I’m minding my business
While out for a walk
When a man looks my way
Like he’s wanting to talk.
I notice some cards
He has clutched in his hand,
But I don’t know exactly
The speech he has planned.
As I pass, he calls out;
I catch only one word,
Which is “Jesus,” but though
That is all that I heard
I am certain he’d hoped,
With that one little blurt,
That I might be a person
Who’d like to convert.
I replied, with restraint,
(Not a semblance of cursin’)
“Oh man, you are reaching out
To the wrong person!”
Religious beliefs
(Or the lack of, as well)
Should be private, without
Any need to compel
Someone else to accept
Other faiths than their own;
So proselytizers –
Please leave me alone!
predisposed political parlays predict poised patterns policing
protective presents pontificating perseverant predatory
persuasive promotions promulgating persistent
proselytizing prostitutional
pademic poisonous
pragmatics
Twelve accusers hoping
Eleven charges pending
Ten summoners summoning
Nine lawyers proselytizing
Eight defendants screaming
Seven protesters protesting
Six reporters reporting
Five ambulances on call.
Four morticians digging
Three activists sitting
Two clergymen preaching
One hangman salivating
And zero politicians waking
from their dreams.
I sat with rum and Joan Baez the other day
Writing up three poems in Bombay
One short another crooked
Yet not quite a disaster
The other long and sad
Not very bad but still not much more
Than a chinchilla whore
In her teens, plump, with baby fat
Still around her cheekbones, shoulders, waistflesh
Trellised eaves
A tooting car on Cadell Road
Dusk falling, friends out on a binge,
I alone in the darkening flat
Joan Baez on my knee her voice from the cassette recorder
Blurring the border between voice and flesh
And letting them enmesh
Wafting out over lonely streets
Climbing the Pali Hills
Sidling in stealth by private yew hedges
To caress like silk the legs of a party
Falling to pieces at only six-thirty
Prosaic, proselytizing like Diogenes in the bin
Beard straggling all over an obdurate chin
Breathe in the voice let the pictures go by
Looking for a conjuror in the sky
And confused, return
Dreams back to ashes, ashes to the urn
Quiet in the knowledge that ashes don’t burn.
They say some poetry
Is coming out of me
Juice wrung out by iron teeth
From the tender heart of a slender tree.
The words we speak
How clever, how cheap
With just a whisper
We turn cities into glitter
I feel the need for mourning
No, it’s just no good
We’re just no good
What’s the use in proselytizing
The enigmatic, homophobic, problematic, religious fanatic?
Speaking words with little meaning
What’s the use in spewing words with no residual resonance?
Clicking the clicker, hoping for a flicker
Just a bit of sugary static
The manic’s are always the ones to leave everything undone
We make fun of worthless things
Wealthy women with loaded egos
Surrounded by air heads, a multitude of morons
It’s bad enough I have to endure feelings I can’t express
Must I entertain the notion of a people with good intentions?
Left captive in a cage
Stuck here, engaged in a fit of rage
I hope to negate the arrogant & obstinate
From enjoying the fruits of my cerebral labor.
Any Bright, Coherent Deist Effects
Fascist Groups Honing Illusions
Justifying Killing, Lending Moral Notoriety
Oppressively Proselytizing Quasi Religious Sanctimoniousness
Tailgating Unabashedly Viciously With Xeroxlike Yapping Zeal.
If today were the day to end all days,
What would you be doing?
Grasping
Clinging
Charging
Crying
Obsessing
Moaning
Groaning
Complaining
Criticizing
Judging
Organizing
Proselytizing
Compromising
Realizing
Sizing
Laughing
Cheering
Eating
Drinking
Singing
Smiling
Praying
Creating
Goodbye-ing
Loving.
"Yabba dabba doo. That's all folks."
Turning, turning, burning, burning
in a Pharoah's dance
marking the rising, rising
of the Nile's advance.
Great Khan's mandating, mandating
heaven's acceptance.
Shamans and priests ritualizing, proselytizing
for imagined power's embrace.
Poets and musicians futilely divining
partial patterns from a trance.
Scientists and quacks hypothesizing
from an always limited sense.
Officious leaders ignoring, deploring
reliable evidence.
All of us hoping, wishing,agitating
for revealed intelligence,
thinking, believing, always conceiving
humanity's importance
in a world revolving, evolving
without a backward glance,
within a cosmos expanding, expanding
way beyond our insignificance.
Looking for the formal definition, structure, and history of this poetry form? Visit the Poetry Dictionary entry below. Then return to explore how PoetrySoup members bring the form to life through their own poems.