Poetry

Praying for a Sick Mother

/ Greg Asimakoupoulos

Earth Day Reflections on Global Warming:
Mother Nature’s Death Wish

Mother Earth has got a fever.
Some insist it’s no big deal.
Others say it could be fatal.
Doomsday prophets start to kneel.

Diagnosis? Global warming.
There are sweat beads on her brow.
She is having trouble breathing.
Just how much will God allow?

Major surgery is needed
Cutting out some things we do.
Like the fossil fuels we guzzle.
Going green may see her through.

We should pray that she’ll recover.
After all, she is our mom.
May our Father who’s in Heaven
intervene before she’s gone.

Mother Nature’s Death Wish

The irony of what this week represents.

This very week Earth Day draws near.
Most eerily it’s very clear
how sick our planet seems to be.
Just ponder what has been.

The Waco cult Davidian
revealed the human heart of sin
as senseless killings stunned us all
and soaked the ground with blood.

Fast-forward then another year
when Oklahomans shed their tears
for victims of a downtown bomb
who died so needlessly.

It was this week in Ninety-nine
we gasped to learn of Columbine
as Littleton became big news
we wished we’d never heard.

And now this week Virginia Tech
has left us all a nervous wreck.
Ironically, though tulips bloom,
our Spring has lost its step.

Life is Like “The Boston”

/ Greg Asimakoupoulos

There’s more to a marathon than meets the eye

It’s a metaphor for living.
Like “The Boston,” life’s a race.
There are hills, downpours and shin splints.
There’s a stiff wind in your face.

While you run it flanked by others,
often times you feel alone.
You get winded and discouraged.
You’re exhausted to the bone.

Life is never like a cake walk.
It’s a marathon at best.
It’s a measure of endurance.
It’s a complicated test.

But a second wind awaits you
if you pace yourself each day.
Dropping out is not an option.
Finish strong! Go all the way!

You Don’t Know Jack

/ Greg Asimakoupoulos

Ignorance to what Jackie Robinson did 60 years ago;
The Puss of Prejudice

You don’t know Jack
whose oiled bat
could swing with endless grace.

You don’t know Jack
who dodged much flack
like millions of his race.

You don’t know Jack
who freed the blacks
and steeled their walk toward home.

You don’t know Jack
and looking back
you hardly are alone.

You don’t know Jack,
whose home run crack
in Brooklyn made him great.

You don’t know Jack.
Admit your lack
by being born too late.

The Puss of Prejudice
Why the Don Imus Show deserves to be gonged.

I must insist
Imus must go.
Those Rutgers girls
are hardly ‘ho’s.

Don’s oozing bias
(much like puss)
is quite revolting.
Can the cuss.

Unlike the grace
the Dodgers showed
to Jackie R
so long ago

Don Imus proves
we’ve not arrived.
His comments mean
racisim thrives.

The likes of him
cause hurt and fear.
So drain the puss.
He’s out of here!

His free speech rights
were rather wrong.
Chuck Barris please
go bang the gong.

Good Friday Now and Then

/ Greg Asimakoupoulos

Looking at the past through the lens of the present

The calendar above my desk
announces that today is a good Friday.

But the headlines of my morning paper
counter that claim.
A river of crimson blood
flows through the parched dirt streets
of an ancient city.

It’s a pity really.
Innocent life snuffed out.
Victimized by fanatic fundamentalists.
Warring factions who fashion a wardrobe of power
cloaking the city in a sinister fog.

“Bag dad and bury him,”
a jaded widow doubled in grief
chides her frightened children.
“Hurry please, before your father is disposed
upon some garbage heap.”

This mother’s mourning
continues late into the night.

“I rock my babies to sleep
wishing them sweet dreams
all the while praying my own will come true.
Dreams that my sons and daughters will be able
to grow up without being blown up
never to wake again.”

The complaint of the ancient psalmist is voiced anew.
“Where is God anyway?”
“Why has He forsaken the helpless anyhow?”

The mother of Jesus knew a similar sorrow.
Hunched at the foot of a Roman cross,
Mary inched back in fear and revulsion.
Her swollen eyes looked through
tear-stained fingers at a lifeless body.
It was a body she knew only too well.

This dead man was once the baby
she had gently rocked to sleep.
This bloody corpse had once been the toddler
whose bloodied knees she had tenderly bandaged.
This object of her grief had (not so long ago)
been her twelve-year-old Bar Mitzvah boy.
You know.
The one who went missing for three days
only to eventually to be found in the Temple
talking with the elders.

And now that life
(which God had supernaturally given her)
was gone.

As she lived her own nightmare that day,
I doubt Mary dared to dream
she would again find her Son in three days time.

The injustice was just too blinding.
The pain too intense.
The reasons why the blood was flowing
not nearly clear enough.

Two women (separated by two millennia)
drank bitter dregs from a common cup.
One lost an Iraqi husband.
The other a Jewish son.
For neither was it a good Friday.
It was a bad news day all the way.

And in the midst of human agony
the likes of which few of us could possibly imagine,
God has a way of showing up unannounced and unexpected.

It’s called Easter.

The Bar Mitzvah boy did it again!

Take Me Out to the Ballgame (Revisited)

/ Greg Asimakoupoulos

A needed diversion from a non-ending war

O please take me out to the ballgame.
I’m tired of bloodshed and war.
And though it’d be nice if the home team prevails,
I’m not that concerned with the score.

What I need is a break from the headlines.
Nine innings away from Iraq.
Just give me some strike outs and several home runs
before CNN brings me back.

Our bases in Bahgdad and elsewhere
are loaded with B-52s.
And though I am glad that those jets are on base,
I’m weary of watching the news.

Today I’ll choose four other bases
and offensive weapons called bats.
The non-ending toll in both dollars and lives
will give way to some happier stats.

* This poem originally appeared on this website three years ago