Category: Myths & Folklore

Five Loaves & Two Red Fishes

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those fish do not look cooked

Five Loaves & Two Red Fishes

Reverend, Reverend, writer of the tales:
Murder, guilt and passionlust, herringful and slick.
Popular and idolised, blessèd are your sales,
Though the critics pan you off as “slight” and “formulaic”.

Reverend, Reverend, writes another tale:
Murder, guilt and passionlust, once more with a twist –
The victim here is Jesus Christ, crucified, impaled.
Yet we know the killer has to be the one who kissed.

That’s okay, the Reverend is not asking whodunnit,
He tells it straight and poignant – for kudos, not for wealth.
Yet at the Ascension, so a final twist is sprung:
It turns out in Heaven waits old Lucifer himself.

“Just how can a Christian priest write of such a blasphemy ?”
Ask his readers and his bishop, still not comprehending.
“All because I do believe the Lord will yet forgive me,
(And I’d surely sell my soul for fiendish-good twist ending.)”

I feel the joke in this one is rather laboured, as are some of the rhymes.  Incidentally, the Bible contains one of the first locked-room mysteries in literature in the Book of Daniel (or at least in the versions that allow house-room for the apocryphal additions such as Bel & The Dragon).  And if you’re interested, the most common fish in the Sea of Galilee was the tilapia.

The Right to Offend

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The Right to Offend

Moses is a psycho,
And Jesus is a wimp,
Buddha is a lardarse,
Ganesh is more a gimp,
Mohammed is a pedo,
While Mary is a prude,
Yahweh is a rapist,
And Paul is just unglued.

Onan is an onanist
Who loves to bash the bish,
Zeus a sexual preditor,
Cthulu cold as fish,
Ra just gives us side-eye,
While Odin squints when viewed,
And Allah must remain unseen
Because he’s in the nude.

So sue me, dude.

Lift thou Up thy Rod

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salisbury cathedral withstands the wrath of god

Lift thou Up thy Rod

Just as a church is crowned by a spire,
And just as a spire is crowned by a cross,
So a cross is crowned by a stiffened wire
That points heavenwards and reaches higher,
Showing God that science is boss.
From king to serf to country squire,
Nobody’s prayers and nobody’s choir,
To God or Thor or Helios,
Can stop the bolt of electric fire –
Not any pope or priest or friar
Can tame the spark and spare the loss
Like copper can.  And that is why
There’s a spike that jabs the eye of the sky,
With a finger raised to the holy man on high.

Salvation United

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cute little boy with football ball on sports ground
Photo by Gustavo Fring on Pexels.com

Salvation United

Pick a team, son,
Any team you like,
But choose them well –
They’re yours now, tyke,
Your burden, your dream,
Through joy and hell,
Through triumph and strife –
For you must support your team
For the rest of your life.

Don’t ever think
That you can change,
Don’t show disloyalty.
Their ways are strange,
But do not blink –
You must persist,
To treat your lads like royalty.
And even though
They barely know you exist,
You still must follow them
Through goalless draws and penalties missed –
Taste the myths and swallow them.

For they are your brand now,
Your Lord, your quest,
So bare their sponsor
On your chest.
And swear a vow to never don
The colours of a rival squad,
Don’t play away to Babylon,
But trust in the blessed boots of your God.
And don’t be lured to other cults,
By better results or midfield flare –
Do not betray, come Saturday,
For thirty pieces of silverware.

Sing in the stands, you never know,
You just might spur them on,
Or yell at the screen from your sofa,
Till all the communion pies have gone.
Send your hopes and glory beaming
Over the ether,
Praying for goals,
Trust in a messianic coach to pull the levers, switch the roles.
Never stop dreaming, be a believer,
And wish upon a nimble weaver,
A star right-back, a sainted attack,
A keeper who saves our souls.

Pick a team, son,
Any team you like –
But just the one.
For now you’re theirs,
And all your cares,
Your misery and fun
Are bound up in their fortunes,
Highs and lows,
As the seasons run,
From half-time mid-life woes,
Until the final whistle blows
And your game is done.

Read by Edgar, voiced by John Dobson

Damnatio ad Bestias

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is that aslan about to polish them off
The Christian Martyrs’ Last Prayer by Jean-Léon Gérôme

Damnatio ad Bestias

The lions weren’t alone in the Colosseum
To kill the priests –
Not that there were none,
But the Romans also had their fun
With boars, and bulls, and dogs, especially dogs,
To be the beasts.
Their moment was the lunchtime lull
When public executions filled the interval –
And some, I guess, were Christians,
Making up the Lions’ feasts.

