[stylist] Poem - "Pagan" - First Draft

[William L Houts]

Hi Gang,

Here's this morning's effort.  Not a lot of literary poetic jazz in this 
one, but I think it's a little charming anyway, and tells a little bit 
about where I've been soulwise.


--Bill



---


I was a priest of sorts,

and honored the gods.

Hermes, Herne, Dionysos,

the pantheon regulars, as well as

gods of kitchen, timetable, bus,

the ones we worship without quite

knowing it, and pleasing anyway, or not.

I even kept an altar, no joke,

though it was a gesture, mere and sad.

When I went Catholic, I once told

a startled roomful of my pagan priesthood.

"No shit?" a woman said.

"Well," I replied, less shit

than I thought at the time."

But I finally came to a place

where wonders met with ruin and I

decided to settle for beauty.

Magicians are fine and all,

but poets get all the boys, and anyway,

I'd rather smell roses

than pray to them, and praying, forget.




















-- 

"Do one thing for me, Sredni Vashtar!"

           --Saki