Hark the eager Liberal’s cry:
Thy redemption draweth nigh!
I will teach thee how to live...
HALT! says the Conservative.

The rolls of the sexes, though neatly assigned,
Seem interchanged now and then.
Not all Madonnas are women, you’ll find,
....and not all seducers are men.

She heard a song: and then appeared
A being who his love bemoaned-
Complacent, self-absorbed and weird.
So this is Man, she moaned.

Good is noble, Good is strong
But his task is hard and long;
Evil is so epicene,
So elusive, so serene.

All day upon the cross he hung;
Then Jesus died.
But many a year Mankind has swung
And smiled, though crucified.

Here’s Bishop Briskoe Pettifogg.
Is he in- or on- the hands of God?

Original Sin once happened to see
A Mister Chitt. Good Lord! said he;
Tell me, Chitt, do you think it’s true
That I’m in everyone- even you?
[i]Ahem, ahem, said Mister Chitt,
It’s a difficult point I must admit.
Your presence should never be understated
But I trust in me you’re attenuated.
With a relieved, expansive grin,
Thank you, Chitt, said Original Sin.

A thousand, thousand years ago
The ancients sadly laughed
As we, and at the same old show-
Reform destroying Graft.

Experience has much to tell
Of trial and error, love and hell.
But she is weary, she is old,
And Innocence is grim and cold.

Who said Death was lean and grim
and an aristocrat?
Taken another look at him,
Death is mean and fat.

When a money-grubbing mole
Crawls at last outside his hole,
Honor, shining the sky,
Seems a splendid thing- to buy.

Alas, it’s not the cares of State
That prematurely age the great.
It’s angry pens a-gleaming at them,
And someone always screaming at them.

As Grief fled stricken through the grove,
Sobbing dully for her love,
The cynic Gods, who saw and smiled,
Sent her Laughter as her child.
Oh, not for me! her chocking word
Arose at first to Those on High
But Laughter cackled in her ears,
He shrunk her heart, he stole her tears.
Her memories dimmed, she sang... and heard
Titters in the sky.

Evolution
Once, they say, a bat-like brute,
Which began to evolute
Long before the apes or others,
Grew so man-like he was hated
At at length annihilated
by his brothers;
And a shark that once began,
by mistake, to be a man,
Finding nobody could bear him,
Prayed to God Himself to spare him.
But the apes- though not so vicious
to begin with- were ambitious.
During man’s persistent climb
Up from the primeval slime
To the dismal though sublime
Heights that he now occupies,
With his Parthenons and sties,
Birds have watched him, wondering
When he’ll have more heart to sing.

The garden that gave birth to Man
Was not the first one in the Plan.
No, an earlier Eden lies
Far off, secret, in the skies.
And there, before the Seven Days,
Out of much too hopeful clays,
Mixed with ichors fierce and odd,
Something, once created God.

The old Librarian’s leaving his books-
It’s the King of Worms invites him;
But he’s spent his days in sheltered nooks,
And to lie in the fields affrights him.
Now that all his life is past,
He must look at life at last.

Los Angeles
I know a town where the wild cults grow,
Whose priestesses stalk to and fro,
Taking toll by tongue and pen
of old and innocent business men.
(Note: This is about Sister Aimee Semple McPherson)

A Mister Jenkins owned a brink
On which he used to stand and think
Of heaven above and earth below
And why the world is thus and so.
There is no better place to think
Large thoughts than on a quiet brink;
But Mister J’s became so vast,
So super-cosmic, that at last,
While grappling with what God had wrought,
He got completely Lost in Thought.
He disappeared without a sound,
And- what is worse- was never found.
Reader, I do not say that you
Or I would disappear from view
If we should let our thoughts expand,
But- let us keep them well in hand.

Tender are a mother’s dreams,
But her babe’s not what he seems.
See him plotting in his mind
To grow up some other kind.

Every Maiden’s weak and willin’
When she meets the proper villain.

A man convinced against his will
Is of the same opinion still.

With a heart torn and aching
And a raging soul within,
Pity the man whose feelings
Are clad in an armor too thin.

“Stern daughter of the Voice of God,”
Like Mary, you’ve a little lamb;
And everywhere you go I plod
Along, O Duty. (Damn.)