Letter to the Corinthians

Porcine posits
Forced in closets
Built to bind such “beasts”
Remain detained
Innately feigned
By peace-believing priests

For fear of God
Or sheer façade
In odd symbolic lure
Is grace enough
To waste rebuff -
Embracing chaste manure

And what of fear
For God – Career?
Or fodder for the crowd?
Or both? – Who knows
When swooned repose
Bestows the blows allowed

Will paddled ass
Or straddled class
Or raddled knuckles save
A wayward yearn
Or mental churn
Determined to deprave?

And if depraved
Or stone-engraved
Like turbans torn to hell
Before the chance
Bore circumstance
To hem the foreign fell,
Then save me not
A pavement lot
Embroidered to the hilt
With gilded guise
And wilted eyes
For temples tempting guilt

Suburban cross
And turbaned loss
Exist betwixed these realms:
Of that which hurts
To stitch the flirt
And that which skirts the helm . . .

When symbols sign
A simple line
And holy ground secures
Well then my friend
The pen you tend
Breeds “beasts” like you and yours

Amen