hoping this one’s the Savior . . .
Psalm 111
the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom
The “fear of God” required by the Torah is an antidote to religion.
— William Kilbrener, Open-Minded Torah (122)
The future in my pocket, stardust candy
wrapped in cellophane; God the Father slaving
for America; Christians being saved.
Flavor of the day: Brotherhood of Man.
Tomorrow—well, tomorrow is another day
so I will pray and praise Him while I can.
The hungry fear tomorrow and the poor
are squeezed so hard that centuries from now
they’ll be a streak of oil miles underground:
but that is what the hungry poor are for.
“More light!” said Goethe, dying on his bed.
Now let us decompose, pulling Earth’s blanket
over our small faces, shrinking and thankful
for a God our pagan fathers could invent.
The pagan fathers, Presbyterians
at best, represented widely today
interdenominationally
and across all races, tribes, and nations,
meant well. They did not sacrifice children
lightly. They knew God—just as well as we;
they did not write scriptures sarcastically—
in fact, God wrote them. Where do we fit, then?
We are their water; their bones plow our bowels;
each Spring the same horse sheds his sand and stands
over our bed at night, his white eyes rolling,
and we cry for the same God. The world ends
anyway, the same way, before the same throne.
The fear of God is love of the unknown.
I will praise the Lord with my whole heart.
The Old One surely wouldn’t want such praise
as clatters from the clown kitchens of Earth.
The future is the whole of what we were,
so praise must be all the winking-out ways
we have abandoned—left at some altar
that even isotopes have forgotten,
a bushel of fireflies last night’s boys caught
turning to earthy mush in a glass jar.
What of the Holy Bible speaks for God?—
the altars, offerings, the jealous rage?—
the widow’s penny pressed by Caesar’s steed
into the dust of the forgotten dead?—
hot miracles that lick up from the page?—
the crazy happiness of the blind saved?
Psalm 112
The desire of the wicked shall perish.
The wicked’s brains will go right down the drains
much like everyone else’s, I bet.
They’ll all be on fire but their hottest desire
is just what the wicked won’t get.
Lust strong and mighty will put on her nightie
and disappear into the night;
the Lord of the hood will commend the dead good
before He puts out the last light.
Is this what our Jesus was for?—to save
a concordance of ghosts? The rain falls the same
on the just and unjust, washing their laundry away.
The heavenly host will give up the most
forgetting, forgetting, forgetting all day
desires that were us, desires that are lost.
Desire’s the cycle of death and rebirth.
By the grace of God, the wicked will lose
their desire. The good are on their own. Suppose
that heaven is full of the wicked, pure
because purged, clean of the dreams of Earth,
innocent of memories, gold to the soul.
On Earth, they would be a parade of ghouls,
but in heaven they are feathered; they are birds.
The good must stay and suffer all things here—
herds of birth, skirts in every satan’s snare,
earning the first curse by their lust to live;
having given all, scalded, fallen, scarred,
cheated by the power of the sweet hour of prayer;
these shall be with Jesus and remember who they are.
trusting in the Lord
Let those who trust in God trust if they must—
but as for me and mine, we’ll look out sharp.
Whatever can’t be held by vigilance
is worthless. Take this matter of my heart
attack: should I eat pork and trust in God?
Or should I clot myself with globs of cheese
served over eggs. The best I ever had—
good
