"monastic" poems
Jesus runs in Everglades, Mohammed climbs the roof
The Angels stamp in anger as the Devil stands aloof,
A wandering Pope in la-la land while Jewish hands do writhe
Those apoplectic Muslims glare while Catholics pay the tithe.
Religion, girls, has hit the skids…the game is up on God
With rosaries rotating hard, theologians do nod,
While Mormons rant moronically with frankincense and myrrh
The irreligious bark and howl in Rastafarian fur.
Sectarian’s recant Sanctum’s Shrine the rite of soul is lost
As neophytes are dancing… the High Priest counts the cost,
Theocracy unbalances as Voodoo’s stamp the floor
And the Prophets throw their hands up, fast retreating for the door.
It’s transcendental disbelief that’s nailed it to the Cross
With the Priesthood chasing little boys all credence here is lost.
With sanctity’s monastic plunge the pagans roar and shout
As Shamans scream their incantations…God declares a route!
There is silence in the Temple now, stillness in the pews
As dust lies thick on altars, a nervous clergy holds reviews,
What, once, was good and vibrant here, is now as dead as dust
As the Blood Red Wine evaporates and Holy Bread…to crust.
Marshalg
Feeding the pigeons by the dusty, open door of the very, empty Chapel.
30 November 2013
Nov 29, 2013
Nov 29, 2013 at 2:55 PM UTC
sure, first we had the schism
of the church & state...
"oddly" enough...
we now live in the 2nd tier
of schism -
the segregation of
state & media...
no?
really?
we're not?!
i'm kind of enjoying
this ongoing schismatics -
the segregation of church
from state, at least left us with
the Vatican (i.e. the church-state) -
but this, current...
segregation of state from
the media?
**** me cram my testicles
into a monkey-wrench
and subsequently watch me laugh...
and there i was thinking,
that psychiatrists,
were the new priests of
the secular age...
prescribing the alt. to
the metaphor of cannibalism
in the form of big pharmacological
pills, to replace the wafer for
bread,
or the watered down wine /
grape juice of the...
so how does that party trick goes?
is that the wine turned into blood?
symbolically:
turned water into wine:
flag-wise...
white,
cardinal...
and then burgundy of
cardinal red teasing the bishopric
coloring of purple?
i'm not here to undermine
the faith...
i'm here for the self-deprecating
humo(u)r...
you don't even require
atheism to get a laugh
out of the conundrum -
you, simply need...
the deviation from the catholic
rites...
an apostasy -
but sure as **** it's there...
secularism has allowed
journalism a monastic status...
first came the schism of
church from state -
which remained intact in
the church-state of the Vatican...
so... FAIL...
secondly had to come
the schism of the state from
the media...
i'm watching a schism
take place...
apparently...
the comparative concern
of church's divorce from
the state was easy,
having imploded into the Vatican...
but the divorce of
the media from the state?
apparently... not so easy...
the media is already locking-down
on obstructing the schism -
arguing from an entertainment
perspective...
a century or so later,
and still, the persistent,
media symbolism -
of crafting caricatures of
a state...
as the state embodied in
nothing more than subordination
to its will...
media is the new church...
and if the separation of the state
from the church took so long...
how much time, do you "think",
it will it take, for the state
to segregate itself, from the media
baronage?
i suspect - as much time as it
took to segregate itself from
the church's cardinal-lineage.
Aug 3, 2018
Aug 3, 2018 at 11:34 PM UTC
I want to live in Europe.
I want to run in the Bavarian Forest.
I want to be left in the English rain.
I want to feel the Russian Frost.
I want to skate in the Alps.
I want to feel the French Luxury.
I want to taste the Belgian Chocolates.
I want to sleep in the European Palaces.
I want to feel the Papacy Monastic.
I want to feel the taste of French Cheese and Scottish Whiskey.
I want to hear the Italian Piano.
I want to read English Poetry.
I want to hear the Spanish legends and don't forget the olive there !
I want to feel the magnificence of the Parisian Events.
I want to swim in the Danube River.
I want to be inspired by the fascinating paintings.
I want to be amazed by the beauty of the churches there.
I want to read about the greatness of the European History from there.
I want to search in The Vatican Stores and Warehouses for answers I was looking for.
I want to dream about reading the books that have been hidden in the Invisible Palace of Books in Berlin.
I want to walk among the shelves of The National Library in London.
I want to go shopping in the streets of Paris and Milan.
I just want to be European,
I want to live in Europe.
