Those people who love Paul as much as Jesus—
shall we agree to call them the Paulines?
The schematics of sin, the counting of beans,
fault-finding, blame-placing weasels
not just ignoring the big guy’s red letters, but
also forgetting Shorty’s juicy bits
“Better to marry than burn” must have meant
the epistler burned like an old mattress,
like an oil lamp that never empties,
an abandoned refinery post-apocalypse.
But I get it, I really, really do. Without
a clear sense of rules, how the hell do you
know how to pop the rusty balloon
of anxiety in your chest, let alone actually pop it.
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I wrote this sonnet in tweets, a couple of lines at a time, starting on Friday, finishing today. Made me look at the sonnet differently–I may try again sometime. Tweeting the lines makes me want to make them more stand-alone. Hm.
marniere 