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Terry Collett Dec 2013
Sister Scholastica left the refectory after lunch; made her way to the grounds for the twice-daily recreation period. She had been one of the twelve nuns to be chosen to have their feet washed by the abbess later that day. Some were too old, some too young, she imagined, looking for a quiet spot to wander; take in the scenery; meditate on her day and the following days to come of Easter. A chaffinch flew near by; a blackbird alighted on the ground and then flew off again. She paused. Maundy Thursday. Her sister Margaret had died on a Thursday. She remembered the day her sister was found in her cot by her mother; heard the screams; the rushing of both about her; her father’s harsh words; both shouting; her being pushed aside; wondering what had happened; no one saying until the small coffin was taken out of the house for the funeral and off to the church which she was not allowed to attend. Mother was never the same afterwards. The days of lucidity grew less and less; madness crept over her like a dark spider spinning its web tightly. She sighed. Walked on through the grounds passed the stature of Our Lady green with moss and neglect. The sun warmed. Say your prayers, mother had said, always say your prayers. Mother’s dark eyes lined with bags through lack of sleep, peered at her especially when the madness held her like a bewitched lover. Poor Margaret, poor sister, only said baby sounds, off into the night. One of the nuns passed her with a gentle nod and a smile. Sister Mary. She saw her once holding the hand of another sister, late evening after Compline, along the cloister in the shadows. Father fumed at the creeping madness; Mother’s spewing words; the language foul. She stopped; looked at the apple orchard. Le repas saint: le corps et le sang de Christ, Sister Catherine said to her that morning after mass, the holy meal, the body and blood of Christ, Sister Scholastica translated in her mind as she paused by the old summerhouse. Francis, who once claimed to have loved her, wanted only to copulate; left her for some other a year later. A bell rang from the church. Sighed, Time not hers. She fingered her rosary, a thousand prayers on each bead, each bead through her finger and thumb. Her father beat her when her mother’s rosary broke in her hands; the room was cold and dark. Pray often, Mother said, in moments of lucidity. Time to return. The voice of God in the bells. She turned; walked back towards the convent, her rosary swinging gently in her hand, her eyes taking in the church tower high above the trees; a soft cool breeze kissing her cheek like Francis did once, long long ago before Christ called and made her a bride; clothed her in black as if in mourning for the sinful world she’d left behind.
Between the brown hands of a server-lad
The silver cross was offered to be kissed.
The men came up, lugubrious, but not sad,
And knelt reluctantly, half-prejudiced.
(And kissing, kissed the emblem of a creed.)
Then mourning women knelt; meek mouths they had,
(And kissed the Body of the Christ indeed.)
Young children came, with eager lips and glad.
(These kissed a silver doll, immensely bright.)
Then I, too, knelt before that acolyte.
Above the crucifix I bent my head:
The Christ was thin, and cold, and very dead:
And yet I bowed, yea, kissed - my lips did cling.
(I kissed the warm live hand that held the thing.)
Lawrence Hall Apr 2017
Maundy Thursday – Mass of the Last Supper

“Bare ruin’d choirs, where late the sweet birds sang”
-Shakespeare

The air is thurified – the incense given
Our Lord upon His birth is fumed at last;
The censer’s chains, clanking like manacles
Offend against the silence at the end of Mass

Supper is concluded; the servants strip
The Table bare of all the Seder service:
Cups, linens, and dishes, leaving in the dark
An Altar bare, prepared for sacrifice

In Gethsemane the flowered air is sweet
But iron-heeled caligae offend the night
g Jul 2013
She is Sunday service love letters written in the centrefold
of a hymn book.
A coffee stain smile hiding the words of my favourite pages
of poetry that sits every night next to my bed.
This is my doomsday notebook rolled into the edges of cut off jeans
and you were my judgement day,
standing on the edge of a cliff pretending that my life didn't depend on it
in that second,
depend on me.

She is my Maundy Thursday:
give away everything I own like I can live with nothing.
Live like I don't exist anymore.
Leave without a trace like burning,
because that's how I am when I don't remember you now.

Sitting in my bedroom with the lights turned out
you moving next to me like dancing with the covers off.
She promised me Saturday nights and feather dreaming
and now all I can do is this.
She told me the next evening:
'so many of these boys are clueless, I really hope I'm not'
I tell her 'I don't think you are
anymore'.
She says I'm down to earth.
I think she is too when her head isn't stuck above the clouds
there are things I would give to see what she sees
when she looks down.

