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Best Famous Second Hand Poems

Here is a collection of the all-time best famous Second Hand poems. This is a select list of the best famous Second Hand poetry. Reading, writing, and enjoying famous Second Hand poetry (as well as classical and contemporary poems) is a great past time. These top poems are the best examples of second hand poems.

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Written by Walt Whitman | Create an image from this poem

Respondez!

 RESPONDEZ! Respondez! 
(The war is completed—the price is paid—the title is settled beyond recall;) 
Let every one answer! let those who sleep be waked! let none evade! 
Must we still go on with our affectations and sneaking? 
Let me bring this to a close—I pronounce openly for a new distribution of roles;
Let that which stood in front go behind! and let that which was behind advance to the
 front and
 speak; 
Let murderers, bigots, fools, unclean persons, offer new propositions! 
Let the old propositions be postponed! 
Let faces and theories be turn’d inside out! let meanings be freely criminal, as well
 as
 results! 
Let there be no suggestion above the suggestion of drudgery!
Let none be pointed toward his destination! (Say! do you know your destination?) 
Let men and women be mock’d with bodies and mock’d with Souls! 
Let the love that waits in them, wait! let it die, or pass stillborn to other spheres! 
Let the sympathy that waits in every man, wait! or let it also pass, a dwarf, to other
 spheres!

Let contradictions prevail! let one thing contradict another! and let one line of my poems
 contradict another!
Let the people sprawl with yearning, aimless hands! let their tongues be broken! let their
 eyes
 be discouraged! let none descend into their hearts with the fresh lusciousness of love! 
(Stifled, O days! O lands! in every public and private corruption! 
Smother’d in thievery, impotence, shamelessness, mountain-high; 
Brazen effrontery, scheming, rolling like ocean’s waves around and upon you, O my
 days! my
 lands! 
For not even those thunderstorms, nor fiercest lightnings of the war, have purified the
 atmosphere;)
—Let the theory of America still be management, caste, comparison! (Say! what other
 theory
 would you?) 
Let them that distrust birth and death still lead the rest! (Say! why shall they not lead
 you?)

Let the crust of hell be neared and trod on! let the days be darker than the nights! let
 slumber bring less slumber than waking time brings! 
Let the world never appear to him or her for whom it was all made! 
Let the heart of the young man still exile itself from the heart of the old man! and let
 the
 heart of the old man be exiled from that of the young man!
Let the sun and moon go! let scenery take the applause of the audience! let there be
 apathy
 under the stars! 
Let freedom prove no man’s inalienable right! every one who can tyrannize, let him
 tyrannize to his satisfaction! 
Let none but infidels be countenanced! 
Let the eminence of meanness, treachery, sarcasm, hate, greed, indecency, impotence, lust,
 be
 taken for granted above all! let writers, judges, governments, households, religions,
 philosophies, take such for granted above all! 
Let the worst men beget children out of the worst women!
Let the priest still play at immortality! 
Let death be inaugurated! 
Let nothing remain but the ashes of teachers, artists, moralists, lawyers, and
 learn’d and
 polite persons! 
Let him who is without my poems be assassinated! 
Let the cow, the horse, the camel, the garden-bee—let the mudfish, the lobster, the
 mussel, eel, the sting-ray, and the grunting pig-fish—let these, and the like of
 these, be
 put on a perfect equality with man and woman!
Let churches accommodate serpents, vermin, and the corpses of those who have died of the
 most
 filthy of diseases! 
Let marriage slip down among fools, and be for none but fools! 
Let men among themselves talk and think forever obscenely of women! and let women among
 themselves talk and think obscenely of men! 
Let us all, without missing one, be exposed in public, naked, monthly, at the peril of our
 lives! let our bodies be freely handled and examined by whoever chooses! 
Let nothing but copies at second hand be permitted to exist upon the earth!
Let the earth desert God, nor let there ever henceforth be mention’d the name of God!

