"Art, like morality, consists of drawing the line somewhere."
--G.K. Chesterton
"The man's body is sacred and the woman's body is sacred.../Each belongs here or anywhere just as much as the well-off, just as much as you."
--Walt Whitman
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According to the Buddha, right speech is a statement that is timely, true, kind, helpful (connected to liberation), and spoken with a mind of good-will. Let us all try to observe this precept.
Taylor, a Winning Writers subscriber, often emails me his poems about the spiritual disillusionment of the Vietnam generation. This latest entry is one of my favorites. Read my critique of his poem "Corpus Christi" on our website.
Bored in Sunday School
In better times,
we would have been best friends,
growing up with pals down the street,
with our Davy Crockett hats, and our Johnny Unitas helmets,
after school was our first attempts at understanding
the head and shoulder movements of the opposite sex,
such mysterious lamentations of nature,
we also were becoming bored in Sunday school,
figuring all this talk of morals was bad for our young souls,
we had worlds and mountains to conquer,
our chapter in history had yet to be written,
all of us could do it better than
it had been done before!
the afternoon matinee became the Saturday night chick
flick,
where we suddenly were consumed with our looks, and if our
hair and nose were the correct lengths for our species,
we did not care, in the beginning, that our lovers were the fruitful results
of aloofness, we held them secure in the dreamland epitaph of insecure country boys
who prayed, not to the Sunday god, but that deity who ran naked from
the Garden of Eden,
when these starlets whispered "I love you", we were certain
our aging would stop,
those blue eyes held us dear,
their ample breastplate provided cover,
their legs, wrapped round us,
until the next sunlight
awakened the merging of passion,
and the future,
was a bitter cough drop,
yet, swallowed,
funny, the old drunk told me,
nothing stays wonderful, forever...
