Lame from the journey, weary but still wary.
Came at the holy hour of the Hail Mary
(I love anachronising Holy Writ)
Looking for lodgings. Lot, who had just lit
His lamp, saw them, called them and said: "You're very
Welcome here." They smiled: "Ah, a good fairy.
Such kindness. You'll be amply paid for it."
These two were angels. The buggers of Gomorrah,
Hearing of their arrival, knew it not,
Else all their hair would have stood up in horror.
Their pricks stood up instead. They yelled out: "You
Selfish unsodomite, let's have them, Lot.
You don't require their arses, and we do."
Lot 2
The angels now announced themselves to Lot
And said "This town must suffer for its fault.
No rooftop, cavern, hole or nether vault
Will hide them when the flames leap high and hot.
You and your family leave now. Do not halt
And look back down Longara Road. Do not,
We say again." But hardly had they got
Away when Lot's wife turned and turned to salt.
Ah, woman, cursed by curiosity.
If all of our Italian women could
So change, as by that precedent they should,
They'd soon destroy the salt monopoly
And bring the price down, though of course we would
Be forced to live on salt and sodomy.
Lot 3
God, then, assumed the office of a cook
And baked the Sodomites like salmon trout.
Only the family of Lot got out,
Though his wife suffered for that backward look.
They camped near Zoar, in a stony nook.
Lot's daughters, starved of love, began to pout,
Seeing no sign of penises about,
And, driven by a fleshly need, forsook
Propriety. Here at least was their father.
They gave him wine with a well-salted pasty.
When he was drunk they fucked him to a lather,
Not finding this unnatural or nasty.
No fire rained down. It seems that God is rather
Inclined to incest but hates pederasty.
Abraham 1
The Bible, sometimes called the Jewish Chronicle,
Says, midway between Noah's and Aaron's ark,
That Abraham played the grand old patriarch
And sacrificed to God, with fine parsonical
Language that all that blood made sound ironical.
He took a donkey from the donkey-park
(Chewing up chicory and grass in stark
Lordly disdain, as if it wore a monocle)
And called to Isaac: "Pack the bags and load
This ass here, get the boy to bring a nice
Sharp axe, then kiss your mother on the cheek.
Bring coats and hats, we're going to take the road.
The blessed Lord requires a sacrifice.
The time has come to teach you the technique."
Abraham 2
They ate, while day was cooking in the east,
Some breakfast. When their journey had begun,
Abraham led them in an orison
That lasted for a hundred miles at least.
Then the old swine or, if you wish, old priest
Said: "We've arrived. Shoulder that burden, son.
And as for you -" (meaning the other one)
"- Wait here. You too," he told his fellow-beast.
They started climbing. Halfway through their climb,
Isaac said: "Where's your victim wandered to?"
"Wait," said his father. "All in God's good time."
They reached the top, where knife-edged breezes blew,
And Abraham said: "A victim, yes. Well, I'm
The priest, son, and there's only me and you."
Abraham 3
"No, no!" The boy knelt in his innocence
– The right position for that butcher-dad
Who raised his axe above the hapless lad,
Ready to do paternal violence.
"Stop!" cried a voice. "I think we can dispense
With filicide." An angel. "You've just had
A Godsent test, and passed it, I might add.
Baaaah – here's a sheep. Quite a coincidence."
To cut it short (I'm sick of the damned story),
The sheep was slain, and all the four went home,
The ass to pasture, Isaac to his mother.
As for the slab he nearly made all gory.
It's a prized relic, hidden safe in Rome,
At Borgo-novo, or some place or other.
Joseph 1
Some merchants, so it's said, near signed the pledge and
Gave up the drink when they heard something odd:
A yell deep in a well. "A child, by God,"
One said, sticking his chin over the edge and
Peering. They hired a dredger then to dredge and
He dredged up, dripping like a landed cod,
Howling like hell, a stinking clayey clod,
Joseph the Jew, so goes the ancient legend.
They dried him, cleaned him, gave him fodder and
Bought him a shirt against the inclement weather,
But didn't want to bring him up by hand.
Seeking returns on what they'd clubbed together
They sold him off in Egypt, contraband,
For a few rags and half a trank of leather.
Joseph 2
Joseph grew up. When he was fully grown,
The lady that he worked for cast him looks
Whose drift he thought he'd read about in books,
Sighing, trying to get him on his own.
She ogled him with many a meaning moan,
Carefully careless with her eyes and hooks.
