Since we have a few people who seem to like poetry here, I thought you might be amused by some Christian poems. Actually, if you like and respect poetry, you might not want to click through that link—this is poetry like throwing a cat in a woodchipper is music. I’ve included a few small fragments below the fold if you just want a taste.
As you gaze into the bosom of God,
A big empty whole you will see.
God is so empty and sad because He is so lonely.
He misses you so much, dear.
That hole in His heart,
so big and empty, is where you once came from.
His life and love is what made you what you are.
Rats do not have feathers.
They do not have wings.
But you, your wings beat down the air.
They lift you higher and higher still.
Carry me with you in your strong beaks.
I am your rat.
Hear God’s horn!
Come! Come! My Baby! Come! My Baby!
General Jesus is calling!
Hear the drums of heaven!
Law of love rules!
Great party! Jesus’ bride jumps around like a gazelle!
She is completely drunk!
There are also some tedious Christian stories and incoherent sermons at the site, which, curiously enough, is based out of New Hope, Minnesota, a Minneapolis suburb. We do have some weird ones up here.
(via Overcompensating)
I clicked, thinking, “how bad could it be?”. Oh my. Very very bad indeed. I realize now that I’ve never red truly bad poetry… until now. Maybe these xtians are actually Vogons?
From the first one..
“A big empty whole you will see.”
There’s many a true word spoken in bad poetry.
“…like throwing a cat in a woodchipper…”? That’s an image I could do without first thing in the morning. How about the sound of an evolutionary biologist suffering the Revenge of Snowball and The Zebrafish.
“You are never left alone
With God in your heart.”
These poems are great clues to the causes of religious delusion. Longing for a parent figure. Needs for protection, warmth, hugging. Fear of loneliness.
Who wouldn’t want a God who provides all these things?
Here’s an antidote- a portion of the greatest poem, “Wild Broom” (La Ginestra), by the greatest atheist poet (and one of the greatest of all poets), Giacomo Leopardi.
Often I sit here, at night,on these desolate slopes,
that a hardened lava-flow has clothed
with brown, and which seem to undulate still,
and over the gloomy waste,
I see the stars flame, high
in the purest blue,
mirrored far off by the sea:
the universe glittering with sparks
that wheel through the tranquil void.
And then I fix my eyes on those lights
that seem pin-pricks,
yet are so vast in form
that earth and sea are really a pin-prick
to them: to whom man,
and this globe where man is nothing,
are completely unknown: and gazing
at those still more infinitely remote,
knots, almost, of stars,
that seem like mist to us, to which
not only man and earth but all
our stars, infinite in number and mass,
with the golden sun,
are unknown, or seem like points
of misted light, as they appear
from earth: what do you seem like,
then, in my thoughts, O children
of mankind? And mindful of
your state here below, of which
the ground I stand on bears witness,
and that, on the other hand, you believe
that you’ve been appointed the master
and end of all things: and how often
you like to talk about the creators
of all things universal, who descended
to this obscure grain of sand called earth,
for you, and happily spoke to you, often:
and that, renewing these ridiculous dreams,
you still insult the wise, in an age
that appears to surpass the rest
in knowledge and social customs: what feeling is it,
then, wretched human race, what thought
of you finally pierces my heart?
I don’t know if laughter or pity prevails.
Sovente in queste rive,
Che, desolate, a bruno
Veste il flutto indurato, e par che ondeggi,
Seggo la notte; e su la mesta landa
In purissimo azzurro
Veggo dall’alto fiammeggiar le stelle,
Cui di lontan fa specchio
Il mare, e tutto di scintille in giro
Per lo vòto seren brillare il mondo.