- Shilo
Aug 4, 2014
Aug 4, 2014 at 11:50 AM UTC
Glacier,
Flake
Time
Crystal
Collective
Mass
Gravity,
Flow
Breaking
Celibate
Monastic
Oath
In
This
Cathedral
Tower
Bedrock
Cracking
Groans
Moans
Under
Exponential
Cave
Crush
Crevasse
Plowing
Scoring
Tearing
Mush
Melt
Calving
Diving
Block
By
Block
Headlong
Into
Wave
Reflecting
Clouds.
Oct 24, 2010
Oct 24, 2010 at 9:04 PM UTC
In the darkness that dispels all hope
we fumble with meaningless insight.
What we said does not relate to what we want
and yet we embrace boundaries to punish ourselves
with unnecessary hells. Languishing in the thought
that silence will answer these loud questions.
We love because we are created to love
unconditionally.We hate because we don't understand
what vast oceans of meaning lie in love.
Silence may answer the ascetics
monastic and contemplatives but
rarely an equation for relationships.
When its grey it rains tears of knowing
where we belong and to whom we belong
in the worlds whole people. Love binds us all
in this understanding fabric of contemplation.
Yet in the darkness we find solitude
and hope in the isolation of reason.
The silence between the drumbeats
announces the rhythm of the song.
We walk in silence
yet celebrate without it.
© Marshall Gass. All rights reserved, 19 days ago
- See more at: http://allpoetry.com/poem/11566249-Grey-Skies-by-Marshall-Gass#sthash.8dgLQUr8.dpuf
Jul 29, 2014
Jul 29, 2014 at 4:56 PM UTC
The circumambient wings of a seraph
Obstrepously monastic within
Dereliction contemning the
Mendaciously obsequious;
The bathos of ablution grittily
Jejune fulgerating the engrossed.
The chaldean lachrymatory
The ligature of the darklings rheum,
Volently acclaimed
The paladin necromancers
Circumfluous wintry orbs
Ardently accosting the chasm
Lasping tarnation fructifying
Acedias roborant,
Heavens ignoble lassitude
The boreal scope of causality-
Hells predacious moil.
ELEETE J MUIR..
Apr 9, 2012
Apr 9, 2012 at 2:24 PM UTC
I wish, most of all, to have had a tangibly physical notebook to write all this in. instead I use the 'note' function of my smartphone, smoke a cigarette. busy on forward, it's Pandora.
one of those acid-high coffee overbouts, feeling the brain compress inside the skull. for an hour. for a few.
some man in tattered-all's gets angry when I state I have no quarter. like I'm lying when I say it, and must be lying because my pants aren't worn like his. bus and car alike ghost past, the monastic rise of the local music conservatory pokes at the skyline, straight at the overcast.
I toss "If on a winter's night" by Italo Calvino atop the third step of the church stairs leading to the church doors, the Seventh Day Adventist Church, Where we meet Jesus. I begin to write this poem, huddled atop my cellphone as if I were in silent debate with a lover, only sitting to make a point.
to the left is a McDonald's flying a McDonald's flag. A man with a thoughtless white ball-cap and a thoughtful tattoo walks past with a McDonald's dollar drink in his right hand, pointing his arms in opposite directions to illustrate the dimensions of something he wants. "See?" he says to the woman he walks with, her face scabbed over with acne scars.
my eyes are tunnel-visioned to the screen every time I follow a thought, or the glancing past of a passer-by like the woman with the black scarf, black hair, black sweater, grey pants, black shoes.
the orange 'don't walk' sign pulses 7 times, and then sticks, as if waiting for a high-five.
I reach into my backpack for a cigarette.
Apr 9, 2014
Apr 9, 2014 at 10:32 PM UTC
The paradise of darkness is like a climactic and physiological déjà vu, where souls have been swallowed by ancient daemons amidst an **** of oral sacrifice.
Aren’t you tantalised by such forbidden seductions?
Although I am somewhat acquainted with the blackness of unfathomable depths of the ancient abyss, I sincerely call upon your superior wisdom to beckon me across craggy chasms of mathematical perplexity, where eternal ghosts wail with agonising obscurity from the turrets of architectural stronghold.
If you light a candle toward the incarnation of depravity and reveal the sacred circle, then I will ensure safe passage down those historical and spiral staircases where dungeons hold innumerable fetishistic secrets.
I am captivated by co-existing opposites.
Let us talk with the goat, and arrive at a mutually agreeable pact.
