Sunday, July 27, 2025

Fish

Here in America, between the coasts
Christianity is like the sea
Invisible, and salty as can be.
Haunted as we are by undead ghosts
(The genocides we've done, in all their hosts)
We cannot exorcise them properly
Until we recognize that to be free
Is nothing like our vain and feeble boasts.
The irony that rises above all
Is that true Christlike care could make us so
But when I hear of Christ, it does not call
For good for all, but gold for those we know
And so we all remain in total thrall
To impulse--which true freedom must forego.

Sunday, July 6, 2025

Of July

I had a country once, and I had faith
That what it strived for, if not did, was good.
That surety is dead; an empty wraith 
That only shrieks in tones of could and should.
I hoped my nation would do what it would
To help the sick, to free those under bond:
That what it had of burning cross and hood 
Was banished to the past. But that was fond.
It all remains. Not banished to beyond
But living, breathing in my hopes' dead shell
As if the hope itself had somehow spawned
Its revenant, and born it out of hell.
Yet looking at the thing that I abhor
It is the same as what it was before.

Gather Us In

The song that we sing will tell God to gather
The people together, and make them God's own;
But I have an inkling that God would much rather
We gather ourselves; not like seeds to be sown
But livestock to pasture, or people to freedom
More self-motivated, more ready to go
Aware of our hungers and eager to feed 'em
Not crops that the sower must gather and sow.
For God can most certainly sow as God wishes
(And make things spring up that were never before
Like the insects, the water, the land, and the fishes,
The light and the darkness, and so many more)
But the point of our lives is not passive obeying
But living the life that itself is our praying.