The Stations Of Life

Centuries ago he first came forth. A prince turned vicar. Through disillusionment, he eschewed and denounced politics once he had completed his vows. In keeping with his station in life, he was appointed to a wealthy parish and the problems of his parishioners were, as you might imagine, petty in the extreme. When once upon an otherwise beautiful July afternoon a woman came to him in distress because her son had become engaged to a stripper, things began to unravel. Jesus had, after all, forgiven a harlot caught in the act of adultery--no questions asked.

"Have you met the young woman?" Vicar asked.

"Excuse me?!" the woman replied. "Do not cast your pearls before swine!" she exclaimed.

"Fine," Vicar smiled. "Get back to me with her phone number. I'll have a talk with her."

Divine Accoutrements

Shapes and smells of lilting accessories
The whistling of an angry voice
Woman lays up the warning from a distance
The human blasphemy, I somehow utter.
Its bliss and its tragedy
Foaming at the mouth in a play of wizardry.
Sorcerers, shadows, dark bias of interior planes
Careening out of control
Pushing, expanding, rifling out like the sparks of wildfires
Gone, those hideous liberators, exempt now from such fetid goings-on

These fled to live on in dens and dugouts,
Bunkers, foxholes and dragon lairs molded by witchery.
Deadly spirits create and inhabit divine bodies
Rife with killing, sweat drunk on salvific power.
I see my own soul flying, floating, weeping, laughing.
A whirlwind of hysteria unknown to prior generations.
And why? Idiots!
Because the soul inevitably fails to rise high enough.
Its tools, its loves, its desires, and its knowledge notwithstanding.
This earth is simply the locus of earth souls.
And so far, not even the greatest of martyrs
Have been able to change that.

Americas

From the American Southwest
Down
Into Mexico
On
Into Bolivia and Peru
Red Gods & Brown Gods
Black Gods & White
Convene to confer
To converse on the subject
Of the plight of our kind
Of Absolute Truth
In native whisperings
Ancient and raw
A La-La-La-La-La-La
Of flickering tongues
In antechambers, inner chambers
Spirit cells and ether
Guardians of desert and high plateau
Mountain Gods, Sky Gods,
Valley Gods, and others
Hold their semi-monthly ritual pow-wow to explore
The never-ending question:

"How can we make the people understand that we are all Christ?"

Juggernaut

Against the soft stucco of dry wall
And spawns of lichen spreading along the grout lines in the cheap tile
The victims of The Juggernaut fall
One after another

Materials too inferior
Workmanship too shoddy
To hold in place that
Which she plows asunder