Let there be no God! 
Let there be money, business, imports, exports, custom, authority, precedents, pallor,
 dyspepsia, smut, ignorance, unbelief! 
Let judges and criminals be transposed! let the prison-keepers be put in prison! let those
 that
 were prisoners take the keys! Say! why might they not just as well be transposed?) 
Let the slaves be masters! let the masters become slaves!
Let the reformers descend from the stands where they are forever bawling! let an idiot or
 insane person appear on each of the stands! 
Let the Asiatic, the African, the European, the American, and the Australian, go armed
 against
 the murderous stealthiness of each other! let them sleep armed! let none believe in good
 will! 
Let there be no unfashionable wisdom! let such be scorn’d and derided off from the
 earth! 
Let a floating cloud in the sky—let a wave of the sea—let growing mint, spinach,
 onions, tomatoes—let these be exhibited as shows, at a great price for admission! 
Let all the men of These States stand aside for a few smouchers! let the few seize on what
 they
 choose! let the rest gawk, giggle, starve, obey!
Let shadows be furnish’d with genitals! let substances be deprived of their genitals!

Let there be wealthy and immense cities—but still through any of them, not a single
 poet,
 savior, knower, lover! 
Let the infidels of These States laugh all faith away! 
If one man be found who has faith, let the rest set upon him! 
Let them affright faith! let them destroy the power of breeding faith!
Let the she-harlots and the he-harlots be prudent! let them dance on, while seeming lasts!
 (O
 seeming! seeming! seeming!) 
Let the preachers recite creeds! let them still teach only what they have been taught! 
Let insanity still have charge of sanity! 
Let books take the place of trees, animals, rivers, clouds! 
Let the daub’d portraits of heroes supersede heroes!
Let the manhood of man never take steps after itself! 
Let it take steps after eunuchs, and after consumptive and genteel persons! 
Let the white person again tread the black person under his heel! (Say! which is trodden
 under
 heel, after all?) 
Let the reflections of the things of the world be studied in mirrors! let the things
 themselves
 still continue unstudied! 
Let a man seek pleasure everywhere except in himself!
Let a woman seek happiness everywhere except in herself! 
(What real happiness have you had one single hour through your whole life?) 
Let the limited years of life do nothing for the limitless years of death! (What do you
 suppose
 death will do, then?)


