Author: Michael Brown

Ill-timed Epiphany

When I stare at the crucifix hanging

Above the altar at a Catholic friend’s funeral.

I do not see the crown of thorns or

The five holey wounds.

 

All I see is the outline of a lifted up figure,

Covered in a purple shroud because it is Lent.

Without context, it could be any stick figure human, god,

garment hung out to dry, or monster that visits in dreams.

 

But this is a Catholic church we’re talking about,

And Easter is still a couple of weeks away,

So I know it’s supposed to be Jesus

Sent to save our souls from ours sins.… Read the rest

“Earth, Our Island Home*”

We sail on a ship called “Earth, Our Island Home*”,

Shackled and bound galley slaves skimming star-capped electromagnetic waves.

Smash your irons and break your bonds if you dare,

Jump into the Empty,

Uncaring black sea where there is

No treading space to breathe,

No lucky lifeboat,

No luxury liner with safe passage to Mars,

No opt-out, even for taskmasters cracking cat o’ nine tails on blistered backs.

*Book of Common Prayer 1979, Eucharist Prayer C… Read the rest

Always has been and ever will be.

In the worst of times, We the People, left to our own devices, have always tended toward lawbreaking, hatred, and cruelty.

In the best of times, we have been held in check and guided by our better angels, a reliable system of self-correcting, democratic government, and the leadership of conscientious and courageous people in all fields and at every level of American society who possess keen insight and unwavering true north moral vision.

It has always been and ever will be both “the best of times and the worst of times.”*

Outcome TBD.

*Now is worse than most times.… Read the rest

Held to scale

When I consider a line on a desert floor,

4.3 miles long, marked off in 11 yard increments worth 20 million years each,

and take in the time and distance since our kin first tamed fire,

1 million years tucked in 2.5 feet of that 4.3 miles,

 

and then discover that every name

ever spoken or heard

fits neatly in 0.4 inches of that 2.5 feet in the 4.3 mile, 13.8 billion years long line

stepped off on a desert floor,

 

I find the breadth of my life is less than the width of a human hair

(do I even need to tell you how small that is?).… Read the rest

Rich gnat, poor camel

I chuckle–morosely–anytime I hear a religious person state their belief that someone surviving a life-threatening event such as a shooting is “god’s will”, especially when someone else dies. Quite a god you got there. Sounds a bit capricious, sort of like Zeus.

There are shootings all the time. Some bullets hit their mark, others don’t. Some people live, others die. “Time and chance happen to them all” reads Ecclesiastes 9:11.

What’s ironic in the case of the current “subject of discussion” is the widespread belief that a bullet that missed him is regarded as a sign of a god’s favor and somehow makes him an “instrument” of that god’s will.… Read the rest

’Tis grief

’Tis grief.

For story unwound

For truth obstructed

For lies unbound

For faith deconstructed

For country splitting

For Lady spayed

For Liberty flitting

For patriots betrayed

For servants abandoned

For dirt poor dying

For now open-handed

For despots thriving

What I am feeling

’tis grief.… Read the rest

Near misses

Slow, arcing convergence.

What are the chances?

One in a million?

A little more headwind here,

A little less tailwind there.

Totally different outcome.

“Time and chance happen to them all.”

Old words written truer than new ones hastily spoken.

Here we sit in the glow of our screens,

Survivors of a thousand near misses.… Read the rest

1/20/25

ἀντίχριστος:

Limp, slouching wolf of unbridled appetite and self-love

Cloaked in a FAKE! “Made in China” tunic of an ancient itinerant Jewish preacher

And immigrant

Who didn’t give a g-damn about politics,

Head crowned with 47 red-tipped, gilted thorns and a

Halo of Lies.… Read the rest

11/17/24

For E.C.

It was a most excellent  “36th birthday” . . . /s

I shared CHEEZ-IT communion with E.C. and held her hand.

I watched her go down the tube slide “One more time!”—many times.

Thinking her Dad was trailing behind her (a physical improbability), she stuck her head back into the maw of the slide, cupped her hand to her mouth, and called out:

“You comin’ Daddy? You comin’?”

How does an “almost” 2-year-old girl learn to amplify sound with her cupped hand and call out around a blind curve and through a tunnel? From whence comes the courage?… Read the rest

a strong case for “fat, dumb, and happy”

And I went to see the doctor of philosophyWith a poster of Rasputin and a beard down to his kneeHe never did marry or see a B-grade movieHe graded my performance, he said he could see through meI spent four years* prostrate to the higher mindGot my paper and I was free

—“Closer to Fine”, Indigo Girls

*personal note: twelve years

17 Then I applied myself to the understanding of wisdom, and also of madness and folly, but I learned that this, too, is a chasing after the wind.

18 For with much wisdom comes much sorrow;
    the more knowledge, the more grief.

… Read the rest

two short poems to posterity fused one week apart

11/5/24

My ballot is a match.

I strike it and

Burn down a joker’s house of cards.

Fight fire with fire and

Forge a Freedom House.

I vote

’La.

(one week later)

11/12/24

Wait.

What just happened?

I’m confused.

I struck a match

and fought fire with fire

but the joker’s house of cards didn’t Burn.

(Freedom House just a “concept”)

I ask AI Chatbot:

Why didn’t the joker’s house of cards Burn?

AI: It_is_coat_ed_ with_flame_ re_tar_dant_ Lies.

Me: How can it Burn?

AI: Self_im_mo_la_tion.

Me: What do we do?

AI: Let_it_Burn_____Stand_ by_to_ launch_ res_cues.… Read the rest

american proverb

There are three things not worth defending—no, four you should walk away from:

a con man selling cheaper eggs,

a nation trading its birthright for a blow* of traitor,

a “concept” of a country,

a church that fails to recognize an antichrist when it sees one.

*spelling correct. reads as intended.… Read the rest

message to sisters and brothers by different mothers

The social media apps and texts started dinging around 6:30 this morning (we already knew).

Friends reaching out, grieving, trying to process.

I tossed a couple of scripture grenades on Facebook using the flawed “Swing the ‘two-edged sword’ so it means whatever you want it to mean!” methodology of exegesis to get it out of my system and kick a dent in the side of the moment.

Yesterday, and then again today, two Facebook “Friends” from high school (one of whom I honestly don’t remember) showed up, as if on cue, to reveal their theological obsessions with genitalia and scatology by regurgitating debunked lies in an effort to explain why it was necessary for them to vote into office—again—a white man who is a manifestly horrible human being, sexual predator, criminal, and traitor over a biracial woman who is a manifestly decent human being, the wife of one husband, law-abiding, and true to her oath.… Read the rest