A poem from my thesis that will never get published

I won't share any poems that might make it into a journal someday, but here's a poem from my thesis that was okay at the time but not really publishable. It's one of a series about the Poet, a stereotypical old white male poet type on at least his second marriage; "recovering" from some religion or other and vaguely associated with Buddhism; supremely pompous, though in an Everyman sort of guise; and so well-known in the poetry world that anything he writes will be published, good or not.

The best of my Poet poems will hopefully get picked up by a magazine, so it won't appear here. This one was more something I had to write, a working-out of some issues about Poetry that I was dealing with at the time. Most poets who talk about religion in their work are post-church people, and the dreaded f-word of academe is not that nasty one that rolls regularly of most tongues these days, but fundamentalism. Truth is fluid, art semi-divine--really, it's the only thing safe to believe in.

The in-jokes (among other things) are what make it less a good poem than a good exercise (or exorcising of some stuff), but it's thought-provoking, at least.

The Cult of Art

The Poet, a Buddhist if he’s anything,
says I can’t believe in poetry and capital-G
god, says I’ll have to choose.

I always knew it.

But how to give up poetry, how to
shun her goddesses with an oh-well
shrug? Can’t I just mix spirits
and saints, chants and prayers?
Drink bubbling potions and
communion wine?

No, he warns. We dare not
risk such mixing. Leave experiments
to science—this is Art. Here
is the blank white page. We
write holy writ. Your muse is
jealous, Dearie, jealous as any
O.T. God, and, Vengeance—
well, she saith it’s hers, too.

How can I risk the silence
of the goddess? How dare I
risk the holy wrath of God?
How much longer can I live
in the eye of this Venn, these
intersecting rings of flame?

Other writers circle us, say
the Poet’s full of mumbo-
jumbo, say I’m too dramatic.
What choice? What incompatibility?
Think of Milton, they say,
of King David, of Gerard
Manley Hopkins. Worship
is Art, Art worship. Jesus,
Allah, YHWH, it doesn’t matter.
You might even follow the Poet
as he follows the Buddha. We are
all artists here, followers of
Art—full of love and
questions. Seekers.

From the corner, Art eyes
us, an elephant wild for
peanuts just beyond her
reach. Should the seekers
notice, they would dress her
statuesque in red and gold,
call her shrieks songs, make
obeisance. But they’re not
paying attention, and I don’t
care to see the spectacle.
My reasonable act of worship:
to remember she’d like to devour
me, and to fear that power.