Written by Allen Ginsberg | Create an image from this poem

In The Baggage Room At Greyhound

 I

In the depths of the Greyhound Terminal 
sitting dumbly on a baggage truck looking at the sky 
 waiting for the Los Angeles Express to depart 
worrying about eternity over the Post Office roof in 
 the night-time red downtown heaven 
staring through my eyeglasses I realized shuddering 
 these thoughts were not eternity, nor the poverty 
 of our lives, irritable baggage clerks, 
nor the millions of weeping relatives surrounding the 
 buses waving goodbye, 
nor other millions of the poor rushing around from 
 city to city to see their loved ones, 
nor an indian dead with fright talking to a huge cop 
 by the Coke machine, 
nor this trembling old lady with a cane taking the last 
 trip of her life, 
nor the red-capped cynical porter collecting his quar- 
 ters and smiling over the smashed baggage, 
nor me looking around at the horrible dream, 
nor mustached ***** Operating Clerk named Spade, 
 dealing out with his marvelous long hand the 
 fate of thousands of express packages, 
nor fairy Sam in the basement limping from leaden 
 trunk to trunk, 
nor Joe at the counter with his nervous breakdown 
 smiling cowardly at the customers, 
nor the grayish-green whale's stomach interior loft 
 where we keep the baggage in hideous racks, 
hundreds of suitcases full of tragedy rocking back and 
 forth waiting to be opened, 
nor the baggage that's lost, nor damaged handles, 
 nameplates vanished, busted wires & broken 
 ropes, whole trunks exploding on the concrete 
 floor, 
nor seabags emptied into the night in the final 
 warehouse.
II Yet Spade reminded me of Angel, unloading a bus, dressed in blue overalls black face official Angel's work- man cap, pushing with his belly a huge tin horse piled high with black baggage, looking up as he passed the yellow light bulb of the loft and holding high on his arm an iron shepherd's crook.
III It was the racks, I realized, sitting myself on top of them now as is my wont at lunchtime to rest my tired foot, it was the racks, great wooden shelves and stanchions posts and beams assembled floor to roof jumbled with baggage, --the Japanese white metal postwar trunk gaudily flowered & headed for Fort Bragg, one Mexican green paper package in purple rope adorned with names for Nogales, hundreds of radiators all at once for Eureka, crates of Hawaiian underwear, rolls of posters scattered over the Peninsula, nuts to Sacramento, one human eye for Napa, an aluminum box of human blood for Stockton and a little red package of teeth for Calistoga- it was the racks and these on the racks I saw naked in electric light the night before I quit, the racks were created to hang our possessions, to keep us together, a temporary shift in space, God's only way of building the rickety structure of Time, to hold the bags to send on the roads, to carry our luggage from place to place looking for a bus to ride us back home to Eternity where the heart was left and farewell tears began.
IV A swarm of baggage sitting by the counter as the trans- continental bus pulls in.
The clock registering 12:15 A.
M.
, May 9, 1956, the second hand moving forward, red.
Getting ready to load my last bus.
-Farewell, Walnut Creek Richmond Vallejo Portland Pacific Highway Fleet-footed Quicksilver, God of transience.
One last package sits lone at midnight sticking up out of the Coast rack high as the dusty fluorescent light.
The wage they pay us is too low to live on.
Tragedy reduced to numbers.
This for the poor shepherds.
I am a communist.
Farewell ye Greyhound where I suffered so much, hurt my knee and scraped my hand and built my pectoral muscles big as a vagina.
May 9, 1956
Written by Delmore Schwartz | Create an image from this poem

