Pastor oh pastor
Stars shine black shuffle madly waiting
Mull silently over the countryside
Heaped clouds and farmers trundle
Their flocks and herds and prayers like children
Back to bed inside stone shelters
Can't convince me of their wiles I am
Braced comfortably feverishly shut
But places fall under
The spell of your seductive whisper
The book you carry in your heart
Is dripping with blood
You must know this
Faith in an unseen, unheard, ambient grace
Is just a solicitation of patronage
Belief merely a business
But my heart and mind are not for sale
As much as any street peddler you lust
In your godly pursuit of power
The same aching will that dominates all humanity
Pushes up your veins and consumes you
I don't believe because I am not willing
To live my life under another's thumb, trivialized
Made secondary to anyone or anything
Under the canopy of heaven, empty Heaven
Give me freedom from your opinions
Sovereignty to do what I will
Spill all your poison into
Someone else's weary but hopeful ears.
4 comments:
missed this one....as well as other this far back but I applaud you for using your own mind!
Wow, you really did some digging last night... :)
If this poem was a dream it would be in black and white and I'd wake up with a feeling of slight menace.
Sorry, but I feel atmospheres from poems as much as the theme and content, which are not exactly overlooked but find their place on a different level of sense. If that makes any? probably not :/
It makes perfect sense. The biggest thing I take from a poem as a reader is the overall mood is evokes in me. After that, the meaning, and only last the form or any clever wordplay. As a writer, my order of importance doesn't change. I'd rather someone felt in reading it what I felt in writing it than any of the other stuff, even if they've no idea what I'm on about. That's just a bonus ;-)
Though to answer many people's unsophisticated question that they don't ask in order to appear sophisticated (I'm not talking about you or Empath) - YES, there is always a true meaning, something concrete. I write impressionistically, but not abstractly and arbitrarily, unless it is a purposeful exercise in doing so. There is always a real life experience behind my poems, even if by the time they reach their finalised form they are almost unrecognizable.
I only say this because as a highschooler I was interviewed by the newspaper and the reporter had the nerve to ask me how I "thought up" such imaginative poems. Grr.
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