Christian culture’s crucifixation
nails us to our seats as, station by station,
we travel the trammelled line
until we find
that terminal
more primal.
The humanstrain’s end-of-line stop
is Ragnarok.
Everyone please disembark
into the dark–
no light, no map.
Mind the Ginnungagap.
*****
This is as close as I get to religion: existential uncertainty. I’m a Militant Agnostic: “I don’t know… and neither do you!” Yet this attitude is apparently compatible with religion, being not that different from Eliot’s ‘East Coker‘:
O dark dark dark. They all go into the dark,
The vacant interstellar spaces, the vacant into the vacant,
The captains, merchant bankers, eminent men of letters
(…)
I said to my soul, be still, and let the dark come upon you
Which shall be the darkness of God.
But Christianity? I think not. Altogether too unlikely, with so many impossibilities packed into such a small understanding of the cosmos. We don’t know where we are headed, not just as individuals with finite lives, but as a species that is simultaneously developing space travel and genetic modifications… the possibilities are endless and the future, dark as well as light, is unknowable.
The poem is semi-formal with its loose iambics and paired rhymes or slant rhymes, but no structure beyond its natural flow. It was originally published in the Experimental section of a 2019 issue of Better Than Starbucks, and republished as part of work being spotlighted in The HyperTexts in August 2024.
Photo: “London Holborn tube station in Black and White effect” by Patrick Cannon Tax Barrister is licensed under CC BY 2.0.
Form in Formless Times 
Robin, I think we may be rivals to be the most heretical living poets and heirs of William Blake. But can you outdo this heresy?
In His Kingdom of Corpses
by Michael R. Burch
1.
In His kingdom of corpses,
God has been heard to speak
in many enraged discourses,
aghast, from some mountain peak
where He’s lectured men on “compassion”
while the sparrows around Him fell
and babes, for His meager ration
of rain, died and went to hell,
unbaptized, for that’s His fashion.
2.
In His kingdom of corpses,
God has been heard to vent
in many obscure discourses
on the need for man to repent,
to admit he’s a lust-addled sinner;
give up threesomes and riches and fame;
to be disciplined at his dinner
though always he dies the same,
whether fatter or thinner.
3.
In his kingdom of corpses,
God has been heard to speak
in many absurd discourses
of man’s Ego, precipitous Peak!,
while demanding praise and worship,
and the bending of every knee.
And though He sounds like the Devil,
all good Christian men agree:
He loves them, indubitably.
Published by The Chimaera, Cyclamens and Swords and Lucid Rhythms
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I enjoyed the HyperTexts selection & was particularly taken with “I started out alone.”G
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Thanks, Gail – The HyperTexts is an amazing resource.
I think I’ll post ‘I Started Out Alone’ next week. It is also one of my favorites – and one I can recite from memory, which is always nice!
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