POEMS ABOUT SAINTS AND SINNERS

POEMS ABOUT SAINTS AND SINNERS Of Seabound Saints and Promised Lands by Michael R. Burch Judas sat on a wretched rock, his head still sore from Satan’s gnawing. Saint Brendan’s curragh caught his eye, wildly geeing and hawing. "I’m on parole from Hell today!," Pale Judas cried from his lonely perch. "You’ve fasted forty days, good Saint! Let this rock by my church, my baptismal, these icy waves. O, plead for me now with the One who saves!" Saint Brendan, full of mercy, stood at the lurching prow of his flimsy bark, and mightily prayed for the mangy man whose flesh flashed pale and stark in the golden dawn, beneath a sun that seemed to halo his tonsured dome. Then Saint Brendan sailed for the Promised Land and Saint Judas headed Home. O, behoove yourself, if ever you can, of the fervent prayer of a righteous man! In Dante’s "Inferno," Satan gnaws on Judas Iscariot’s head. A curragh is a boat fashioned from wood and ox hides. Saint Brendan of Ireland is the patron saint of sailors and whales. According to legend, he sailed in search of the Promised Land and discovered America centuries before Columbus. Excerpts from the Journal of Dorian Gray by Michael R. Burch It was not so much dream, as error; I lay and felt the creeping terror of what I had become take hold . . . The moon watched, silent, palest gold; the picture by the mantle watched; the clock upon the mantle talked, in halting voice, of minute things . . . Twelve strokes like lashes and their stings scored anthems to my loneliness, but I have dreamed of what is best, and I have promised to be good . . . Dismembered limbs in vats of wood, foul acids, and a strangled cry! I did not care, I watched him die . . . Each lovely rose has thorns we miss; they prick our lips, should we once kiss their mangled limbs, or think to clasp their violent beauty. Dream, aghast, the flower of my loveliness, this ageless face (for who could guess?), and I will kiss you when I rise . . . The patterns of our lives comprise strange portraits. Mine, I fear, proved dear indeed . . . Adieu! The knife’s for you. Originally published by Dusk & Shiver Magazine My nightmare by Michael R. Burch writing as “The Child Poets of Gaza” I had a dream of Jesus! Mama, his eyes were so kind! But behind him I saw a billion Christians hissing "You're nothing!," so blind. Keywords/Tags: Judas Iscariot, Satan, gnawing, Saint Brendan, curragh, hell, parole, rock, church, baptism, baptismal, Dante, saved, salvation, bible