Formed in wickedness, born in sin,
tarnished by selfishness within.
Loving evil, hating good,
sinning freely, because we could.
No room for God within our hearts
since Satan lives in every part.
Our body parts are slaves to sin
There's no trace of rightness within.
Fully depraved, we live like slaves,
Pleasures of life is all we crave.
Chained by sin, in darkness we grope
In deep despair, lost without hope.
God sent His Son to this dark earth
so, like us, He'll share human birth.
In man’s flesh, He lived a pure life
In this dark world of sin and strife.
On a cross, He suffered and died,
breaking sin’s curse, turning the tide.
Paying sin’s price, for you and I,
thanks to God, we don’t have to die.
If you want to live and not die,
pray to God, He’ll hear your cry.
Confess your sin, and from it run
reject Satan, accept His Son,
God is love, He’ll save you from sin,
change your mind, and purge you within.
Then you’ll joy in His warm embrace,
free from death’s grip, saved by His grace.
I come to you not as a suitor
(Who could sue for heaven’s grace?)
nor as a lover, for lovers steal
from each other, and how can
the ocean be stolen by the stream?
You hold my hope for forgiveness
In your open hand, with a gift more sacred
Than a child’s kiss. Innocence flows
From everywhere you stand
And love from every place
You visit.
Too pure for unkind thoughts,
You insist on absolute rightness
In all things and since all things
Are in your open hand
You deserve
Pure love.
You are the gift the universe
Bestowed on me
To compensate for
My lost loves and
Lost innocence
Now found
In your
Name.
So I, for whom passion has reached an end,
sue to be, not your lover, but your friend,
once a witness to the light in your face,
now happily see that light in every place.
Christopher M. Swan 2008
Green and yellow,
Lime of sunrise before,
Orange in front,
Rhymes on the board,
Queen of Saba goes to North,
Cross with rainbow,
From Bethlehem to Luxor,
It signifies no slay, no rob,
Shoot the sheriff of sorrow,
Rightness of heart not wrong,
Notes are colors,
My song and psalm,
The road of hope,
God of love above,
I don't stop like arrow,
The sword one on one,
Icon of one vagabond,
The world around,
Stopping the pale albatross, this storm,
Like a contractor the Patriot,
But precise, Ivanhoe, more,
Gone and not gone,
Noe with the Dove.
Winter withers all the meadow’s flowers,
and the frozen hours
paint the woodlands pale:
as the snowfalls thicken,
lindens cast their stricken
branches stark against the season’s whiteness.
Yet I mourn this barrenness less sadly
than I grieve how badly
Shame and Honor fail:
Honor’s stream runs shallow,
Virtue’s field lies fallow,
no heart seeks to cull the rose of rightness.
The spring restores the leaves and petals to the flowers on the thorn-hedge,
but the man whom wickedness has taken
and who has forsaken
Honor’s holy pledge
walks a path of sorrows,
nor can face tomorrow’s
gleaming dawn secure in manhood’s brightness.
— translated from the Middle High German
---------------------------------------------------------------
A font that deemed to have no voice,
That too little freedom enjoys,
Few give a second thought
In choosing-- if or not,
Whilst to some makes aesthetic choice.
For Times New Roman’s century,
Calibri’s not even twenty,
Is deemed as an upstart
To lack fine sense of art
And suffer some ‘wokeness’
When weighed against rightness
Where age defines personality.
To Marco Rubio
It is perhaps more so
Where old order out of way be.
_____________________
Happenings | 16.12.2025 | fonts, words, humour, political, USA, limerick
Note: US secretary of state Marco Rubio junked a typeface ‘coz it’s too PC (politically correct). Perhaps what he meant was: too Biden-faced!
As I sat thinking the other day,
A flow of thoughts brought these words to say.
Some were fleeting, some longer lasting,
Like the evening shadows the sun was casting.
Quenching my thirst for knowledge to be known,
Neither rightness nor wrongness had a need to be shown.
Titles and labels were thrown to the floor,
As aspects and insights began to soar.
How can the beginnings and endings be understood?
If we look inside, then they could.
It’s looking inside, to determine the intention,
That reveals a truth that fuels comprehension.
It’s the essence of Truth that we must perceive,
To see its value so we can believe.
Through perception to conception, we begin to relish,
The connection to perfection, we then can embellish.
Life has many mirrors
like a Fun House,
many nooks and crannies
different paths and roadways
that can take you
in various directions
You may believe
steadfast in your feelings
that you have chosen
the right one, the one for you
But after awhile
other circumstances come to light
new emotions surface
and you begin to question
the rightness of it all
Was it just a temporary station
on your path of existence?
Was it all a learning experience
fostering growth, expansion?
Questions for eternity
Two hearts glare at each other
Clutching their stone tablets
Written by the finger of their rightness,
Guarding the secret handshake
In single sighted delinquent tantrums
Refusing to share the offertory
Of a loving cup -
Consumed by daggers of thoughtless words
Carved deeply in a scarred heart.
