Murray Silverstein: Dante in Auschwitz, Ulysses in Hell
The storm that swirls in God’s dark heart,
our poor boat tossed, and sank, my crew & I all lost.
Robinson Jeffers: Hurt Hawk
I’d sooner, except the penalties, kill a man than a hawk; but the great redtail
Had nothing left but unable misery
From the bones too shattered for mending, the wing that trailed under his talons when he moved.
Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer: Design
Whatever is sacred, I feel it in canyons,
these earthen temples to surrender—
such holy architecture
with their deep and ancient silence
Octavia E. Butler: Kindness eases change / Love quiets fear
In order to rise from its own ashes, a Phoenix first must burn.
Desne A. Crossley: Something I Came Across
Yesterday, I was culling through papers to throw out and came across a letter from my mother to her father. She’s trying to cushion the news that no one will tell him. He’s dying of cancer.
Gerard Manley Hopkins: ‘I wake and feel the fell of dark, not day’
I am gall, I am heartburn. God’s most deep decree
Bitter would have me taste: my taste was me;
Bones built in me, flesh filled, blood brimmed the curse.
Darnell Arnoult: This Too Is Creation & Work
Moonlight freely wants its glory,
holy howling eyes singing
heaven’s blues.
Robert Okaji: Nothing of Heaven
How must we interpret
such change, feelings sorted and filed
into separate chambers, like people
herded into showers, like bullets
in the air seeking flesh.
Mike Vargo: Bad Religion, Good Religion
What sort of personal meaning can any of us extract from the current state of religious affairs, which is very strange?
Michael Simms: Leaving Walden
Is it true the distance between atoms
is proportionate to the distance between stars
and the world we know is mostly empty space?
Barbara Hamby: Ode to the Sacred Heart of Everyone, Including You and You and You
Hey, Catholics, what is it with that red heart out there
beating on Jesus’ chest like some Frankenstein
experiment gone bad
Michael Simms: Against Prayer
Okay,
God of crib death
and dirty needles,
of heroin and fentanyl,
God of twisted steel
burning beside the road
Yehoshua November: Hearing Roy Orbison in a Mikvah in Salem, MA
To submerge beneath the water,
the mystics add,
is to return to the Divine womb,
the way the soul returns to the Heavens each night
as the body dozes.
Yehuda Amichai: God has Pity on Kindergarten Children
God has pity on kindergarten children. He has less pity on school children And on grownups he has no pity at all, he leaves them alone, and sometimes they must … Continue reading