I want to talk about gods with her.
I want to know if every medicated son of god complex really was
a psych case
or simply someone trying to finally send us down something good,
like we pretend we would see it when it happens.
Someone tell me how people
can paint the sky with their guts and the broken dreams of strangers
and call it religion.
How can these gods hate any kind of love?

Tell me why you wanted to die the year before you were a teenager.
How you're still trying five years on like you can't face
the seven months before you become an adult.
I don't know if you're terrified of real life
or being a child,
or if you still sweat in the middle of the night at thoughts
of an incarcerated man's hands touching your innocent body
like it was ever supposed to know what to do with itself.
Your body a haunted house, breaking from the cracks
you left in yourself.

You couldn't leave your own ghosts out.
Is this why 'god' lets you be so afraid of living in your own skin?
that you will dice yourself into pieces
praying for bad fate for once, tonight,
you're out of luck this time honey.

I'm sorry I don't know what to say to you nowadays,
I just don't want you to be all my fault.
I'm sorry I can't talk to you like I used to, like I didn't know
you were a time bomb
but I can't pretend you didn't light your own fuse,
because all you feel is leaking out the lines you left in your own skin.
I find it hard to believe you will ever actually detonate,
but I am more than over prepared for any hint of explosion:
buried my head in a glass case,
pretend that whiskey could ever take away the pain
like you were barrel aged.
So go ahead
knock yourself out.
I can pretend I didn't feel anything like you did all those years.

You sit, breathing in the last shreds of sunset like the sun reclining could make you any more alive I tell you
just stop trying.

You are a painting.
Da Vinci,
3 years on,
incomplete,
no idea of your own beauty.
Your glazed surface
isn't cracked yet.
You are a work of art waiting to be fully formed.
Paints hand-made, every brush stroke a sacrifice,
you're more than this oil
not an acrylic, he can't paint out your mistakes.
Tell me how does it feel to be the pigment in your lips does it feel like home?
Can you see me?
How does it feel to hang all those years
do you forget every face?
Can you hear what I'm trying to tell you
for once?

If you see her, can you tell her:
I only wish I could have captured her on film
before she left
me.
grace beadle 2013
Sally A Bayan May 2015
Unicorn Moments


It was Maundy Thursday, an afternoon so lazy
the words of the passion could sink hardly
for my eyes were on the beading tray
the unfinished bracelet was now  awry
off and on, i kept stringing  
the garnet rounds and pearls kept falling
no more tiny brass rings to string in between
i had to think of other ways...something
also had to wash away the gray feeling.

Searched inside my bedroom drawers
and found silver flower spacers!
i gloried at the thought of finishing two bracelets
three, more, maybe even an anklet!

Three, four hours had passed, i was so exhausted
i had already showered
the whole bathroom was spotless,
smelling of ^Pandan leaves^ and flowers,
i was so delighted!

Outside the bathroom door, i stopped
spotted the shiny silver spacers! on the bed, i almost dropped
the silence was too loud, i couldn't stand the spacers' glare,
nothing to say, nothing to offer... just a stare...

"No! no way!
i'm fine, i'm okay!"
was that my voice that gave me away?
moment of truth could never be held at bay...

I held the cable wire to start beading
but body and mind were one...refusing
my fingers were limp...a bit trembling
tired, from too much scrubbing.

My finger traces the head of my unicorn figurine
God knows, i have loved this magical creature ever since
but, i'm not sure i even like these new visitors, these
unicorn moments,
they don't come often,
yet, they're bound to happen.
oh, well....i guess i have to be a bit bolder
accept these changes that come with growing older...

when this happens, i try to joke and laugh,
and then people say......."you're tough!"
i answer them with a smile...and a gruff!



Sally
Copyright April 2015
Rosalia Rosario A. Bayan
**A "unicorn moment" is when somebody gets off the subject of a conversation, or when one gets "side tracked" from a task without realizing it....(from the Urban Dictionary)***


^^^Pandan leaves---A tropical plant with leaves that are long and narrow, used in cooking for its flavor and its fresh and pleasant smell. I tie some leaves all around the bathroom, to keep cockroaches away...i don't know how, or why...but it works! ^^^
Àŧùl Feb 2013
This note is meant to be read complete at one sitting with complete attention and then only you're expected to react to it.*

One of my female friends claims:
"God won't let anything bad happen to me, I have never intended wrong to happen for anyone..."