E poi che gli occhi a quelle luci appunto,
Ch’a lor sembrano un punto,
E sono immense, in guisa
Che un punto a petto a lor son terra e mare
Veracemente; a cui
L’uomo non pur, ma questo
Globo ove l’uomo è nulla,
Sconosciuto è del tutto; e quando miro
Quegli ancor più senz’alcun fin remoti
Nodi quasi di stelle,
Ch’a noi paion qual nebbia, a cui non l’uomo
E non la terra sol, ma tutte in uno,
Del numero infinite e della mole,
Con l’aureo sole insiem, le nostre stelle
O sono ignote, o così paion come
Essi alla terra, un punto
Di luce nebulosa; al pensier mio
Che sembri allora, o prole
Dell’uomo? E rimembrando
Il tuo stato quaggiù, di cui fa segno
Il suol ch’io premo; e poi dall’altra parte,
Che te signora e fine
Credi tu data al Tutto, e quante volte
Favoleggiar ti piacque, in questo oscuro
Granel di sabbia, il qual di terra ha nome,
Per tua cagion, dell’universe cose
Scender gli autori, e conversar sovente
Co’ tuoi piacevolmente, e che i derisi
Sogni rinnovellando, ai saggi insulta
Fin la presente età, che in conoscenza
Ed in civil costume
Sembra tutte avanzar; qual moto allora,
Mortal prole infelice, o qual pensiero
Verso te finalmente il cor m’assale?
Non so se il riso o la pietà prevale.
Earnest poetry like this, no matter how bad, is supposed to be praised because the writers are so sincere and well-meaning. I can’t, however, bring myself to gush over them. Now, guffaw I can manage.
Have you read Where Eagles Soar? Click the link to see epic inspirational doggerel. What makes it so bad? I’m not sure. But it is astonishingly wretched. Verily.
“Maybe these xtians are actually Vogons?”
On the contrary, Vogon poetry is mild by comparison.
There is, of course, real Christian poetry in the world. Both really Christian and real poetry.
George Herbert, Gerard Manley Hopkins, TS Eliot, ee cummings, Czeslaw Milosz….
But of course there would be no fun in poking fun at them.
re #8- no shit, Sherlock. I have little doubt that I’m far better acquainted with the greatest of them all, Dante, than you are.
Damn it, I just ate breakfast!
Does the eagle ‘poem’ author realize what the eagles do with the rats once they’ve finished their flight?
#10
They get sent to Heaven? See, there’s no bad side to being devoured by an eagle – if you’re a Christian.
And sadly, I just clicked over and read the whole poem, and you’re right. The rest of the ‘poem’ is “eat me!”
Steve Labonne: chances are you’re right. Though I have in fact read the entire Divine Comedy in my life. But it was PZ I was replying to. It was he who chose to link to the worst of Christian poetry.
By the way, I like the Leopardi poem a lot. Interestingly he was a favorite author of Fr. Luigi Giussani, founder of the Catholic lay movement Communion and Liberation.
RAT? In the sense of being a supporter of Rational Choice Theory? I doubt it…
Weird. I drive by that address every day taking the Hexlette to preschool. Don’t judge New Hope too harshly, there’s a great cafe called Fat Nat’s Eggs and also a comic book shop a block away.
Just as intelligent design ain’t science, this stuff ain’t poetry — not by any stretch of poetic imagination.
See, there’s no bad side to being devoured by an eagle – if you’re a Christian.
I read that particular masterpiece and couldn’t help but think, briefly: damn, but there’s some very familiar and very messed up overtones in that, intentionally or otherwise. Suppose I could get all elaborate about it, try to work out: so, does the writer really wish to be devoured? Is this a reference to the consuming of the self in the ‘greater glory’ of the god certain sects seem so fond of trumpeting as desirable? If so, what do we make, then, of the belief itself, if an adherent of such a belief finds such an image illustrative of the notion: a rodent that actually wants to be torn apart by something large and hungry with talons? And how insightful is this, as an expression of the deeper wish?
‘Cos man, if it is, that’s a bit scary. Disgustingly abject, even. Devouring, why, yes please? I’m a tiny rodent. You’re an eagle. Rend and eat me; I’ll try to enjoy the view… Lovely.
Sadly, however, it’s just as likely it’s just a really clumsily chosen metaphor.
That’s not a bad first line, though. Something could be made of it.
Rats do not have feathers.
Rats do not have fins.
Rats have tails and whiskers
And they live in wheelie bins.
Rats do not have feathers.
Rats have ticks and fleas.
Rats have mites and parasites
And like to spread disease.
Rats do not have feathers
But teeth with which to gnaw.
