the heel of the boot iii

morning lag,
saddle bag snag
locked up rear
momentary fear
east is beast
west for rest
the church by the wine bar
they ring the bells
to summon up
the ghosts from hell
until they have
a quorum
to discuss matters
ecclesial
in their
worthy forum
there was
anarchic popelessness,
the vatican
was hopeless with
erratic sin
and soulless stress
you understand
the mess we’re in!

we had some funny luck with our bikes on the holiday. the crank arm was threaded and the pedal fell off. we got a different bike. and we had a little difficulty with balancing above, rather than on, the tarmac. the saddle bag strap on my bike snapped and the bag fell into the wheel and the strap got stuck in the brake caliper. although the first i knew of it was a noise and the wheel locking up. quite scary but kept it upright.

under his eye iv

so, pope bob the communist,
riddle me this
if all of life
is formed of carbon,
ejected from the factory chimney
which i understand it is
are the two poles
of the toothbrush moustache,
mirth and antimirth?
matter and antimatter
genocide and love
and why does the church
always make things worse?

so i think i like pope bob. obviously, he believes in all the bad catholic stuff like homophobia and sexism. but at least he is against war and generally against poverty and for love, of some sort. so yes, i like him fine as pope. but not enough to tempt me to transubstantionate with him.

under his eye ii

crying to my mother
in the phone booth
an undiagnosed autistic
immature youth
unable to verbalise,
understand, explain
the abhorrent situation
i was in…
i had no way to pray
for succour
no deus ex machina
from the kirk

i seem to think about the pope more than most catholics. i always found church confusing as a child. jesus was a hippy peacenik sort of character. church people seemed much more stern. fundamentally uncool. it’s hard to imagine jesus ordering the burning of witches, or driving a land rover, or paying his workers a subsistence wage, or speculating in capital. or coveting wealth generally. yet so many rich people claim to be christians. like, as if they think the lower orders are too thick to spot the contradiction.

under his eye i

since the pope died,
i’ve had religion on my mind
child protection and it’s opposite,
no child’s left behind
i endured the kirk
and a ton of bunk
in the mid nineties
on a coach trip
to innsbruck
some older kids and me
i only joined the club to play football.
how did i end up here?

i’ve been on a bit of a poetic frenzy recently. i feel an urge to overproduce poetry, to give me some spare time to do other things. but then i have a spare moment and i work on some more poetry. because it’s fun. so maybe i’ll never finish the bloody novel i’m working on. it’s called ‘the san estaban mayoral election of 2016’, subtitle ‘a historical novel by n.n. benn’

if i wasn’t called n n benn i’d have gone for red blaes

a pontiff
post-pontificating
has a point if hope remains
but dust will
surely settle
on his line in the blaes
departure
led suggestion
ask always ‘what is right?’
rather than
the usual
‘what did we do last time?’

with the changing of the popes i was thinking a lot about religion i guess. the last pope was alright. definitely better than ratzinger. but i have a lot of hope for pope bob. not that i’m a catholic. but a pope is a powerful man. i wish the president was more like pope bob.

red blaes was a sort of surface that used to be common for football and hockey pitches. i skinned my knees on it many times. a sort of pink dusty cinder with little jaggy stones in it. there is still some of it about. anyway, you could draw a line on it, like sand.

and its good that the future isn’t like the past. let’s not give up yet on making the world a bit better for the next generations of earthlings, plants, animals and mushrooms alike.

the christmas rush (for profits)

we share lunar nectar
from the honeymoon phase
i’m melodramatic.
a little bit insane
come on to it,
we’ll get through it
furnished on pews at church for the bell
for those in the business
of avoiding hell
a prayer for vast,
wasteful riches
research and develop a needless
needle’s eye
and call it camel sized
to scadge a tad of marked time
then a renegade point one nine
in and out caused a firm, wide flummoxing…
i’ll be driving the laptop home
for christmas this year

happy/merry christmas, delete as appropriate.

my love and i shakily reunited, exchanging christmas gifts. she got me a guernsey. i got her a little scroll in a charm on a necklace. we decided to surrender to love.

work was busy, but i had a new thing lined up, and i was getting itchy for a new year, a new challenge, a new configuration.

my darling and i went to church to hear the choir. sadly it was their day off, so we just endured a freezing cold sermon. at least hell’s warm.

in purgatory every pain and every pleasure you caused will be inflicted back / and you will judge yourself

i don’t know where this came from. frankly, i can only assume some deity or other was using my mind instrumentally to communicate a new policy of the afterlife.

this is my problem with religions, they aren’t selling the product hard enough. now, i’m a good candidate for salvation. i’m keen to cause no harm. i know that only the devil can offer in-life boosters and that the whole deal of belief is for the afterlife. so if they want my custom, they need to start banging on about what facilities etc are available in their afterlife plan.

i need the info on why proddie heaven is better than the hindu rebirth thing and why neither stack up to valhalla or whatever. i need to find the religion with the right afterlife for me.