Three poems by J Barret Wolf

Atheist haiku…

nothing is out there and wishing will not change that be good anyway. t
he sky wearing stars a billion years of the dust that comes to be us.
things that don’t exist things that are invisible what’s the difference?
Just because it’s there in the pages of a book? Harry Potter lives!

 

Rough Day

I have given up deities.
A world that serves us napalm and Dahmer
in the same hot breath as the exquisite turn of your thigh
is clearly run by the committee for a swift return to Bedlam.
This camel of a life was once a sturdy draught horse,
Now it’s proof that evolution moves in both directions.
While adoration is always an option, This is a commonplace world,
where the furnace is grinding through the last of the oil
on the other side of a sheet rock wall.
I still strive. Want. Beg for the chance to choose sides
in the blue-gray civil war of your eyes.
The day we learn that Worship only works on gods,
and there aren’t any of those in the vicinity, is a sad day.
I suspect every moment of plotting our demise.

In defense of Mrs. Lot

She was turned into to a pillar, The story goes, for looking back.
Unable to close her eyes to a retribution
Against the few who stalked in darkness —
Not ten righteous men, said the angels. Not a woman…
Yet, what young child of Sodom deserved To die by fire?
What infant, brimstone? Like the story of the flood.
A world castigated for the sins of a few.
Only Noah and his family saved,
To build and cower before the will of a god
So impotent that water, then fire and ash
Could not rid the world of evil. Lot’s wife was brave.
Just as a column of the temple Is unable to bend, someone must stand,
Against capricious anger,
Refuse to obey, refuse to depart
Without so much as a look
At the dust and sulfur cast upon the plain.
She turned to salt, it is written,
Tasting of oceans and tears,
Salt of the Earth.
Without which, there is no life.


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