Verse by Caleb Mannan

If you like Robert Service, Longfellow, Tolkien, Milton, Robinson Jeffers, Whitman, Poe, The Bible, Tennyson, Ray Bradbury, life, death, Untermeyer, Pound, Donne, joy, sorrow, Siegfried Sassoon, Wilfred Owen, Robert Graves, children, beauty, Dante, Tom Waits, then set yourself down beside this fire.

Thursday, April 21, 2011

LXXV. Spring Illness

One of these years
I will finally succumb to these illnesses
that ail me, aye, but once a Spring.
In that day I will hear Jeffer’s Demon klaxon call me thrice,
And leave my psoriatic skin filled with strep and sin and vice,
And I will die,
Leaving my body to the earth
And the rest for God knows only
As the angels cry as the sailors:
‘Who shall have this!’
Over my soul and spirit and heart and mind.

LXXIV. May the Law of Moses

May the Law of Moses convict you
In that you may never uphold its weight,
Just as the Gospel of Jesus compels you
With the good news that you are a saint
When your stone tablets break.

LXIII. Technology

Technology
hath made apes of us all.