Corruption is the vein we mine,
risking our life to foul the air
Tag Archives: sin
I pity my compadre
Don’t strike the snake
I thought as I struck
at the root of my sin.
Fear not but pity
weighed my spade as I cut
earth with my thought.
For the serpent, too, a creature is –
rise thus he must –
and the first to fall waits longest of all.
Yes, by God he’ll rise. I say it is just.
For what better blow
to the little man’s pride
than to give what he hates
and wants all along?
Laetare
I don’t like the stupid part
of being a disciple –
how you have to learn
the same lessons again and again,
fight the same fights,
and offer the same apologies
thirty years in a row.
I’m sick to death
of thinking I get it –
feeling contrite at Mass,
all that wet-eyed resolve
and the light shining on
just the right window
at just the right time –
until you’re again coughing, after,
over your coffee, sputtering
your justifications and wondering
secretly if God Himself is not choking,
ready finally to keep His promise
and spit you from His mouth!
The cheerful reaper
Error’s a bit player now,
but he used to be big,
in the morality plays.
You had Pride then, too,
and Death,
and kids called Patience
and Fear
McDonald at Dusk
Many a reasoning unreasoning sow.
He himself is heir to the jackass,
to his regret.
The barnyard reeks of natural
and unnatural failings we’d call sin
were that word, too, not joined
to the general disrepair.
Paul’s plaint
I have a bitter spot,
a little burn lodged
in my side
still smoking
A man can stink in a lot of ways
But the worst way is the way
you don’t actually smell
That snake sunning himself
What an attitude!
Utrecht Journal 