Floral offerings wilt
Upon stone manifestos
Where ashes of incense lay impotent
To clear the air
And wipe clean the embedded words.
Passion falls in pixels of distortion
Blurring valleys where sacred poles burn –
Lie in dust written in the past –
Paralyzed
Unable to rise from handwritten crypts
Placed in captive marble altars,
Epithets like an epitaph for love.
Immoveable stone resists the transcendent
Until forgiveness’ chisel
Re-writes the script of etched words
Crumbling in swaddled tears of humility
That know their need for grace
Consummated in love’s perfect signature.
Being how you are on purpose,
and being what you are is often effortless,
I suggest a course of non-action.
Self-help from mentors
will land you both pickled in the same cosmic jar.
There are all kinds of just rightness,
stay put,
being your own special kind of fit
in this misfit world.
Reality is a jigsaw puzzle for the sightless,
be the last piece to be found.
("Outside Looking In Merit Badge" - MB #40, 2011, original oil)
Echo Chambers
'Everybody’s talkin’ at me
I don’t hear a word they’re saying
Only the echos of my mind….'
And so it is, and so it goes.
Everyone in their own worlds
Safe and secure within the confines
Of confirmation biases
Building castles made of sand.
Meanwhile the tide swells,
Waves come as they always have,
And always will, as everything we believe in
And hold dear will be washed away.
And still we dream
Secure in the folds of our ignorance
Of the rightness of our cause
Whatever it may be.
(6/2/24)
Unto what shall our era be likened?
Are we like unto people of old?
Are we so far removed from the ancient of days
we gain not from the stories they told?
Has the God of our fathers been vanquished?
Have we found other means to get by?
Is there cause any more for salvation?
Or perhaps are we living a lie?
Unto what shall our era be likened?
We are like they of whom the Lord said -
who dance not when piped
and lament not when mourned
as we sit in the market for bread.
For we claim we want all that God stands for,
be it goodness, or rightness, or peace,
yet with the same lips we say, “Don’t speak of God”
and we’ve done all to make his words cease.
But God surely still reigns in the Heavens,
searching out for the simple and meek.
For as it is written, wisdom is justified…
of her children who quietly seek.
Reference Matthew 11:15-19
The Unsupervised Stop Sign 10-26-23
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The Unsupervised Stop Sign
STOP!
Red lights flash crimson warnings
As arias of bloodred omens swirl about
My heedless headstrong rush past clanging signs
Into a deserted briar filled footpath in desertion.
SLOW DOWN!
Before unattended bowers of simpering weeds
Teach my mindless feet of snares and waiting snakes
While grieving angelic hosts
Sing pathetiques of harbingers.
DANGER!
Scoffing ignorance of neon auguries,
Captured in the throes of blindness,
My scorn winks in guarantees like surety bonds
That no other pathway breaths with rightness.
LOOK! CAUTION!
Heralds of merciful premonitions skirr,
Lay in tatters of disdain - pride traded for prudence
I swat at qualms and question like skeletons of leaves
Only to be swallowed into an abyss of remorse and contrition.
We may wonder if the painter sensed
that perfect revealing, that apogee,
and how it was understood
that all else,
anything now added,
would be a superfluous footnote.
When that exactness,
that 'just rightness'
arrives out of nowhere,
then
description and explanation
must stand just as needless prattle.
When the ineffable happens
it is time
to throw the brush away.
?rightness falls on our eyes,
like the bright summer sunsets,
the moon revolves around the earth,
and we are blessed,
you wear a bright summer dress,
you are earthy, positive, tasty,
you unwind,
you are freedom,
you are breath and oblivion,
and you stroll down the pathways of the heart
and you rise and you fall like the temperature,
healing,
and I come to you and and I am kneeling,
I have sunshine in buckets,
as luck would have it I am released,
you are my girl, my sunlight,
my rest,
my luck,
you are a spoonful of joy
and you are right on the track,
can I wake you with kisses,
and be with you and hold you,
and if you ever fail,
never tell you I told you,
and to move you with song and to savour the moment,
and together to go roaming
and be,
and stay in my heart,
and unfold all your love,
and cling to your warm summer body,
and taste the sand,
and your feet step on mine and you lure me,
into your cave were you cure me,
for what is life without love,
let’s carve out the stars.
Spawny, Spawny, he’s our man!
Bought the farm without the land,
fury-fueled, he took his stand.
Life had not gone as he planned.
Evil came to him unjust.
Sent to Hell in sudden thrust.
Return to Wanda, he must
become foul Hellspawn or bust.
Right the wrong unfairly dealt,
he sought evil where it dwelt.
Moral rightness is his belt,
doing good is how he felt.
Stopping evil now his quest.
Evil men he does detest.
Justice comes at his behest,
anti-hero full of zest.
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