Best Heretical Poems
Nonbeliever
by Michael R. Burch writing as Kim Cherub
She smiled a thin-lipped smile
(What do men know of love?)
then rolled her eyes toward heaven
(Or that Chauvinist above?).
pretty pickle
by Michael R. Burch
u’d blaspheme if u could
because ur God’s no good,
but of course u cant:
ur a lowly ant
(or so u were told by a Hierophant).
Jesus was a carpenter,
he worked with saw and hammer.
He pounded, banged, for 20 years,
it was an awful clamor.
Then he spent three years a'preachin',
he never had a stammer.
At last they nailed him to a cross,
nevermore to yammer.
Meditating in the garden Gethsemane
Jesus decides to become agnostic
not believing the religion himself
perceiving a clearly telling prognostic
He sat within the still winds then
blowing all the possibilities around
his soulful mind could not pretend
birthing this idea was fundamentally sound
"What am I doing here anyway?" he thought
"What made me think to try to do,
that, that mankind cannot be taught.
It'd be better, without all this ballyhoo"
"Love one an' another I said on the mount"
blessed are the meek, the pure, the mild,
yet these souls seem incapable to surmount
their tendencies toward erratic and wild"
All these thoughts swirled in his head
his darkness matched the coal cold night
thought he'd maybe retire to Cairo instead
maybe turn a new corner with his life
He was just about to firm his thought
and tip-toe toward that far away land,
when for the few disks of silver bought,
troops took him forcibly, in their hand
The crowd, the soldiers, the leaders all,
insisted that the show must continue
Jesus had grave reservations after all
and tried to move to a whole new venue
But the die was cast, the end was clear
the faith of the faithful must be built
now Jesus thought this strangely *****
that faith be created by him being killed
"These people are a bloody race,
the god before them is bloody too,
to die for god, to save his face
seems an unkind, unforgiving, thing to do"
Crossing o'er on crossed beams of wood
Jesus, painfully, was now aware,
the ironic irony nailed him good.
"This race of people, they just don't care."
© Goode Guy 2013-01-07
There once was a poet named Hanks
Who loved to play metrical pranks;
A master of rhyme
And sonnets sublime
He'd nevertheless be the first to confess
That his messing with scansion caused lavish expansion
Of ultimate lines which knew no confines,
Defying all schools of rhythmical rules,
Resulting in poetic angst!
01/10/18
'A form of mischief contest' : sponsored by Nina Parmenter
I hope you can appreciate that heretical Hanks has conformed to the Limerick's rhyming regulations AABBA but taken huge liberties with the rhythm and acceptable final line word allowance!
There was a humble man
in empathy with cosmic light,
who in desert climes
filled his head with stars at night,
distilling their bright beauty
to shine within his mystic soul,
in rays of old, blue wisdom,
reminded him, of how
their sight had arrived
from their long, long journey
to the magic in his own eyes :
Some called him Christ.
Nonduality
imbued him from above
and from the ancient east
but to the west
his sun would set on scorn,
save those who loved him as a man.
Few words would serve the vision
that he served so well,
and few can tell
how words, became the disease
set down on papyri,
how man might reign -
pay lip - service to distorted truth
and cork the wine of centuries.
When his path came to a dead end
a tall, magnificent tree
gripped the edge with it's roots
and he bravely, hung there to climb it,
to see out, far and wide,
in grief to know,
accused of blasphemy
how little he was understood,
when ' nil by mouth '
and with no tubes to feed him
he cried out and died,
pointing to what he had seen
and how narrow his way had been.
...........................................................................
I am not one of ten billion—I—
sunblackened Icarus, chary fly,
staring at God with a quizzical eye.
I am not one of ten billion, I.
I am not one life has left unsquashed—
scarred as Ulysses, goddess-debauched,
pale glowworm agleam with a tale of panache.
I am not one life has left unsquashed.
