one storm has already passed as quietly
as Mary’s soft sigh
when Jesus’ pale lips first pulled
upon her left breast, her
pink nipple lightly rigid and yearning,
but another is forthcoming,
her wanted wrath
cruelly sliding in from my right
(the West)
like Joseph’s jealousy
against the god that deflowered his wife.
from a porch that needs painted gray
i watch
the tainted man with three cats, a
one-legged wife, and
his “fucks”, “shits”, and “cunts”
anticipating sin while
latching
cellophane windows and
cardboard doors;
i imagine
Mr. Valentine as he
shepherds inside a dead brother’s house
fully clad in bourbon’s smile,
a church’s empty eyes, and
Sunday’s suit ready for burial;
and from this washed-out, wrap-around
porch of a Victorian home
(circa 1888)
its spindles and stained-glass windows
pull a drink with me from
a bottle that’s
sweating with Mary’s humidity
as thick as
god’s godless semen ---
as stale as my vile, yet apathetic heart;
and before i can ready myself
to withstand her virginity’s sinful gape
(legs spreading
easily from the West)
as if on cue --- as if she
irreverently and unrepentantly found
her beauty …
she’s here
beneath these final, scripted words
written upon this page that
prayed to hold close her purity.
H.L. Peterson (July 2008)
A contest entry
- Welcome Home, Vaseline Carmichael by onerios13.
6500 points, ended July 27, 2008, 12 entries
Honorable mention
• next poem in this contest, remove from contest
Comments
1 - 22 of 22
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Metaphorically brilliant.
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oh my god. i love this. how have i never read you before?
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Between the lines of the need to impress with trying to understand what you are really trying to say.
Your poetry expresses well the sexual undertones of your personality, and your disbelief of a higher power.
No I think all this is just to impress the ladies.
Excellent can i have lessons please?
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this took me to several different places but the biggest one is the most current for me...
i wonder why bad things happen.. not just to good people but to anyone... i doubt the 'god' for enough tests already! lol.. with my hubby gone in iraq i wonder about it all... how with my old job i got into a mindset that there is no god because why would a baby be in a dumpster? and then...
i think... he is maybe in me and in my husband for what we do. like the nurses in vietnam- how many came home saying no god could exist for what they saw and dealt with daily was beyond acceptable...
and then one sat and thought-- maybe god was working through her instead....
i dunno... sorry to get so personal... just where it took me
i have to say that i loved your ending... like through a childs eye.
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um. this doesnt even compare to anything ive read today... wowowow. you, sir, are incredibly talented.
im not even christian ( you dont really have to be, as long as you get the references ) but this... wow. im lost for words, that much is clear.
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I think I might love you.
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No, I still can't comment properly on this, though I have reread a few times. Amazing imagery that pulls me in different directions, so much spilling out, just like trying to notice everything that takes place anywhere, at any time, with a deep underground note of disappointment. Very rich poem that lingers.
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Wow
I see so much between the lines in this poem.
Love your style my friend. I haven't been in
poetry world much lately. (long story)
Red
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I have written many things full of religious imagery and metaphor--sometimes it just flows, a separate voice from my own. I think that's what I admire most about this--the inner voice, the questioning, the finality--a unique voice. Loved this.
Saffron
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This is well written poetry.
I could mimick what the others have said but more importantly I appreciate that it is highly unique in a cliched era of writing.
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Outstanding
I liked the way you played with lots of different ideas in this poem. A short masterpiece. My favourite image was:
a church’s empty eyes
I thought that was very original. I also liked the way you told a story and how you kept it graphic with lots of unexpected images that were quite edgy, pushing the limits of the reader e.g.
like Joseph’s jealousy
against the god that deflowered his wife.
This is a tremendous poem written with a lot of skill.
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Give the church a child and it will destroy them for life, at least that is the old adage I remember, and once I may not have believed it, but there is no longer a shred of doubt in my mind on that one.
Because it teaches us how to be wrong, how to be ashamed, how to subjugate the will to power, and an incorrect belief in 'sin'. As you know I've been around and around this one.. the images, coming from the west, the storms. jesus on the breast, and who can we point fingers at? Mary mary quite contrary, you know it, I know it, and saying it here, openly makes me a target but what the hell, let's cut the falsity where it falls..
And still there is grace, still there is the desire for something more, a union perhaps, that has nothing to do with blood or bone. And of course in saying that I'm adding my own bias..
Sunday for me is any other day, they all run together to a point, but even saying that, it is also that day, and the collar of my atheism, because I wanted to believe once, I wanted to believe in that communion, that something beyond this. I remember watching images of Vietnam on the television, when I was too young to really know what war was, and war after war after. Terrorism attacks, jihads, and of course, in gods name we trust, in gods name we fix things..
and I remember my brother dying when I was four, and the truth of what it meant to be final..
funny I see so much of that here, but that's what good poetry does. isn't it?
I love this write, I do, and i won't pretend to fully get where you were in it, that's why I love it, because it takes me different places each time..
I said I'd be back. I was.
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Oooh...there was just SO much here to love and fawn over that if I chose my favorite parts, I'd just be putting the whole damn poem in here! lol But this was startling, like jane's work when she's at her best, and it held such exquisite words that both glowed and growled but still surrendered to grace and a masterful penning.
Very strong and very delighted it was in this contest. My thanks.
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...the finished poem is one to behold, Proph. You amaze me, but the, you've always known this
Love, Lane
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love the details...visually unforgiving but an honest to goodness write...i love the humor twisted with sarcasm
your mind is just brilliant
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Yep
Yet another beautifully scripted poem from you. I wonder how you do it. There's so much depth in everything I've read from you.
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I don't think you're as vile as you make out to be; apathetic? perhaps. lol. I like your arrangement of S1, and raunchiness of 2. You still haven't painted your porch? Not sure about S3, I think it's this line;
"sweating with Mary’s humidity"
it doesn't work for me. Could be, like Jan, a personal thing.
Regardless your work is always worthy of more than a few reads, intriguing, creative, and totally you. Great ending, shows your softer side. *winks*
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I sometimes spot suggestions as I read your work then when I go back for another read through or to leave the suggestions I realize it's personal style rather than things that particularly "need" to be changed. I was going to suggest removing "a" from in front of bourbon's and Sunday's (eg fully clad in bourbon's smile... Sunday's suit) just my initial instinct (and perhaps to do with trying to limit articles like a and the) but it isn't incorrect as it is and when I went back I could wrap my head around it.
Some interesting imagery. I guess it's a propos that it's thundering this morning as I read this.
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"she’s here
beneath these final, scripted words
written upon this page that
prayed to hold close her purity."
I always suspected you were a romantic at heart. Gorgeous, Scribe. Love it. 
lil' night
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monumentally vociferous...
like a chestnut grown for its Christmas qualities, this is a piece of religiously slain conceptualism, crass and bravely construed. no feud to follow. no potluck to poison. no communion to violate. no passage from a creotene queen in a Bastille blue gown. but there is most definitely a rigid tension built in to this Sunday morning affair.
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Sit Down And Listen
wow, this write is very, very
interesting. the imagery is
very choking and wagging,
as it is strong and finalizing.
a contemporary piece that speaks
volumes in it's simple words
that hold complex meanings when
read back to back, and through
out this whole piece.
it left my mouth dry. incredible.
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