my grandmother

[revolutionR]

my grandmother was a catholic
she went to church everyday
but she never talked about religion
she was religious but she did not talk about it
it is strange to be raised as a catholic
but my parents did not really talk about it
we went to church on Sunday
but hardly ever talked about it

I remember the musty smell of the church
but I never really liked going to church
what I am trying to say is nobody taught me
so I would say this shows that there is
something wrong with religion
that after so many years, people don't
want to talk about it

but this is true about the the fact that most money
is spent on making war on people
it does not matter what they believe about God
the war machine is like religion
for the ruling cabal

after so many generations of unholy wars
is it any wonder my grandmother
did not want to talk about it

[Arcadia]

r-rabitt: was she Irish, Italian, Polish? just curious!. I was raised as a Catholic and it took me more or less twenty years to overcome (more or less) a deep sense of betrayal after that experience ...

bravo!!! gracias for the poem!!!

[revolutionR]

My grandmother on my mother's side, was French, she wanted to be a school teacher but she got married and had four children. She was always very kind to me.

[mnaz]

Not talking about it is somewhat normal.
Trying to politicize it has been the problem.

[still.trucking]

My maternal grandmother did not talk about it. She was an orthodox polish peasant full of what peope call old wives tails and superstitions. There were some names she could not name, only refer to it with pronouns and then she would daintily spit as it to get the thought out of her mouth.

Only as long as poets talk about it will we survive
poetry is our wall built by the poets
the front line warriors
the last defense against
blood encrusted Mars
If we can make it through this century I think we will survive as a species, maybe our aging adolescents will all die off and —
and we create wilderness out of an empire
thank you for the poem

[saw]

was raised Catholic as well, even did a 2 year stint in Catholic school ( and yes I was hit with rulers and had my ears twisted by nuns)....and yes, my family never talked about religion....the only talk was, You have to go to church !....only thing is Dad Never went and Mom when she felt like it....but they made me....I hooked church most of the time....went down to the car barn where the trolleys turned around.....and all my friends were there hooking as well....and he would get high and make up a sermon, in case a parent would ask...

Very early on, I became afraid of Catholicism....too many contradictions....too many not practicing what they were preaching...I didn't understand why my Catechism tried to teach me The Fear of God....so I asked about it....I said in my 8 year old way, How you supposed to love this guy you're afraid of ?.....well that was blasphemous....and I was scolded and given penance for life...

There was no one to talk to about it....not at home or in the church...only with friends who all felt the same way, that there was something weird about it....

[revolutionR]

Interesting responses, I thought it was very odd that people that went to church did not really want to talk about it, or not much. Maybe that was a catholic thing. I think that is why the surrealists did not like religion, because something was really wrong.

[Arcadia]

in my family the women talked about religión, Catholic and also the B options...! They were Italians or daughters of italians all of them. It´s still a theme of congregation and/ or debate between our family members & friends.


Trying to politicize it has been the problem. ... mnaz.. at least for the Catholic Church I guess it´s a bit too late for avoiding that...

[cmoore]

Sometimes talk is cheap, In a poem I take poetic license, there is so much to say about religion, my aunt sent me these religious pamphlets that were meant to teach me about
being a catholic, but I never read them, my aunt was also very religious, she thought
I would become a priest, but she lived on the other side of the country, and my parents
just did not know much about religion, and so I became interested in reading other things.

I became interested in surrealism in 1971, after talking to Philip Lamantia the North Beach surrealist, the surrealists did not like the church. There is a lot of stuff coming out in the open now about the church.As far as I am concerned organized religion is of the cabal that
enslaved humanity long ago. I not saying that there are not good people that are religious.
But.

[mnaz]

Religion had its day, but God wars and dogma can only get you so far..

[cmoore]

My karma ran over my dogma, I donno I was trying to recall what it was like when I was a child, and what I actually thought about,what was being conveyed to me about God. And it seems to me it wasn't so much what was said but what was not said. And I have some vague
feelings that I was on the far end of something, and that formed my thinking. Things just get weird and more weird. Poetry opens it up.

[Arcadia]

And it seems to me it wasn't so much what was said but what was not said. And I have some vague
feelings that I was on the far end of something, and that formed my thinking. Things just get weird and more weird. Poetry opens it up.


in my memory it was a somehow bellicose oversaid!

bravo !!! , & gracias for the poem, again!

[cmoore]

Right, in your face authoritarian, in my experience it was more like mum was the word.
Which is rather telling. What I mean to say is nobody taught me anything, something was wrong with that. But on the other hand I would not want anybody forcing it on me me either.

[Arcadia]

Right, in your face authoritarian... yeah, maybe: it was (and sometimes is) more a subject of criticism and debate, a sense of terroritory in disputa plus a double bind kind of familiar bond...

What I mean to say is nobody taught me anything ... are you sure?

gracias again for your poem!

[cmoore]

I am sure nobody sat me down and said I am going to teach you thus and thus . Really I feel that something important was lost, how can I say that I would have wanted religion to be forced on me, but it would have been nice if some folk traditions or some family knowledge would have been passed on to me. Something practical and useful. My grandmother did give me a novel to read when I was about thirteen, but that was it. Thank you for reading poetry.