Jan 22, 2015
Jan 22, 2015 at 11:17 PM UTC
Then there are those times you write
Because otherwise the words will tear you up inside
Like supercharged particles
Of steam under pressure
Or uranium reaching critical mass
So you set to the task
Grab pen and paper
Or iPhone and browser
And start uploading your sins onto clean white sheets
Of loose leaf or LCD
As if possessed by some other self
Or non-self
Itself a fountain of diction
A percolation of syntax
Bubbling up and out so as not to **** the messenger
And lines flow
Kia ora koutou katoa
Nga hoa
Me toku whanau
My friends
And family
Be well
See well through this life
And her pitfalls
Tall walls and
Crash courses in experience
Standard variance and deviation from the mean
She can be mean
She can be cruel and unkind sometimes
But you’ll find rhymes to make lines line up like signs on the highway
And find even in grief there is beauty
Truth in pain
Life in suffering
There is no judgement inherent in these things and none at all other than that which we place upon them
Negative or positive are uniquely human conditions
Everything else just is
It sits within itself
Without apprehension of the fourth dimension
Not beating up younger selves for poor decisions made by poorly equipped versions
Nor fearing an abstract time hence
From whence march our fears about death
And a life well spent
And incontinence
And I think my phone bill is going to be massive
And I think my 2 minutes is up
And I think my 15 minutes is up
Where was I again?
Words have surfaced
Simmered and settled down
Beauty in the badness
Truth in the madness
Tiredness overtakes
Like post coitus
An **** of the monastic order
Intellectual intercourses subsequent exhaustion
And sleep calls ceaselessly
As if nothing else mattress
Dec 1, 2012
Dec 1, 2012 at 7:36 PM UTC
Benedict stands
in the porter's lodge,
circa 1969, waiting
for Dom Tyler the monk,
to bring the large key
to open the church for Matins.
Dawn, cold air, smell of age
and incense and baking of bread.
He remembers Sonia,
the domestic at the home,
who pushed him to the bed
of old Mr Gillam and said
in her soft Italian,
Potrei fare sesso con te qui,
then in her broken English said,
I could have *** with you here.
Another joined Benedict
in the porter’s lodge,
some holy-Joe type,
breviary under arm,
starved gaze.
The silence,
the smell,
the chill.
Dom Tyler opens the door
from the cloister
and rattles the key,
smiles, but does not
break the Grand Silence.
He takes them out
into the morning air,
opens up the church.
Lights are on, monks
are assembling, bell rings,
Benedict takes a seat
on the side pew,
the other sits
more in front.
The old monk who last time
talked to Benedict
of monastic life,
slides by, his body aged,
his habit like a shroud.
How he escaped Sonia,
how he managed
to get away unmolested,
he finds it hard to fathom,
except the promise
of the cinema,
the seats at the back,
the kisses and touching,
all in the dark,
the flashing images
of the film going on.
Potrei fare sesso con te qui,
he utters under-breath.
The Latin of early morning
Matins begins, he dismisses
her image and her words.
The holy-Joe opens his breviary
in the semi dark, his finger
turning pages, muttering,
his head nodding
to an invisible prayer.
Benedict imagines Sonia
creeping into the pew,
muttering Italian,
sitting there.
Jun 2, 2013
Jun 2, 2013 at 11:00 AM UTC
i keep the squalor of our opulent hearts
in heavenly hovels, and i mushroom harps
in the damp lurch of our fever dream
monastic,
i combine the river with the sea
and swamp the ether of our delicate masquerade.
we don the ribbons of a hag
and scoff the ludicrous
of Sunday.
Mar 29, 2015
Mar 29, 2015 at 10:00 PM UTC
And slowly closing eyes,
And slowly closing eyes
Painted behind temples,
Smathered colors upon white and inviting canvess,
Monastic Lisa and her friends,
Filling mosaic and print,
Surety of smile,
A thousand nothings to do,
Weeping a single tear,
Causing heavy paint to elude.
Sep 9, 2013
Sep 9, 2013 at 8:01 AM UTC
I want to reach nowhere,
fill sand dust on my feet.
Fingers grasping thin air,
gritting restless teeth.
chase out my thought,
listen to monastic chimes.
Make misty ring road,
and fluty little rhymes
Sep 2, 2014
Sep 2, 2014 at 5:19 AM UTC
You are like a paisley sunrise -
A tapestry of gorgeous spirit.
Your sheets radiant with laughter
Are patchouli spiced dances
In the sweltered tunings of cooling dusk.
Now Eros' altars wafting incense;
Sepia backbones stir spectral sighs.
Poised for splendid primal reckonings
Back door brains melt lucid minds
For in fluidity we thrive.
