:22 AM UTC
Is schismatic schematic prophetic problematic differences
a future world
to be unscholarly resolved with arms?
Heresy, is an accusation that requires hanging,
not just participles, but participants,
let us tear apart the baby,
give me half and you, can scrape the pavements.
I see , no communion, no Democracy, no theologian
or Cleric, no Christ, no Buddha, or Mohammed,
coming to our rescue.
No one says, this is craziness, totally religious
schismatic
I may be. But,
give me an alternative.
I cry, today.
Oct 26, 2014
Oct 26, 2014 at 8:31 PM UTC
earthquakes
and such disasters
are caused by immodest women;
if you are wise you will see this truth
women
indecently dressed
and accentuating contours
cause excitement in vigorous young men;
if you are spiritual you will see this truth
the men who thus get excited
(and it’s all the women’s fault, you will agree)
and so are led astray by such women
and this causes adultery
and such immorality which
results in seismic activity
and so you have earthquakes;
if you are pure you will see this truth
it’s true
because adulterers
do it more vigorously
hence the earth trembles
more readily
Oct 7, 2010
Oct 7, 2010 at 6:56 PM UTC
How do you describe
I'm not sure that you can
Truly find the words for
A Renaissance Man
I woke up this morning
Saw the paper, he was dead
Renaissance Man
Popped into my head
Rebel against the standard
Rage not causing pain
Live a life worth living
Like Anthony Bourdain
Teacher, writer, critic
Chef, student and man
Philosopher and cleric
A grown up Peter Pan
Question those around you
Learn, and share the wealth
Be a Renaissance Man to others
Don't keep your knowledge on the shelf
Demons, we all have them
Don't feed them, for they breed
Doubt into existence
Dark demons need to feed
Live life, avoid the shadows
Share and then go share again
Don't end up on a headline
Fight the urge, count to ten
Today, I read a headline
A Renaissance Man out of pain
I guess we never really knew him
Rest gentle Sir Boudain
Jun 9, 2018
Jun 9, 2018 at 3:44 PM UTC
“The Mass is ended,
go in peace.”
the aged cleric said.
“Thanks be to God”
said some dozen odd
parishioners
who then fled.
The Priest dismissed
his server.
and had turned himself to
go
when he noticed still
one worshiper
kneeling in the seventh row.
She was an older woman,
her head swathed in
a blue scarf.
She was obviously in devotion
before the Sacred Heart.
He thought:
“There is no need to rush”
He shuffled towards the chair.
which is where the Bishop sits
when attending service there.
The aging cleric said a prayer
for the gracious soul’s repose
whose generosity provided
his vestments and his robes.
He next prayed for his friend,
a priest, who’d grown too fond of wine.
He’s consecrating grape juice now
the non alcoholic kind.
He thought:
“it now is getting well past time
I need to lock the doors.”
His urban church had been vandalized
a scant few months before.
He rose up on his arthritic hip
and didn’t cry in pain
He accepted this, his suffering,
in Jesus’ holy name.
As he approached the woman,
Her head bowed as before
He had a vague uneasiness
He experienced fear and awe
She looked up then and he said
“Mother!”
and fell, senseless, on the floor.
His housekeeper found his body
on the floor of fitted stone.
The police found no evidence of foul play,
The priest had died alone.
The M.E. said the heart had failed
Though not from shock or rage
The Lord had called his servant home
to grace a grander stage.
Dec 11, 2011
Dec 11, 2011 at 12:02 PM UTC
On yonder strand
In bridled land
A motley band
With vigor fanned
Across hill, lowland
With self righteous brand
Seeking brigand contraband
From each licentious hand
To forthrightly remand
Every highway spanned
Tolls, tribute to demand
Each pilfering cleric did reprimand
Then every bloated collection was panned
Every royal vestige scanned
Gratuitous coffers to expand
Aug 6, 2012
Aug 6, 2012 at 11:46 AM UTC
our mothers tears fill a hospital ward
as a doctor summons the Chaplins call
last rites administer to this tiny newborn
thrice in five days you're destined to fall
born with a hole in such a delicate heart
yet no doctor nor cleric could recognise
this was to allow the world seep through
a shining eighth wonder of pale blue eyes
held on the sill outside a neonatal room
i saw with my soul a love birthed anew
dad he promised that you'd be home soon
there to the years of childhood we grew
the time had come for mam to say to me
sister was different in other ways as well
not for you was destined a desk at school
nor books would you read nor stories tell
innocence of the pure and purity of truth
special she said born of down syndrome
and yet would i never once see you down
for your smiles to me evoke only wisdom
now as you pass over your fortieth year
my sister i cherish all that we hold dear
for you are a family's jewel in it's crown
raising a world from love handed down
Oct 3, 2017
Oct 3, 2017 at 11:57 AM UTC
"Choir of the sun chants inside the anti moon
Shockwaves rattle the Earth below with hymn of doom
Chilled rays freeze below the eye of silver sun
****** souls gather in valley of the evil one
Phantasmal specter of two worlds collide
Planetoid soaked in rays of electric light
Stoner caravan from deep space arrives
Rides on the suncraft toward the glowing eye
Walk with the cleric under eye of silver sun
****** souls gather in valley of the evil one
Choir of the sun chants inside the anti moon
Shockwaves rattle the Earth below with hymn of doom"
Dec 16, 2012
Dec 16, 2012 at 7:30 PM UTC
The Sunni minority were marginalized
Sectarian killings were commonplace
In 2012 alone,
There were more than 1,600 deaths
The interviewer talked to a motorcycle gang
They said they wanted freedom
But some said they missed the way things were
Under Saddam Hussein
Some would trade the freedom they had
For the stability of Hussein's regime
The Shiah cleric
Says there is an assault on Iraq
Exemplified by the copying of corrupt Western culture.
