Poison man

 Write me off

John Clare Stokes

Often it crosses my thought

What thing did I do

For one to cross me from

Their life?

I think for some I may have placed

A moon in a moonless scene and 

maybe another I took

A photo of a coed crossing the street

And they see me as some voyeur

Still another I may have said

I took this photo yesterday

When I took it in seventy three

I mean

Couldn’t they tell I am now hairless?

And there was maybe one

I said Hillary should have frozen atop 

Everest 

Or what of the one I think wrote me off

because I said God is a chicken

and I’m under His wing

Couldn’t figure if he took the Bible

Literally or figuratively 

Or allegorically.

But either way

It wasn’t funny I think.

And that great group of many

Who left me simply because I left

Their congregation 

And I wasn’t even thinking myself

Southern baptist

Having grown up United Methodist

I must have mistook my dispensation 

I was thinking I was in all grace

It must have been all law after all.