Many people find the statement pretty obvious. But I have an entirely different perspective...

Read on, be intrigued.

My counter-statement to the above claim questions the very basis of theism:

"I wonder then how I got on your God's wrongbooks... I have always been a helpful person serving those in need and even serving the lower-strata - I even taught underprivileged kids dedicatedly during my tenure in second year at the previous college.. I remained a no-fuss son to my parents who were always very caring and loving. So my question is, why then your God - if any such entity exists - gave me the worst possible time, why I was cut off from the world by a grave accident that put me into a 22-day long coma, why did I lose all my friends, why I was made to abandon my previous ways of life - including playing guitar as fine as I used to & moving as freely as you do, why I suffered and  why - simply why?"*

Nobody can answer these why's and I don't seek their answers because this is a statement which questions the viabiliity of theism - the belief in any imaginary entity that controls the universe. Bhagwaan or God or whatever you may call the dormant power probably just created the universe & let chemical reactions follow the physics laws and went to a permanent sleep itself.

Life was just created by mere chemical and physical interactions, why do we then need to waste incessant money at different 'so-called' religious institutions instead of doing social service ourselves?

Don't we find any poverty or negativity in the outside world itself?

Why do we not stop the incessant flow of money into places of worship and go serve the poor ourselves instead or are we so busy, rather so lazy?

When God or Bhagwan is not going to be pleased by any such hypocrisy then 'why' are we fooling ourselves by remaining religious in the flashy-fashioned-faking ways?

Why - just a small why?

I'm sure that if God or Bhagwan could listen to our prayers even in its dormant state - it's by the following ways:
1. Serve the poor by your own hands instead of giving mere donations or maundy money, or simply doing more & more of charity to wash your sins
2. Help others - be it a friend, a normally needy person, an aged person, or a physically handicapped person - help them more frequently with a kind heart and pure intentions, free from the awareness that you are helping them such that you don't have to count it among your good deeds
3. Raise your voice against wrong - it could happen to you or a loved one too

There are some other fairly similar ways by which you can attain pure liberation from the worldly woes in this world - in this life only.
P.S.: I'm neither a theist, nor an atheist person
© Atul Kaushal
Jandel Uy Mar 2018
You asked me
to open up
a bit more

I shooed away
the thought
of baring all
my skin

To someone
uncertain of ever
feeling the same

I took my clothes
off; one by
one

When I no
longer have
clothes on my skin

You were
gone
Charm R Sep 2010
(A missive to the "Thursday Guy")

Pause, I tight my eyelid,

there your face again,

Lovely and winning.

Suddenly Interfered my mind,

Thereupon rested and died.

I can no longer pick you up,

In an opening w/c is abounding

Abounded by the thoughts of you

My mind, I was speaking (of).

On the Ascension Day, Maundy and Holy alike,

I am smiling deepest and ceasing the time.

I held on for you, I stared then,

(though your eyes are daft),

Foolish, Crazy, even though I was,

every hour.

Oldness has gone, I flew.

Withal,

You are still a beauty even in fancy

In truth,

I cleave solely in your memory.

Your hair, dawning from your eyes

Succored the threshold of my fantasy.

I intend to whisper a truth

Some words that will embody my longing

I don't want you to, all but dwell on my fancy

But to breathe with me in solidity.

Please, once again, I want to gain a stare.

-C.
memory, longing
Lawrence Hall Mar 2018
“Bare ruin’d choirs, where late the sweet birds sang”
-Shakespeare

The air is thurified – the incense given
Our Lord upon His birth is fumed at last;
The censer’s chains, clanking like manacles
Offend against the silence at the end of Mass

Supper is concluded; the servants strip
The Table bare of all the Seder service:
Cups, linens, and dishes, leaving in the dark
An Altar bare, prepared for sacrifice

In Gethsemane the flowered air is sweet
But iron-heeled caligae offend the night
Lawrence Hall Apr 2021
A Sequence of Poems for Holy Week

(Some of these were submitted in past years)

Holy Thursday 2017

On this Maundatum Thursday falls a bomb
From the belly of a beast, falling, falling
From the Empyrean and through the blue
Past mountaintops and misted valleys deep

