Mariya Magdalena (1858)

Frederick Sandys, 1829-1904

(Image from wikipedia.org.)

Looney Toons

If my lover can be struck
And crushed
To mush stuck to a truck
And if
My dog can fall
From a forty-foot cliff
(Beloved pet)
What’s next?
An anvil? A piano?
An exploding cigarette?


[Image from media.photobucket.com.]

False Start

Hell’s not just pain, it’s triviality—
A play that no one else would come to see.
Null dimension; crushing gravity.

“We suffer when we can’t let go,” they say,
“The self’s all just attachments anyway.
Unclench your heart and learn to love today.”

“Just bondage” seems reciprocal to me.
I’ll pay my creditors before I’m free—
To “let it go” would mean my bankruptcy.

Still others preach, “For us it has sufficed
To think about what Jesus sacrificed.
Repent your sins and give your life to Christ.”

If praising God with practices devout
Can free the soul from pain, regret, and doubt,
Why does it feel so much like “selling out?”

A colder voice sneers, “Fuck it, let’s be blunt:
Life is death. You don’t get what you want.
God’s a fiction; Gaia is a cunt.

“You won’t give up your dead biologist—
Her mangled hands, those dry, cracked lips you kissed.
You cursed God then—admit it, don’t resist.”

It’s true, and I’m addicted to that pain—
The wormy muse’s singular refrain,
The eggs it lays inside my beating brain.

I’ll rest awhile and then I’ll try again—
It’s hard work setting fire to these straw men.


[Image from walletmouth.typepad.com.]