Mocking Pat Robertson (A Guest Post by Dr. Adequate)

There is, or ought to be, a close-knit community, a guild if you will, of pseudonymous internet poets. As I have said before, I am friends with a number of them who do what I do better than I do it (I, however, make up for quality with quantity). One of our proud fraternity has recently lost his internet home, but not his penchant for skewering fools with a pen much mightier than Excalibur itself. (I note, now, that Podblack has also posted this verse. Only fair--it was she who introduced him to me.)

What Podblack does not have, though, is his very own introduction. I do. Ladies, Gentlemen, Virtual Entities, I give you the inimitable Dr. Adequate:


You will, of course, have seen Pat Robertson's latest bit of crazy, and those who know me know that I can't see a fish in a barrel without getting an itchy trigger finger and a strong craving for bouillabaisse.

I therefore give you this little ditty, which I call ...

Unmysterious Ways

Jehovah, as I understand,
holds all creation in his hand:
the Bible leaves no doubt.
And yet he always intervenes
with great economy of means,
and takes the easy route ---

sends droughts to nations that defy
his will (and which are hot and dry);
to prove his power is great, he
judiciously supports this boast
by flooding regions on the coast
and causing quakes in Haiti.

For God, it seems, has got a chronic
dislike of anything tectonic
as Pat Robertson's revealed,
and he'll pour his wrath and hate on
folks who don't live on a craton
on a continental shield.

For petty sins like genocide
and torture, he lets those abide
and wisely stays his hand;
but saves his deadliest assaults
for those who have tectonic faults ---
that's one thing he can't stand.

The wage of sin is death, it's written:
and yet I somehow stay unsmitten
by earthquake or tsunami:
for God forgives the rather large sins
of those who shun tectonic margins,
and chooses not to harm me.

And so, as far as I am able
I stick to regions that are stable
and thus avoid my sentence.
This clever little dodge, I call
most geo-theo-logical ...
and more fun than repentance.