Her hunger could not be assuaged by cooks,
Only by some raw mutton with no bone.
One morning, bringing the hot water to her,
He found her naked, the sweet buxom slut,
So damped her with the contents of the ewer.
She grabbed him by his single garment but
He left it with her, naked but still pure,
And ran away, the bloody idiot.
Exodus
Pharaoh, a rogue in charge of other rogues,
First drowned the Jews then turned them into slaves,
Driven to toil by knaves with stones and staves,
Just where the fertile Nilus disembogues.
But Moses (the humane dictator vogue's
Said to start here), after some narrow shaves,
Led the Jews out between two walls of waves:
The buggers didn't even wet their brogues.
When the Red Sea swung open like a door,
The Jews assumed their journey was near done,
Not having met the love of God before.
But round and round beneath the desert sun
They had to frig for forty years and more -
A fucking waste of time for everyone.
Balaam's Ass
As ancient Hebrew story tellers knew
The future better than the past, we lack
Proof that when Balaam rode his donkey's back
And, since it halted, beat it black and blue
The poor beast turned on him and brayed: "Hey, you,
Why did you launch that unprovoked attack?
If you could see that angel there you'd thwack
This ass, or arse, more gently than you do."
If you believe this, welcome an incursion
Of awe to learn that donkeys can be pat in
High class Italian (English in this version).
Accept the premise and it follows that in
Pointing you out the donkeys that know Latin
(Aspeeeerges meeeeee) I cast no foul aspersion.
/> The Battle of Gideon
300 Jews knitted their warlike brows and,
Armed with trombones and torches hid in skillets.
Marched in good order on their foemen's billets,
Quiet as a moving munching herd of cows. And
As dancers on the stage taking their bows and
Boos in an endless belt endlessly fill it, s-
O this small troop marched in a circle till its
300 men looked damned near like 3000.
Ta-rah, ta-ray – clash pans, flash torches. Flustered,
And deafened as 300 brass are mustered,
The enemy collapses like a custard.
Such thrift! Today we have our martial brawls,
Our soldiers heed the bugle when it calls
And waste 300 fucking cannon-balls.
Foxes
The Bible is quite verminous with foxes.
Samson caught hundreds and, with foxy cunning,
Tied torches to their tails and set them running
Through his foes' harvest-fields – thus, with hot proxies,
Saving them sweat. Still, they wished ninety poxes
Upon him and increased their vengeful gunning.
Where are the foxes now? It seems they're shunning
Our hounds as we shun syphilitic doxies.
We ought to want them, since they stank of virtue
When Samson used them against naughty men.
But still an eggless henless world would hurt you
More than a foxless. If he came back again
With scores of foxes sniffing round his skirt, you
Would say: "I'd rather have a fucking hen."
Revenge 1
Of all the Bible stories that they tell,
This one to come is quite the most fantastic.
A sonnet being so damned inelastic,
I'll require two to tell it really well.
Well, now – the exodists from Egypt's hell
Met the mad Malechites who, dreadful, drastic.
Ferocious, tastelessly enthusiastic,
Fell on the Hebrews, and the Hebrews fell.
God made a memorandum. After all,
The Jews pursued the then correct religion.
After four hundred years he called on Saul.
"The Malechites," he said, "deserve the axe.
Spit the whole nation; roast it like a pigeon.
Don't leave a feather on their fucking backs."
Revenge 2
So in God's name Saul went and waded in,
Trouncing them in one horrible stampede,
Goats, calves and all. Mercy maybe or greed
Or something made him save Prince Agag's skin.
Samuel now prophesied about Saul's sin!
"Idolater, betrayer of our creed,
A holier Israelite will supersede
Your reign and make a holier reign begin.
Bring me the prince you blasphemously spared."
Tremulous as a fatted pig, that prince
Stuttered – agag agag aghast, shit-scared.
The holy Samuel did not blink or wince
But raised the butcher's blade that he had bared
And made a mound of Malechitish mince.
David 1
How powerful is God's arm! He sent a boy
To fight Goliath, who was tough and scary,
Who swallowed foes like oysters of the prairie
And thought he'd stamp on David like a toy.
But God wished Israel to yell with joy
To know that every flabby, weak, unhairy
Weed that loves Jesus and his mother Mary
Finds giants rather easy to destroy.