Rats will eat your face off
Like in Nineteen Eighty-Four.
Rats do not have feathers
And so they cannot fly
It makes them easier to catch
And bake inside a pie.
Oh, heart full of joy!
Breathless mouse fingers click, yet
What foul stench is this?
Oh, heart full of joy!
Breathless mouse fingers click, yet
What foul stench is this?
What a funny name!
I had to read it out loud
To understand it.
#9–Wow, what a vicious response to such an innocuous comment.
#21- Sorry to shake you out of your genteel reverie. You may now return to your tea and crumpets.
Miss Prism’s poem is much nicer.
I also like how the eagle (singular) has beaks (plural).
Carry me with you
in your beaks.
i am your rat.
ignore my squeaks.
i am tasty.
i am chewy.
Eagle, I’m your rat a touille
These poems are to poetry what vomiting is to oration.
Yes, and the rat is still granted its final and fondest wish, which is to be eaten!
LOL @ Miss P, yup I noticed that two. Beaks. Beaks!! Not even Cthulhu has “beaks” … sheesh. (Or so I presume.)
This “being eaten by god” theme is so familiar. Hey, has anyone read the SF story in which a husband-wife team (both accomplished psychics, she more so) are called to a planet to investigate this big slime mold thing that lives in a cave and is worshipped by the locals? Those people who wish to become Initiates wear a bit of the slime on their heads. The slime slowly eats its way into their minds. These people are revered and envied! Eventually they “become one” with the slime and go to live inside the slime – and are consumed, I guess.
I think the story was called “Song for Anna” (?) but I can’t remember the author, nor find the book.
#22–What the hell do you know about crumpets?!? I have little doubt that I’m far better acquainted with the greatest of them all (coconut crumpets with lemon butter) than you are.
Move over, Paula Nancy Millstone Jennings!
We can but hope that the large intestines of the offending authors do the right thing, as they have done before.
Some rats do have feathers;
Some rats soar the breeze.
We just call them pigeons –
They, too, our stomachs quease.
Weak, EMR, very weak. But feel free to try again should your wits revive a little.
Meanwhile, speaking of rats, nobody does it better than Goethe (though the bartleby.com translation leaves something to be desired):
Once in a cellar lived a rat,
He feasted there on butter,
Until his paunch became as fat
As that of Doctor Luther.
The cook laid poison for the guest,
Then was his heart with pangs oppress’d,
As if his frame love wasted.
He ran around, he ran abroad,
Of every puddle drinking.
The house with rage he scratch’d and gnaw’d,
In vain,–he fast was sinking;
Full many an anguish’d bound he gave,
Nothing the hapless brute could save,
As if his frame love wasted.
By torture driven, in open day,
The kitchen he invaded,
Convulsed upon the hearth he lay,
With anguish sorely jaded;
The poisoner laugh’d, Ha! ha! quoth she,
His life is ebbing fast, I see,
As if his frame love wasted.
Good grief, that really is bad:- no meter, no structure, no metaphor, no similie.
But I what I really can’t forgive is:-
> He misses you so much, dear.
“dear”???? The last refuge of the poor rhymer who wants to couple it with some other commonplace, weak, meaningless word that accidently ends up at the end of a line. Normally it means a lazy attempt to salvage lazy work.
But in this case, it doesn’t even form a rhyme with anything. What is that about?
Scones of ginger
Dry but sweet
Were my favorite
Breakfast treat.
Whence this hollow
In my gut
Craving crumpets
Coconut?
Kseniya, #27 — It’s titled “A Song For Lya”, from the collection of short stories of the same name, by George R. R. Martin. Yes, THAT Martin, the same one who is currently giving us the splendid “A Song of Ice and Fire” series. It was among his very earliest work, dating back to the 1970s. The original cover of the paperback is . . . creepy.
The same anthology, however, also had “With Morning Comes Mistfall,” in which scientists discovering the truth behind a local legend on a recently colonized planet basically destroy the beauty and wonder of it — at least for one man.
Eagle came down the walk
He did not know I saw
He bit the Christian rat in halves
And ate the moron, raw
Rats do not have feathers
And so they cannot fly
It makes them easier to catch
And bake inside a pie.