Prothalamion

 "little soul, little flirting,
 little perverse one
 where are you off to now?
 little wan one, firm one
 little exposed one.
.
.
and never make fun of me again.
" Now I must betray myself.
The feast of bondage and unity is near, And none engaged in that great piety When each bows to the other, kneels, and takes Hand in hand, glance and glance, care and care, None may wear masks or enigmatic clothes, For weakness blinds the wounded face enough.
In sense, see my shocking nakedness.
I gave a girl an apple when five years old, Saying, Will you be sorry when I am gone? Ravenous for such courtesies, my name Is fed like a raving fire, insatiate still.
But do not be afraid.
For I forget myself.
I do indeed Before each genuine beauty, and I will Forget myself before your unknown heart.
I will forget the speech my mother made In a restaurant, trapping my father there At dinner with his whore.
Her spoken rage Struck down the child of seven years With shame for all three, with pity for The helpless harried waiter, with anger for The diners gazing, avid, and contempt And great disgust for every human being.
I will remember this.
My mother's rhetoric Has charmed my various tongue, but now I know Love's metric seeks a rhyme more pure and sure.
For thus it is that I betray myself, Passing the terror of childhood at second hand Through nervous, learned fingertips.
At thirteen when a little girl died, I walked for three weeks neither alive nor dead, And could not understand and still cannot The adult blind to the nearness of the dead, Or carefully ignorant of their own death.
--This sense could shadow all the time's curving fruits, But we will taste of them the whole night long, Forgetting no twelfth night, no fete of June, But in the daylight knowing our nothingness.
Let Freud and Marx be wedding guests indeed! Let them mark out masks that face us there, For of all anguish, weakness, loss and failure, No form is cruel as self-deception, none Shows day-by-day a bad dream long lived And unbroken like the lies We tell each other because we are rich or poor.
Though from the general guilt not free We can keep honor by being poor.
The waste, the evil, the abomination Is interrupted.
the perfect stars persist Small in the guilty night, and Mozart shows The irreducible incorruptible good Risen past birth and death, though he is dead.
Hope, like a face reflected on the windowpane, Remote and dim, fosters a myth or dream, And in that dream, I speak, I summon all Who are our friends somehow and thus I say: "Bid the jewellers come with monocles, Exclaiming, Pure! Intrinsic! Final! Summon the children eating ice cream To speak the chill thrill of immediacy.
Call for the acrobats who tumble The ecstasy of the somersault.
Bid the self-sufficient stars be piercing In the sublime and inexhaustible blue.
"Bring a mathematician, there is much to count, The unending continuum of my attention: Infinity will hurry his multiplied voice! Bring the poised impeccable diver, Summon the skater, precise in figure, He knows the peril of circumstance, The risk of movement and the hard ground.
Summon the florist! And the tobacconist! All who have known a plant-like beauty: Summon the charming bird for ignorant song.
"You, Athena, with your tired beauty, Will you give me away? For you must come In a bathing suit with that white owl Whom, as I walk, I will hold in my hand.
You too, Crusoe, to utter the emotion Of finding Friday, no longer alone; You too, Chaplin, muse of the curbstone, Mummer of hope, you understand!" But this is fantastic and pitiful, And no one comes, none will, we are alone, And what is possible is my own voice, Speaking its wish, despite its lasting fear; Speaking of its hope, its promise and its fear, The voice drunk with itself and rapt in fear, Exaggeration, braggadocio, Rhetoric and hope, and always fear: "For fifty-six or for a thousand years, I will live with you and be your friend, And what your body and what your spirit bears I will like my own body cure and tend.
But you are heavy and my body's weight Is great and heavy: when I carry you I lift upon my back time like a fate Near as my heart, dark when I marry you.
"The voice's promise is easy, and hope Is drunk, and wanton, and unwilled; In time's quicksilver, where our desires grope, The dream is warped or monstrously fulfilled, In this sense, listen, listen, and draw near: Love is inexhaustible and full of fear.
" This life is endless and my eyes are tired, So that, again and again, I touch a chair, Or go to the window, press my face Against it, hoping with substantial touch, Colorful sight, or turning things to gain once more The look of actuality, the certainty Of those who run down stairs and drive a car.
Then let us be each other's truth, let us Affirm the other's self, and be The other's audience, the other's state, Each to the other his sonorous fame.
Now you will be afraid, when, waking up, Before familiar morning, by my mute side Wan and abandoned then, when, waking up, You see the lion or lamb upon my face Or see the daemon breathing heavily His sense of ignorance, his wish to die, For I am nothing because my circus self Divides its love a million times.
I am the octopus in love with God, For thus is my desire inconclusible, Until my mind, deranged in swimming tubes, Issues its own darkness, clutching seas ---O God of my perfect ignorance, Bring the New Year to my only sister soon, Take from me strength and power to bless her head, Give her the magnitude of secular trust, Until she turns to me in her troubled sleep, Seeing me in my wish, free from self-wrongs.
Written by Lewis Carroll | Create an image from this poem

Fit the First: ( Hunting of the Snark )

