Saturday, October 31, 2015

Ramona Thompson- Two Poems


With A Friend Like Jesus

Can't go wrong
If you got him
In the place to be
In the thick of your life
Get on your knees
And you just may find
A whole new way of living
Cause with a friend like Jesus
On your side today
No way tomorrow
Any enemy can take you down

Gotta trust sometime
Why not make it now?
Let him take control
Turn your wheel
Away from the path of self desires and trouble
You've been on way too long
Stop, look and listen baby
Turn that bible page
Embrace what you know is right
Jesus forever
What do you say?

The crowning glory
Yours for the asking
Lord of lords
King of kings
Won't you ask him in?
Won't you turn your back?
Deny all sin
Take him in and above
Let him show you
The way, the truth and the light
Revealed in him tonight

2015 Ramona Thompson



Breath of Life

Come to me now
Give unto me
Your will for my own
Guide me
Through the forests
Over the rivers
Let no doubt
Drown or subside me
Entrust in me
Your power
Your glory
Oh lord
Give me your all

Take me to my knees
Loosen up my doubt
Replace it with precious faith
The joy of knowing
In you
I can find
All I'll ever need
No devil to clip this angel's wings
No, not today
For my lord
I've found
The ultimate paradise
At your side

And so I raise
Hands to the Heavens
Lips praying to only you
Now and forever more
I cannot
Will not live
Without you
Savior
Father
Sweet breath of life
I love you

2015 Ramona Thompson



Ramona Thompson has been writing for more then 20 years. Her past publishing credits include Dead Snakes, Calvary Cross, Infernal Ink, Erotic Tales of The Paranormal, Howl and many more.

Fans/readers may reach her via facebook or her e-mail reddstar111@gmail.com


 

Friday, October 30, 2015

Donal Mahoney- A Poem


Heart Broken

What you think can’t tell you what you feel but how you feel can determine what you think for a while at least. 

Or so I discovered in a hurry when I met an old priest I’ve known for years coming out of church one morning recentlyUsually upbeat, he looked startled and goggle-eyed and said, “I can’t believe it but I lost my job!

I said, “What job, Father? You’re still the pastor.”

Then he told me how for the last 20 years every weekday afternoon he would drive from the city into the country, a long round trip, and say an afternoon Mass for a group of retired nuns in their rural convent. 

These were nuns too old or too ill to get up for the usual morning Mass. So my pastor would say his morning Mass every day at his small parish in the city for his parishioners, no longer youngsters either, then read the newspaper, attend to parish matters, eat lunch, get in his old Toyota and head for the convent out in the country. The nuns appreciated his never missing a day.

Whoever the bishop in the area was 20 years ago, and I can’t remember his name, had asked him to say the Mass for the nuns because the priest was then already 64 and not too busy compared with other priests with bigger parishes. 

It wasn’t actually a job in that he was paid only in gas money. But it was a duty he took seriously as he did just about everything else in life. 

Besides, old nuns moved him as much as they do old lay people like me who had been educated by nuns long ago in grammar school. In my case they had done a great job with not that much to work with in terms of my attitude. They had forced me to study by telling my father I had the brains. All I had to do was the work instead of rolling marbles down the aisle and pulling the pigtails of girls. 

I finally did the work because although the nuns didn’t scare me, my father certainly did. Life’s been good because of the nuns’ encouragement and my father looming like a not-too-jolly green giant.

Nevertheless I asked the priest that day why he took the job in the first place and he said, “Well, you don’t say no to the bishop if you don’t want to risk reassignment to a parish in Timbuktu.” 

We both laughed at that and it was the only laugh I heard from him that day. And, come to think of it, I don’t think I’ve heard him laugh since although I see him at least once a week. He’s beginning to look 84.

He told me the nuns had told him they had found a younger priest to say their Mass, one in a new parish in a small town not far from their convent, one who wouldn’t have to drive so far during the bad winter weather to get to them, something my pastor had been doing for two decades. 

He was accident-free on his daily trips often over slippery highways and country roads going from the city to the convent and back again but, after all, he was now 84. 

At that age, he was older than many of the nuns he said Mass for. 

They told him they knew he was going to heaven. They just didn’t want him to have an accident coming to say Mass for them and arrive in heaven ahead of schedule.

So instead they broke a heart that may beat a few years longer.

Donal Mahoney

———————————————————————
The writer knows this to be largely a true story with a few things changed to protect the innocent on both sides. They are all innocent in that they all the love the Lord Jesus Christ and want to do the right thing but sometimes being human can cause a little sadness as we grow older. The priest involved would go anywhere to spread the Word of God. He still does it every day at his home parish.
 
 

JD DeHart- A Poem


Phylacteries

There were phylacteries
around their heads
like lions' manes,
around their minds like
chains, but it doesn't have
to be the way,
you can love God and love
thought at the same time.
 
 

Tempest Brew- A Poem


so much

they tell me that God
loved me so much
that he gave
more than any could

they tell me the
easy answers
life is this way because
of sin

I want the real God
that stirs this world
with the real answers
and the raw truth
 
 

Thursday, October 29, 2015

Donal Mahoney- A Poem


Apostrophe in Eternity

A coffin’s not so bad, the old monk told me,
the two of us standing there, a foot or two 
from the monk who had died the day before

and was lying now in a pine casket.
He was younger, only 83, the old monk said, 
and healthy, too, and yet he got there 

before I did, a lucky soul if you believe 
that life's an apostrophe in eternity 
standing in momentarily

for Who we’re all dying to meet.
If we didn’t believe that, the old monk said,
neither of us would have come here.

He was an engineer, like you, for years 
and I would have been a forest ranger, 
hard to believe two men like us would 

spend our lives praying for hours a day 
and making cheddar cheese in between
I’ll give you some to take home to the family.

The cheese is worth the trip, he laughed. 
We monks make the best of it
until the apostrophe disappears.


————————————————————
Donal Mahoney lives in St. Louis, Missouri.
 
 

Monday, October 5, 2015

Jonathan Beale- A Poem


At Golgotha, then…. Who’d have thought?

We sat beneath
the bodies hung
            upon
The crosses.
Of the dead, dead wood
And beneath
The belting sun
Drawing and giving
            Life.  
looking at their
Eyes and their
Grimaces.  The rope
The nails.  Their blood
Dowsed the sand
Beneath.  Offering a
new hope for new
Generation
             Who
would have thought
anybody, any soul
Could be unbroken
by this. By this
unfathomable
situation
that has written
books….
2000 years
Hence. 


Donal Mahoney- A Poem


As It Ever Shall Be

Every man leads 
in the daily race 
that takes a lifetime.

Right behind him,
God and Satan, 
one of whom 

always wins.
It can be a toss-up but
one of them knows 

who will win.
He simply waits. 
The other has to scurry.


———————————————
Donal Mahoney lives in St. Louis, Missouri.
 
 

Andrew M. Bowen- A Poem



A SHORT PRAYER

God grant that always
I walk in humble shoes when
I escape Satan's
snares for the unwary soul
and never scorn they who fall.



Andrew M. Bowen works as a sales manager in Bloomington, IN.  He has published 24 poems and recently submitted his first two novels for publication.  He is also an actor who has has appeared in eight independent films, six stage productions,and one radio teleplay.