I drew inspiration for this rhyme from W. B. Yeats’s poem “The Two Trees” and Leonard Cohen’s song “The Future,” particularly the verse “Give me Christ or give me Hiroshima.”
Even before God cultivated the Garden
and planted two trees in downtown Eden,
angels sanded and stained
beams of wood
to saddle the hill of Calvary
where the Son of God stood
as He wrote with His own blood,
a masterpiece of irony.
A holy holocaust ensued,
the land torn in two,
a juxtaposition of opposites
that still continues,
a binary of influential forces,
things visible and invisible
to choose from without apology.
Give me Abel or
Give me Cain.
Give me a shepherd’s sacrifice
(a foreshadowing of God’s sacrifice) or
Give me a basket of exotic fruits
poisoned with forbidden desire,
an omen of our planet’s destruction
and acid rain.
Give me the Cross or
Give me the Swastika.
Give me Christ or
Give me Hitler’s harmonica.
Give me objective truth or
Give me cultural relativism.
Give me a confident smile or
Give me deconstructive criticism.
Give me the Everlasting Man or
Give me the Underground Man.
Give me eternity,
feasting on common sense realism or
Give me self-loathing
born of intellectual spite and
contempt for 19th-century utilitarianism.
Give me Narnia or
Give me the Wild Lands of the North.
Give me Aslan or
Give me the White Witch
and her black dwarfs.
Give me love or
Give me porn.
Give me grace or
Give me a woman scorned.
Give me Mary Magdalene or
Give me the Witch of Endor.
Give me a calloused heart circumcised or
Give me necromancy,
the craft of divining what the future holds for
kings obsessed with winning wars.
Give me the Gospel
and one Kingdom soldier or
Give me a “Coexist” bumper sticker
for an entire Woke culture.
Give me the Ark or
Give me a worldwide flood.
Give me heaven or
Give me secrets and sins
buried under generations of mud.
Give me peace or
Give me hate.
Give me kind eyes with a side of fries or
Give me rage on a raw, red meat plate.
Give me Francis of Assisi or
Give me Faust.
Give me a humble pauper or
Give me a dissatisfied mouse.
Give me your time or
Give me your excuses.
Give me a second chance or
Give my Ego a barrage of bullets and bruises.
Give me the Tree of Life or
Give me the root responsible
for all this disease, death and strife.