Bravo!
This rat has no feathers
Nor beak, nor wings
And tho’ it has little use
For all of these things
It thinks on these absences
And is deeply depressed;
Seeing an eagle
It is duly impressed:
“Why look at those feathers
How proudly it flies!
Look at those talons
How steeply it dives!
Just look at those eyes
With such cunning invested…”
The rat grovels and fawns
As it is ingested.”
All those 17th century English mystic poets are wonderful to read, starting with John Donne. This dreck resembles such works the way the average Xian contemporary music resembles Bach.
As someone somewhere said, “Why should the Devil have all the good tunes [or poems]?
I am sure PZ is sick of my poetry by now, so I’ll just post a link this time. My little love poem to Jesus is inspired by Julia Sweeney’s monologue “Letting go of God”, which everyone should see. I saw her perform an earlier draft of it, in which there was more emphasis on her girlhood crush on Jesus.
http://digitalcuttlefish.blogspot.com/2007/10/how-do-i-love-thee.html
I wonder if I can get it added to the original christian site…
Not so much “currently” at the moment, dagnabbit! George, finish the next book already!
I don’t get it. We should worship God because if we do, he’ll eat us alive? I coul write a better Christian apologetic poem than that, and I’m an atheist. To wit:
Rats do not have feathers
They do not have wings
They also don’t have laser eyes
And many other things
That would make it harder
To squash the bastards flat
Rats aren’t indestructible –
And thank the Lord for that!
How can you deny the genius of “General Jesus is Coming” with the oft-repeated line:
“Eh! Eh! Eh! Eh! Eh! Eh! Eh! Eh!”
followed in one spot by
“Hear the sound of music”
Is this what inspired PZ to come up with the cat-in-a-woodchipper metaphor?
“Eagle came down the walk
He did not know I saw
He bit the Christian rat in halves
And ate the moron, raw”
This is phenomenal.
Come! Come! My Baby! Come! My Baby!
Hmmm. Sounds like somebody doing a very unconvincing job of faking an orgasm.
I wonder how Jesus feels about having been demoted to General.
Maureen: Thanks for serving as my memory :-) “A Song for Lya” is it!
# 38 – sick of what? You’re poems are classics!
http://digitalcuttlefish.blogspot.com/2007/10/how-do-i-love-thee.html
Dang, Cuttlefish, with that link you just moved PZ’s blog from PG13 to M15+!! It’s even got the ‘holy orgasms’ at the end! You sure you’re not hiding your own desire for scuba there? :D
“General Jesus” probably sounds better in the original Klingon. Or, y’know, whatever other crazy moon language it was originally in. It just smells so much like an artless, direct translation.
Not every cleric
Alone praises god
Consider Robbin Herrick
Who often gave the ladies a nod
Upon Julia’s Clothes
Whenas in silks my Julia goes
Then, then (methinks) how sweetly flows
That liquefaction of her clothes
Next, when I cast mine eyes and see
That brave vibration each way free;
O how that glittering taketh me!
P.Z. that stuff you reproduced for us is doggerel-not poetry-and yes so is my poor little rhyme.
I’m somewhat grateful
PeeZed blog’d this tripe, but now
my hangover’s worse.
The perfect haiku would have just two syllables:
Airwolf!
Oh, yes Cuttlefish. Please try. Not that your far superior effort belongs in such trashy company.
Oh, my poor, bleeding eyes!
…You’re my butterfly; sugar, baby.
Oy, shitty Christian poetry that sounds just like equally shitty ’90s white-rap. I guess New Hope is the real “Crazy Town.”
Incidentally:
Rats do not have feathers,
Rats do not have wings,
Rats have beady little eyes:
Such complicated things.
Birds do not have rat-tails,
Soaring in the sky,
And those facts are objective proof
Of Darwinism’s lie.
Hey, this Christian poetry stuff is easy! I wonder if this site would accept my submissions. “There once was a father named Lot…”
#40
I don’t get it. We should worship God because if we do, he’ll eat us alive?
Isn’t that very close to the message of the book of Job? Or am I confusing the Bible and the Necronomicon again?
