Written August 14, 2012. Web page created using 
Arachnophilia 4.0, October 2, 2012.The poem. We should get to the poem. Or the poems. For there are several. There is a web page of poems: http://www.spharnx.com.
I like the poet's poems. They are finished. He seldom revises them. They exist. They exist in a dark forest, lost on the internet, for few to see. Obviously the poet should promote his web site. He tried to promote his poetry on Facebook and failed.
It is the religion, Stupid. It is the religion! So much centers around our religion. Our religion is our outlook. This is how we look out at the world. And it is important. To the poet, the religion is all important.
So, we go to the first menu, "A Menu of the Religious Poetry." This is a new menu, only created in December, less than eight months before this analysis was written, yet already there was a very large selection of poems to include.
The first poem is "The Environmental Prayer," written in 1994, when the poet was living in Oldsmar Florida. The poem is still good. It speaks. It shouts. It has clarity. The poet should promote it. It is very good.
The second religious poem is "My Religion," written a decade later in 2005. Okay. It targets extreme evangelical Christianity. The poet has taken the gloves off. He is writing with bare fists. He is calling names. He is using the term "Christian Hatred," a very strong term. He has explained this to me as follows.
His term, "Christian Hatred," accuses them of hating. A very strong accusation, indeed. He knows that he should use a softer term. He likes the term, "Christian Contempt." By this, he means that the Evangelical Christians have much too much contempt for people that have different beliefs than they.
He is saying that although they express Christian Love, they do not speak with Christian Love. He is accusing them of failing the tests of First Corinthians Thirteen in their Bible. To him, they are no more than the "Sounding Brass," of that great Bible verse. Strong speech.
So they look at him as the one espousing hatred, hatred against them. To them he is fanning the flames against them. He is speaking with fire and brimstone. He is creating heat when he should be creating light.
They call him an atheist. He says that they call him a "fornicator." He says that they call him names. They shout with the full force of Christian Contempt! To him this is the world of today. This is where we are at. This is the issue! This is the center of the problem. This is the center of the dialog. This is where we should start.
He started in 1996 with a poem that addressed Christian Hatred against the Gay and Lesbian agenda by the presidential candidate, Patrick Buchanan. "The poor man," Spharnx says. "He is filled with so much predjudice and hate."
The poem was "Cock and Load." It was the poet's first broadside against "Christian Contempt." The poem went nowhere. Yet it is a masterpiece. It included the entire agenda of the Religious Right. Because it is more of a political poem, it is not included in the Menu of Religious Poems.
The poet believes that we have differing viewpoints of viewing God and the truths of God. We see the planet in different ways.
The first way is the Biblical way, the Christian way. It subscribes to a strict reading of the Bible and does not tolerate or allow very much deviation. This viewpoint is politically strong and has wide popularity. He calls this viewpoint as the more fantasy prone view because it includes belief in a living God that watches over us, judges us and can allow us to enter His Heaven upon our worldly death if we are so deserving.
The other viewpoint is more reality prone. It discounts the more fantasy prone religious view, although there are many that still subscribe to the biblical view of their youth. He wants to call this more reality viewpoint as the scientific viewpoint. It is the view that he subscribes to. His readings of scripture are the writings of Charles Darwin, Rachel Carson, Aldo Leopold, and other environmentalists. Environmentalism is his religion. He believes it religiously. He does not look for scientific proof. If the Christians can believe in a heaven fantasy purely on belief, certainly he can believe in science. They must allow him this yet they do not. From his poetry he has a name for his belief system. He calls it the "Whole World" religion.
Yes, this is a theology. They may call him an aetheist because he doesn't believe as they do, but he claims that he is a "theist." He does have a theology. He does have a religion. He repeats this in his poems over and over.
And sex. He has sex. Or he had sex. Sex dominated this man for many years. He was addicted. Severely. It conflicted with his religious conversion back in 1965, forty seven years ago. He addressed this in 2005 in the poem, "Prayersations." Prayersations was his first confessional poem, and it did not leave very much out. It is a great poem. The poem was about sunny downtown Okinawa, that island nation south of Japan, that American Cold War Fortress. He was stationed there during the Kennedy-Johnson years a long time ago. It was there that he became a "born again" Christian. Yes, he was once one of them. He reveals his two pre-Christian years on Okinawa, the years of sinning, brothels, abortion, veneral diseases and strong dosages of penacylin for such social diseases. Yes, this is a great poem. It is clear, concise and to the point. The poet had lived it.
Written August 14, 2012. Web page created using Arachnophilia 4.0, October 2, 2012.