As expected we were swamped with entries for this competition. Noah, Abraham and Lot featured most frequently in your cast list from which there were some notable absentees -- the Editor having expected (nervously) at least a handful of Onans, a less than demure Ruth and even a hardcore Susannah or two. But joys there were a-plenty, with special delight provided by Robert Schechter's brief but wry comment on the Creation and Joyce La Mers's even briefer gem about St. Paul.
God said, "Let there be!"
And sure enough, there was.
This does not work for me,
But when you're God, it does.
******
For looking back when God said NO
Lot's wife deserved God's odium,
Yet some believe God went too far
When he turned her into sodium.
Robert Schechter
Saul of Tarsus
Found catharsis
In epistles he'd scrawl
Signed "St. Paul."
Joyce La Mers
One twin, less hirsute than the other,
Is preferred by their crafty old mother,
Who cons their blind dad into blessing her lad
Instead of his hairier brother.
******
Irate when the folks of the town misbehave,
The Lord rains down one of his slaughters.
Lot flees from the flames, relocates to a cave,
Gets drunk, and shags both of his daughters.
Chris O’Carroll
The prodigal son had his snout in the trough:
He whored while I prayed and he gorged while I fasted.
He crawled back to Daddy when he’d had enough.
The prodigal son was forgiven, the bastard.
Mary McLean
A gopher wood boat
Kept Noah afloat --
And his Zoo
Too.
Leo Vincent
If the animals went in two by two,
After forty nights with little to do
Mustn’t the mice and their rodent cousins
have disembarked in tens of dozens?
Muriel Rattleby
To those two who dwelt in the Garden
The serpent said, "Begging your pardon,
Go on, take a bite." Then God got uptight,
and Adam ashamed of his hard 'n.
P. Lench
“What kind of God do you think I am?”
the Lord demanded of Abraham.
“Put down that cleaver; untie your son,
I was only having a bit of fun.”
Peter Goulding
Jezabel was thin and Posh and liked a little Baal,
till the mad chauffeur Jehu drove her out with curse and snarl.
She donned scent and rouge and lipstick before leaping from her casement -
the spaniels thought her quite a dish when she landed in the basement.
Lynn Roberts
Esau was hairy; his kid brother Jacob was slick, though, in more ways than one --
He tricked his dad Isaac to win the rewards that were due to the primary son.
Impious, perhaps, but it's clear that a moral of guile and resourcefulness lingers:
If you can't pull the wool o'er the eyes of a blind man, try running it under his fingers.
Brendan Beary