 The Landing 

"Just the place for a Snark!" the Bellman cried,
As he landed his crew with care;
Supporting each man on the top of the tide
By a finger entwined in his hair.
"Just the place for a Snark! I have said it twice: That alone should encourage the crew.
Just the place for a Snark! I have said it thrice: What I tell you three times is true.
" The crew was complete: it included a Boots-- A maker of Bonnets and Hoods-- A Barrister, brought to arrange their disputes-- And a Broker, to value their goods.
A Billiard-marker, whose skill was immense, Might perhaps have won more than his share-- But a Banker, engaged at enormous expense, Had the whole of their cash in his care.
There was also a Beaver, that paced on the deck, Or would sit making lace in the bow: And had often (the Bellman said) saved them from wreck Though none of the sailors knew how.
There was one who was famed for the number of things He forgot when he entered the ship: His umbrella, his watch, all his jewels and rings, And the clothes he had bought for the trip.
He had forty-two boxes, all carefully packed, With his name painted clearly on each: But, since he omitted to mention the fact, They were all left behind on the beach.
The loss of his clothes hardly mattered, because He had seven coats on when he came, With three pair of boots--but the worst of is was, He had wholly forgotten his name.
He would answer to "Hi!" or to any loud cry, Such as "Fry me!" or "Fritter my wig!" To "What-you-may-call-um!" or "What-was-his-name!" But especially "Thing-um-a-jig!" While, for those who preferred a more forcible word, He had different names from these: His intimate friends called him "Candle-ends", And his enemies "Toasted-cheese" "His form is ungainly--his intellect small--" (So the Bellman would often remark)-- "But his courage is perfect! And that, after all, Is the thing that one needs with a Snark.
" He would joke with hyaenas, returning their stare With an impudent wag of the head: And he once went a walk, paw-in-paw, with a bear, "Just to keep up its spirits," he said.
He came as a Baker: but owned, when too late-- And it drove the poor Bellman half-mad-- He could only bake Bridecake--for which, I may state, No materials were to be had.
The last of the crew needs especial remark, Though he looked an incredible dunce: He had just one idea--but, that one being "Snark", The good Bellman engaged him at once.
He came as a Butcher: but gravely declared, When the ship had been sailing a week, He could only kill Beavers.
The Bellman looked scared, And was almost too frightened to speak: But at length he explained, in a tremulous tone, There was only one Beaver on board; And that was a tame one he had of his own, Whose death would be deeply deplored.
The Beaver, who happened to hear the remark, Protested, with tears in its eyes, That not even the rapture of hunting the Snark Could atone for that dismal surprise! It strongly advised that the Butcher should be Conveyed in a separate ship: But the Bellman declared that would never agree With the plans he had made for the trip: Navigation was always a difficult art, Though with only one ship and one bell: And he feared he must really decline, for his part, Undertaking another as well.
The Beaver's best course was, no doubt, to procure A second-hand dagger-proof coat-- So the baker advised it--and next, to insure Its life in some Office of note: This the Baker suggested, and offered for hire (On moderate terms), or for sale, Two excellent Policies, one Against Fire And one Against Damage From Hail.
Yet still, ever after that sorrowful day, Whenever the Butcher was by, The Beaver kept looking the opposite way, And appeared unaccountably shy.
Written by Galway Kinnell | Create an image from this poem

Wait

 Wait, for now.
Distrust everything, if you have to.
But trust the hours.
Haven't they carried you everywhere, up to now? Personal events will become interesting again.
Hair will become interesting.
Pain will become interesting.
Buds that open out of season will become lovely again.
Second-hand gloves will become lovely again, their memories are what give them the need for other hands.
And the desolation of lovers is the same: that enormous emptiness carved out of such tiny beings as we are asks to be filled; the need for the new love is faithfulness to the old.
Wait.
Don't go too early.
You're tired.
But everyone's tired.
But no one is tired enough.
Only wait a while and listen.
Music of hair, Music of pain, music of looms weaving all our loves again.
Be there to hear it, it will be the only time, most of all to hear, the flute of your whole existence, rehearsed by the sorrows, play itself into total exhaustion.