Through eyeing eternity
the prophecy is absolved
By monastic deflection I
Gained what the animals saw
Gypsy moth set your passion in plaster
Metamorphosis looms wherein
Wings strive thereafter
Feb 20, 2013
Feb 20, 2013 at 1:29 AM UTC
He asks you, “how does a forest sound.”
there’s that veiled, monastic hush to everything,
not so much muffled,
words, (in your language or others,)
that cannot be understood save for their intonation,
vague fingerprints on your pearlescent neck.
you look up and there’s lace,
weaving itself matador armed through impossible eyelets.
straw falls out eventually,
your face hollows,
and eye sockets repurposed as homes for vines,
tendrils pushing upwards,
they breach the surface of the earth and take their first breath.
Apr 15, 2013
Apr 15, 2013 at 1:31 AM UTC
People are too concerned
with self, said Father Higgs.
His aged face as if hewn from
Rock, sat before you on broad
shoulders, the lips labouring
with the words. Too much
worried how self will feel,
how self will benefit. He
hunched forward, his large
eyes moving over you like
tired slugs. The symbol of
the cross, he said with a
movement of his head, is to
cut through the I, the sign
of the self. You noticed one
high brow, grey, larger than
the other, hair in nose like
insects in hiding. He breathed
out deeply. Self denial is
the essence of the message
of Christ, he said, a left
inclination of his head, his
teeth (not his own) large
and discoloured. You wanted
to ask questions, but he raised
a hand. The word I is stated
too often in conversations,
he said, or self too much
brought in as myself or herself
or himself or such as may be
used in talk. You understood
this was his way of lecturing.
His black monastic habit was
stained about the neck by food
or dribble or dried up phlegm.
We ought to be concerned with
others, he stated, wheezing, face
reddening, eyes enlarging. Where
is my inhaler? he wheezed, I really
must be off, this smoker’s cough,
my poor old lungs, must get myself
a stronger inhaler and he was off,
out of the common room he had
caught you in some hour back.
All you saw was his hand and inhaler
and departing monastic habit of black.
Jul 9, 2012
Jul 9, 2012 at 1:58 AM UTC
~~~/\~~~^^
you sit looking forward
to learn the words of the
new alphabet
your senses have regained
you gaze at the photographs
memories
your time with a friend
in Abkhazia
the elfin oak trees silver leaves
sigh and teach you the soul
of the winds 'round
Akhali Atoni
monastic mountains engraved
a simple poignant song
in the silence
you believe you are not fit for much
but you are
else wise, why would the world
you have come to know
color your heart cyan
*as you rest
in the arms of the
sky?*
SoulSurvivor
(c) 2013
Mar 7, 2015
Mar 7, 2015 at 11:45 AM UTC
Moon butcher- weaned on courting flesh from safe
viewing, whistling to draw the blinds over fettered
flocks, all whose beaks are wired. Upon his eyes, a
monastic charm, cuffed by all means toward profane
morality, are his deeds and are his perfect misdoings.
And in the most miserable quarters of the mind,
along sad shrines where these supple thoughts are
stowed and ferried as the cattle he should drive;
Bird killer.
How mad you are– crimp hearted figure, without
lament for tattered homes and frayed hulls of a child's
laughter, pulled from heavy sacks. But all are beaten dogs
on morbid eyes, clubbed all with gentle hands and choked
with deft ideals-malformed. How artful though, that no
pinion primed should go clipped, nor aviaries-bold should
hold them here, but only should their minds be tainted–
Made whole in mechanics-belt driven. Just stay and take
my woeful Ode: Tyranny be your maxim; conformity be
our dying ways.
Dark ways; made so dark only in their leaden glare, that all
should turn and close their eyes for night. Monolithic as
mauled humans, ravished as the bark of black Willows and
pawing tides‒ all an empty obelisk of horrors-makeshift.
Pavlovian; cold soup; torn rags on the dashboard‒ and
for miles upon miles, ravaged quill over sunken hills, the
feathers poured here as ink into my ebbing dreams. Though,
to think yet that all had been warm upon a day, now too
distant and criminal. Too nefarious for notion, to hold
wolves for wool, and kooks for feathers stalked to hiding.
Jun 14, 2017
Jun 14, 2017 at 2:20 PM UTC
Feel the rhythm of those who row longboats from Scandinavian shores, in their plundering quests of arson and ****
Although stalactites may be used in the same manner as an icicle in order to commit ******
it is necessary to acknowledge that one weapon leaves a trace of evidence whilst the other evaporates into the firmament.
The wind is truly wild, as she kisses our skin with force, amidst the swell of marine visions beyond Ljodhus, Ivist and Skid, where Gaels reside in monastic solitude.
Have you ever been to the shores of Iona?