And then into the planet’s earthen flanks
Its pulses to repudiate Creation
In vaporizing the structures of life
Into primeval molecules of dust

Because some bad men might be lurking there
On this Maundatum Thursday falls a bomb



Maundy Thursday – Mass of the Last Supper

“Bare ruin’d choirs, where late the sweet birds sang”

-Shakespeare

The air is thurified – the incense given
Our Lord upon His birth is fumed at last;
The censer’s chains, clanking like manacles
Offend against the silence at the end of Mass

Supper is concluded; the servants strip
The Table bare of all the Seder service:
Cups, linens, and dishes, leaving in the dark
An Altar bare, prepared for sacrifice

In Gethsemane the flowered air is sweet
But iron-heeled caligae offend the night



6 April 2012, Good Friday

A Night of Fallen Nothingness

The Altar stripped, the candles dark, the Cross
Concealed behind a purple shroud, the sun
Mere slantings through an afternoon of grief
While all the world is emptied of all hope.
The dead remain, the failing light withdraws
As do the broken faithful, silently,
Into a night of fallen nothingness.



7 April 2012, Holy Saturday

Easter Vigil, Sort Of

A vigil, no, simply quiet reflection
Minutes before midnight, with all asleep
Little Liesl-Dog perhaps dreams of squirrels,
For she has chased and barked them all the day;
The kittens are disposed with their mother
After an hour of kitty-baby-talk,
Adored by all, except by Calvin-Cat,
That venerable, cranky old orange hair-ball,
Who resents youthful intrusion upon
His proper role as object of worship.
All the house settles in for the spring night,
Anticipating Easter, early Mass,
And then the appropriately pagan
Merriments of chocolates and colored eggs
And children with baskets squealing for more
As children should, in the springtime of life.



Easter, 2014

Christos Voskrese!

For William Tod Mixson

The world is unusually quiet this dawn
With fading stars withdrawing in good grace
And drowsy, dreaming sunflowers, dewy-drooped,
Their golden crowns all motionless and still,
Stand patiently in their ordered garden rows,
Almost as if they wait for lazy bees
To wake and work, and so begin the day.
A solitary swallow sweeps the sky;
An early finch proclaims his leafy seat
While Old Kashtanka limps around the yard
Snuffling the boundaries on her morning patrol.

Then wide-yawning Mikhail, happily barefoot,
A lump of bread for nibbling in one hand,
A birch switch swishing menace in the other
Appears, and whistles up his father’s cows:
“Hey!  Alina, and Antonina! Up!
Up, up, Diana and Dominika!
You, too, Varvara and Valentina!
Pashka is here, and dawn, and spring, and life!”
And they are not reluctant then to rise
From sweet and grassy beds, with udders full,
Cow-gossip-lowing to the dairy barn.

Anastasia lights the ikon lamp
And crosses herself as her mother taught.
She’ll brew the tea, the strong black wake-up tea,
And think about that naughty, handsome Yuri
Who winked at her during the Liturgy
On the holiest midnight of the year.
O pray that watchful Father did not see!
Breakfast will be merry, an echo-feast
Of last night’s eggs, pysanky, sausage, kulich.
And Mother will pack Babushka’s basket,
Because only a mother can do that right

When Father Vasily arrived last night
In a limping Lada haloed in smoke,
The men put out their cigarettes and helped
With every precious vestment, cope, and chain,
For old Saint Basil’s has not its own priest,
Not since the Czar, and Seraphim-Diveyevo
From time to time, for weddings, holy days,
Funerals, supplies the needs of the parish,
Often with Father Vasily (whose mother
Begins most conversations with “My son,
The priest.…”), much to the amusement of all.

Voices fell, temperatures fell, darkness fell
And stars hovered low over the silent fields,
Dark larches, parking lots, and tractor sheds.
Inside the lightless church the priest began
The ancient prayers of desolate emptiness
To which the faithful whispered in reply,
Unworthy mourners at the Garden tomb,
Spiraling deeper and deeper in grief
Until that Word, by Saint Mary Magdalene
Revealed, with candles, hymns, and midnight bells
Spoke light and life to poor but hopeful souls.

