.

“I Will Mock When Your
Calamity Cometh” 

“…but ye have set at nought my counsel, and would
hear none of my reproof: I also will laugh at your
calamity; I will mock when your fear cometh…” 

—Proverbs 1

If you butcher a womb, you’d shoot up a school,
Your feet in the tomb, two fingers to fool,
Two fingers to trick you—each in one ear,
A gun on your shelf, your death drawing near.

Sophia ignored, God’s Wisdom will mock,
And the shootings of masses will come as no shock.

.

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Alec Ream is a writer living in the Northern Neck of Virginia. His work has been printed in Decanto Poetry Magazine (West Sussex, UK) 2013-14, Western Viewpoints 2014 (Woodinville, Washington) and Poetic Images: the Great American West 2015 (Woodinville, Washington), The Society of Classical Poets Annual Journals 2015-19 (Mt Hope, New York), The Rocky Point Times 2016 (Puerto Peñasco, Mexico) and in several issues of The Lyric (Jericho, Vermont) 2015-18.  Currently, his work has gone to print in the Autumn Journal of The Writers Guild of Virginia, and his novel Canterbury 2020 is available locally in the Northern Neck of Virginia.  A member of the Demosthenian Literary Society at the University of Georgia, he deployed to Hawija, then wrote on Lookout Mountain, continuing to write, lecture and work for Delta Kappa Epsilon International. He prefers to note that he was first published reading to the pledge class of Michigan DKE, in Ann Arbor.  Most recently, his poem Green Fire was read at the Washington Literary Society and Debating Union at the University of Virginia.

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5 Responses

  1. Cheryl Corey

    My takeaway from this is that you reap what you sow. Am I correct in that assumption? I don’t understand the reference to “Sophia” and welcome an explanation. Thanks.

    Reply
    • Alexander Ream

      Thanks for the reply…you are correct, Cheryl. “Sophia” is the female personification of God’s Wisdom when His warnings have been repeatedly ignored.

      Reply
  2. Patricia Allred

    In appreciation, for an exquisitely powerful and haunting work!

    Best wishes,
    Patricia Allred

    Reply
  3. Alexander Ream

    Thanks, Patricia, for saying so. Best wishes to you and yours also. DKE housed and fed me for 8 years during the Great Recession, enabling me to be printed in Britain 2013, 3 times.

    As the House Dad at LSU for 5+ years, I currently miss the adrenalin from seeing the 6 o’clock news van on the sidewalk in front of the house Huey Long built for his son’s fraternity. When they put up the banner (above), I knew that there was an odd profundity to what the banner stated – ie, that when a comic book narrative creates glamour-themed criminals, it follows that 1 person out of 100 would wrongly imitate the fictional actions of those glamour-themed criminals.

    Reply
  4. Alexander Ream

    P.S. The banner that much outdid the one above was posted the day of the Kent St / LSU game: “Kent St is no stranger to a massacre.” This trended #2 on Yahoo. That one really instigated reflection. How so? Well, if a protest burns the ROTC, then the protest may get fired upon. Fictionalizing one’s own persecution is prominent today – when in fact one has played the clear provocateur.

    Reply

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