Poems to God

   					     No. 81

    				    Obvious & obscure God
   				    of godly irony 
    				    & sacred ambiguities,
   				    radiating a deep darkness
    				    among intense intimacies,
  				    self-evident while being
   				    beautifully hidden
    				    everywhere my imagination
   				    seeks You
    				    in cumulus clouds of unknowing
     				    while I keep falling back down
     				    into my habitual black hole
    				    where dark energy consumes me.
     				    You are my momentum & Lord,
   				    promise beyond ancient doubts,  
   				    ultimate question to my answers,
      				    source of doggedly delightful love,
    				    destiny beyond my addictions,
    				    master of possibilities,
    				    my wonderfully mysterious God.
    			 
      			



   					 Poems to God

   					      No. 83

    				    I have doubted, therefore
     				    I am alive with calm urgency
    	 			    to become pure of heart
    				    enough to see You alone
   				    among the menageries
    				    of Your created possibilities
      				    saturating each amazed
      				    moment of my strangely
     				    inexorable & stumbling 
    				    inclinations into eternities
      				    hidden in my every breath.
    				    Sometimes You necessarily
    				    are hidden in my darkness
     				    & sometimes so apparent
    				    is Your beautiful ambiguity
     				    doubt extinguishes itself 
        				    into a faint remnant
     				    of the primal nothingness
      				    from which You as Poet
    				    made all beings, even me.





     					Poems to God

   					     No. 84

    				   My atheistic twin shadow
      				   sadistically & wholly revels 
   				   in every zeitgeist moment
     				   descending into blasphemous
    				   scourges of Your memory
    				   where dire & godless indulgence
     				   imposters itself as new wisdom
      				   among its own ruins & debris
    				   of power, lust & murder of hope.
     				   My twin is at home in an orphan
    				   universe of dark matter &
   				   ever darker anticipations
     				   with naked evil deified 
     	 			   in ceremonies of aborted
    				   innocence to sounds of
    				   primal, everlasting screams.
      				   Living with such a twin
      				   is the epitome of suffered
      				   love & grotesque graces
    				   revealing You in darkness.
          			   
   				   
Alan Altany has BA & MA degrees in Catholic theology, and a Ph. D. in religious studies (University of Pittsburgh). After an academic career, he is a semi-retired, septuagenarian professor of Comparative Religions at a small college in Florida, USA.  In the past he was the founder & editor of a small magazine of poetry (The Beggar’s Bowl), a high school teacher & university professor, factory and lawn maintenance worker, hotel clerk, novelist, delivery truck driver, etc. He has published three books of poetry for a series, “Christian Poetry of the Sacred”:  A Beautiful Absurdity (2022), The Greatest Longing (2023), and Intimations (2024).  His poetry has been published by Tipton Poetry Journal, Beltway Poetry Quarterly, Valley Voices, Sand Hill Literary Magazine, The Hong Kong Review, North Dakota Quarterly, Montreal Review, St. Austin Review, and others.
Website:  https://www.alanaltany.com/.