Of course, a Colosseum death
Was for the criminals –
And Christians weren’t that often used
To feed the animals.
Persecution was rarer than lions –
It happened, but only in spurts.
But how to vilify Roman indiff’rence
And un-martyred lack-of-hurts ?
We needed far more dramatic saints,
So unleash the lions and uncork the paints !

Teenage Timbrels

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daddy, why do you love god more than me
Alas I cannot find who is the artist for this picture

Teenage Timbrels

Jephthah’s daughter never had a name to call her own,
Nor a life beyond her moral,
Nor a point beyond her sacrifice –
And so she nags us to atone
Just by being, just by dying,
Just by owning nothing but a price.
She’s just a noble loser, bewailing her virginity,
A shibboleth to adolescents searching for divinity
In mopey acquiescence of lonlieness and blame.
A role model for the friendless nights,
But one of fleeting fame –
Discarded by her acolytes
Once they discover girls who bear a name.

Musical AI version generated by Suno.com – find more of them over here.

Sunday Best

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hats to heaven

Sunday Best

Just what is it with trilbies and churches ?
Men must remove theirs, but women’s stay put.
Indeed, why does Paul say that women must cover ?
Is God so upset by each bare-headed mother ?
Men, shed your turbans !  Your masking besmirches !
At least He allows still a shoe on each foot !
(Though women are free from such moaning and wails
To sport wedding bonnets and funeral veils.)

Just what is it with stetsons and churches ?
We might as well dress-down in sackcloth and soots
Than decked-out in finery, mumbling our prayers,
While tutting at any bloke hiding his hairs.
Men, lose your skull-caps !  Such hattery lurches
To thinking you’re working upon your kibbutz –
For men who wear hats are not resters, but grafters –
So the Lord wants your locks flowing free to the rafters.

Just what is it with bowlers and churches ?
Men’s heads are open, but women’s are shut.
How much of an insult is headgear undoffed ?
Does God rage in Heaven at brims left aloft ?
Men, ditch your toupees !  Our scriptural researches
Show bald-pate Elisha is nobody’s butt !
Or do we use ‘etiquette’ as a hypocrisy ?
That doesn’t sound like good manners to me !

I hope the hatted women in church also keep silent throughout, just as 1st Cor 14:34 says to.

Dressed in the Raiments of Emperors

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Lady Godiva
Lady Godiva by John Collier

Dressed in the Raiments of Emperors

Oh People of Coventry, turn not away !
For not only Thomas should view this display.

Oh People of Coventry, look not in shame,
She canters so proudly, erect in her frame.

Oh People of Coventry, unshield your eyes !
She wants us to watch her, to join her, to rise.

Oh People of Coventry, protest exudes,
So cast off your shackles, your breeches, your prudes.

The story is based on a real woman – Godgifu, Countess of Mercia, who survived her husband Leofric and died soon before the Domesday survey of 1086 (which lists her former lands).  The bareback ride doesn’t appear until the Flores Historiarum collected and retold by Roger of Wendover in the early HE 11200s (early 1200s AD), and Peeping Tom didn’t get a look-in until 11600-700s.

As for the poem, I wrote this so long ago that it feels almost as old as the legend.  Strange I was trying to channel socialist values through a protest over lower taxes !

The Rose & The Nightingale

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a bit like the flag of japan

The Rose & The Nightingale

(In reply to Oscar Wilde)

Poor little student, moping for a girl,
He yearns to have a crimson rose to give her –
“Shucks !” thinks a nightingale, heart in a whirl,
“I’ll plead with the rose-bush to deliver !
But woe, all its blossoms are white as a pearl…
…Unless I thorn my breast and sing a-quiver.”

Thus the little nightingale gives her life for beauty,
As nothing but a lacky to a human.
Raising future nightingales – that should be her duty !
At this rate, extinction’s surely looming !
The rose, though, is delighted with this unexpected booty –
With birdie’s rotting body, times are blooming !

Lonely in her dying breath, as atoms fall apart,
She thinks this makes a handy metaphor –
The poor romantic soul who bares her tender little heart
For the callous world to savagely ignore.
(Like artists ev’rywhere, she demands we love her art,
And buy into her struggles and her lore.)

As for the student, he plucks the crimson rose
(Denying for this bud to spread its seed),
And seeks out his classmate with the very pretty nose –
But she looks less than happy with his weed.
“But don’t you see ?” he says, “This bloom’s a mutant !  I propose
To splice its genes and follow where they lead.”

“Pah!” says his paramour, crushing all his dreams,
“I’m bored with ev’ry rose and phlox and crocus !
For I’m in love with rubies, sparkling in the sun-beams –
I want to find a way to make them focus…”
The student is crushed – as is the crimson rose, it seems –
He’s had enough of love and hocus-pocus !