Various Heresies 6

Various Heresies 6 Altared Spots by Michael R. Burch The mother leopard buries her cub, then cries three nights for his bones to rise clad in new flesh, to celebrate the sunrise. Good mother leopard, pensive thought and fiercest love’s wild insurrection yield no certainty of a resurrection. Man’s tried them both, has added tears, chants, dances, drugs, séances, tombs’ white alabaster prayer-rooms, wombs where dead men’s frozen genes convene ... there is no answer—death is death. So bury your son, and save your breath. Or emulate earth’s “highest species”— write a few strange poems and odd treatises. Pagans Protest the Intolerance of Christianity by Michael R. Burch “We have a common sky.” — Quintus Aurelius Symmachus (c. 345-402) We had a common sky before the Christians came. We thought there might be gods but did not know their names. The common stars above us? They winked, and would not tell. Yet now our fellow mortals claim our questions merit hell! The cause of our damnation? They claim they’ve seen the LIGHT ... but still the stars wink down at us, as wiser beings might. Well, Almost by Michael R. Burch All Christians say “Never again!” to the inhumanity of men (except when the object of phlegm is a Palestinian). O, My Redeeming Angel by Michael R. Burch O my Redeeming Angel, after we have fought till death (and soon the night is done) ... then let us rest awhile, await the sun, and let us put aside all enmity. I might have been the “victor”—who can tell?— so many wounds abound. All out of joint, my groin, my thigh ... and nothing to anoint but sunsplit, shattered stone, as pillars hell. Light, easy flight to heaven, Your return! How hard, how dark, this path I, limping, walk. I only ask Your blessing; no more talk! Withhold Your name, and yet my ears still burn and so my heart. You asked me, to my shame: for Jacob—trickster, shyster, sham—’s my name. To Know You as Mary by Michael R. Burch To know you as Mary, when you spoke her name and her world was never the same ... beside the still tomb where the spring roses bloom. O, then I would laugh and be glad that I came, never minding the chill, the disconsolate rain ... beside the still tomb where the spring roses bloom. I might not think this earth the sharp focus of pain if I heard you exclaim— beside the still tomb where the spring roses bloom my most unexpected, unwarranted name! But you never spoke. Explain? ur-gent by Michael R. Burch if u would be a good father to us all, revoke the Curse, extract the Gall; but if the abuse continues, look within into ur Mindless Soulless Emptiness Grim, & admit ur sin, heartless jehovah, slayer of widows and orphans ... quick, begin! Bible libel (ii) by Michael R. Burch ur savior’s a cad —he’s as bad as his dad— according to your strange Bible. demanding belief or he’ll bring u to grief? he’s worse than his horn-sprouting rival! was the man ever good before made a “god”? if so, half your Bible is libel! stock-home sin-drone by Michael R. Burch ur GAUD created this hellish earth; thus u FANTAsize heaven (an escape from rebirth). ur GUAD is a monster, butt ur RELIGION lied and called u his frankensteinian bride! now, like so many others cruelly abused, u look for salve-a-shun to the AUTHOR of ur pain’s selfish creation. cons preach the “TRUE GOSPEL” and proudly shout it, but if ur GAUD were good he would have to doubt it. un-i-verse-all love by Michael R. Burch there is a Gaud, it’s true! and furthermore, tHeSh(e)It loves u! unfortunately the He Sh(e) It ,even more adorably, loves cancer, aids and leprosy. One of the Flown by Michael R. Burch Forgive me for not having known you were one of the flown— flown from the distant haunts of someone else’s enlightenment, alighting here to a darkness all your own . . . I imagine you perched, pretty warbler, in your starched dress, before you grew bellicose . . . singing quaint love’s highest falsetto notes, brightening the pew of some dilapidated church . . . But that was before autumn’s messianic dark hymns . . . Deepening on the landscape—winter’s inevitable shadows. Love came too late; hope flocked to bare meadows, preparing to leave. Then even the thought of life became grim, thinking of Him . . . To flee, finally,—that was no whim, no adventure, but purpose. I see you now a-wing: pale-eyed, intent, serious: always, always at the horizon’s broadening rim . . . How long have you flown now, pretty voyager? I keep watch from afar: pale lover and voyeur. what the “Chosen Few” really pray for by Michael R. Burch We are ready to be robed in light, angel-bright despite Our intolerance; ready to enter Heaven and never return (dark, this sojourn); ready to worse-ship any gaud able to deliver Us from this flawed existence; We pray with the persistence of actual saints to be delivered from all earthly constraints: just kiss each uplifted Face with lips of gentlest grace, cooing the sweetest harmonies while brutally crushing Our enemies! ah-Men! wild wild west-east-north-south-up-down by Michael R. Burch each day it resumes—the great struggle for survival. the fiercer and more perilous the wrath, the wilder and wickeder the weaponry, the better the daily odds (just don’t bet on the long term, or revival). so ur luvable Gaud decreed, Theo-retically, if indeed He exists as ur Bible insists— the Wildest and the Wickedest of all with the brightest of creatures in thrall (unless u somehow got that bleary Theo-ry wrong too). Keywords/Tags: god, Jesus, Christ, Christian, prayer, Bible, angel, atheist, faith, blasphemy, heresy, heresies, heretic, heretic, heretical, pagan, pagans, god, gods Published as the collection "Various Heresies 6"