The world is unusually quiet this dawn;
The sun is new-lamb warm upon creation,      
For Pascha gently rests upon the earth,
This holy Russia, whose martyrs and saints
Enlighten the nations through their witness of faith,
Mercy, blessings, penance, and prayer eternal
Now rising with a resurrection hymn,
And even needful chores are liturgies:
“Christos Voskrese  – Christ is risen indeed!”
And Old Kashtanka limps around the yard
Snuffling the boundaries on her morning patrol.
A poem is itself.
Sally A Bayan Apr 2019
.............to sit down and reflect
on how we lived our life the past
years, months, weeks, days, hours...
it's not the only time to recall
the wrong decisions we made,  
the people who got affected, and
how we recompense(d) them...

Lent is not the only time to be kind,
to be giving to others...we go deeper
than thinking good...being good, and
doing good.......love must shine in
our actions and words, naturally,
it must radiate from within us
all the seasons in our lifetime...

older folks always told us children then:
"be patient...find time to read, try to
understand the Passion of the One
crowned with thorns...it could lessen
the stubbornness in you...or, change
some of your stubborn views..."

until now, i ask myself: if i had been there,
would i have stopped?
would i have helped Him in His sufferance?
this leads me to my own daily crosses...
the lightest, the easiest problems worry me,
without analysis...i quickly pray for solutions...
...i whine......even in silence, i complain...

most people have flown out of the country,
some are on their way to blue beaches
to play games on the sandy shores...
some stay home, watch movies on netflix...
me?..i am alone...but not really alone,
pondering by the garden....with two white
puppies nibbling on my toes and slippers,
naughty, exploring nonstop...ruining my oxygen
and money plants...messing the veranda floor,
i almost rang their former owner.....but,
their enquiring eyes did melt my heart...

these puppies, somehow, brought light
to my blurry mind....taught me to just
accept what is in front of me,
without asking questions....
i do believe...reflections
come off and on...anytime,
...lent is not the only time....
::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::
:::::::::::::::::­:::::::::::::::::::::
((Maundy Thursday reflections))

::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::­::::::::
     HAPPY EASTER, EVERYONE!!!   PEACE TO ALL.
::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

­
Sally

© Rosalia Rosario A. Bayan
April 18, 2019
Richmond Sep 5
Noisy Silence
In the graveyard sleeps millions
They never snore or take the deepest breath
And the yard is always heavy with billions unspoken.

Night hushes day
And the world is taken by surprise
When it unleashes its realities.

Granny has been stroked down
But her stick - a leftover - paces miles
And so does shush and hush speaks.
© Aug 18, Normesi Richmond Ganyo   nature  
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Useless
A green plant bears flowers
The flowers are scentless with petals bright
Yet it bears tasteless fruits
© Aug 18, Normesi Richmond Ganyo    nature • society  
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The Easter Dream
It was a brutal scene,
A cruel deed that parted us here
Just the time when bunnies went egg hunting,
At the sight of it we made a grave sin
That forever dogged in our mind, our dream.
On that Maundy dawn, after eating his flesh and drinking his blood,
In a flash of sermons, time passes our doubt, our King was apprehended
With the kiss of death and we witnessed
Shallow minded, we drew the dagger of betrayal
Because we had died before the face of death.
And we sneaked up the hooting crowd to the market
And riff-raffing tongues were cursing and fingers pointing
And there was thrice a fated head shake before **** crow.

A good day promised by fate
Revealed by soothsayers before the birth of a prince,
He was worn a thorn crown, ripped out his body
The cleansing blood in which maggots were nourished,
A popping day when thieves were welcomed instead of grumble at
And thirty pieces tossed back shamefaced
And a priest took off his robe
And a wretched cried but he urged for himself cry,
"For if they do this when the wood is green,
What will happen when it is dry?"

And there was a flare on the middle tree on the mountains low
And crows gather at Golgotha for the coronation
And the dark clouds took earth, the congregation dividend,
The Armageddon short lived
And found we the lost silver cup in the crowd
And prophecies were fulfilled
And the earth and tombs ***** bodies out their carnivorous mouths
And a dove flew in the glory of the Sun's ray
And I woke to find it a dream, a dream to the world

It's another time for bunnies to fetch eggs
Another time to remember that dream and pray our sins
And that would the East Wind blow away filth
And that we would await the promise of the promised Savior
When nightmares would dream of day
And our souls shall return showered from Bethany.

— The End —