It took me some fumbling but I finally figured out the following poem was my response to the Indian Ocean disaster. I wrote it in the "wake of the tsunami."

When I saw a quote of the inimitable Jon Stewart: he deadpanned on Comedy Central's The Daily Show, "God, you've made your point. You're all-powerful," I got it.

Yet it isn't God we need to be addressing our concerns to -- it's us.

A Phenomenal Conversion

... Sweet women, youths, men, all incredulous,
W ho chimed as one: 'This figure is of straw,
This requiem mockery! Still he lives to us!'
from “God’s Funeral” by Thomas Hardy


Is god dead?

No, she only changed her underpants

Crotchless, provocative dominatrix

that she is

Unafraid to undress enough

to expose the hapless male warrior

with his erect member she no longer heeds.

Neutered pretenders

wail from their pulpits—“Behold!

The end is near!”

That it is: right behind them

roaring off to a future

the prophets did not see.

They were looking to the sky or dreaming, while

Mother Earth had the key

wired into a code of life the wise understood

when god lifted her skirt.