Disinherit Now!

Disinherit Now!

(“Above all else, cherish intense love for one another, for love covers up a mass of sins.” 1 Peter 4:8)

Are you really going to throw him out?
Disinherit him and carry him to the limit,
to the cliff, to the sidewalk curb and leave him,
brown socks and flannel shirt, to look for a dangerous bed
somewhere in the city?

Did you say he is gay, and there is no way you will allow
such an abomination living under your brand new roof,
the crown you devoted to God-first and family-second, as if
God wants your weeping boy out in the cold anyone,
no one knows where they will find him
or his body
when you hope to seat him the day before Thanksgiving.
(You never said he couldn’t eat at a table running with gravy,
so long as he was gone by nightfall).

And for those who read this (the few), I had planned to write
a jolly ditty, and celebrate love; the way it lifts the clouds or
sings above the fogs; the way it keeps the flowers in bloom at the courthouse
till nearly a week after January 1.

But then I read of homeless shelters in Minneapolis, maybe more,
where a third served there, in the shelter, in the cold, the upper frozen
where sidewalks cannot support winter mattresses; a third served there
are L&G&B&B who came out to their families and their families misinterpreted
it as slap in the face of their good name!

How many sins, if you believe they are sins, would be warmly covered
by families who loved the way a certain Father welcomed a vagrant son

And

Turned it around a long time ago…ran away from home, sought the homeless life
and had no shelter yet but an arid memory. How will we keep our own who say
they just cannot live the way we expected? Will Extravagance win the day,
or will we send them soon so another homeless shelter can feed them

What we refused to prepare.