All the minor faults of Christians, while I miss the love of God.

I defend my rights to swindle you, as long as I can pick

One cathedral in a hundred, where the dead have caught the quick.

So I shun the men, who promulgate and serve communion bread,

As I justify the heartless things I’ve done with life instead.

I’ll attack the credibility of all religious creeds,

To procrastinate the chances of the pastor sewing seeds.

I’ll ignore the fact that Jesus came to die upon the cross

To redeem the sins that brought my soul near such a tragic loss;

As I focus on the things that drag the Lord’s name through the mud,

Never mindful of the way He offered up his precious blood.

I’ll enjoy the jokes that paint the Bible’s narrative with smut,

While I overdose on drugs to dull the anguish in my gut.

I’ve no time for church on Sunday, since I’ll spend the day in bed,

With a hangover of damage to my liver, lungs and head.

But this doesn’t really matter, once my high tech microscope

Helps me spot the spec in your eye; so that I won’t need to cope

With the knowledge that my vision’s been distorted by a plank.

When I’m barred from Heaven later, I’ll just have myself to thank.

I will question those afflictions that a God of love permits,

While I bless the world with dodgy deals, to prove the slipper fits;

So that God becomes a scapegoat for discomforts men have made,

Like depletion of the ozone; though God’s trees have yielded shade.

I blame God for child abuse by men who infiltrated deep

Into youth groups; as it won’t occur to me that God will weep

So much harder than the rest of us, when children bear a scar

Put there by someone without the gospel in his repertoire.

I can take the wide and easy road, with words to please the crowd,

Who will never know the secrets I’m afraid to voice aloud,

Of my private insecurities, which God would love to heal,

If my sour grapes gave way to humble pie for my next meal.

I’ll forever point the finger at the preachers on TV

Taking tithes, because I’ve missed the point that my salvation’s free;

If I’d make a true repentance and accept God’s greatest gift

Of the sacrifice He made to fix a most expansive rift.

This post was originally published on Your Poems, Your Stories at My Oculist was a Carpenter.

The news came from Washington,
right from the wire-
“Feed-the-poor-pheasants!” like
a prairie on fire!
John found a pheasant, its last
strength was shorn,
And it died in his hand, too late
to eat corn!

The pheasants get such a sad
gleam in their eyes,
When they take the last look, at
the wide open skies!
They can’t dig through snow, a
few weed-seeds forlorn,
And all that they need, a few
handfuls of corn!

The big Soil Bank acres, that’s
where they lay,
The snow is so deep, and they
can’t get away!
You find the big holes they dug,
struggling along,
With nothing to eat, and the
strawpiles are gone.

The spring-days are only a short
ways away–
The brook will be singing, where
soft breezes play:
The grainfields will wave, as the
warm wind goes by:
But not for the bird who looked
last at the sky.

They once were so happy, the
summer-days made
“A Garden of Eden!” in sunshine
and shade,
They died in a snowdrift, for-
saken, forlorn,
When no one came down the
road, bringing them, corn.

This post was originally published on Your Poems, Your Stories at “Save the Pheasants”.

by David Ronald Bruce Pekrul

This post was originally published on Your Poems, Your Stories at Digital Music.

If Once in a lifetime

Love comes your way

Grab it and hold it

Don’™t let it get away.

Cherish it and nurture it

Encourage it to grow

Gather it’s™ seeds

And keep them to sow.

Scatter them wisely

Give some to friends,

Show them

True love

Never ends.

Tom Fenning

9/16/2006

This post was originally published on Your Poems, Your Stories at Love.