Written by Rudyard Kipling | Create an image from this poem

Cells

 I've a head like a concertina: I've a tongue like a button-stick:
I've a mouth like an old potato, and I'm more than a little sick,
But I've had my fun o' the Corp'ral's Guard: I've made the cinders fly,
And I'm here in the Clink for a thundering drink and blacking the Corporal's eye.
With a second-hand overcoat under my head, And a beautiful view of the yard, O it's pack-drill for me and a fortnight's C.
B.
For "drunk and resisting the Guard!" Mad drunk and resisting the Guard -- 'Strewth, but I socked it them hard! So it's pack-drill for me and a fortnight's C.
B.
For "drunk and resisting the Guard.
" I started o' canteen porter, I finished o' canteen beer, But a dose o' gin that a mate slipped in, it was that that brought me here.
'Twas that and an extry double Guard that rubbed my nose in the dirt; But I fell away with the Corp'ral's stock and the best of the Corp'ral's shirt.
I left my cap in a public-house, my boots in the public road, And Lord knows where, and I don't care, my belt and my tunic goed; They'll stop my pay, they'll cut away the stripes I used to wear, But I left my mark on the Corp'ral's face, and I think he'll keep it there! My wife she cries on the barrack-gate, my kid in the barrack-yard, It ain't that I mind the Ord'ly room -- it's that that cuts so hard.
I'll take my oath before them both that I will sure abstain, But as soon as I'm in with a mate and gin, I know I'll do it again! With a second-hand overcoat under my head, And a beautiful view of the yard, Yes, it's pack-drill for me and a fortnight's C.
B.
For "drunk and resisting the Guard!" Mad drunk and resisting the Guard -- 'Strewth, but I socked it them hard! So it's pack-drill for me and a fortnight's C.
B.
For "drunk and resisting the Guard.
"
Written by Alec Derwent (A D) Hope | Create an image from this poem

Australia

 A Nation of trees, drab green and desolate grey 
In the field uniform of modern wars, 
Darkens her hills, those endless, outstretched paws 
Of Sphinx demolished or stone lion worn away.
They call her a young country, but they lie: She is the last of lands, the emptiest, A woman beyond her change of life, a breast Still tender but within the womb is dry.
Without songs, architecture, history: The emotions and superstitions of younger lands, Her rivers of water drown among inland sands, The river of her immense stupidity Floods her monotonous tribes from Cairns to Perth.
In them at last the ultimate men arrive Whose boast is not: "we live" but "we survive", A type who will inhabit the dying earth.
And her five cities, like five teeming sores, Each drains her: a vast parasite robber-state Where second hand Europeans pullulate Timidly on the edge of alien shores.
Yet there are some like me turn gladly home From the lush jungle of modern thought, to find The Arabian desert of the human mind, Hoping, if still from the deserts the prophets come, Such savage and scarlet as no green hills dare Springs in that waste, some spirit which escapes The learned doubt, the chatter of cultured apes Which is called civilization over there.
Written by Carl Sandburg | Create an image from this poem

Knucks

 IN Abraham Lincoln’s city,
Where they remember his lawyer’s shingle,
The place where they brought him
Wrapped in battle flags,
Wrapped in the smoke of memories
From Tallahassee to the Yukon,
The place now where the shaft of his tomb
Points white against the blue prairie dome,
In Abraham Lincoln’s city … I saw knucks
In the window of Mister Fischman’s second-hand store
On Second Street.
I went in and asked, “How much?” “Thirty cents apiece,” answered Mister Fischman.
And taking a box of new ones off a shelf He filled anew the box in the showcase And said incidentally, most casually And incidentally: “I sell a carload a month of these.
” I slipped my fingers into a set of knucks, Cast-iron knucks molded in a foundry pattern, And there came to me a set of thoughts like these: Mister Fischman is for Abe and the “malice to none” stuff, And the street car strikers and the strike-breakers, And the sluggers, gunmen, detectives, policemen, Judges, utility heads, newspapers, priests, lawyers, They are all for Abe and the “malice to none” stuff.
I started for the door.
“Maybe you want a lighter pair,” Came Mister Fischman’s voice.
I opened the door … and the voice again: “You are a funny customer.
” Wrapped in battle flags, Wrapped in the smoke of memories, This is the place they brought him, This is Abraham Lincoln’s home town.
Written by Carl Sandburg | Create an image from this poem