Vogons? No, they only write the third worse poetry. The site you dare not click is perhaps that of Paula Nancy Millstone Jennings of Redbridge.
I find this very disturbing. The eagle especially.
Is anyone else hearing “Come ma lady, come come ma lady” playing when they read that last, uh, poem? Wasn’t this on South Park?
I think that I shall never see,
An (ID/hyperChristian/uberrightwing/creationist/ID again) troll much smarter than a tree….
Phy wrote:
Indeed it does:
Phy wrote:
You dare to insult a Klingon?
What about pigeons? Pigeons being “rats with wings”. Ahem:
Let the pigeons soar!
O’er the teeming waste land of urban gore
Whence from Heav’n D’vine acidic tears do pour
For every sperm abandoned in a condom on the floor …
Amen.
It’s a shame you can’t hear this Christian poetry as it was originally spoken–it loses so much in the translation. Unfortunately, you are atheists and cannot appreciate its wit, its subtlety, its life affirming message. And the humor! Oh, the humor! If you could but read and truly understand. But none of you speak in tongues, do you?
“Come! Come! My Baby! Come! My Baby!” Priceless!
My sense of metaphor is crying.
Kseniya: I like your poem.
Comment 53 seems to be the only one who has understood that there is but one thing we can hope for: to be eaten first.
noncarborundum, is there a babelfish-style translator somewhere online, or did you do that yourself? In the latter case, let me express my deep respect, and let me blame you for the capital J in the 2nd-to-last line. }}:-)
Comment 53 seems to be the only one who has understood that there is but one thing we can hope for: to be eaten first.
noncarborundum, is there a babelfish-style translator somewhere online, or did you do that yourself? In the latter case, let me express my deep respect, and let me blame you for the capital J in the 2nd-to-last line. }}:-)
David M:
I did it my own self. Sorry about the J. Oh the embarrassment.
It could have been worse; I almost posted that with a couple of lower-case i’s too.
#52, that opening line is too good to pass up. Here’s my first take:
There once was a father named Lot
whose wife was transformed into salt
his daughters, distressed
got him drunk and undressed
and did things they probably ought not.
Yeah, well, pretty soft targets.
I’d add R S Thomas to the list of readable religious poets. His style is quite easy to parody but I’ll spare you this.
“Cat in woodchipper” recalls story that Brahms used to shoot cats from his window with a little bow and arrow and carefully transcribe their dying cries into his musical compositions, although this might have been a malicious joke put about by Wagner.
might?
Makeitstopmakeitstopmakeitstop.
My great-grandfather self-published a lot of horrible religious poetry, thus driving all of his descendents to atheism. I’m told that when the old bastard died they had a huge bonfire of all the unsold copies.
One is called ‘Evolution’ and has the lines
From out of the mud and slime
Came crawling a myriad of things
With Fur! And with Feathers! And Wings!
Religious hymns are all ‘poetry.’
Happily it is sooo easy to improve lyrics.
Rocks of ages
Rock of a-ges, cleft for thee, fossil re-cord there to see.
Tri-lo-bite, T. rex, Lu-cy, in layered stone, success-ive-ly.
Split by wa-ter, lands up-hurled, historic ta-pes-try unfurled.
Rock of a-ges, cleft for thee, mar-vel-ous stratigraphy.
Clock of a-ges, DNA, genetic mar-kers of our way.
Mutations neu-tral, accum-u-late, tick onward at a constant rate.
Split by en-zymes, helix un-sealed, parental lin-e-age revealed.
Clock of a-ges, DNA, tree of life in grand ar-ray.
Compar-a-tive ana-tomy, a science called morph-o-log-y.
Walrus flip-per, wing of bird, in human hands, the bones recur.
Tadpoles, humans, snakes, and whales, in embryo- all have their tails.
Compar-a-tive ana-tomy, shows our common an-ces-try.
Fos-sils, genes, morph-o-log-y, on one result they all agree.
Studies in-depend-ent-ly, give the same phy-log-en-y.
Three sci-en-ces: a u-nit-y, light of reason: a tri-nit-y.
What about the-ol-o-gy? Left behind- a chim-pan-zee!
