Dear Sally,
I feel it might be stronger if you regularised the syllable count and metre.
Also I think the stanza that begins: "I never heard such utter rot" is by
far the weakest and could be omitted. Pish is handy to rhyme with fish, but
I don't think it carries the negative weight the poem calls for, and
similarly I think 'utter rot' is a bit too jokey for the resentment that I
feel is expressed in the rest of the poem.
 I think the bitterer the better with this poem.
  Kind regards,
   grasshopper


----- Original Message -----

From: "Sally Evans" <[log in to unmask]>

Subject:      New:  Jesus   : warning: anti-Christian
Date: 26 February 2002 23:07

warning


anti christian


you might be offended if you are a strict Christian














    JESUS

I haven't forgiven Jesus
  (though he's forgiven me)
for frightening me as a child
   making me stoop on bended knee

not to the great wide universe
   but to a narrow god,
routing the bright plurality
   for one cussed despot.

Nor for my hair being cut so short,
   my dresses sober black and grey,
for hanging on a dirty cross
   when I desired to dance and play

for taking credit for the flowers
    and lovely things that still crept in
to the universe he occupied
   with so much thought of sin,

for taking in my parents
   whose fault I think it wasn't
(because I loved them more than him).
He loves me? No he doesn't -

he wants me in his hockey team
  he wants me on his side,
he wants me to get up and say
   it was for me he died.

I never heard such utter rot,
  I  never heard such pish.
The words that spring at once to mind
   are 'bicycle' and 'fish'.

I don't want his forgiveness
   and I don't admire his  god.
I'd rather think that everything
   just happened out of mud.

And he if ever listened
  to what stared him in the face,
he'd stop saying he'd forgiven me
  and just get off my case.



Sally Evans