tags: God, A Poem, James Fenton, poetry, National Poetry Month
April is National Poetry Month, and I plan to post one poem per day, every day, this month (If you have a favorite poem that you'd like me to share, feel free to email it to me). Today's poem was suggested by a reader and friend.
God, A Poem
A nasty surprise in a sandwich,
A drawing-pin caught in your sock,
The limpest of shakes from a hand which
You'd thought would be firm as a rock,
A serious mistake in a nightie,
A grave disappointment all round
Is all that you'll get from th'Almighty,
Is all that you'll get underground.
Oh he said: 'If you lay off the crumpet
I'll see you alright in the end.
Just hang on until the last trumpet.
Have faith in me, chum-I'm your friend.'
But if you remind him, he'll tell you:
'I'm sorry, I must have been pissed-
Though your name rings a sort of a bell. You
Should have guessed that I do not exist.
'I didn't exist at Creation,
I didn't exist at the Flood,
And I won't be around for Salvation
To sort out the sheep from the cud-
'Or whatever the phrase is. The fact is
In soteriological terms
I'm a crude existential malpractice
And you are a diet of worms.
'You're a nasty surprise in a sandwich.
You're a drawing-pin caught in my sock.
You're the limpest of shakes from a hand which
I'd have thought would be firm as a rock,
'You're a serious mistake in a nightie,
You're a grave disappointment all round-
That's all you are, ' says th'Almighty,
'And that's all that you'll be underground.'
-- James Fenton, Selected Poems (Farrar, Straus and Giroux; 2006).
- Log in to post comments
Dialog Before the Earth-Goddess Eloped with the Star-God
by
JONATHAN VOS POST
(appeared in Amazing Stories Magazine, ISSN: 0279-1706, ed. Patrick L. Price, Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, Vol.64, 1989)
==============
The Star-God swept in from the arms of the Milky Way
having glimpsed the Earth-Goddess in glimmers of Gamma Ray.
"Am I not the master of all that I survey?
I must find Her, & woo Her, & set Us a wedding day..."
But the Elders of Earth demanded a resume.
"A resume? But that's totally perverse.
I'm ten billion years old & I've travelled the universe
while quasars quake & the galaxies disperse,
great stars burn low & nebulas cry for a nurse.
The Black Hole rolls for our souls like a hideous hearse!"
"That's all very well," said the Elders, "but we need the papers.
The stars die down? Never mind, we can read by the tapers
that burn in the basement windows of Wall Street sky-scrapers.
We want documents, not the recital of cosmical capers.
A curriculum vitae, not vortical vagueness and vapors."
"Vapors? Just who do you think swirls those vortices
such as this goofy galaxy where you absurd aborigines
live your lives' petty period in between two small ()s?
Striding space-time, stopping only to pocket the Pleides
as a boy plucks a pebble to play with, I play with infinities!"
"That is infinite nonsense, as far as we all are concerned.
What's 1,000,000 degrees if you can't prove to us what you've learned?
While you ranted & raved about how all those stupid stars burned
our files have closed, our expensive attorneys attorned,
and so, if you please, our interview now stands adjourned."
This boded no good. It rendered our planet outmoded
when the Star-God was thus incommoded:
cities of sky-scrapers crumpled, corroded;
pinnacles, mountains & hilltops eroded;
with a splash of neutrinos the sun supernova'd, exploded.
"Sorry, Love," he said, leaving,
I just didn't know it was loaded..."
==============
0518-0544
16 May 87
Copyright 1996, 1997 by Emerald City Publishing.
All rights reserved. May not be reproduced without permission.
May be posted electronically provided that
it is transmitted unaltered, in its
entirety, and without charge.