I knew a girl with countless fears
Who every day shed bitter tears,
And round and round the world she ran
While looking for the perfect man.

She said, “Like Jesus Christ I’ll be—
The Sinless One who pleases me!
Courtship is what I want, not dating:
I think I’ll put off love and mating.”

One day she thought she’d found her pearl,
But he was looking for a girl—
A rich patrician, young and fair—
A paragon beyond compare!

At forty-four  her search was done:
She found Him — and became a nun.

FAREWELL

Here on the bridge together
Let us kiss, let us part.
The wine can leave the pitcher
But not these tears the heart.

Here awhile let us linger
Before we follow fate:
You to the starlight, Stranger—
And I to my back street.

‘Madonna of the Magnificat’, Botticelli, 1482 (detail)

There is no rose without a piercing thorn,
And shadow closely cleaves to radiant light;
And though for life and love we have been born,
Our life’s a struggle, love our painful plight.

But you are light alone and my life’s breath,
And for you daily my love tender grows;
A thousand thorns I’ll challenge unto death
For you who’ve pierced my heart, my heavenly Rose.

Mrs Moloch
likes to froloch
in the mud—
before she drinks
her children’s blood!

Before they see the light
she’ll often eat ’em—
but once they’re born
she’d never spank
or beat ’em!

Pastiche of a poem by Hilaire Belloc

Blind, perverse, corrupted Shrew,
Resembling the devil in all you do!
Shrew, destroyer of all that’s good,
From youth you’ve poisoned all you could;
Promoter of porn, abortion, gays—
You serve your Father in so many ways;
Shrew dirty in bed and worse with mammon,
Shrew, cause of wars and tears and famine;
Shrew arrogant, Shrew of bile and lies,
Shrew reckless, Shrew with roving eyes.

Shrew twisted, Shrew obsessed, Shrew scary,
Shrew self-absorbed and solitary;
Shrew blustering and epileptic,
Shrew puffed and empty, Shrew dyspeptic;
Shrew hypocritical, Shrew bad,
Shrew furtive; Shrew, like Hitler, mad!
Shrew (since a man must make an end)
Shrew that shall never be my friend—
That is, until fall from your eyes
The scales of Satan, and you arise.

You’re just a shrew like Shrews of old,
With necks of bronze and sacks of gold;
Imbibing—as they thieved men’s homes—
Hell’s poison from satanic tomes!
Like them you curse, blaspheme, and bawl;
Like them one day in hell you’ll fall;
Thou turncoat Shrew, to sin devoted,
Shrew to thine own damnation quoted,
Perplexed to find thy trivial name
Reared in my verse to lasting shame.

Shrew dreadful, swinish Shrew and swearing,
Repulsive Shrew, Shrew past all bearing!
Shrew of the cold and sinister breath,
Shrew despicable, Shrew of death!
Shrew sly, Shrew nasty in night revel,
Shrew snotty, Shrew so like the devil!
Shrew, symbol of dark hate and horror—
Shrew whose mind is in Gomorrah.
Begone, O parasitic Shrew—
Who serve the devil in all you do!

Based on Hilaire Belloc’s Lines to a Don

We hear it very often when it’s wet
and cold: the curse, the murmur, the complaint;
as if we held almighty God in debt
to give us warmth and sunlight, and to paint
the world bright green without the snow and rain;
to send fair Summer, pleasant Fall and Spring
without the cold and wind — without the pain —
as if we did not know that would not bring
more happiness, but total, painful loss.
Can there be life without the winter rain?
Can we accept its gifts and still complain?
We often hate the cold that makes us strong.
We learn to love the light when nights are long —
In Winter lives the mystery of the Cross.

In memory of Rachel Corrie

I came upon a swan and asked to hear from her a song.
She said, “I sing in silence, and in silence you will hear
A song far greater, if you will but listen to His voice,
Whom you with earthly eyes can’t see, because He is so near.

But I am not permitted yet to sing, or I would lie:
For God made me to listen in the silence my life long,
Composing every day for Him the notes of one sweet song,
Which I will sing most beautifully the day I am to die.”

“The brute creation suffers not from this…”

We’re quick to see in others’ eyes the splinter,
but find it hard to notice our own beam.
We smile like summer when our soul’s in winter
and say we’re fine when we would like to scream.

The brute creation suffers not from this;
a shrink is something animals don’t need.
They never hide to copulate or piss,
nor do they smile to see their neighbor bleed.

Begun in pleasure, vices turn
to pain, and we’re unable
to flee from them: first cobwebs,
they become a binding cable.

And when the tyrants are entrenched
we find we can’t endure
the torture of their slavery,
nor the torture of their cure.