Meeting God: A surreal, slightly irreverent poem about love, God, and movies

Note: playful, irreverent humor involving God and relationships.

Meeting God

I told her I was upset that
God spoke to me.

She said she thought
that was a good thing, and
weren’t you pleased
you had a raconteur
and bon vivant
while I
was away…

I told her
she was a
bonne vivante
and I was upset
He spoke to me in English

You don’t know Greek she said, but
that was not the point.

I had wanted the full story
so I said, “Show me the movie!”
No, not “Jerry Maguire” or
“Oh, my God!” circa 1977
with George Burns as God.

So she got cute and giggled with
did It show you the movie?
I thought it was blasphemy
that she called God “It” but
she said, didn’t you call me Goddess?
Well, um uh and um uhhhhhh I said

She: did He show you the movie?

Me: Part 1

She: So?

Me: Part 1 of a 1,000

She: How was Part 1?
was it in English with
subtitles or something?

Me: No English but
it was 24 hours long.
No intermission.

Are you going to see
the rest of the story?

No I asked for a summary.
God said:
Love your wife closely,
Love the lion from a distance, and
Don’t be a child.

She: Love me as a Goddess

Show me the movie!

Planet Kepler-452b Asks For Your Indulgence In Our Experimental Text

Salutation and Introduction

Dear People of the planet that we measure from here as located at:

Right Ascension (RA): 07h44m00.89s
Declination (Dec): -44°16’39.2″
And in your manner of speaking, the constellation Puppis (but we have no mythology equivalent to this pattern.)

We are in Cygnus by your terminology. Our computer tells us in the manner of making puns in some languages that “In Cygnus and in Health” would be a joke pun. Someday you will tell us about “The Voyager Golden Record” for your obscure location method.

[Note: our linguists have not come up with a name for your planet. We think that our A.I. has made a mistake in saying that you call yourself earth or dirt. So we will decide on something official later. In the meantime we have also heard the word “Blue”]

A Test Extract Story Text For The Blue Planet

We have used our A.I. to derive wisdom
from the most flagrant writing canons
that provide many words on a narrow subject

For our first attempt at extraction translation
we choose the topic:
“Flop-mandering the Vote on Delusion Planet”
(Note: this is for test purposes only
to establish grammar and syntax)

Demoxists of America unite!
Free paid vacations!

Comrades, don’t waste a district —
it only needs to have 51%, so
send the rest on registration vacation.

We have the houses and apartments
in the devil’s districts from which
our ex-patriot Demoxists can vote

This is the nuclear option
for a gerrymander.

Remember what Vlad III Denin the Impaler,
founder of the Dolshecriks Party said:
Party is God, and
when the river of blood is wide
no one can cross back into democracy

Note: There may be mistakes in this translation. Available texts are limited. We apologize if we have offended you. Please do not invade, and we promise not to invade you. This is for research purposes only.

Love Dream on St. Valentine’s Day

A Dream Love

In a lucid dream he called out:
Playwright — show yourself.

A burlesque show ensued with
a Lady doing a striptease
while riding on a lion
and then appearing from a mist
a doppelgänger said
he was the playwright, until
the lion tore him apart and threw
a bone to the first poor dog to
come along wagging a tale of woof

What the hell was that he thought.

Another doppelgänger fought with the dog.
He said, “This is a bone of contention!”,
jumping off the stage onto a commuter train
where he made love to every woman who had a ticket
and one who collected them

And then his friend Carina appeared with a rose in her mouth.
“Basta! Enough!”

But her tone softened from anger to love to lust to stardust:
“Enough my rogue, I love you so and I need you to confess,
upon the stars, that you’ll marry me and give me the leading role…”

A doppelgänger and the ghost of his first wife woke him up.
They said, “Speed, mark it, Scene X, Take Carina, Action!”

They made the film and
trademarked a new line of chocolates:
“Dark Chocolate Expedience by Carina”
Some have cherries.

Ode to Love Potion #9

Magic Love Brew Number Nine

I brought loneliness pangs over to a psychic witch
You’ve seen and heard about in scary books
She’s got a hut down near 34th and Nine
making just lovely carafes
of
love tinctures of giraffe

I whispered I was too short for girls
I’d been stunted since 1966
She took my hand and gave it a kiss
She said what you miss is
love tincture number nine

she kneeled right down and made a blink at a snake
said I’m conjuring it right here for moonlight lakes

it wafted foul odors, it seemed like a toad baked

I slapped my face, I cringed my eyes, I drank

I didn’t see any stars of day or night
but frantically kissed everything in sight

But when I kissed police around 34th and Nine
she broke my petite carafe of
tincture number nine.

I slapped my face, I cringed my eyes, I drank

I didn’t see any movie stars of day or night
but french kissed everything in sight

But when I kissed giraffes ’round 34th and Nine
she broke my petite carafe of
tincture number nine.

