When Jesus hacks the global app, Appearing on everyone’s phone Rousing dead sinners from their nap To pay back their outstanding loan, Then shall we see the Savior’s face and know there is redeeming grace.
When Messiah addresses the world
appearing simultaneously
on every channel,
every smartphone,
every device,
calling the whole earth to faith . . .
When ALL the clans of Judah,
every lost Israelite,
and all the tribes of Ismael,
with every village of Greater Ethiopia,
all Sinim and every Japethite
heed the Messianic voice—
in that day we all shall know: Christ has not yet returned.
Start by reading James Tate’s poem “The List of Famous Hats.”
Now, write a poem that plays with the idea of a list.
TATE, man, Tate—you’re not a poet . . .
And your silly work will show it.
You confirm what poetry feared
When your muses disappeared:
Tawdry prose and rambling verbiage
Must get thrown out with the garbage.
Modern muses shirk their duty,
Trampling, thus, on lyric beauty.
Such non-verse causes one to say: You’re why Poetry sucks today.
Seriously, that boring paragraph by Tate doesn’t even pass for a poem.
It’s a dull and frivolous paragraph about NOTHING.
Here’s my offering for Day 7:
Smoke Rings
With a host of furious fancies
Whereof I am commander,
With a burning spear and a horse of air,
To the wilderness I wander.
Tom O’Bedlam
Born of tobacco, borne on air, Heeding the piper’s fragrant call,
Rising, as they lose their form Circles waft aloft then fall Shimmering ghosts of dead ideals Magnificent in their demise (Unlike most human enterprise.)
Wraiths emerge, phantasms form, mutating, dissipating; organic ephemera swirl and dissolve, interpenetrate in airborne Eros, a pas de deux to the power of three, wherein polylectic philosophy is revealed as a dissolving circle:
Rings must rise. There are fires to stoke: An unnameable emotion Mutability in motion… Pipe enthroned in seraphic smoke. The glowing altar: an abyss As coals illuminate the dark The wicked burn: a smoldering spark Below the briar’s rim, a hiss . . .
Omniscience, celebrated, burns
To send forth children on the air While grace eternally returns Specifically to . . . everywhere. Exhaled, philosophy’s sad ghosts Bow down before the Lord of Hosts.
Lyrics as poetry and prophecy: they reference two verses from Isaiah:
There will be on every high mountain And on every high hill Rivers and streams of waters, In the day of the great slaughter, When the towers fall. [30:25 ]
Your heart will meditate on terror: “ Where is the scribe? Where is he who weighs? Where is he who counts the towers?” [33:18]
Pride of Man by Quicksilver Messenger Service (1968)
Turn around, go back down / back the way you came, Can’t you see that flash of fire
ten times brighter than the day?
And behold a mighty city broken in the dust again,
Oh God, Pride of Man, broken in the dust again…
Turn around, go back down / back the way you came, Babylon is laid to waste / Egypt’s buried in her shame, The mighty men are all beaten down / their kings are fallen in the ways, Oh God, Pride of Man, broken in the dust again…
Turn around, go back down
back the way you came,
Terror is on every side, lo, our leaders are dismayed. For those who place their faith in fire
in fire their faith shall be repaid, Oh God, Pride of Man, broken in the dust again…
Turn around / go back down / back the way you came, And shout a warning unto the nation that the sword of God is raised. Yes, Babylon, that mighty city / rich in treasure, wide in fame,
Oh God, Pride of Man, broken in the dust again…
The meek shall cause your tower to fall,
make of you a pyre of flame, Oh, you who dwell on many waters,
rich in treasure, wide in fame— you bow unto your God of gold,
your pride of might shall be your shame, For only God can lead His people back unto the Earth again.
Oh God, Pride of Man, broken in the dust again.
Thy Holy mountain be restored, have mercy on thy people,
thy people, Lord!
Zhey is to Them as Zhee is to It...
The argument: God got it wrong.
Your singular identikit:
A plural and psychotic song
The selfish language of the young:
Confusion. That’s your mother tongue:
The pronoun wars have lost the day
We shall not call you what you wish, Nor let you serve yourself this way From your strange cracked and leaking dish. Freshmen claim to be dysphoric
Acting merely sophomoric.
We get it. You’re a special kid;
You came, confused, from mama’s womb
With daddy’s chromosomes outbid
By better buyers, we assume.
Have your tantrum—we won’t take it.
Girls are girls and boys can’t fake it.
Regardless how you cut and paste
Or wax autistic at your foes . . .
Reality can’t be defaced
And sin’s rebellion ever shows.
Your gender was confirmed at birth
When you arrived on God’s green earth.
Proud warrior of the gender war:
Change Romance languages, and sex.
Then count your chromosomes once more…
Till Y no longer follows X,
The Lord is God. That does not change
His truth has power to derange.
DYSPHORIC:
adjective; pertaining to dysphoria,
or of being in a state of dysphoria
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