To a Contemporary Bunkshooter

 YOU come along.
.
.
tearing your shirt.
.
.
yelling about Jesus.
Where do you get that stuff? What do you know about Jesus? Jesus had a way of talking soft and outside of a few bankers and higher-ups among the con men of Jerusalem everybody liked to have this Jesus around because he never made any fake passes and everything he said went and he helped the sick and gave the people hope.
You come along squirting words at us, shaking your fist and calling us all damn fools so fierce the froth slobbers over your lips.
.
.
always blabbing we're all going to hell straight off and you know all about it.
I've read Jesus' words.
I know what he said.
You don't throw any scare into me.
I've got your number.
I know how much you know about Jesus.
He never came near clean people or dirty people but they felt cleaner because he came along.
It was your crowd of bankers and business men and lawyers hired the sluggers and murderers who put Jesus out of the running.
I say the same bunch backing you nailed the nails into the hands of this Jesus of Nazareth.
He had lined up against him the same crooks and strong-arm men now lined up with you paying your way.
This Jesus was good to look at, smelled good, listened good.
He threw out something fresh and beautiful from the skin of his body and the touch of his hands wherever he passed along.
You slimy bunkshooter, you put a smut on every human blossom in reach of your rotten breath belching about hell-fire and hiccupping about this Man who lived a clean life in Galilee.
When are you going to quit making the carpenters build emergency hospitals for women and girls driven crazy with wrecked nerves from your gibberish about Jesus--I put it to you again: Where do you get that stuff; what do you know about Jesus? Go ahead and bust all the chairs you want to.
Smash a whole wagon load of furniture at every performance.
Turn sixty somersaults and stand on your nutty head.
If it wasn't for the way you scare the women and kids I'd feel sorry for you and pass the hat.
I like to watch a good four-flusher work, but not when he starts people puking and calling for the doctors.
I like a man that's got nerve and can pull off a great original performance, but you--you're only a bug- house peddler of second-hand gospel--you're only shoving out a phoney imitation of the goods this Jesus wanted free as air and sunlight.
You tell people living in shanties Jesus is going to fix it up all right with them by giving them mansions in the skies after they're dead and the worms have eaten 'em.
You tell $6 a week department store girls all they need is Jesus; you take a steel trust wop, dead without having lived, gray and shrunken at forty years of age, and you tell him to look at Jesus on the cross and he'll be all right.
You tell poor people they don't need any more money on pay day and even if it's fierce to be out of a job, Jesus'll fix that up all right, all right--all they gotta do is take Jesus the way you say.
I'm telling you Jesus wouldn't stand for the stuff you're handing out.
Jesus played it different.
The bankers and lawyers of Jerusalem got their sluggers and murderers to go after Jesus just because Jesus wouldn't play their game.
He didn't sit in with the big thieves.
I don't want a lot of gab from a bunkshooter in my religion.
I won't take my religion from any man who never works except with his mouth and never cherishes any memory except the face of the woman on the American silver dollar.
I ask you to come through and show me where you're pouring out the blood of your life.
I've been to this suburb of Jerusalem they call Golgotha, where they nailed Him, and I know if the story is straight it was real blood ran from His hands and the nail-holes, and it was real blood spurted in red drops where the spear of the Roman soldier rammed in between the ribs of this Jesus of Nazareth.
Written by Edmund Spenser | Create an image from this poem

Amoretti LXXV: One Day I Wrote Her Name

 One day I wrote her name upon the strand,
But came the waves and washed it away:
Again I wrote it with a second hand,
But came the tide, and made my pains his prey.
"Vain man," said she, "that dost in vain assay, A mortal thing so to immortalize; For I myself shall like to this decay, And eke my name be wiped out likewise.
" "Not so," (quod I) "let baser things devise To die in dust, but you shall live by fame: My verse your vertues rare shall eternize, And in the heavens write your glorious name: Where whenas death shall all the world subdue, Our love shall live, and later life renew.
"

Book: Shattered Sighs