Seeing the stone and sling and stripling shepherd,
Goliath cried: "You little prick, you've gone a
Mite too far," and tensed up like a leopard.
But David blessed the saints and the Madonna,
Measured his fireline, fired his pebble up it
And saw Goliath crumple like a puppet.
David 2
King David's later life? The stories vary.
It seems, though, his prophetic eye was sharp,
He spoke with God, he much preferred the bar-p-
Arlour to the coffee-shop or dairy.
Jesus, of David's seed through holy Mary,
For David was a very pericarp,
Had his gab-gift, but could not play the harp
Nor sing like David, King Saul's prize canary.
The Bible gives a fairish bona fide
Account of him, although it's hard to follow:
The story is elliptical, untidy.
You'll learn, however, that he loved to wallow
In love, and frot until his balls were hollow,
From Saturday till pretty late on Friday.
Wisdom
Solomon's judgment. So. It makes you laugh.
But could a judge upon a modern bench,
Nose lifted high against the rabble's stench,
For all his wigs and tomes and courtroom staff,
Do better? He, drained like his own carafe,
Hearing one wench scream at the other wench
In language that would make a bargee blench,
Could only say: "Let's chop the child in half."
The parish register was plain to see,
You say. He could have checked on her or her name,
The date and place of birth of son or daughter.
Fool. In those days nobody had a surname,
And parish registers came in A.D.,
When Christ had shown a brand-new use for water.
Judith
The Holy Bible tells how the seduc-
Tive Judith feasted Holofernes, winner
Of the late bloody war. They finished dinner,
She doused the lights. He, leering at his luck,
Leapt on her unresisting. Then she struck
His head off with a sword and cried: "Foul sinner,"
(His milk still frothing to the boil within her)
"Now you can find some blacker hole to fuck."
She heaved the head up in her lily hand,
Though it was heavy, horrible and gory,
And did a tour of triumph through the land.
I find two morals in this sacred story:
(a) Prove your faith by killing people and
(b) Be a bloody whore for heaven's glory.
Susannah
The chaste Susannah – what was she chased for?
Her beauty, yes, but was there something more?
The sort of reputation that she bore?
You said the word, not I: the word is w--e.
Those old men said it too (Ach, nothing's lower
Than watching at a lady's bathroom door).
But Daniel caught them out. His lion-roar
Condemned their heads, not hers, to hit the floor.
Chaste, was she? Hm. Perhaps she couldn't bring
Herself to fancy two limp bits of string.
A woman's nature's nature-in-the-spring.
To get to know it, cease your pondering,
Slap on your chest two puddings in a sling
And let your haunches launch into a swing.
Belshazzar's Feast
Belshazzar, drunk, observed a kind of smoke
Resolve itself to something vaguely manual
Writing upon the wall. He called on Daniel.
"Many tickle your arse - What's this – a joke?"
The ambiguous bilge that Daniel then spoke
Made less sense than the yapping of a spaniel.
"Weighed in the balance to the utmost granule,
Found wanting." Why not just "You're going to croak"?
All right, that's not a literal translation.
But what came next was no big fat surprise:
Belshazzar didn't live to eat his breakfast.
A prophet, scared of sticking out his neck, fast-
Idious about his reputation,
Ought to be told that riddles are damned lies.
Dec. 8
Serious talk now; let's not arse about.
December eight – what do we celebrate?
Come on, you know. Good – the Immaculate
Conception. When that apple-loving lout
Adam first took it in his head to flout
The Lord's law, angels said: "Evacuate,"
And firmly locked the paradisal gate,
Keeping his maculate descendants out.
Poor Mother Nature, ever since than ban,
Cannot breed even half a child that's blameless.
There boils within the rising prick of man
The seed of something terrible though nameless.
So praise to Joachim who, with Saint Ann,
Achieved a fuck that was uniquely shameless.
Annunciation
You know the day, the month, even the year.
While Mary ate her noonday plate of soup,
The Angel Gabriel, like a heaven-hurled hoop,
Was bowling towards her through the atmosphere.
She watched him aash the window without fear
And enter through the hole in one swift swoop.
A lily in his fist, his wings adroop,
"Ave," he said, and after that, "Maria.
Rejoice, because the Lord's eternal love
Has made you pregnant – not by orthodox
Methods, of course. The Pentecostal Dove
Came when you slept and nested in your box."
"A hen?" she blushed, "for I know nothing of -"
The Angel nodded, knowing she meant cocks.
Enter Joseph
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