One Day that Shook My World

(Image from 30.media.tumblr.com, Joe Strummer, Earthquake Weather)

Give me the shakes

shake and bake

run for the hills

Oops! This is uphill

The fool who lives this high

has nowhere to go but down

Can’t go out without a sigh

Cry and look like a clown

Call and text

Shoot your load

No more sex

Forget that broad

Holy book this, holy book that

Catch the last train on track

Sing His praises

Get high on smack

If the world ends today

Buy that last happy meal

Here’s a toast, don’t stray

My God is right, hooray!

The Arrogance

(Image from s6.thisnext.com)

With arrogance that should only belong to God
she breaks my heart.
Fearing neither karmic outcome or the speed of my hand
she smiles while cutting up vows like paper falling on floor.
The betrayal of ultimate candlelit dinners
whispered flirtations sinking in wine
are ancient recalls of moonlight caught in lace curtains.
Will the victim live through blotter reports
blood dripping on snow
the cliché of shared movies, shred tickets?
The query of final judgment
will prove a pretty smirk
is not the right to hurt mock.

Tiger Through the Rose Bush

(Image from wwwdelivery.superstock.com)

The blood the prick
Thorn elects
Goads is a gift on the land
Parched by invaders from up north
Two footed and four

Cat of stripes and rare gripes
Ambles through thickets swims through flows
It minds not the cuts remind it it’s beast
The biggest one on any block

Growling mewling mood dictates
Humidity this deep calls for waters
From below and above

Tiger beauty and death
Is god to the famished

You Are Not The World's Best Dad

(Image from ablemuse.com)

You are not the world’s best dad
There were times I wished you dead
I forget the reason why I felt that way
You were not the world’s best dad

Freud believed that a father is a godlike figure
in everyone’s mind
I don’t know about that,
but you sure did act like your were God at times

No father, no son, no daughter
Where is mother in all of this?
In the kitchen cooking,
In the toilet cleaning

Loving you is not easy
It should be but not
Today is your special day
Mother has hers too

Who wins out in father-mother contest?
Counting the number of mother’s boys
And father’s girls
Mother should win by a landslide

It’s not the easiest thing in the world to say:
I love you, father
You are a creature of darkness and light
Can’t live without one or the other

Congratulations, you have done enough to pass
The paternal test of love and hate
Happy Father’s Day, dad
Someday you will die, but today you live.

God’s Karateka

“I will appear before God with empty hands.” -- St. Thérèse

Illustration by Daya Callan

Dame Edith tells the story of a Catholic girl
who fell in love with a Protestant boy.
She was determined not to let a little matter
of sects get in the way of her happiness.
It didn’t harm that Ed loved stories
as much as she did. They wrote of words.

Asking Jesus’ mom for guidance;
the Virgin Mother let all the flowers
in the garden bloom the next morning.
Edith had her answer.

They married, had kids, didn’t exactly
live happily ever after (Ed went away)
but were as close as they could get
to ecstasy and literary paradise –-
words brilliantly uncommon,
words garden variety, words warring
east and west, words begat worlds.

At St. Therese’s little church
north and south united.
Blades swirled in blurred motion,
poetry bouquet caught in blades.
Petals and blood nectar splattered
Edith’s story in sequel.
The necklace winds its way
back down to the clasp.

Emulating Ariel

Emulating Ariel is easier
read than written
Plath had so much wrath
and bitterness
Not exactly exclusive
She hated her father
She hated Hitler
That attitude and vision
cut through races and ages
A successful suicide for an idol
Is like worshipping a demon
in place of God
Riding a race car
in the safety of an armchair
Ovens have their uses
Baking bread and wiping out races
Taking your life in winter
When you can’t wait for summer
To thaw and rot in the sun
Ariel was a Tempest sprite
An archangel, or a mad woman
Who took her own life
Two times unlucky

Pain in the grace of God

I don't need no enlightened one
to tell me
that everyone suffers,
everyone dies.
What I want to know
is the why, the for how long.
The questions and sensations abate
after realization -- there is a point
to everything over and under the sun.
In a state of grace,
it hurts,
it's exquisite,
it's pain in the grace of God.