The cleric wanted to eliminate American influence
Of any kind
Checkpoints make getting
Around the city a hassle
Subcultures in Iraq are under attack
Rap, metal, emo, and classical
All are looked down on
Gays are persecuted
The military uses a faulty device
That is supposed to detect bombs
But has been proven not at all effective
The city exists between extremes
There is the religious extreme
And people who want to be westernized
Without understanding what that is
The infrastructure was ruined by the war
Hopefully life will get better
As they continue to rebuild the infrastructuree
Feb 26, 2015
Feb 26, 2015 at 5:05 AM UTC
Whatever.
I thought that I:
lost the power
fell from grace
left behind the Presence
Yet it remains anchored
Steadfast
It cannot be stripped from me
by a church that has exiled me
I was never to a Sunday Christian anyway
The gifts and the call of God are irrevocable
...were not given to me by man,
only confirmed..
Man cannot take it away
The heart I was given
the spirit that defines me
the gifts I share
The most important lesson I have ever learned -
that: "To love is to give"
will not be blotted out of my notebook.
So what am I?
I don't know
All I know is that my purpose here
Is to guide
to reveal
to those whom I sent
"You are not mere clay...Breathed of God is your first breath...and the light of eternity will shine upon your last"
No river is crossed
No path untravelled
No passage unjourneyed
...to which the gateway is not found within.
Beyond the boundary of the accepted, tolerated, comformable
is where you will find this cleric
Preaching in bars
reaching out on the streets
My only prayer:
Let me continue to defy
Assumptions of what can, should be done.
And in the end...
we shall all be on the long road home
Sep 23, 2018
Sep 23, 2018 at 5:31 PM UTC
Vieques
Snakes were here by the grace of God, but
knowing Him, He set them down while He fiddled
with an Egyptian plague, forgetting where He’d left them.
The Navy brought mongooses to eat the snakes
so they could relax and shell the sunrise coast in peace
but mongoose got to eat, as any chicken farmer will tell you.
Spain sent Church and State astride the horse, but conquistador and cleric
dismounted to take in a sunset from ***** Arenas while the sea breeze
whispered soft and sweet to a restless stallion and his starry eyed mare.
Ticks in the grass, indifferent to bombs, bitter on mongoose tongue
bloated equestrians each every one, blithe captives of nothing
but the cold blue Atlantic and the turquoise bath of the Caribbean Sea.
Bored by the endless cycle of creation and destruction, inspired perhaps
to beauty or by niggling guilt, God unveiled the egret, elegant in its simplicity
with a taste for tick and a knack for lazy symbiosis.
The Malecón sways with rhythms we won’t bring back in our carry-on’s, a drink
down the road from the old United Fruit Company dock, short stroll to sugar house
ruins, unhurried drivers nodding to afro-son, waiting for horses to make their way.
Oct 12, 2016
Oct 12, 2016 at 7:43 AM UTC
After lengthy calculations, the aged cleric stood:
“This Saturday, May twenty first, those up to no good,
will find themselves abandoned by those who bless the Rood.”
The blessed and the Chosen will be caught up in Mid- air.
Evil-doers will suffer, the Righteous will not care.
It’s been a long time coming, the new Heaven and new Earth
But by my calculations, the four horsemen are at work.
“A time of tribulation will descend upon the land.-
It s’ past time for repentance by the legion of the dammed.
“If I’m perhaps a little off, (as I’ve been wrong before)
Keep those contributions coming, while I check to see the flaw”
Jan 21, 2012
Jan 21, 2012 at 12:15 PM UTC
We lived in a house a cleric built
In fifteen sixty-three,
Deep in a copse of Roman Elms
A grand and mighty tree,
The place was Tudor, half timbered,
And it creaked in every storm,
The wind was rattling through the eaves
Before we both were born.
