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Index
manifesto
Bunny Scent
My Dog Would Kill
Posteriority
Oh Give Me A Hill!
Walk Don't Run
Wise Crack
Joy Is In My Blood
Second Brain
humanity is a tiger
monkey gun
It Came To Me This Morning
tetrahedral cull cathedral
Four Tribes
It Passes, The Night
Loki & Lucifer
Damn
Love & Laughter
I'm A Born-Again Virgin
Subliminal Pornography
Luscious Lips of Lily
I Will Follow
Science and Dreamer
The Blood-Spattered Banner
America Was Invented
So You Think It Was Coincidence
The Magic Spell
There Is A Graven Image
Mass-Marketed Sports
Do You Wear A Tie?
The Veil
Water Water
Their Halls Ring With Laughter
The Story of Christmas
Poem For A Past Pontiff
Exodus 20 Revisited
Oh.Shit!
Burning Man sound poems
Interactive Poems:
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Poempathetic
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Exodus 20 Revisited
1
Thou shalt have no other gods before me…
By which it should be clear that yes, there are other gods
2
Thou shalt make no graven images, nor any likeness of any thing
that is in the heaven above or in the earth beneath the heaven
or in the waters below the earth…
In other words: no pictures, no sculpture, no artwork, no media of any kind
Because if you make it you will worship it
And I really really hate those idols
3
Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain…
Because my monitoring system starts recording when it hears the word Jehovah
And I do not want to have to pour through hours of you cursing because you stubbed your toe
4
Thou shalt honour the Sabbath and keep it holy…
Because regular vacation time is just good personnel management
5
Thou shalt honour thy father and thy mother…
Unless, you know, they're REALLY bad!
6
Thou shalt not kill…
Unless I tell you to, which I may be doing a lot of
So don’t worry too much about that one
7
Thou shalt not steal…
Except of course the stuff from those people
Whose land I’m stealing to give to you
8
Thou shalt not commit adultery…
Which is, face it, just shitty
9
Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor…
Though in pretty well every other circumstance
Feel free to make it up as you go
10
Thou shalt not covet the things of thy neighbour…
Which is a thought crime, and hardly the worst
But I include it so you’ll think I’m telepathic
Ah… the Holy Commandments of mighty Jehovah…
But wait! Did not Moses, on coming down the mount
With the two tablets on which he had just carved
Those Ten Commandments
Upon seeing the tribes worshipping the golden calf
Did cast them down upon the rocks, destroying them utterly?
And despite the fact that he had just spent most of the day with them
And they were only ten, and he was from an oral tradition
He somehow couldn’t remember them
And had to go back up the mount to get dictation again?
And if this is true then how do we even know
What was on those two tablets of stone?
Is it because the second set were identical?
They were not
And if they were not, in matters legislative
Do not later laws supersede those that came before?
And was it not this second set of tablets
With this second set of Commandments
That was placed in the Ark of the Covenant
And hauled around the desert for forty years?
Is it not therefore this second set of Commandments
To which we should abide?
What is the second set of Ten Commandments?
Exodus 37
1
Thou shalt worship no other gods
For the Lord thy God is a jealous god
And his name is Jealousy…
Pretty close, a little bit creepy
2
Thou shalt make no molten gods…
Pretty close, a lot more specific
Moses had just come up the mount with the whole story
About the golden calf
So he was probably just clarifying things for this dimwitted bunch
In the first list we had that whole “name in vain” thing
Apparently not a high priority, because now at number
3
we have:
Thou shalt keep the feast of unleavened bread…
Feast of unleavened bread?
Here’s my theory:
By the time Moses came back up the mount
Jehovah was between meals
And a god’s gotta eat (probably has a staff to feed)
Therefore we now have at number
4
Thy first born shall be mine…
Which is not to say that God eats people
The first born of a human is to be ransomed with a sheep or a goat
And let’s be clear about something else:
God don’t eat no ass!
The first born of an ass is to be ransomed with a sheep or a goat
And as we all know, the first born are the most delicious
5
Forget about Mom and Dad,
But don’t forget to take those regular breaks:
For six days shalt thou work and on the seventh shalt thou rest…
(And, I don’t know, maybe have a bite to eat?)
In the first list, the only Commandment anyone seems to remember:
“ Thou Shalt Not Kill ”
Does not appear anywhere in this list
Instead, at number
6
We have more feasts:
Thou shalt keep the Feast of Weeks, the Feast of the Ingathering
of the Wheat, and the Feast of the Harvest at End of Season…
Mmm-mmm! Bring on the food!
7
Stealing? Fuggedaboutit! But:
Thou shalt not mix the blood of the sacrifice with the unleavened bread…
… which is more of a serving suggestion, really
8
Adultery? Whatever. But:
Thou shalt not leave the fat of the sacrifice
Overnight until the next morning…
In other words: For God’s sake, clean up!
9
Bear false witness? Do what ya gotta do, but:
The first of the first of the fruits of the land shall be mine…
Because I just remembered even God can’t get by on meat alone
You gotta have some greens in there!
And at number
10
Surely the most sublime of all of the Holy Commandments
Of mighty Jehovah:
Thou shalt not seethe a kid in its mother’s milk…
Seethe is to boil, a kid is a baby goat –
It’s a cooking instruction!
My God was he hungry!
Making one wonder
If Moses had come up the mount an hour after mealtime
If most of the Commandments might not be about
Waste disposal
So the next time someone asks you
If you follow the Ten Commandments
Keep in mind all those feasts you’ve missed
And all those groceries you failed to deliver
And tell them you refuse to worship any god
That can’t remember the simplest things
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