oharaville

[This poem was brought on by a term I heard Earl Creps use in describing the challenge of church-starting in Berkeley.]

Berkeley!

Friend of the afflicted,

You pre-paradigmatic primordial soup

Strutting your stuff

Before princes and paupers,

In front of the soiled old man

Pushing his world in a shopping cart

And that clean-cut freshmen

Carting her dreams in a backpack.

You’re creating the world

With neo-synaptic connections

Firing over valleys of indifference

And setting the fires of innovation and conscience

That can’t be extinguished

By cash, oil or holy water.

You are a city set on a hill,

Misguided and delusional as you may be,

Because Jesus is the patron Savior of

The kinds of people good religious folk

Hang out to dry.

Look to the mountains!

Your next great idea won’t come from there

Or from the valley or the sea

But from the sapling that breaks through

The hard concrete of duplicitous idealism

To reveal a revolutionary love

That knows no bounds

And names tolerance

As the clanging cymbal that it is

Yes,

Tolerance is weak street smack

Compared to the love that’s

Flooding your streets