religious verse can be both light and humorous in addition to something like John Donne cartographically contemplating his death… 

le bon fire

quick burn something

I forgot to order the ashes

for this Wednesday

weep day for the cold dead coal stuff

was it to have come from

the church supply store or maybe Ashby?

no they do calendars

and I should have earlier

consulted theirs

where do church supply companies

get their palms from anyway to cremate

and how do they get them

so cream-ated smooth and free

from cancer producing roughage

were they ever in the chancel

of a church on Palmarum

or blessed and held by the Faithful’s palms

even pious children flagellating siblings’ cheeks?

a house burned down down the street

where did its foreheads go

the folks who lived there

after it was emptied by the fire personnel?

what if I used its charcoaled door as a smudge pot

there are no ash trays accessible anymore

healthier the forehead thing seems

a less a dooming dreadful thing

furnaces have burned clean for decades

forest fires are mostly remote

and burning autumn leaves is against the law

and this season in our part of the world

has veiled with lids its backyard barbeques for months

if the kitchen oven has not been cleaned

since the ribs were made last month

would you suppose any red sauce

might symbolize something passionate and sad

rather than hickory enhanced finger licking good?

the Israel lights were left cooling

campfires of the wandering years

forty like about to start without the black smear

thanks to my forgetfulness of how to mark the grave

can the cross be drawn on

with our emptiness to fill?