Divine Hygiene
Divine Hygiene
Some deity clipped her toenails today
and left one dangling,
suspended from
a trace
of cloud.
It is perfectly rounded,
and I am worried for her—
you’re really supposed to
cut these things straight across
or else they might
grow inward
instead of projecting out.
My son had an ingrown nail once.
It was angry and red
like the face of a
certain god. 
The Prompt
God has appeared in so many of the poems here—both in my poems and in the ones you share in the comments. The beliefs within this community range widely. There are atheists and agnostics among us, and there are devout monotheists. Perhaps we have some polytheists and pantheists here, as well. Many of us have been through a faith transition of one sort or another. My guess is that all of us live in cultures that are shaped by religion or by beliefs about the divine.
If you’d like a prompt to play with today, then I invite you to notice the stories about the divine that populate your own mind. These might be stories you believe in, and they might not. They might be stories you’ve learned about Athena or Zeus, stories you heard preached from a pulpit, or stories that seem to have grown straight from the center of your own heart. They might be stories you love or stories that leave a terrible taste in your mouth. If the former is the case, what do you love about this story? How does it connect with your life? If the latter, how would you like to see the story rewritten?
My own poem is a quirky reworking of the story I grew up with. It plays with the possibility of a feminine god, of multiple gods, and of fallible gods. It isn’t a declaration of any truth. It’s just play. But then again, playing with the concept of the divine might already be considered a radical act by some.
You get to choose how radical you want to be here—how silly, how earnest, how angry, how ardent. All I ask is that we hold one another’s poems with gentleness and respect. I am sure we will; the generosity and kindness of this community has been so consistent and so heartwarming. I look forward to your poems, reflections, and comments!
I will give you all I got.
But you gotta give me something to eat.
I am a hungry and tired and scared
streetdog named grace.
Lisa, when I first quickly read your poem without the prpompt, I though "oh my, we have to write a poem about toenails. Since feet and toes are not my best feature, I cringed. Fortunately, I kept reading. And two poems emerged, one perhaps a bit more irreverent than the other, but both ring true to me.
Dog God
^
I always knew that God
was Dog spelled backwards.
And that God must be ready
to welcome me home,
face licks and whirling roundabouts,
excited face and chew toy ready,
gleeful with anticipation
and caring less about the rigors of the day
Boundlessly joyful and unconditionally loving,
And always wordlessly asking
“wanna take a walk?”
God escapes the building
^
The God I first met was trapped inside the building,
constantly angry and continuously judging
every action against an impossible measure.
This God the Father looked like many of the fathers I knew,
distant and unapproachable, dour and grim,
hair trigger temper and fiery anger
and never quite satisfied.
Somehow we were the ones to blame.
^
The inevitable questions came
like where did all of the animals sleep on the boat?
Or how does God fit in that little wafer?
The answers came in three varieties:
“God did not like that question, Larry.”
“God is very angry with you, Larry.”
“Questions like that will get you into hell, Larry.”
I reckoned I rather not meet that God
in a dark alley.
^
Through it all there was a glimmer,
a quiet sense between the dogma,
that God could escape the sanctuary,
romp in the sweet scent of earth,
glide with me upon the waters,
lead the way to where beauty lives
and children safely sing and play.
^
No matter all of the masquerades
they tried to dress God up in,
That tender spark of love was there,
Tinkerbell like,
always reminding me
there was much more to the story.