We saw it up in the window of
The Realtor, going cheap,
It needed some TLC because
Its look would make you weep,
It badly needed a paint job and
Some timbers plugged with tar,
The years of rot had disfigured it,
‘Are you interested?’ ‘We are!’
Dead leaves had cluttered the downstairs rooms
And damp had swelled the floor,
The leadlight windows were dark with gloom
There were rats down in the store,
We worked and slaved on it, Jill and I,
Till it soon became a home,
Nestling in a hollow that
The locals called a combe.
I’d lie awake in the poster bed
That had been since Cromwell’s day,
The beams and curtains were overhead
And the wind would make them sway,
While Jill slept soundly, I still could hear
The wind sough through the trees,
Come rattling up to the shutters and
Slip gently past the eaves.
But then some nights, I’d hear some muttering
Down there by the elms,
Like ghosts of soldiers, loud and stuttering
Underneath their helms,
And then I’d hear the sound of marching
To a Roman beat,
There wasn’t even a pavement but
It sounded like a street.
A street that clattered with cobblestones
To the sound of chariot wheels,
I’d stare on out from the window-sill
To see what night reveals,
But nothing moved in the shady wood
To make those strangest sounds,
I searched and searched in the daylight, through
Those ancient wooded grounds.
Then one day digging a garden patch
I came across a stone,
That held a funny inscription on
The face, that smacked of Rome,
I think it mentioned a Lucius
From Legion Twenty-Nine,
I pried it out of the ground and then
I knew what I would find.
He lay there still in his breastplate
With his helmet and his sword,
His sandals still on his feet and tied
On tight, with a rotted cord,
The skull stared up at me in dismay
As if to say, ‘Who’s there?
You’ve broken into my endless sleep,
Invaded my despair.’
I swiftly covered him over so
That Jill would never see,
A sight to give her the nightmares that
I knew would come to me,
But then I settled his stone upright
That he might rest in bliss,
And that was the end of the mutterings,
From that day until this.
David Lewis Paget
Jan 19, 2017
Jan 19, 2017 at 7:34 AM UTC
~||«§V§»||~
I shall make upon a tempest wind,
the howling lore of kin-dling Kin.
Naked as the growling lush,
exposed to gnarling mangle-brush;
cut deep a-depths~ a ghoul's ravine,
a chasm winding labyrinthine.
The cleric scolds the child's eye,
a vision purer shan't comply.
To each and every soul tis own,
the Majesty alone is known;
what cannot speak or read of such,
we walk alone, to staff we clutch.
Such passing is a bent display,
the overarching Virgin's ray~
of light and luster gleams too much;
a subtle sense and gently touch.
The Maker's Mark as center thrice;
completed cross and circled square,
a lighter mist must walk you there.
Through hidden and unveiled descent,
the loving heart must twice repent.
So thorough bound~
the Hallowed Ground and dusty gems
wash clean and clear;
transmit the sound~
a vibrant round,
resounding through the atmosphere.
Like patterned rings and symphonies,
resolved upon each leveled wave;
a sonance much like paradise,
a fortitude as bolden-brave.
The House that thrills the Living Word,
enshrouds the saints upon their throne;
whose gardens groom a rich bouquet,
a fragrant mist of plush array;
Illuminates the Sacred Hall,
in reverence of which moves us all;
in song and dance, Eternally,
I leave you here to rest in me.
~||«§V§»||~
Nov 22, 2016
Nov 22, 2016 at 8:04 PM UTC
Parents
My father hung in the belfry
so many called him father
but the old woman in the house where I lived
said he was my father.
When I met Mother superior her eyes
softened for a second
The hanging was an accident
at his funeral came the bishop attended
to stop any rumours of suicide.
The old woman and I watched the proceedings
at a distant
I did see the face of the prioress in the window
it was unblinkingly stern but in
afternoon light I saw tears in the corners
of her eyes.
The old woman cackled and said, she gave you
to me to look after.
I had a silver cross on my bedside table
the old woman said it was a gift in case I wanted
to become a cleric one day.
Nov 18, 2016
Nov 18, 2016 at 2:07 PM UTC
Robert Herrick,
Poet and cleric,
Wrote numbers that were noble
When they weren't ignoble.
Sep 20, 2024
Sep 20, 2024 at 3:30 PM UTC
Onward my hate
Though loved
Can’t I be
I loathe it
Despise
Glowing eyes
Warmth fading
Unto a cleric
Uncertainty
Nov 14, 2024
Nov 14, 2024 at 6:02 AM UTC