Necessary Evil

Why doesn’t God nip all evil in the bud, so as to eradicate suffering?

Our business is to learn that death is sin’s most necessary recompense;

and so to choose what’s right, not wrong, without a hint of diffidence.

This we can only do if every choice has its sure consequence.

There must be moral hazard, founded on unswerving law;

or else between wisdom and folly there would be no difference,

there would be no divide between what’s reckless and prudence.

If on jumping from a precipice I did not fall to stony floor,

always being rescued by an angel’s hand; presumption hyperbolic

(that’s filled with risk and self-despond) would be remade as merry frolic!

– which would, after not long, become most tedious, and nothing more.

Laughter

You laugh and my gut churns. 

I cringe before your mockery.

Your ridicule cuts deep, 

severing the bonds of breath and life.

Your careless disrespect is more than I can bear.

I desire your love: the bloody business of your heart

but all you care to offer me is bile.

I need your affirmation and regard

but you would rather me revile.

Satan laughs and darkness churns,

the world lies in dismay.

His despite rings through all the halls of men;

greed and hate and soft conceit:

the comedy of error and of ill

which he does pen and close direct,

with force of iron will.

This vale of tears for us is his dire cauldron vast,

where he does compound fell

and noisome brews, his pain to sooth at last.

God laughs at the plight of men:

the sorrow and betrayal,

the sickness and the pain,

the hardships and travail.

God laughs, not with mirth, but from sympathy:

not that God can know our woe

in His Eternal Being;

but that He’s ever present in our sorrow

and absurdity.

In that laugh God exceeds Himself

and falls for man from Heaven to Earth,

becoming one with us

and taking up the very comic role

which you and I and all our kin play out

and that had first brought forth His laugh.

We laugh and hate is spent

error and pain are overcome.

The wounds we have inflicted close

and healing can begin.

Now grappling can become a form of play,

not strife,

and all our wanton ways

be shown in purest light.

Laughter frees us from our sin

and all that locks us in,

binding us with false wisdom

and denying our necessary freedom.

I laugh and the whole Universe stands still,

the absurdity of life bounds forth

and will not rest until its sympathetic force

is spent. Empathy moves my bowels.

My heart is pulled towards the trials

and sufferings of my fellow men. Perforce,

I must else laugh or yet weep copious tears

of bitter, stinging woe: so I do choose to laugh.

Priest and Altar

The old priest clings
     fast
and with fearful fingers
     to the altar slab
     that
     long has stood
in this faithful place
     this place of filial hope.
His heart is now
    quite cold
    dead as the stone
    his hands tight hold:
    cold as its silent speech.
His soul is withered
    as autumnal leaves
    which fall from stricken trees
to dampen, darken
and decay
– or else to burn
on bonfire bright
to briefly lighten up the night
and end their feeble, futile span
no sooner than by them began.

His eyes flare out with tears:
     precious gems of salty woe.
He mourns mortality
    and loss of love
    and failing hope
and desiccated faith
    which flaunts its false solace
though he, like Faustus his forebear,
    is far beyond
    all scope of grace.

His mouth frames silent syllables
    which if were spoke
    might shrive his soul;
but no words, fair or foul,
    escape his narrow lips
nor e’en inchoate grunt slips
    out: no sacrament of hope.

The old priest slumps
    devoid
    of breath and and word
on the altar slab
    that
    long has stood
in this fateful place
    this place of filial hope.
His heart is now
    quite cold
    dead as the stone
    his hands un-hold:
    cold as its silent speech.
His soul is withered
    as autumnal leaves
    which fall from stricken trees
to dampen, darken
and decay
– or else to burn
on bonfire bright
to briefly lighten up the night
and end their feeble, futile span
no sooner than by them began.