To the Skeptic Who Denies God
You want me to prove to you my God exists.
“The burden of proof is on you,” you insist;
But when my lips open, you only resist.
You try to use logic to tear me apart;
You pull out your jargon to get a head start,
And don’t know I see through this right to your heart.
You say all my arguments have been refuted;
Before you heard me, though, you had me muted;
You tell me I’m stupid, religious, deluded.
You shut yourself out from reality’s blessing;
Your fantasy world without God is digressing
While blinding your eyes to the trap you’re caressing.
I don’t mind the names and I don’t mind the mocking;
You’re showing God true with the way that you’re talking,
Attacking my person and how I am walking.
But I know God won’t hold against you your past,
If you ever tire of your spiritual fast;
And I’m praying one day you’ll come home at last.
Sonnet IX: On Phil. 4:19 and Matt. 6:33
Why dost thou yearn, my soul, for that which bears
No fruit? Why longest with a deep desire
For things that only perish in the fire?
Thy fleshly craving builds up and repairs
Thy curséd nature; ill thy reft soul fares
When thou to nothing higher dost aspire
But, destitute, ly’st grov’lling in the mire,
Where sin thy good discretion warps and tears.
My soul, why walkest thou like unto this?
For all thou needest thy God well supplies,
And fleshly satisfaction bears no good
Thou mayest profit from; thou’lt blessings miss
From heaven’s riches. Therefore let thine eyes
Gaze upward, from where blessings truly flood.
James Sibert is a Mechanical Engineering student and poet living in Colorado.
These poems are among the entries for the Society of Classical Poets’ 2012 Poetry Competition.
You say that flesh is nothing less than sin,
that embracing life on Earth can only win
destruction of my heart-soul in the end.
That attitude of yours “godly” priests have held,
while burning women who don’t fit your mold,
molesting children, cloaked in robes of God.
You say pleasures of skin divert attention
from the mythical realm that you call heaven;
while ignoring all painful work needed now
to create, at last, Eden from human hell.
James, your poem ”To the Skeptic Who Denies God” is very well written and I enjoyed it very much, especially the closing lines:
”But I know God won’t hold against you your past,
If you ever tire of your spiritual fast;
And I’m praying one day you’ll come home at last.”
So true of some friends of mine, you expressed it perfectly!
Genuine truth is timeless, and that’s what makes poetry like this so special. It’s brilliant art in its best form.
Wonderfully written, my kind of poem. People deny Christ because they don’t know the truth.
DILEMMA
— James Ph. Kotsybar
Faith is often blind, and that seems tragic.
It drops to its knees, humble and devout.
Science’s problem is lack of magic.
It can’t accept the mystical throughout.
Each sees light stream
through a prism of glass.
The pious think of stained-glass
and God’s bliss,
and all but simplicity they let pass.
They have no need for a hypothesis.
The logical need to know how light’s bent,
and measure photon wavelength to decide
if particle-waves end the argument
or there are more dimensions to divide.
The first has all the answers that it needs.
The other must seek before it accedes.