Two Monks and a Nun

I am still itching like crazy. I want to scream. I have been an itching machine for three weeks now. Enough already. Thank god my appt. with the dermatologist is this afternoon. I am praying he will give me a shot of cortisone or a dose of prednisone, and that it will work (make the rash magically disappear or at least stop itching).

In the meantime, I am sending out a bunch of class rosters to teachers, pre-class emails to students, and emails to myself (of ongoing revisions of the monk/goddess poem). Not sure why I am giving this poem such devout attention.

Yesterday I started reading a book by poet Ted Kooser (U.S. Poet Laureate 2004-2006) called The Poetry Home Repair Manual. He says he averages 20 to 40 revisions per poem. He says he heard poet Linda Pastan say, in a radio interview, that some of her one-page poems go through a hundred revisions. So...I feel validated. Revision is good. Round and round the poem goes; where it stops, nobody knows! You subtract from it, you add to it, you subtract what you added and put back what you subtracted, over and over and over until finally, hopefully, something clicks and you decide that's it. Over and out. That all being said, here I go again:

Sermon

Two monks and a nun walk into a bar, order a round of Zombies. God
gazes down and sees a design: parking lot, bar, patrons, environs. He
thinks, Jesus, this view looks a lot like a Rorschach test! He thinks, What the hell, why not have a little fun? He stares at the blot until he sees a

bell, a bone and a skull. Then voila! An inkblot man appears on an
operating table, encircled by a team of surgeons. His chest, split apart, is yet another blot. A blot within a blot. Holy shit, thinks God. I can see his heartbeat. Man, I never get tired of that. But then the beat stops, and a

bird made of energy, shimmering, free, rises from the static chest, hovers in the ceiling corner. God forgets it's just a test. He thinks, Do I let this guy live...or not? He sighs. His breath becomes a mistral that sweeps across the coast of France. Just take it one small death at a time, he chants.

Two monks and a nun get hammered, wobble from a bar into the realm of night and stars. The lights have burned out in one lone O of the neon sign. Even so, the remaining glow casts an electric blue over their wayward souls. God gives them a tired nod as they head back home.

Let us pray.