Chocolate, Card, Bed On the 14th

Our Strange St. Valentine’s Day

It had been a little expensive
to hire a hippy Priest
for February 14, but
worth it!

Slyly in babble
I had said in January:
“St. Valentine’s Day
is coming?”

I thought:
chocolate, card, bed
with a rosy optimistic Rosé wine,
a bow to tradition with a bow

But she gave me a book
to study about origins

On February 14
I got the card: “Happy
Lupercalia Festival Day”;
I got the goat and made the bed.
Goat Birria Tacos are really good.

Warning: stop here. Let
sleeping dogs lie. Although
her dog, Charlie, always told the truth.

On the appointed day,
Charlie chased the
naked Luperci Hippy Priest
smeared with goat cheese
as we went from bar to bar,
and then we romantically
made her bed a trampoline
while we saintly bed down
in a pile of roses.

It was a g.o.a.t. St. Valentine’s Day.

Letters Can Fly

Love letter
(hey yeah)

from you
(oh my God)

is like a flier
I’d climb on board

Love letter
(say yes!)
from you
(bump a yum come)

making me ride
on a dream
(say yeah)

and I’d climb
(OMG)
on your paper plane
(love letter)

(bump me come on)
oh yeah, and

I fold it
in lust, but

Then

We are glowing
from a journey
from a story
oh happy,
enveloped in you

Love letter,
in the morning

with my coffee
(hey yeah)
stirring your cream

(thump a lub dub)
do re mi la la and up
a lub dub

oh

feels like
a phantom kiss,
and I miss the bliss
(oh yeah)
I know you’ll be

’til then

when we see
each other
(oh joy)

OMG
in-person
like a dream.

Love letter,
I’ve got wings
and see you soon.

Traveling Groundhog Predicts Six More Weeks of Summer

A Wombat Loves her Groundhog Warrior

I swear by roots, bark, and herbs,
that a cross-species warrior lover isn’t new
I’m thinking of a žaawanų (Zah Wah New)
He’s got strong incisors and I love him too

He’s a damn good hell raiser I call Helushka
and he’s the best groundhog prophet scholar
the Ho-Chunk Prairie has ever seen, yeah but
though Wisconsin boys are the scariest ever seen
I swear they know their rock ‘n’ roll decrees, hey

Cross species love can’t be bad ’cause
I’m a Wombat and you can see
my Joey in a pouch
loves rock ‘n’ roll

So I got my dear groundhog a passport suitable
and after our Chapel wedding roots and branches
he’ll say “Six more weeks of Summer” too, ’cause
down under it’s a better prediction
then that Maxatushka in Kalamazoo

Cross species love can’t be bad ’cause
I’m a Wombat and you can see
Helushka in the burrow
loves a rock ‘n’ roll beat

Little Grandma Match Girl

Happy News for the Blind Wolf News Network

A poem about what doesn’t count as a headline—and why that’s considered good accounting.

Introduction

This poem is not about the storm that’s coming.

It’s about the ones that don’t qualify—politically, morally, or financially.

A woman walks into winter carrying charity leftovers, inherited fairy tales, and proof that some lives disappear cleanly enough to balance the books.

Happy News

She would not beg any more
for her Congressman not to
shut down her government funds.

She would march on into cold hell
if that would be her fate before she fell on

She escaped from her neighbor
who the protestors had loved but

the good neighbor was
wanted for murder and rape, and he
came from an unmentionable place
not the North Pole

But soon a tease and joke flake of snow
brought on a lugubrious gloom and

a doom exploded in her head
like the bomb cyclone snowstorm ahead as
she walked in her snow shoes, flip-flops
from an empty closet, and

she slid down a hill
into a snow bank without money.

She checked her backpack in the snow,
CONTENTS
her Granddaughter’s
unneeded present:
Hans Christian Andersen’s book
The Little Match Girl,
a doll, a flashlight,
an article about
her granddaughter’s rape
and murder
CHAPTER
flashlight
matchbook from a fund-raising dinner
a photo of her Grandchild
her wedding ring

She shined the flashlight into the storm,
and each snow flake sparkled like a cinema screen
each flake held a memory, but when no angel came
she lit one match for her Grandchild, threw
her wedding ring into the snow and died.

She didn’t make the news. And no one
ever found her frozen body.

It was a good thing:
not a strain to the budget.

Short End: on running out of breath before running out of time

Introduction

This poem uses compressed idioms and displaced clauses to explore time, breath, and the uneven arithmetic of a life. Its sentences run long while their subjects run short.

Short End

Born short too long,
tall dreams under
shedding trees and dog days,
breathless sex
not often enough

Too long will be
a breathless death bed,
betraying trays
coming up short cake
without cherries or cake walk,
walking into a set sun, burning up
in fire and timid stone,
dancing the limbo
without a bar that
has no gin and tonic
or topic tonic against
the shortness of life
in the din of nature
and laughing hyenas
the elephant in the room

Notes

The poem leans on idiomatic drift and breath-length phrasing rather than fixed narrative voice.