Parsing the Void: Two Poems

We find our own problems
     like thieves on the prowl
They are diamonds, we the robbers.

Hold them to your bosom like a son
     new born and yet corrupted
So we count them, we count them.

No tradition, no history
     Mongrels of War: America,
The Beautiful, rob me no more.

I’ll keep my problems in a library
     In books, in yellow and black and red
In a library, they are forgotten like
     books about war.

* * *

A Christian world of God and Hell
     of feasts and dollar bills
Seven sins we can list, but
     who knows all the virtues?

Symbols, crosses, loaves of bread
     all icons meant to raise the dead
How I’d love to rest my head . . .

Some Christian land, where dogs starve
     and cats cry throughout the night
While businessmen make their hand
     Out of other people’s tears.

Some Christian land, built on temples
     of gold, never once straw-beds
We cast our vote, yawn then stretch
     before further digging that moat.

One God on high, one devil below, in our
     Christian world!0