I am not one without spots of disease,
laugh lines and tan lines and thick-callused knees
from begging and praying and girls sighing "Please! "
I am not one without spots of disease.
I am not one of ten billion—I—
scion of Daedalus, blackwinged fly
staring at God with a sedulous eye.
I am not one of ten billion, I
AM!
Heretically speaking
…I am at odds with myself
Various Heresies 12
God Had a Plan
by Michael R. Burch
God had a plan
though it was hardly “divine.”
He created a terror:
Frankenstein.
He blamed death on man:
was that part of the plan
so hard to define,
or did he just cut his losses?
Now sleepless he tosses
hearing the screams,
the wild anger and fear
of men in despair.
"Just disappear!,"
he cries to himself
on his fearful bed,
tearful, afraid
of those he misled.
Ah-men!
The Final Revelation of a Departed God’s Divine Plan
by Michael R. Burch
Here I am, talking to myself again . . .
pissed off at God and bored with humanity.
These insectile mortals keep testing my sanity!
Still, I remember when . . .
planting odd notions, dark inklings of vanity,
in their peapod heads might elicit an inanity
worth a chuckle or two.
Philosophers, poets . . . how they all made me laugh!
The things they dreamed up! Sly Odysseus’s raft;
Plato’s Republic; Dante’s strange crew;
Shakespeare’s Othello, mad Hamlet, Macbeth;
Cervantes’ Quixote; fat, funny Falstaff!;
Blake’s shimmering visions. Those days, though, are through . . .
for, puling and tedious, their “poets” now seem
content to write, but not to dream,
and they fill the world with their pale derision
of things they completely fail to understand.
Now, since God has long fled, I am here, in command,
reading this crap. Earth is Hell. We’re all damned.
Keywords/Tags: Heresy, Heresies, God, religion, religious, christian, Jesus, divine plan, death, man, men, screams, anger, fear, despair, Divine Plan
Good at assembling spiritual mishmash,
High expectations raising for big cash
In the open for Despair full fury:
The demons behind them for his jury…
Chooser of the Language of Pentecost
He may have acquired at a great cost:
Body movements take on the pugilist’s
For all Contrary Spirits’ flying fists!
No vows made he wouldn’t try kung-fu kicks,
His smarter left leg foes one by one picks…
The events in the Bible come alive
Clever links with the current trends survive;
Sometimes seems he would afterwards vanish,
One recalls words: he did nothing varnish.
More and more hearers of the Word-Life swarm
And this as a development - Uh! – warm…
“Now, I want to the Devil embarrass
But as I cast him out might some harass.
Therefore, you vacate where I now point to:
It’ll mean I won’t afresh to God cry to…”
“Next, sands under your feet take a handful;
Then, at the sky look with a face thankful.
Despair is done for as you repeat these:
I come against you Despair; right now, freeze”
Crescendo Against Heaven
by Michael R. Burch
As curiously formal as the rose,
the imperious Word grows
until its sheds red-gilded leaves:
then heaven grieves
love’s tiny pool of crimson recrimination
against God, its contention
of the price of salvation.
These industrious trees,
endlessly losing and re-losing their leaves,
finally unleashing themselves from earth, lashing
themselves to bits, washing
themselves free
of all but the final ignominy
of death, become
at last: fast planks of our coffins, dumb.
Together now, rude coffins, crosses,
death-cursed but bright vermillion roses,
bodies, stumps, tears, words: conspire
together with a nearby spire
to raise their Accusation Dire ...
to scream, complain, to point out these
and other Dark Anomalies.
God always silent, ever afar,
distant as Bethlehem’s retrograde star,
we point out now, in resignation:
You asked too much of man’s beleaguered nation,
gave too much strength to his Enemy,
as though to prove Your Self greater than He,
at our expense, and so men die
(whose accusations vex the sky)
yet hope, somehow, that You are good ...
just, O greatest of Poets!, misunderstood.