Vines Crawl up the God’s Face

No one thinks much of the gods
They don’t, as the case may be,

Think are real gods, but I do.
I think most of the lost gods

No one thinks are real, and then
I spare a thought for big gods

The wide world’s still in play for,
And for the gods of the few—

One and by one, the slow feet,
So Pound wrote, the souls of blood,

But not just the ones he liked,
Old Ez, those he loathed as well—

The great god with the green eyes
Who craved sole rule of whole lives,

The carved gods made of dark woods
Who had no poems in ink yet.

I think of them all, the ones
I know of, the ones I don’t.

Why them? Why such things? All ghosts
Haunt me, but the gods are strange.

What imp forged gods for our brains?
We don’t know. We say we do,

Fake or real, say we know who
They are, what they do for us,

But we don’t. We have these gods
We feel can help or smite us,

While we mock all gods not ours,
When most of them, of course, aren’t.

How can we burn with such faith
And scoff at all not-my-god?

Not your god? Of course your god!
Each god, all gods, claimed some souls

To have names, to be called gods
In the first place. God’s a god.

The same flesh and blood dreamed each,
Our flesh and blood, our weird dreams.

Cut a thought of god in half,
And what you get is all god.

And then they’re lost. Just like that—
A prayer no one makes, vague shapes.