Nabokov said poetry should be at least as well written as prose. He would, of course, beat himself to death with Humbert Humbert’s diary rather than read this crap.
Are you sure about Klingon? Perhaps this long existing ranking needs to be rethought. It looks as if the Vogons have been demoted.
Well, okay . . . but you have to be the one to tell the Klingons.
Here is a little relief. You may need after that tripe.
A big empty whole you will see. So, is that godse.cx then? (cue sounds of brain scrubbing…)
I don’t know, the one about boozing it up in heaven was sort of OK. Weak on prosodic construction, as so much modern poetry is, of course. On the whole, though, this guy can certainly hold his head up next to William McGonagall.
Steve @9,
point taken, but your interlocutor (who I believe has trolled here before, though “troll” might be a bit strong) is right this time. PZ’s godly poetaster deserves ridicule not because he is Christian, but because he sucks (which seems to have been your point as well, so I am not sure you and Kremer are actually in disagreement).
The 17th c. Anglican clergyman and religious poet Thomas Traherne, for example, wrote about a sense of wonder at existence that I think any thoughtful atheist would share. Be that as it may, he wrote beautifully:
(from “The Salutation”)
You mentioned Goethe on rats. When it comes to vermin, I much favour arachnids over rodents, so permit me to cite this snippet from the West-Östlicher Divan, in which Goethe at once affirms the existence of God and rejects the idea of a Great Chain of Being with man at the apex:
For those of you who do not read German, I offer this dog-translation, which ruins the metre but conveys (poorly) the sense:
The take-home from all this is: abandoning theism might be desirable for any number of reasons, but none of those have to do with producing great art; and Goethe was noble enough to recognise that he shouldn’t go about smashing spiders.
Conversely, religious people have produced great art and much of it about or in service of religion, but that is no reason to keep religion around. The amazing art that has come about due to the church’s resources and inspiration says nothing about the truth or value of the religion, but it does speak to the incredible, individual, natural talent of the human artists who produced those works.
The fact that something–religion, war, disease, inequality–has led to great works of art doesn’t mean it has any intrinsic value of its own.
I guess it’s true what they say about repression…
My eyes! The goggles, they do nothing!
As a more modern antidote for this stuff, I refer you to Making Light. Both their open threads, and the trailing ends of topic threads, tend to collect lots of impromptu poems. They write everything from limericks to villanelles, but even their doggerel is better than this stuff. Dave Bonta at Via Negativa is also pretty good, with poems, photos (mostly nature), and assorted musings.
Gghhhaa!! What putrid stuff. There must be thousands of things to take issue with in this drivel, but here’s one I’ll point out. The poem “The Soldier’s Song”, it’s about a Marine. Now a Soldier is not a Marine, Soldiers are in the Army. If you don’t even know that, perhaps you shouldn’t be writing poems about them, and trying to equate service to your country with loving god. Like I said, one of thousands of things wrong with this, but a pet pieve of mine.
Two (of many possible) data points in support of this:
1)Goethe’s famous quip that he didn’t care how much harm the Church had done, as long as he could use its symbols in his poems.
2) Two of the most spectacular 19th century works of “religious” art- the Requiems of Berlioz and Verdi- were created by atheists.
Two of the most spectacular 19th century works of “religious” art- the Requiems of Berlioz and Verdi- were created by atheists.
Back when I was a church member and went to a huge church on a hill, we performed the Brahms German Requiem, that the composer wrote upon the death of his much-beloved mother. My music teacher told me Brahms was a humanist and not particularly religious, therefore he had picked Bible verses of comfort for the living rather than judgement for the dead.
And I didn’t want to post this before checking it out, because I wasn’t sure I remembered it properly… but the number of times Jesus is mentioned in the German Requiem is… zero.
Yes, I should have mentioned the German Requiem as well (though I don’t think it’s as great a piece as the other two).
Piffle. You haven’t sung it as an alto. :)
I can imagine Monty Python singing these songs. Half of them dressed as Vikings, the other half in drag. Perhaps out on a bridge in suburban London.
Where are they in our hour of need?
What I meant to say was, performing these poems as songs. Set to some nice, generic Gospel-sounding tunes.
Still with Python (Monty), though.