Please do not cut off your nose to spite your face, in the same manner as those nuns, who sought to be unappealing to Nordic barbarians.
The magic numbers are 795 and 802.
Therefore, if we seek to withstand the forces of contemporary evil, I suggest that we swiftly engage with Celtic Druids as they are our ancient forefathers.
Mar 31, 2014
Mar 31, 2014 at 11:08 PM UTC
Like the dark before the dawn,
beast of prey does stalk the fawn.
Wise Hermit waits within the queue,
Time again he waits for you.
Monastic skies blanket overhead
cloud covered moon awake the dead.
Wailing viola lulls the lake,
Aiding in a lover's ache.
Mar 4, 2013
Mar 4, 2013 at 6:17 PM UTC
I would see words forged into action
by these hands of broken memory,
memory that still haunts the darkest nights.
The barren tongue of sparse reaction
concealed in cocoons of silenced delight
decorated in jeopardy and lethargy.
The ramblings of an assumed madman
spent wandering these unforgotten years
comforted only by the monastic echoes of ashram
left to deliver his final illuminated message
unto the radiance of waiting ears.
The days have been long,
hastened by the majesty of moonlight
perishing in cirrus cloud formation.
Like the nightmares of crippled machination
and sheathed divinity more man than hallow.
Caressed by warmth of the morning sun
and in it a song for every fleeting shadow.
And this was the message:
Like all beautiful things:
We.
Must.
Fade.
Jul 22, 2014
Jul 22, 2014 at 11:40 PM UTC
A Novitiate in the World
“…you will go forth from these walls,
but will live like a monk in the world.”
-Father Zossima to Alyosha in The Brothers Karamazov
Every vocation is a novitiate
And every labor a monastic prayer:
Matins and Lauds are sung over coffee,
Then Terce for the plough, the lathe, and the wheel
Sext is gratitude for the midday meal
And None is the hour for downing tools
Soft Vespers is the song of happy homes
‘Til Compline sends all good folk to their beds -
Final vows are taken at death; for now,
Every vocation is a novitiate
Sep 16, 2016
Sep 16, 2016 at 4:54 PM UTC
A Berlin monastic church of blood
shed by true witnesses to freedom’s love:
These few who stood against the flood
of hate from tyrants they rebuffed.
Not far from here, these martyrs were killed
for facing down the brownshirts’ might,
in hopes that all would someday be filled
with the will to live for love’s delight.
Here Mary sits with her holy child,
carved of warm wood, set on cold stone.
She bears an expression, calm and mild,
with nothing around them: alone.
Her robes are daubed in palest blue
while her hair with a golden crown is wed;
her baby son wears redder hues
that foreshadow blood he and his martyrs shed.
This blessèd Mary’s calm defies the fear
decreed by despots in past and present years —
Softly, she whispers her granite will: Defy
all tyranny ’til hate’s tides subside.
Feb 2, 2025
Feb 2, 2025 at 5:08 PM UTC
Religion is an experience ‒
Don’t forget to pay attention
To the road signs and orange
Cones – stations of life.
The dried putty surrounding
The stained glass shards is
A template for countercultural
Beliefs – fidelity.
Pick a denomination and take
A number – investigate the
Universe – celebrate via Billy
Graham or Timothy Leary.
Turn to the pages in the
Geodesic south Indian sub-
Continent – pray to a Hindu
Shrine or dine with a Swami.
Hail the Krishna highs – close
Your eyes and be transcendental
As often as you breathe – but
Do not divulge your mantra.
Heed the children as they climb
And play – drooling on the statues
Of Buddha and his goddesses
At the corner of rebirth.
Monastic discipline is for the
Elderly – after they reach the
New liberation – in tune with
Their pure souls.
Be pragmatic if you must –
Choose therapy, shock waves
Of the brain – or bow down
Before B. F. Skinner.
Start and nurture your own
Beat generation camp – be
**** be alien, be aware of
The invisible lights.
Go west to “EST,” and train
Followers to process bits of
History – couple that with an
Out-of-body jaunt.
The je-ne-sais-quoi of ends
Is approaching – embrace a
Chapter on thanatology, and
Share the culture of after.
There are alternatives – try
Gnosticism or Scientology –
Be the man who won’t believe,
And reach your potential.
The final analysis is to find
Your eternal family – they can
Be anything – beings with which
You will piously be born again.
Give each their name – 2nd Eve,
Zen the little, Erhard, Wymyn,
Pope ***** III, Bogie – and call
Them your disciples.
© Lewis Bosworth, 1/2017
Jan 31, 2017
Jan 31, 2017 at 11:02 PM UTC